Fish eye Cameras

[bduncans1]

Is it possible to use this type of camera with the software? (maybe not this one in particular, but a fish eye lens camera)

http://www.vivotek.com/fe8171v/

Thank you

[ryan]

It certainly is. Here is a sample video from a 180 degree camera in our Orlando office a few weeks ago when there happened to be a fire: https://vimeo.com/95242420

[bduncans1]

Will 360 degree cameras work? Or is it all about it being able to setup virtual IP cams on the hardware? What camera do you guys use?

Glad they got the fire under control!

Thanks for the info Ryan

[ryan]

Theoretically Sighthound Video can record from any video stream. I haven't used a 360 degree camera however, so I can't really comment on what the effects may be on the tracking and recognition.

That clip was capture by an Axis M3007-PV.

[ahallada]

I have 2 of the M3007P in service now with SH and 4 more waiting to be installed. I placed mine in the ceiling of my living room , for example, and I can see my entire room from 720p up to 5MP. You can configure these cameras easily to stream the dewarped views or go into the cameras browser and see all the views. SH can only pull one view from this cam that I know of. I can pull all the views into my iPad app LiveCam Pro if I want to so it's not a big deal. I can also store different views on the onboard recording card of the cam. Once you get used to the 360 degree view though , it just works. Set up detectors the same way, just have more area covered with one cam.

The cons of these cams are that with SH they can be CPU pigs, taking up to 30% of processor with one cam at full resolution. I imagine it's because SH is continually recording one stream while live viewing the other. If you click off on the live viewing it drops CPU demand significantly , up to 10-12%. If you set them to stream 720p and around 10fps , they take 10-11% of CPU on OSX and 7-10% on Windows. 2-3 MP streaming takes around 20% of CPU. This is on an older iMac Mid 2007 with 2.8Ghz duo core.

The other other con is that they are not great low light cams and need outside light sources to give good resolutions. I'm setting up light switches with motion detection sensors today for this reason.

Other than that , they are very descrete in appearance and allow useful digital zooming if recorded at high resolution. I can zoom down on my coffee table and read the writing on the magazines. They save on the number of cams needed to capture a room and play well with every software I've tried them on.

Allen