Hardware, per node:
- A PC, preferably PII or higher, with USB, hard drive, ethernet, at least one spare PCI slot ($?)
USB camera, Linux compatible: http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/en/product/XH5096 (~$90)
- 5M USB extension cable (~$20?), for more flexible camera location
WiFi card, for backup (and extending SWANS): ~$130 (NetGear WG311 with Prism54 chipset, or the DSE 802.11g card, which should soon be supported by Linux)
- Small quantity of gaffer tape, for affixing camera: $0.20
Non-hardware requirements:
- Somewhere to put the box and camera, with a decent view
- Ethernet port and IP address from ITS ($?)
- Power point
- Some way of getting the images to the web -- FTP access to a webserver somewhere would be enough
- If they want streaming video (as opposed to updates every 10-60s) like the citylink cameras, then we'd need access to a Unix webserver with CGI capabilities; we can run one if needed
- It has to run Linux; I've run webcams off windows before and they got sick approx. every 16 hours requiring manual intervention to coax them back to life
The WiFi card is actually useful for when the box mysteriously dies, and is living somewhere containing people you don't want to disturb, or somewhere locked; if it's working, but the ethernet is down, you can remotely diagnose things (i.e. that someone's tripped over the network cable).