There is a wide range of CCTV equipment which you can use to assist you in monitoring events for which you can’t be present. The equipment you decide to purchase will depend on the need you’re trying to fulfil. So for example, the equipment you need for monitoring an industrial process in, say, a chemical plant, will be different to the equipment you’ll need for security purposes.
The basic setup for a CCTV system consists of security cameras, connected via a coaxial cable, to a CCTV monitor. But this is the most basic setup. If you were to add more CCTV cameras you would need also to include a monitor which would allow you to switch between the different cameras. However, this kind of setup does not allow you to record and store your camera footage. To do this you’ll need to add in a device which can record your footage.
Now, the kind of recording equipment you decide to use will depend on the kind of camera you use. So for example, if you want to use analogue cameras and you also would like to record your footage, you could store your footage on tape. This is a cheap option; however, the downside to this is that a tape system can only hold a very limited amount of information, especially when you compare it to a digital video recorder (DVR). So you’ll end up having to slow the tape down and only record, for instance, four frames in one second, which means limited footage. So to compensate for this limited storage ability a video capture card might need to be introduced. It converts the signals from your analogue camera into a digital signal, which can then be stored on your PC at a much smaller size, thus allowing you to save some space.
If an analogue camera is not your thing, then perhaps take a look at digital or IP cameras. Equipment such as this means that you don’t need a video capture card, and the signal from you digital camera gets sent straight to the central PC.
