Video Surveillance System based on Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera

Abstract

Given the high cost of current commercial video surveillance systems, this final year project intends to explore, design and implement an alternative video surveillance system using Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera. With the recent proliferation of cheap single board computers they have become easily accessible and have spawned lots of homebrew projects. Among these projects there are a series of programs designed to be used in a video surveillance system. Having explored the different possibilities each one offers, a video surveillance system was designed using a central server type architecture. Each Raspberry Pi streams a video feed to the central server which then analyzes the video feeds. This analysis allows for motion to be detected and a series of actions to be executed. Among these actions is the possibility of sending email notifications, recording movies, executing commands, etc. Each program used in the system was researched and tested to find the ideal configuration that offered the highest quality video feeds. This configuration was then implemented in a real test of the system which proved to be a cheap and viable alternative to current commercial systems.