Tailbone215

The traveller cable is made up of an assortment of wires, some for communication, twisted pair on the newer travellers and an assortment of whatever on the older ones. Basically it is considered UTP and you would use a passive balun on each end. Even the older ones from the 80s and earlier work remarkably well.

Congratulations on getting it working. Hopefully you will be able to recoup some of your lost revenue dealing with the defective cable. Let us know if you do get reimbursed from the distributor for lost labor. I think he might have other intentions. Just be careful of using cheap cable.

Laws are a bit more lax in some countries. That is, if there even are any laws. And even where there are, are they enforced? That is a good point. My take is the companies that know the liabilities and ramifications involved should something go wrong will generally play by the rules or at least make an effort to do the job correctly. It is easy to get away with doing shabby workmanship, but I feel it will catch up with you eventually.

Thanks for the reply. All i have noticed is a white four pin(i think) plug. I will have another look for the phono plug. What model AD cam do you have?

They use a simple mini-phono plug. Just get a mini-plug from Radio Shack and solder it to a BNC pigtail. You can always buy an adapter for your service monitor from RS as well.

I have to agree that it is a contrast issue or you are simply overdriving. Turn the gain down! Halogen lighting in jewellery shops is easily overcoming any LED lighting they are using. WB for halogen is simple.

I just look at the end and if it is clad I don't care what the core is I don't buy it.

Ah, the one in the above picture looks like it could be a solder on type. Look at the center pin. This brings back memories! Love to see the twist-on junkies work one of these.

Huh? If you gotta go through all of that you better have enough manpower and be running pulling line till you get to the point of where you have everything figured out and can make the final pull in one shot while having the help at the difficult points nursing the cable along. Run fiber and you will see how beneficial it is to avoid splicing in inhospitable areas. Of course, if you miscalculate the length of a run and you will be a slicing to cover your mistake.

Exactly my point! What are the odds? Only bad cabling I have ever run across was caused by mishandling during shipping or installation. I'm glad you said what I'm thinking. If you can get a pull from point A to B there's no reason you can't get the same run from B to C. I've seen a couple techs get their fishing rods caught between HVAC duct and the deck. They wanted to abandon the rods till I showed them how to dislodge them. Simply put, laziness. These types of runs take a little planning and extra time and effort to find the path of least resistance. Had these guys pulled cable on that route they would have torn it wide open.

I think there is more to this story than what is being told.

True this will give you preliminary results if we are testing in a perfect world or right on the spool. This test is highly incomplete in the field as one finds more instances of cable that has a ripped jacket and rubbing against ground or water getting in. You'll never be able to measure this type of problem doing a continuity test most of the time until the problem has become very serious. Anything is remotely possible, but what are the odds? I mean really.

Only thing you're accomplishing by putting a 75-ohm terminator on is checking continuity and eliminating the possibility of having a dead short in the cable. This does nothing for determining other issues. Megging a cable will quickly tell you what's going on. He might have ripped through the outer jacket and is somehow rubbing up against earth ground. He might have almost stressed the cable to the breaking point while pulling and created internal damage, not necessarily an open or short condition. I find the odds are against getting multiple runs of "bad cable" in a 1,000' roll, even the Chinese crap. Meggers are cheap. If one wants to be really anal they will TDR. It's them damn twist-on connectors I tell ya! It's a damn conspiracy....

A dream system would be a Lorex sold at Wal-Mart. You'll be dreaming of ways to toss it in the trash.

If he measures resistance prior to shorting the other end and finds some then we can say he has some sort of problem. If it is open prior to shorting than he is good. Bad dielectric will induce an impedance bump and will degrade picture or add noise. If he has good confirmed continuity than he should proceed to meg the cable to test the dielectric breakdown point with a megger. I'm going with bad crimp-ons and sticking with it.

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say he's using crimp-on connectors!!!!

