This evening I installed a 7 inch Windows tablet next to the front door to stream one of my front porch cameras 24 hours a day. If I hear something outside, I can just glance up and look at it from most places in the house.
(lower right is one of my DIY home automation control panels)
Here is the hardware I used.
Hardware
Winbook TW700 Tablet
Any Windows tablet would work -- big plus for having a full-size USB port for ethernet
$60-80
Dockem 20003-BL Damage-Free Wall Mount
$12
Amazon.com: Dockem 20003-BL Damage-Free Wall Mount & Dock for Smartphone and Tablet, Black: Computers & Accessories
USB to Ethernet Adapter
because I do not use WiFi to stream video continuously
$10
Amazon.com: Cable Matters 202023 USB 2.0 to 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter (Black): Computers & Accessories
Software
The software is something I made myself. Standalone Java app for dedicated live view with Instant Replay
Part of what makes this unique is that my software lets me scroll the video back in time to replay any moment from the past 10 minutes. The 10 minutes part is fully configurable. I could make it save the last hour or longer if I had enough free space on the disk, but that makes it harder to pinpoint a specific time on the scroll bar. So it is 10 minutes for now.
Limitations
The tablet's specs are well suited for streaming one camera. You could probably stream more but a 7 inch display does not have a lot of space to go around anyway.
It only has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage and most of that storage is used by the operating system. For these reasons it is inadvisable to attempt installing Windows 10 on the tablet. I have read horror stories of people who tried, only to have it get stuck in a failure-reboot-failure loop. Those who were successful reported it didn't run as well as it did on Windows 8.1 so I don't plan on trying it myself.
My Blue Iris Viewer software linked above will quickly overwhelm the tablet until it is limited to displaying just a few cameras. It would be best to configure the app on a different computer, then copy the configuration file to the tablet.
(lower right is one of my DIY home automation control panels)
Here is the hardware I used.
Hardware
Winbook TW700 Tablet
Any Windows tablet would work -- big plus for having a full-size USB port for ethernet
$60-80
Dockem 20003-BL Damage-Free Wall Mount
$12
Amazon.com: Dockem 20003-BL Damage-Free Wall Mount & Dock for Smartphone and Tablet, Black: Computers & Accessories
USB to Ethernet Adapter
because I do not use WiFi to stream video continuously
$10
Amazon.com: Cable Matters 202023 USB 2.0 to 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter (Black): Computers & Accessories
Software
The software is something I made myself. Standalone Java app for dedicated live view with Instant Replay
Part of what makes this unique is that my software lets me scroll the video back in time to replay any moment from the past 10 minutes. The 10 minutes part is fully configurable. I could make it save the last hour or longer if I had enough free space on the disk, but that makes it harder to pinpoint a specific time on the scroll bar. So it is 10 minutes for now.
Limitations
The tablet's specs are well suited for streaming one camera. You could probably stream more but a 7 inch display does not have a lot of space to go around anyway.
It only has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage and most of that storage is used by the operating system. For these reasons it is inadvisable to attempt installing Windows 10 on the tablet. I have read horror stories of people who tried, only to have it get stuck in a failure-reboot-failure loop. Those who were successful reported it didn't run as well as it did on Windows 8.1 so I don't plan on trying it myself.
My Blue Iris Viewer software linked above will quickly overwhelm the tablet until it is limited to displaying just a few cameras. It would be best to configure the app on a different computer, then copy the configuration file to the tablet.
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