Should You Use Cameras With Built In Storage?

Many surveillance cameras are now offering on-board storage, enabling the camera to capture and record video all-in-one, thus turning the camera into a recorder (or as some vendors are calling it - integrated camera recorder).

In the consumer world this is certainly common with photography cameras, camcorders, iPods, iPhones, etc all providing built in storage. However, in surveillance, this is a new phenomenon. In the past, video was never stored locally, always being transmitted to a seperate recorder/server over an analog or IP connection.

Products/Architectures Available

There's three general approaches I see currently:

• Compact Flash card support: Many (if not most) IP cameras released in 2009 support the use of a Compact Flash cards. Currently, 32GB flash cards are commonly used (costing about $100 USD).
• Hard disk drive on-board: VideoIQ offers a camera with options for an 80GB or 160GB internal hard drive (costing about $1500 USD for the 80GB option)
• Combining Compact Flash Card and directly connected storage array: Dedicated Micros is offering a combination approach of on-board/local storage (see presentation video).