vehicle cam

[andyl]

G'day all,

Looking for some help - drive a tow truck; few too many needless damage claims of late - that turns into he said/she said... And I seem to loose too often...

Wanting to mount a camera on the boom of my truck - and record on this netbook I keep in here anyway (yeah storage will be an issue to resolve - but thats part of the question - how much capacity needed to record a 12 hr shift?)

Going to build a acrylic box for it - as i'll need to tap the 12v light feed to power it (batteries + cold = no point), and keep the weather off...

Looking for some suggestions as to how best to do this... what equipment to get etc...

Should mention I will be looking at the camera on screen occasionally too (help line up etc) - since its there

Advice/suggestions/help?

Thanks in advance,

Andy

[bcad]

Did you come up with a solution?

[andyl]

I'm muddling through... Somewhat...

Started some testing with a 5mp webcam for now, using minicam to record, ordered one of the foscam (likely a knockoff) off ebay; who knows when that will arrive... Honestly I like this existing setup, but the narrow field of vision makes it a pain in the arse; had to mount it on the headache rack/light bar to get a decent field of vision - but then the booms in the way, and you can't see the working end of the wheel lift...

Still not understanding how the IP camera interfaces, so I can record it as I am with the webcam, guessing it's probably simple - but I'm not understanding the technical side of it...

Recording is a bit of an issue still, found that recording at 320x240, 15fps, using the mpeg4 codec, I'm running around 4gig/shift, not unreasonable; The windows video 1 codec drops it down to about 1gig, but its not a useful quality... Still looking over that line, probably similar to everyone - between quality, and storage capacities, and that universal playability to ensure the office folk can play what I've recorded...