IP Security Camera Time Lapse Video for Construction Site

CCTV Camera Pros recently received the following questions in regards to using a Zavio IP camera to capture time lapse video for a construction site.

I read your article on time lapse video:

How to use a IP Security Camera for Time-Lapse Photography

I took a look at this camera: Zavio B5210 2 Megapixel Outdoor Bullet Camera.

I will have several construction projects in the next few years that will require time lapse video footage. I am more interested in setting up the camera for a month or two while the actual structure is going up. We have power at the construction site, but no internet connectivity.

I don’t necessarily need the remote viewing capability; I’m more concerned about having to change the SD card too often. Do you think I could get one month of shots on one SD card, at say 15 min intervals for 30 days?

I realize that one big problem without connectivity is that I can’t remotely control it – I’m assuming it would be taking shots 24/7.

Anyways, I’d appreciate some advice on this – thanks!

Here is the response that I provided to the customer.

Thank you for reading my article on time lapse photography using network IP cameras!

Yes, 30 days of still images based on a 15 minute interval will be fine.

Let’s assume that each snapshot image will be between 2 and 4 megabytes in size on the very high end (with the camera at to max 2 Megapixel resolution and quality).

If the camera is set on a timed interval (which is simple to configure) to take a photo every 15 minutes for 30 days, that would be 2,880 photos total that will be saved to the SD card.

So the space required would be 11520 Megabytes or 11.52 Gigabytes.

A 32GB SD card will be more than enough storage for 30 days of photos.

To create the video from the still images there is a free software package called mencoder that can help you with this. You can follow the instructions on this page.

If you end up using our camera, I would love to see the end result if you can share it.

Please let me know if I can help further.

Sincerely
-Mike Haldas

• This topic was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Mike Haldas.
• This topic was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Mike Haldas.
• This topic was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Mike Haldas.