Crestron Home Automation & Axis IP CCTV Integration
Cutting Edge IP CCTV Integration with Crestron
As part of a larger Crestron Digital Media project, we have recently completed a comprehensive AXIS CCTV and Crestron integration. The project consisted of 13 AXIS I.P. CCTV cameras both indoor and outdoor, which covered all indoor communal areas and external views of the property. The challenge was to stream 13 camera feeds on one display to provide the client an overview of property, whilst being able to switch seamlessly to individual camera feeds for closer inspection. This had to be controlled via Crestron touchpanels located throughout the property. The CCTV installation included a DVR recorder and provision for remote access. Furthermore, since the client is a frequent traveller, they requested some form of remote access through their iPhone.
High End CCTV Installation
The installation is built around the 13 AXIS CCTV cameras with a stand alone PC as our digital video recorder(DVR), running milestone software for recording and monitoring. We wanted to use the Crestron Digital Media switcher and the LG HD TV’s installed in the building to give the best possible picture. To give an overview of the property we decided to design our own interface that could show all 13 cameras simultaneously on one screen. Designing our own web-page interface allowed us to customise the different camera views and maximize the space to match the maximum possible output resolution for the LCD TV. The VGA monitor output of the PC was used to feed directly into the Crestron Digital Media switcher so that it was available as a HD source to any of the 8 rooms in the property. The CCTV on-screen display was then accessed in each room as a video source by selecting it on a Crestron touchpanel.
Crestron Integration of AXIS IP Cameras
However, to allow the client to switch between camera views activeX components provided by both AXIS and Crestron were necessary. These components allowed the creation of a 3rd party software program to talk to each system using Visual Basic. The resulting program could control each of the 13 camera feeds independently from the Crestron Processor. This approach has several advantages: Firstly the camera source of each feed can be changed dynamically, which means that a single camera feed can be switched between different cameras using commands from the Crestron processor. We used this to display a single full-screen camera feed that could be switched to any camera using a Crestron touchpanel. Secondly, you can start and stop camera feeds and adjust their output resolutions dynamically to help control the system’s bandwidth. More camera feeds at higher display resolutions obviously means more bandwidth and therefore slower camera frame rates. The resulting display uses 13 320x240 resolution camera feeds for the overview display and then switches to a single 640x480 feed, with a high frame rate. Finally, since I.P. camera feeds can occasionally ‘freeze’ or ‘hang’, stopping and starting each camera feed manually refreshes the feed creating a more robust solution. The outcome gives the client the best of both worlds in terms of control and performance.
iPhone Integration
The final part of the integration involved providing remote viewing for the client via an iPhone. To achieve this, the event monitoring system built into each of the AXIS cameras has been used to upload images to a web-server. The event monitoring system uses motion detection calibrated for each camera. The web-server is built into the existing PC which collated images from all 13 cameras as they detected motion. The web-server allowed us to link a dynamic image viewer on the iPhone displaying motion events from the camera, It is even possible to scroll back through the recorded images collected on the server. A smart feature of the IPhone is the ability to switch views between landscape and portrait mode, we’ve used this feature to switch from a multiplexed view in the portrait and a enlarged camera view in the landscape mode for better viewing control.