Pico2000

PICO2000 capture cards introduction

The cheapest DVR card that works perfectly with Zoneminder (Video for Linux versions 1 and 2 tested!). It costs about US$ 5,00 in China with free shipping;

Name Origination

The name "PICO2000" is not really correct, because its in fact the name of a proprietary software that was bundled with this class of cards under some commercial circumstancies;

With all 4 channels capturing simultaneously you'll get around 2 fps; Available under lots of different brand names, like "Star Imavision Video Capture", "Broktree 848 / 878" etc... Generally stated as "Pico2000 compatible"

Specifications

This card uses a single Conexant 878A chip. It is a 4 Camera input PCI Card (some models present 1 audio jack input, tough it´s use may be hard and rare to be set);

Compression : MPEG4. Display Resolution: 352 x 240 (NTSC). Screen Display: 1/4/7/10/13/16 multi-view or full screen. Network: Remote Monitoring and Recording with Search and Playback. Upgradeable - 4 cards in a PC for 16 cameras. Minimum PC capability: Pentium III 800 MHz or equivalent.

Configuration under Linux scope

• Linux kernels after 2.6.2x appear to have the driver for this card bundled in it; specific and further info relating linux drivers for this card may be found on http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/bttv.html;

Suggested 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)": add this before options bttv

options i2c-algo-bit bit_test=1

Configuration under Zoneminder scope (solves problems with repeated/mixed/blank cameras)

• Preferential configuration on Zoneminder for these cards: (As suggested on [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 ou 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 V4L2 implementation after Zoneminder´s 1.24.x versions; in order to accomplish that with cheap cmos cameras, for example, one may use the following configurations:
  • use NTSC-M format, RGB565 pallete, 320*240; On general tabs, use maximum fps 2 and alarm maximum 2; restart zoneminder to obtain results;

Conexant Fusion 878A

The Conexant Fusion 878A chip is a recent incarnation of the Brooktree Bt878A chip. The booktree Bt878A is successor to the well known Bt848. The Bt848 was designed by Brooktree, which is now Conexant. This chip is common on video capture cards and cctv cards.

Why do we mention this? Because this is the chip on the Pico PCI CCTV card. This is also a chip commonly used on many video capture devices, TV cards, and is supported by a wide range of video capture software. However, 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