PIR + CCTV + Voice Control

["Antony Marks" <antmarks@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Currently I am trying to extend both the HA system of the house and the
security aspect of it. 

Almost every light in the house is now X10 controlled, but beyond
simple
timed routines such as sunset and wakeup, plus part manual triggers
such
as home, out, bedtime, etc, is not what I would consider fully
automated.
The bathroom is currently the only non-X10 controlled light since the
X10
controller for it died and it was awkward anyway, so it had to be
reverted to manual. This is one thing that I hope to fix with the next
upgrade. Most appliances that can be simply X10 controlled are.
Although
there might be other candidates later, the installation is other than
the
bathroom lighting pretty much finalised. 

I am looking to work towards voice control. This is much more of a
gadget
thing at the moment than serious but this obviously requires audio
inout
>from
me doing this is the presence of a device in the room for picking up
the
audio. This got much worse when I brought up whole house audio since
she
was concerned about having all these things appearing on the ceiling. I
don't think it would make that much difference since a ceiling is
hardly
artistic, but still. 

There is a "standard" alarm fitted to the house with PIRs
downstairs only
and only linked to the alarm system. I would like to have this linked
to
the HA controller as well as the existing alarm. The next stage is to
flood the house with hard wired PIR. The existing alarm will be
retained
for at least the short term, but the plan is to obtain PIRs with twin
outputs so that the existing alarm and automation can live together.
The
exsiting alarm would support additional PIR input but the current
reason
for seeking twin PIR output is merely for simple replacement of the
existing PIRs downstairs without having to touch the alarm at all while
not needing to add another PIR to the affected rooms.

The other part of the next stage is to flood the house with CCTV. The
CCTV will likely be linked to the HA controller (a PC) for Hard Disk
recording if certain conditions are met rather than the traditional VCR
recording. A traditional VCR recorder may be used as a short term
measure
assuming a low cost system could be sourced that would easily upgrade
to
the hard disk recorder without significant redundancy in the system. 

Long term, I hope to use still CCTV image analysis on the HA PC to
detect
"false positives" on motion detection by "blanking out"
portions of the
view area, when a trigger condition is met. This is mainly so I can
allow
curtains to open or blow when windows are open to remain as
"safe"
conditions. I also hope to use this to limit the size of detection so I
can allow for say the size of a cat to move through an area without it
triggering anything unnecessarily. 

It is this CCTV that represents the main problem since SWMBO is
reluctant
to have cameras in every room. I cannot actually disagree with this
since
even though they would only be "active" when the house is empty,
neither
of us want to spend our lives feeling like we are in front of a camera
and I guess that visitors would feel equally uncomfortable. 

Having spent a while doing some research on the web into how to make
cameras blend, I came across various sources of cameras (some including
audio) housed within PIRS. Since I have approval for PIRs, hiding the
CCTV and voice input within them could looks to be the best solution I
can hope for while I can then maybe push forward on some sort of fitted
whole house audio system since everything else is hidden away. 

I would prefer a day night system (i.e. colour until light levels drop
then revert to black and white) but have not come across any of them.
Colour cameras seem to all but useless in anything other than full
daylight (camcorders included) but I do not want to have to fit colour
and black and white systems to account for this. Since day/night
systems
do exist, if I can find one in such a system, it would be the one I
would
likely go for. My main reason for wanting colour is related to my long
term aim to give certain events immunity from triggering events. The
other reason is when I was showing SWMBO some CCTV footage, she didn't
like the fact that is was in black and white! "It looks very 50s"
or
something similar was her initial response! On the upside, I get the
budget for colour CCTV but from a technical point of view, it would
have
te be very good low light colour or a day night system to actually be
useful. 

Anyway, getting to the point, for those that bothered to read this far
:)

Does anyone have any experience of these combined PIR/CCTV systems or
any
recommendations on them and of anywhere that stocks decent systems at
reasonable cost?

Also any recommendations, comments and criticisms of my proposal are
welcomed.

Ant. 
-- 
  Antony Marks
  antmarks@xxxxxxx
-- 
http://fastmail.fm - Send your email first
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