Our office has grown large enough that we needed to install security cameras. It seems that meth-addicts love to sneak into office buildings (even during the day), and grab whatever they can find. Thanks to images from one of our cameras, our little thief was picked up by the police quickly. We were told that she had only been out of jail for one month on similar charges.
For the cameras, we chose the TrendNet TV-IP201 IP surveillance camera. The reasons were simple: It was one of the cheapest IP-based cameras available, and can send an MJPEG video stream to your server. Sending a videostream is more efficient than having your server grab individual frames, and can give you higher frame rates.
For the back end, we grabbed an unused server, and installed the Motion software package. Motion is qutie advanced, providing motion-detection, MP4 compression, pre- and post-recording, and many other features. The server we used (a dual Athlon MP) is quite old, and lags far behind any current dual-core machine. Yet, it is still able to handle 4 cameras simultaneously, with MP4 compression.
These cameras aren't going to give you CSI-like images, but are still a clear cut above analog security cameras. You can certainly buy better cameras, but such cameras are MUCH more expensive. Since I've bought four of them, it's clear that I like them in the price-vs-feature arena.
In low light, they do so-so. You do get pretty grainy images. But again... if you aren't spending quite a bit more money, that's true of all similar cameras.
One other inconvenience is that they are not able to be powered via PoE (Power Over Ethernet). Since you probably aren't going to mount this near an electrical outlet, that means that power is a problem. To get around that, I have used inexpensive PoE injector/extractor kits.
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