IP Overlay? - POS Solution needed

[dgwharrison]

Hi, I'm kinda new to IP camera's so please forgive any ignorance.

We develop a Point of Sale package which we sell to retailers. We'd like to overlay what's happening on the screen into a video feed and we're looking for cheap, effective and scaleable solutions.

The idea i had in mind was to get a bunch of IP cameras, point each camera at a single till, then from our software installed on that till point at the IP address of the camera and a port and feed it a text stream which should be line-by-line overlaid on the feed in real time. I was then hoping that the feed, including the text overlay, could be then viewed in real time in a browser or reviewed at a later date from a file.

Does anyone know which brands would support this? I'm looking for a brand that provides both PoE powered units and WiFi DC powered units (for installation flexibility). I also want a lineup that with only one or two camera's doesn't need a DVR type device but simply stores the files on a NAS device (eg windows share somewhere) but has the capability to implement a full DVR type device with up to say 16 feeds if required. All capturing the text overlay of course.

Finally, with the text overlay, it would be fantastic if the camera supported saving it in a different track (so the user can turn it off or on as required).

Any experience here would really help.

[buellwinkle]

Axis cameras have the ability to dynamically overlay text, but you'll have to do some c++ coding. The have an SDK and you'll have to register on their website and access their forums. I believe you have to be a partner to get the SDK.

http://www.axis.com/products/dev_sdk/index.htm
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