z o r g . o r g - The TE104 4 Channel Capture Card aka The "Pico 2000" Card

	Search:
Home \| Contact

	Home
	Linux Articles
	Home Automation
	Voice Over IP
	Radio
	Cryptography
	Handspring Visor
	Psion Series 3

External Links
	Vsound
	Pinouts Database
	PMR446 Gateway
	Chantrell.net

The TE104 4 Channel Capture Card aka The "Pico 2000" Card

I bought one of the cheap 4 input BT878a cards off eBay. This capture card is a 4 channel multiplexed card (25fps PAL and 30fps NTSC) which means that the 25/30 fps is split up between the 4 channels i.e. you get 30 fps TOTAL for all 4 video inputs.

These cards usually ship with Windows software called Pico 2000 or Peaqe which is identical to Pico2000 except for the name. The Pico 2000 software is reasonably functional but is terribly unreliable and as it was ripped off from Canadian company Novex there will be no fixes or updates to it. The streaming over the web also relies on active-X so is Windows only.
PLEASE Do not email me asking for a copy of Pico2000.

So what are the alternatives?

Linux:
Under Linux the card works fine with the standard bttv drivers, I have card type set to 77 which works fine. (I'm using insmod option "radio=0 card=77 tuner=-1")

If you find the bttv driver takes a long time to load (a few minutes) add this option in your modules.conf file for loading the i2c-algo-bit module: options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1

Motion (open source) - Absolutely rock solid and does everything. This is the one I am currently using. You can see some screenshots of my web interface to Motion here.
Zoneminder (open source) - Also looks to be a very good package, must get round to testing this.

Windows:
If you are not using Pico 2000/Peaqe then first of all you will need to install the Open Source BT878 WDM drivers. The card works on the "Generic Brooktree Card with four Composite Inputs" setting.

SupervisionCam (free download, 25USD registration)
I found that SupervisionCam did crash occasionally and the GUI isn't the best but it does offer a lot of features like running external programs and sending emails on motion detection. The motion detection isn't a patch on that in the Linux based Motion though.
Video Site Monitor (free download, 39USD for full 4CH version) - not tested
Gotcha! (free download, 379USD for full multicam version) - not tested
Crime Catcher (free download, 49USD for full 4 cam version) - not tested
Active Webcam (free download, 29USD for full version) - not tested

More about my system on the Home Automation page.

"You can't expect perfection. Even from me."
-The Doctor in Face of Evil