cglaeser

Well, it's extremely unlikely you will catch anyone, but if you install high quality surveillance cameras, you will be able to post videos of them laughing at you.

I seriously doubt that fake cameras has stopped the problem. It is extremely difficult to get night surveillance video with sufficient detail to solve an auto burglary. It may deter the occasional auto burglar but most won't care. If you want to catch an auto burglar at night, then in addition to quality surveillance cameras you should also add a motion alarm that alerts you when someone is in your driveway. I've had great success using this setup. In fact, I've had such great success that officers and detectives from the local police department routinely come to my house for tour of my setup. I use Optex outdoor PIR but the Crow DareDevil PIR receives good reviews as well.

You will probably just have to try this for yourself. As a first approximation, the sensitivity at 940nm is probably about half that of 850nm. Best, Christopher

What do you mean by POS system? Do you mean Point of Sale or the other acronym?

I recently switched from an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy S4. I monitor 21 cameras on 3 servers. Several times now the S4 has deleted my settings for one or more servers and the associated cameras. This is really annoying because it takes me three to five minutes to set up all the servers, cameras, and views. When an alarm goes off I need access to the cameras instantly and don't have time to reenter user names, passwords, and views. I contacted Avigilon tech support and they don't have any reports of this problem. Has anyone else experienced this problem on the Android platform? Best, Christopher

Some burglars are not deterred by a typical home alarm (which are not very loud) and they make a quick pass through house with the alarm blaring. Are the 30 W alarm sirens loud enough that some burglars may be deterred just due to the loud volume? Do you have any favorite alarm sirens? Do you mount them indoors, outdoors, or both? Best, Christopher

I have Avigilon domes and Avigilon bullets with IR, but I don't yet have any domes with IR. A neighbor wants to install the domes with IR but the installer cautioned that the IR in the domes may cause spots. I don't know if he was talking about a generic problem or Avigilon in particular. I know this can be a problem with low-end domes when the lens is not sealed against the dome, but is this a problem with the Avigilon domes? Asked another way, what is your opinion of the Avigilon 5MP dome with IR? Best, Christopher

Any experiences with this camera and the IR? Best, Christopher

No phone number on the contact page. Probably an importer selling from a garage. Cool idea, though. I always thought it would be cool to have a sci-fi self destruct sequence blaring throughout the house. Best, Christopher

How much are they in the US?

I hear this security tip often but I'm not convinced. Over the past five years I've reviewed every auto burglary in our neighborhood quite extensively and in general, auto burglars don't seem to care if the driveways are lit or not. I caught two burglars that specifically went to the lit driveways because it was easier to see into the vehicles.

Thanks, I'll check local ordinances. Best, Christopher

When exporting Avigilon native, is the compressed video expanded to a series of images? Is it possible to export the compressed video in native format? Best, Christopher

Yet another compelling reason why your NVR should not be the same as your personal computer.

I have provided video surveillance evidence in about fifteen criminal cases. Based on my experience, what the police, detectives, and DA want are high quality video and images. The bulk of what they receive in other cases is low quality video of "the two dudes" with little forensic value, and when I give them several 5MP images of the key frames that shows faces, vehicles, and license plates, they are thrilled. I provide the video and images in .avi and .jpg format in the cloud so they can easily review the evidence and share with other departments in neighboring cities. I don't know how many of these cases actually went to trial, but I do know that this information was used in warrants, arrests, and resulted in jail time. Although I do lock the surveillance video sequences on the timeline to protect it from overwrite so it could be reviewed at a later date, I have never provided a .ave file nor have I been asked to provide one. Given that the vast majority of homes and business with video surveillance equipment use cheap DVRs, I doubt a format like Avigilon's .ave is available in most criminal cases. Best, Christopher

OK, thanks. I had assumed that native AVE was just a copy from the video database to a file with a wrapper added, but there is a fair amount of processing and the file can get very large for a modest about of video, so it's apparent it is not just a simple copy. Our local police department has an Avigilon player (they get AVE files from Safeway). I was going to give a native file to the DA for a recent DUI arrest, but the file is too large to bother. I'll just use .avi and a few select images. Best, Christopher

So, Avigilon native uses AVI?

One hour of sparse motion video seems to get extremely large. It also seems to take a while. So, I'm guessing it is expanding the H.264 video stream rather than simply copying. Is that your understanding?

Thanks, Alex!

If I set the port forward on the remote server to TCP or TCP/UDP, the client will connect but will set the client speed to LAN which I then have to change to WAN. If I set the port forward to UDP, then ACC will not connect.

Over the internet with ports punched through a firewall. Where is the setting for auto discovery? I'm using ACC 4.12.

You can set up TV so you can login anytime even after reboot, or you can set it up so the other person has to give you a rotating password. I only wish TV had a better pricing plan. I don't use it commercially so I use the free license. It's extremely useful and I'd be happy to pay them a modest license fee but the commercial license fee is quite expensive. I've often wondered how that pricing plan has worked for them. I've also wondered how many governments are able to hack into user accounts.

+1 I also install TeamViewer on all my Windows and Linux surveillance servers so I can perform maintenance remotely as well. (actually, I install TeamViewer on virtually everything including Mac and PC desktops and laptops. My daughters are away at college and I manage their laptops remotely. My dad is in another state and I manage all his desktop and laptop computers remotely. TV is one of those must-have utilities). Best, Christopher

Yes, but I can run the stats for comparison. What city do you reside?

Well, I'm not a noob. I have so many burglary arrests in our neighborhood that half the officers on the police force know who I am. Last month a couple police detectives called me and asked for a demonstration of my equipment to understand how I was doing it. And, I live in one of the safer cities in the state. Most DIY who visit this forum want to install a surveillance system. Nothing wrong with that, but when that is the major objective, they lose sight of the reason why they decided to install the system in the first place. So, they install some cameras, someone burglarizes their auto or home, they post the video on YouTube, and everyone will ooh and aaw over the lighting and the mexapixels and frames per second. Meanwhile, rarely is anyone arrested. When I designed my system, my number one objective was not to simply video burglars for YouTube, but to arrest them. I've learned a great deal in the last several years and I continue to refine my system and technique. The most sure way to get an arrest for burglary is to detect them while they are engaged the burglary. Anyone that thinks they can review video the next morning of an auto burglary that happened in the middle of the night and glean enough forensic information to result in an arrest, well, good luck with that. I use long range outdoor motion sensors that are integrated into a voice alarm system that alerts me when someone is on our court. When I get an alert at 3:20 am because someone is checking car doors across the street, seconds count. The dispatch number is on my speed dial and I place the call as I monitor the cameras. Within seconds I want to be able to answer as many questions as possible. What have they done, what are they doing, how many are there, what are they wearing, which direction were they last seen. I have lots of experience trying to provide answers to these questions while burglaries were in progress using both Exacq and Avigilon, and I'm here to tell anyone interested, there is no comparison. Not even close. Exacq is not up to the task. The problem is that the cameras have a FOV, and trust me on this, the burglars will come in and out of the FOV of one or more cameras. To get a good description of the suspect(s), scrolling through and finding the best still frame is usually required. You may also need to zoom in. But at the same time, you want to keep an eye on them too. All the while, the dispatcher is asking for updates on what they are doing. If you can put real time video in some of the frames and recorded video in other frames, that makes it very easy to simultaneously watch what they are doing and review what they did. So, when I say that I must have both real time and recorded video displayed simultaneously, it is based on the experience of multiple arrests. Of course, another option is to sleep the through the burglaries and review the video the next morning while eating breakfast cereal. It may not result in any arrests, but we'll all enjoy watching the YouTube video.