Pico2000

Introduction

PICO2000 is a cheap DVR card that works well with ZoneMinder.

Name origination

The name "PICO2000," though often used, is technically not correct. PICO2000 is the name of proprietary software that was bundled with this class of cards.

PICO2000 is available under many different brand names such as Star Imavision Video Capture, Brooktree 848, Brooktree 878. They are generally stated as PICO2000 compatible.

Specifications

PICO2000 is a quad camera input PCI card. The card uses a single Conexant 878A chip. In addition, some models have 1 audio input jack; it has not been tested with ZoneMinder.

• Compression: MPEG4
• Display Resolution: 352 x 240 (NTSC)
• Screen Display: 1/4/7/10/13/16 multi-view or full screen
• Multiple cards allowed as per your PCI slot allocation
• Minimum PC capability: Pentium III 800 MHz or equivalent
• 30 FPS (degrades as the channels are utilized; expect ~2 FPS with all four channels capturing)

Purchase information

A PICO2000 costs about US$5.00 in China with free shipping.

For the United States, ebay may be the best place to purchase a PICO2000. As of May of 2009, they are $30 each (including shipping from China). An ebay search for "PICO CCTV" will return results.

Linux driver

Linux kernels after 2.6.2x appear to have the driver for this card bundled in. Further info can be found at http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/bttv.html.

Linux configurations and experiments

In /etc/modprobe.conf

For one card:

options bttv card=77 tuner=4 radio=0 triton1=0 vsfx=0 autoload=0

For two cards:

options bttv card=77,77 tuner=4,4 radio=0,0 triton1=0 vsfx=0 autoload=0

And so on.

Also, if during bootup your system hangs for 5 minutes or more at "Setting clock (utc)":

options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1
options bttv card=77 tuner=4 radio=0 triton1=0 vsfx=0 autoload=0

The order of the lines is important.

ZoneMinder configuration

Solves problems with repeated/mixed/blank cameras:

Preferential configuration on ZoneMinder for these cards ([1]):

• Use Video for Linux version 1 on all cameras plugged to this capture card (into each monitor configuration)
• Disable v4l_multi_buffer (into options >> config)

Alternate configuration (works, but generate unnecessary frame loss):

• If you have a bttv card (eg. bt878) with 4 inputs sharing a single chip, you may wish to adjust CAPTURES_PER_FRAME under options>config tab to a value like 2 or 4 instead of the default 1 value, accordingly. That may solve problems related to repeated or blank images across different monitors.

Tested with success this chip using Video4Linux version 2 for ZoneMinder´s 1.24.x versions. In order to accomplish that with cheap CMOS cameras, for example, one may use the following configurations:

• NTSC-M format
• RGB565 pallet
• 320*240
• On general tabs, use maximum FPS 2 and alarm maximum 2
• restart ZoneMinder

Chip history

The Conexant Fusion 878A is the newer version of the Brooktree Bt878A. The Brooktree Bt878A is the successor to the Bt848.

Video capture software supporting Bt878A that is not designed for CCTV will likely only allow you to access one camera port at a time.

http://wiki.robotz.com/images/d/da/Conexantfusion878A.png

Photos