RE: Adding CCTV

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Absolutely! - piece of the proverbial p*ss with comfort...

Connect up the bell-press switch to comfort as an input, connect up the
contact sensor on the door to comfort as an input. I even have a PIR in
the porch facing the front path, so I sense approaching visitors a
little before they actually reach the door - this gives a little extra
time for processing logic, and thus a more "immediate"
response...

Comfort then knows:
- when someone is approaching the door, before they get there
(regardless of whether they rang the bell or not)
- when the doorbell is pressed.
- when the door is opened.
- when the door is closed.

note that I have a PIR immediately inside *AND* outside the front door,
so if I could be *rsed to deduce the logic & write the code, I could do
all kinds of clever things based on whether the door was opened in
response to a caller, or because an occupant is leaving the house etc.

Once that information is in comfort, you can do anything in response to
it that comfort can do. This includes switching CCTV cameras, and there
used to be numerous examples of this of the Comfort web site. It would
be utter simplicity to have it power on the camera - you would need to
take care of ensuring that whatever CCTV system you have in place can
respond appropriately; - i.e. as soon as it starts receiving video from
that camera, it needs to start recording... It also needs to not
complain about "lost feed" when you power the camera down
again...

In my case, I use comfort to do some of the things that it is best at
(turn on porch lights if its dark etc.), but I also communicate these
conditions immediately into Homeseer via the comfort-homeseer plugin,
and do additional logic there, including sending an email to my mailbox,
pausing any playing SONOS zones if the bell is pressed, etc. (It could
also provide TTS announcements over any/all SONOS zones if I wanted...)

I also have a CCTV camera at the front door, but that currently is not
fully integrated into the above. It is connected to a GeoVision server,
which has motion detection (with complete freedom to mask areas of the
image etc.) so this automatically records when someone approaches the
door, and emails me a still. (I could also have it upload the still to
an FTP site etc.) GeoVision have some I/O modules available that can be
triggered by the motion detection, so I plan to fit one or two of these
and connect its output channels to comfort inputs so it will then be
able to signal comfort as soon as movement is detected by any camera
(one channel per camera allows me to tell comfort exactly which camera
has seen motion). This effectively will allow me to use the cameras as
additional comfort sensors, with *excellent* discrimination in the
detection area (far easier than trying to tune a PIR to only see
movement in a specified area). Then the detection of movement by a
camera will become a comfort trigger, and can instigate any comfort (and
thus additionally Homeseer) response that I want.

Once the in-beta Homeseer Touch software is available, that would
include the ability to push out a customised screen display with either
a still, or streamed live feed from the CCTV, and any log information
that you want, - exactly as described in your question.

You could also pass the info from Homeseer into xAP/xPL and use that to
drive any number of additional display devices around the house. I don't
know if there are any direct Comfort-xAP/xPL interfaces available (I'm
not aware of any), but a UCM-xAP/xPL would be a useful device I think...

BTW: Your choices are all good ones:-

CBUS - Just works
Comfort - Just works
SONOS - Just works
Homeseer - If you do it *properly* it pretty much also does "just
work"
with a fairly high degree of reliability (IME).

HTH

Paul G.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
> Of Ben McCormack
> Sent: 05 February 2009 10:08
> To: UKHA Group
> Subject: [ukha_d] Adding CCTV
>
> All
>
> As you have read I have decided to go down the cbus/comfort/sonos and
> possibly
> homeseer route for my HA system. Things are progressing well but
> slowly.
>
> Now I had thought about CCTV in the past but was never sure but this
> morning I found a
> site that has made me rethink http://www.bwired.nl/Doorimages.asp
>
> There is a camera at the front door that is linked to the doorbell and
> also the contact
> sensor on the door.
>
> So it takes a picture and gives the following readout
>
> Doorbell pushed On Saturday 31 January 2009 - 19:57:42
> Door Opened On 19:57:53  After 11 Seconds  For 8 Seconds
>
> Now the system to do this is home written so is not an option for me.
>
> Has anyone got anything similar working
>
> Action : Comfort Doorbell pressed
> Response : Camera turns on and records for 2 min or until door is
> opened and closed.
>
> Any help or pointers appreciated.
>
> Ben
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>


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