While not free, I am completely willing to pay for software that works well, especially seeing that Xeoma actively listened to their users. Today I continue to use Xeoma and have recommended it to several friends. A short while later Xeoma pushed an update to use an SSL to encrypt the credentials. I had noticed that the credentials used to connect to Xeoma were in clear text! While it’s unlikely that this would have ever been an issue, it went against my morals so I contacted Xeoma. However, it lacked one key item, security. The video streams were consistent (awesome frame-rate), the server was under less load, native support for all major operating systems, and the amount of bandwidth each video steam took had declined (it was Wa圜ool to see that the bandwidth used to view correlated directly with the application size).
Right away I saw better performance with Xeoma than I did with Zoneminder. After playing with the trial version I ended up re-imaging the computer with Ubuntu Server and was easily able to get Xeoma configured to meet most of goals. I was able to achieve most of my goals with the software, but ultimately after several months of consistently tinkering with settings and crawling the net for help, I decided to search for something that was more transparent. I started with one of the largest open sourced surveillance systems ZoneMinder and connected the cameras to a PoE switch.
My goal was to have a system I could view and record anytime of the day or night from anywhere with security in mind. Nothing special just and old quad-core desktop, a couple of hard drives, and a PoE switch.
I started with some old computer hardware and some low cost PoE cameras from Amazon. Not because I live in a bad neighborhood, but for a sense of security and it made for a low cost project that I could use for years to come.
A few years ago I took it upon myself to install and configure a video surveillance system.