We were recently contacted by a customer with the following questions:

My name is Danny and I am part of the student government at Indiana University. We are working on implementing a system that would allow any student to go onto the internet and be able to get a live feed of the work-out facilities that we have. We feel this would be extremely useful for our students because often the basketball courts and weight-training areas fill up around peak hours, creating a backlog of people waiting to use machines or to get on courts. By having a camera
system, students would be able to check how busy the facilities are before they decide to go, saving students time and freeing up the facilities.

I’ve been doing some research on potential solutions. Based on what I’ve seen, it seems to me that purchasing multiple wireless IP network cameras would fit our needs. We have a secure wireless network that covers the campus, so it would be much easier to utilize the Wi-Fi than to run Ethernet cables along the walls. However, there are a few things that I don’t understand:

1. How do you connect these cameras to the wireless network?
2. Does each camera have its own IP address that we could set up a link for online? How would we go about doing so?
3. Can multiple users view the same camera feed simultaneously?
4. How difficult are the cameras to install? Are there any special steps that we would need to be aware of?
5. What do you think about the feasibility of our project?
6. Do you have a ballpark price estimate for everything we would need?
7. Is this even the best way to go about implementing such a system, or are there other setups that you feel would be better?

Please let us know what you think!

Best Regards,
Danny