Multiple monitor solutions

fred funk }{

Hi.

I'm currently working on a CCTV project in Cork and am looking for the best solution.

I have a central location with 12 monitors on site, all wired with CAT6 to comms cabinet. I want to display the CCTV from 12 different remote sites, each to its own monitor at the central location. All are on the LAN as it's one big complex.

I'm thinking of setting up a PC in the comms cab and running the CCTV management software through the 12 screens?. What hardware would I need for this to work? Thanks in advance.

Lucifer

I think you will struggle to get 12 screens connected to one PC without adding a few video cards. What about 12 raspberry pis?

seamus

Why do you want a monitor per stream?

Depending on your budget the most straightforward solution might be 3 x 40" UHD TVs, 3 HDMI outputs, put 4 video streams on each TV.

Unless the CCTV streams are in 4k and you need to be able to see them insanely clearly, then 12 different monitors is way overengineering it.

fred funk }{

seamus wrote: »

Why do you want a monitor per stream?

Depending on your budget the most straightforward solution might be 3 x 40" UHD TVs, 3 HDMI outputs, put 4 video streams on each TV.

Unless the CCTV streams are in 4k and you need to be able to see them insanely clearly, then 12 different monitors is way overengineering it.

Monitors are already in place (32"). The requirement is to have a single video stream from each location per monitor. These will be viewed in an open plan location and ease of viewing is a must ie. looking up quickly at monitor "A" knowing its showing video from a certain location.

seamus

While not the most elegant solution, the one that is most pragmatic is either having a device per monitor or multiple devices with multiple outputs.

A single device controlling all outputs sounds nice, but there are sticking points;

1. You will need a specially built setup capable of 12 outputs.
2. It needs to be capable of handling the bandwidth of 12 simultaneous streams *and* displaying 12 simultaneous streams with minimal jitter.
3. If it fails, you have no screens until you fix it or replace it.

Where 4 or 6 smaller devices don't need nearly as much computing power or individual bandwidth and can be bought off the shelf. And if one fails you don't lose all your feeds; you could even have a failover setup that rotates between different feeds when you lose one of your computers.

Have a look at "Airtame". This claims to let you manage multiple displays from a single place. Disclaimer; I got the name in a marketing email, it may not actually do what you want. Looks to me like basically attaching a chromecast to every display, and managing them all centrally.

free_man

I would suggest Raspberry Pi like another poster. I have setup some remote training machines with individual monitors. It connects to remote desktops on a term server. In your case, it will connect to a video stream.

A raspberry pi with box is about 50euro. The monitor connectors and SD card are already there. Just stick one at the back of the monitor and set it up to connect to the video stream.

I am not sure if video stream will support zoom or pan feature in the camera (if there is one) though

Lucifer

if you go down the raspberry pi route you could look at a program pisignage. Supports rtsp streams and could be a good way to control them from one interface. I have not used this, just seen it before so might be worth checking out.