Intercom solution

Hi all fairly new to cbus
the one feature it seems to lack is a basic intercom system
ie someone presses a button at the entry the screen flips to the camera
you press a button on the touch screen and talk back(maybe a gate open feature )
surely this cant be hard to achieve
when the customer is paying $ 30 000 plus for a cbus system and you tell them that its not an easy task to get this basic feature they start to backtrack
can any one help me with this
I m not opposed to modification of a generic intercom
and integrating it with the cbus colour touchscreen if that is whats required to get something user friendly for the customer
any help greatly appreciated

 

Jut a camera ?

Is it possible to get a security camera to operate on the colour touch screen without the use of homegate maybe via the usb port or rs 232 port ?

 

We have successfully used an IP video server from Ness (Part No. 100-310).

You plug the camera into the video server, then connect the video server to your LAN. You can then view the camera image on the touchscreen using the web cam wizard.

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Matt

 

so does cbus see the server as a device when you do a network search or is there more to it ?
any chance of a little more information as to how you went about it
as the old saying goes " if it sounds too good to be true"
regards
Mike

 

When viewing cameras on the touchscreen, via an IP server, the IP server takes the video signal from the camera, converts it into a computer data stream, either video or still images refreshed every second or so, and then places that data stream onto your LAN, not onto the C-Bus network.

You then network together the IP server and C-Touch, and setup a page on the C-Touch to display the still images from the IP server, automatically refreshing them at a certain rate, so as to appear like a normal video image, just at a slower frame rate.

Darpa

 

What I tried... and will strengthen further when time permits...

I bought a cheap IP camera on ebay - Cost was $140. This was a true IP camera with an inbuilt Linux server. The software enabled me to set square areas of the screen for motion sensing... Any movement in those areas and the litle device could do interesting things...

It could email a photo, ftp to a server - or the magic one - send a http request / post. All configurable to what port etc...

On my touch screen - I wrote a little program that waited for the post on a certain port, listening... listening... and voilla interupted the screen with the live picture and played a mp3 doorbell chime..;

All completely outside of cbus... but yes I am amazed too that for a simple request of home automation - why there is nothing simpler or something specialised for a somewhat easy / wanted solution...

 

Impact, does the unit you're using have a winbond chipset? or does the program you wrote for the touch screen not rely on that like the regular one does?

Any chance you could share the program you wrote?

Darpa

 

The unit I got was a Gadspot N1000 (not the NC1000). I got this through ebay, a powerseller, visited him, and was impressed with the quality for the price.

Ideally I wanted an IP camera housed in a PIR... For spying / or just for recording if an alarm went off. I didnt want the IP camera to trigger the alarm - I want a standard PIR for that...

So my intention was to try one of these, and I would make my own PIR housing for it....

In the meantime I tried it as a door monitor / alarm / doorbell... it works - but the code I wrote for the touch screen was just for proof of concept at present... Not really shareable / constant destroyable while I 'play' (you have to remember my builder is still building the house - hopefully lock up stage in 2 weeks - so I am constantly fiddling to work out what is best etc.)

I will be more than happy to share more later / or happy to work as a group on something as well - that would benefit more than just me...

A quick check on ebay shows the camera I got -> http://cgi.ebay.com.au/MPEG4-MJPEG-...ryZ48627QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Many others duplicate the smae functionality - look for one that has a webserver built in and has motion snesing to do http requests.

(This camera gives a good picture in reasonable light / was simple to setup - obtained an ip address easily / browser worked well with an activex - however I still need to play with it some more - in regard to security and userid / passwords, yes it works securely, but I want to bypass this somewhat so the touch screen does not need to prompt for it... Tinkering in progress)

 

lan ?

So for your system to work computer must be on at all times if i read this correctly to marry C touch to Lan network ?

 

Yes - must have a server listening to your port all the time...

Which is fine for me - I have a home server running 24 * 7 - using windows home server at present and somewhat like it / somewhat hate it. I will use this as the listener and logger... ie. record the picture of a visitor when not home.

I will get this PC Server to notify my cbus touch screens, and if they are off it wont matter, the message will just not be heard, yet I will still have recorded the event occured in the hidden / backend home server.

Intention is that I would be notified when next using the screen that visitors arrived while I was out, and I could look at the logfile...

(so many things to do / so little time available!)

 

Yes I did try it both ways and still working on the pros and cons of each....

 

or is it possible to have both hooked to a router independent of a computer ?

 

Just looking back at some old threads and this one seemed to go dead with no result.

Any idea on how this went? Did you get it all to work in the end?

Cheers mate
Brenton