Cost effective IP camera for video surveillance

IP cameras are key devices for a video surveillance system. This paper introduces a cost effective, power efficient and low profile IP camera. The camera consists of a video preprocessing unit, an H.264 encoder, and an embedded streaming server. The video preprocessing unit is used for video data acquisition and format conversion; the H.264 encoder compresses the preprocessed data with H.264 baseline encoding tools; and the streaming server produces a continuous flow of data for the Internet video communication and surveillance applications. Both the encoder and the streaming server are implemented with the cost effective and power efficient Blackfin DSP and ARM9 processors. Key approaches for efficient usage of the DSP resources and main optimization methods for the encoding speed are presented in this paper. Performance tests and practical uses of the IP camera indicate that it is easy to use and able to deliver CIF or VGA size of real-time video clips directly to the Internet with high PSNR quality and low bitrates. Application of these IP cameras to the video surveillance systems may greatly lower the requirements for the network bandwidth, significantly improve the video quality, and efficiently enhance the system reliability accordingly.