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LOOKING THROUGH THE INTERNET

A Prototype Security System
by Skylar Lei, Jim Haslett, and Mike Smith

Start • Web Server Choice • Interactive GUI • Video System • Remote Camera System • Control RF Link • Solar Power Module • Sources and PDF

The evolution of the Internet has opened many opportunities. At the click of a button you can view the snow conditions at commercial ski sites around the world before heading out for the weekend. Today, however, you are sitting at work wondering about the conditions both outside and inside of somewhere more personal, such as a control site for the company you own or your cottage in the mountains.

If you wanted to get still pictures or moving videos over the Internet from your site, where would you start? What equipment would be necessary? Could you build the hardware and software for an Internet viewing system at a low cost? These were the problems that students were asked to solve in a fourth-year Team Design Project Course at the University of Calgary, Canada. The customers wanted to be at home, yet be able to interrogate a set of fixed and independent camera systems in real time, via phone lines.

In this article, we provide the details of the components of a low-cost, prototype remote video system intended to meet the budget constraints placed on the team.

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

The prototype system was split into several major components (see Figure 1). A base station collects information from local and remote cameras through a video multiplexer. The images are then downloaded to the user’s web browser on request.

Figure 1—Here you can see the base station and video-switching module together with remote video and control links.

(Click here for figure)

Remote low-cost, solar-powered cameras placed at a variety of external locations are able to transmit images to the base station via RF links. Close-in, fixed-link cameras are hardwired directly to the base station. A customized GUI, accessible either locally or remotely, enables the user to select and view from any camera. Also, a commercial video-streaming software package lets the user manipulate the digitized video data.

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