Video switches and Sage for security/baby cams

[wayner]

I have been thinking that it would be neat to be able to add the funciton to view security or baby monitor cameras in Sage but the downside seems to be that you would need one tuner per camera.

But what about using an IR controlled video switch? Could you then fool Sage into thinking that the video switch is an STB and Channel 1 corresponds to input 1, channel 2 to input 2, etc. That way you could use as many cameras as you can connect to your switch with one tuner.

They have an IR controlled 4 input component switch at Monoprice.com - component is overkill since you would only need one RCA plug for the video but they only cost about $20. This is a "learning" switch so maybe you could even have it learn the channel numbers from a common cable box (ie. Motorola or SA) and then use a USB-UIRT with it?

Has anyone tried anything like this? Does this make sense or am I missing something?

[xred]

I've thought about something like this before.

Looking at what it takes from a "traditional" tuner setup I think it might make more sense to use network enabled webcams and just setup each as an "online service". e.g Camera 1 @ 192.16.1.22 or even an internet URL. A lot of the Wifi webcams have built in webservers that make this easy (some Dlink cameras and I think Foscam's do it)

[jnickels]

I have two security/baby cameras hooked up to an old analog tuner card.

Here's my setup:

I have two cameras with an RCA video output, I plug each of them into a video modulator (such as http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCC...?section=10387) and configure them to output to two different unused channels in my lineup. I take the two coax cables coming out of the modulators and put them thru a combiner and plug the combined coax into my old analog tuner.

[wayner]

I have a couple of wifi enabled cameras (Netgear and Lorex) but neither of them broadcast in a widely accepted standard that can be viewed by something like VLC - they need a specific Java or ActiveX applet installed in your web browswer. There is a Sage addin called WebFeedEncoder that is supposed to work with feeds that come through VLC. I dabbled in trying to get this working with USB webcams but was never successful.

I never thought of using an RF mod - I do have one around but I would need two or more to give this a go which would soon get more expensive than the video switch method. What do you use for a combiner - a splitter in reverse?

I have order the video switch from Monoprice so I will give that method a try.

[jnickels]

Yea, the modulators are not the cheapest option...but I had them laying around. An added bonus of this setup is that any TV (not all my TV's have access to Sage) in the house can get these channels (I split the signal post combiner...one into the tuner card...and one into the main coax for the house).

Correct, I just use a splitter in reverse as a combiner.

Good luck.

[rsteele]

I've wondered about doing something similar and started looking at using DVBLogic (http://www.dvblogic.com/) as a way to get there. I haven't actually used the product, but it seems like it should work, especially with (compatible) IP cameras.

Rich

[wayner]

Note that I have been able use a video switch to allow four feeds into one Sage tuner - see http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...163#post472163