Neat concept! I hope you guys get it off the ground. The goal here should be quality, not quantity as you will end up with a pile of crap at the end of the day. Start out small and add more if the cameras you select meet your needs. You are in a commercial building with open space so wiring is a breeze. If budgetary restraints are an issue, I would look into some used true day/night box cameras w/lens on eBay. There are always great deals on Bosch, Toshiba, Sanyo, and Panasonic. Buy four of them and set up a temporary install and see if the resulting resolution meets you and your customer's needs. Everyone is always looking for HD quality images, but not willing to pay the price.

Here's my take on all of this. The indigenousness populi you are trying to control are creatures of habits. They generally visit the same areas of parking lots or whatever area they feel safe doing their business. Your goal here is to protect access points of your building(s) and property. You are not going to stop someone that has a mission in mind. First off, they will spot cameras quicker than they would a natural blonde standing on the corner. Seeing your cameras they will do one of two things, move on because it isn't worth their effort or shoot the cameras. The way I would do this instead of blowing a wad of cash is to get at least enough analog or IP cams to protect the areas that need the most protection, your building's access points. Post signage, the traditional "No Trespassing" and "CCTV" signs do wonders. Again, they will see the cameras anyway, so doing this will deter the average trespasser or vandal. Other than that, the best cameras in the world aren't going to buy you anything more than burning time going to court prosecuting these morons, which will be out in a few days and/or retaliation from the most uncivilised native or their relatives. Pick your battles wisely.

This sounds like a plan, I'm game. I'm more interested in dynamic range, noise, contrast, and how well the camera deals with miserable back-lighting and other crappy lighting. Also, how well the cam handles ambient temperature. I know noise can increase as the sensor heats up. Just a thought.

Thats a great start Though Im surprised there arent people asking for their original sizes Yes you should post these in full res for a true comparison. BUT I don't really care about analog anymore. I don't have customers calling and asking for analog images. I just did a demo for a customer (government) that was lied to by the installer. I did a web demo for VideoIQ and Avigilon. After the demo the customer said wow I have never seen anything like that it is very impressive. He said they just had a analog system installed and the company total them this is the best image quality your gonna get. Well guess what, the customer now knows they where miss informed and lost total respect for the install company. I think if we are going to compare low light cameras we "need" to have a standard test that we use for every camera. I would be very helpful if we could make this test very easy to do so we all can do the test and post the images using the same standard. We would all need the same LUX meter, lens and scene to compare. All images would be exported and posted in FULL res. Please everyone post your ideas I think this would be very helpful to all. I have to agree with you about analog, but there is always going to be a place for it for many applications and customers that might be more budget minded than others. Your customer learned the hard way about how shady and cut-throat this business can be. Giving the customer the options and prices for each option is always the best solution. It saves on bruise feelings and reputations. Setting up a standardised testing procedure is an honorable gesture, and I agree we should have had an industry wide continually evolving procedure 20-years ago, but the parameters are going to be numerous as each installation has varying challenges. Plus, the only way these tests can be taken seriously is if there is a single person or company that doesn't have a vested interest in the results performing these tests. Even simple things like test equipment calibration can play an important factor. Nothing worse than having six individuals testing the same camera with six different pieces of gear that are out of tolerance. If the industry doesn't want to do it, for obvious reasons, I don't think we can really have results that can be looked upon with any seriousness and anything other than for academic reasons or for just saying we did. Now who wants to be the sole individual that wants to take on this task? And no, I don't the individual(s) that are biased towards that CNB crap skewing results that would lead one to believe it is better than a Sanyo VCC-HD2500.

Bosch VDN-498 series cams are probably the best. They are really inexpensive and once focused you can remotely configure them with your laptop. Great sensitivity for night time performance, even without separate IR emitters.

You have got to stop reading those Monster Cable adds with their famous "foreskin effect" and the non-oxygenated mumbo jumbo.

Oh my!!!

Give them a try and see how they look. Thy are cheap enough to experiment with.

Nothing to worry about as IR is all around us at all time. Wait till your kid want his or her first cell phone. Don't get me started on Happy Meals... Don't worry!