crosseyed66

That is an interesting delimina, The problem you have is that with your budget you are just not going to be able to do what you need. I would look at spending a little more money and getting some equipment that will actually do the job. I just put up a Mobotix Megapixel camera that has a 180 degree view with a resolution 2048 x 1536 that will let you map the pimples on a teenager at 20 ft. http://www.mobotix.com/ Granted that this is overkill, but If you are worried about protecting a 8,000 bird, why not invest a few extra bucks and get the equipment that will do the job properly the first time around and maybe you will still have your birds 10 years from now instead of having them ending "feet up" because you tried to cheap out on the equipment to protect them. I have learned that you get what you pay for, and when you try to do it on the cheap you usually end up redoing it with the right equipment anyway (usually after you experience another loss).

I am looking for a APP for the Intellicam Gen IV DVR's that will work with the I phones and Droids other than the one that is provided by the Manufacturer. The Manufactures APP works great but has a link back to their web site which makes it hard when trying to sell and upgrade equipment. They offer you the option of buying the app for 850, you still have to load it to the I phone store and then can make money off of the app when it is downloaded. I am hoping that someone has already done this and not put any advertising on it so that it is just the application. I want to keep our customers coming back to us when they want more equip, instead of going to the WEB. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated!

I personally sell a lot of the larger cameras in High Crime areas for their Deterrent effect, the most effective being the public view monitor. When we install a system, the customer is getting his money's worth if the system is deterring or preventing theft as well as just recording it for him to view after the fact. We have had installs where they had employees quit as soon as we installed the system, and other places where the profits suddenly increased. You know that there were employees with sticky fingers that now know that they could be caught if they do it, and that knowledge is enough to put a stop to it. On the other hand we had a customer that we installed a system, and the first week that the system was active he caught 5 employees "sweet hearting" friends and families (and these were employees that had been with him since he had opened the store) and he figures that the system paid for itself in that first week alone. The funny thing about it is that the employees watched us doing the install, and figured that the owner would never check up on them. The sad reality about employee thefts is that even when you do catch them and prosecute them, you are lucky if you ever get your money back. The court will order restitution, but they have to pay fines and court cost first. Then they let them make payments that stretch out over years,

I have several long runs that we ran undergroung. Are using cat5e with a passive 16 port balun at the head end and 4 port balun's at the camera ends (about 400ft away - 4 cameras in each of 4 buildings each with its own power supply) This is the crazy problem, we can get a perfect picture on our hand held, but no picture comes through on the DVR. I hav tried using other single baluns w/ same results. Has anyone had the wire get damaged when being pulled but still able to show video on the hanheld (4' monitor) but not on the DVR? I hat to replace the wire (it was a bear to pull in the conduit) if it is not the problem, but never had this pop up before. If the cable was damaged you never got perfect video through the handheld. Have already eliminated all the simple things like the patch cables, ect. the only thing left is the underground cat5 cables themselves. Thanks, Steve

I have already sent the tec up with a second DVR after he had this problem friday. The unit benchtested out fine but I sent up a 2nd unit (already burned in for 3 days under load) and have also used test cameras to verify onsite that DVR is working. We have narrowed it down to a Video griound loop isolator. Once we this on to the mix we start getting video through the DVR. Without we get it perfect clear video through the monitor, but the catch is the monitor is battery powered & not grounded. Once we hooke it up to anything grounded that is when we got nothing. I have had lots of trouble withground loops, but this is the first time it ever acted like this.

I have all the channels enabled, Tec in field is telling me that the image is crystal clear in the handheld/focus monitor.

I have a customer that wants to utilize PTZ's with Auto-Tracking, I have not personally used any of these units and was hoping for some feedback on different units. I also am curious as to what recording equip that you have used to with the Autotracks, if you had any issues getting them to work well together? Have looked at the Everfocus, as well as the upper end like Bosh. Looking for experiences good or bad. I was planning on using these in addition to fixed cameras, not as the only unit. I always felt that they were more of a "Hail Mary" type of unit. That you could get the perfect shot with it, or you might miss something all together because the unit was tracking someone else while the incident you need to record was happening. Thanks,

using a Coaxitron that only has 2 power wires and the coax cable to RS485 controls? End use is adamant about using these dinosaurs that he paid big bucks for and will not listen to reason. I am ready to was my hands with this install as he insists that these should be usable since several are still new in the box (from 2001). Factory burnt down (was underinsured) and they are now trying to cut corners trying to finish up the project.

The building has now been wired with Cat5e and the end user had now drug out these old things and wants to use them instead of the new PTZ's that the plans called for. I have no idea where to find either a Coaxitron controller (in which case the wires would need to be rerun - which is really no skin off my teeth since they insisted on running all the wires to save money) or if there is a converter that could be used at the camera end that would allow it to be run over the Cat5. The place burnt to the ground so the new building was wired to allow for future upgrades. Originally it was to have been a hybrid system with a mix of analog and a couple IP Mega-Pixel cameras but they have downsized everything over the past couple years this has been dragging out. They had a few cameras that had not been installed, plus some old B & W units that were around the perimeter that they are trying to use to increase their coverage instead of just buying what they need. I keep telling them that they are going to spend more to try and make the old stuff work that buying new with 10X the resolution. We sold them their server and workstations, their phone systems, now they just want to cheap out on the security and you just can not reason with them.

Unfortunately where this hit us the hardest was a housing authority that had over a dozen sites, each one of a different design than the other. Several required hundreds of feet of trenching, with anywhere from 12 to 25 cameras per site. On one site there was 1600ft of trenching, 10,000 ft of cable, 25 vandal proof cameras, Low light, Variable focus specked out. They got the bid at 16,500. And this was a public housing authority which required prevailing wage rates for and audits for all employees. This was last year, and the year before I did first ones (which they loved and was the deciding factor on doing the rest) and the ground is all rock, hardest trenching job I ever saw. Ate the extra cost ourselves, and I spent 2 weeks of my time doing proper layouts, camera requirements ((recommending where they could go to a fixed focus to save money) right on down the line for each complex. OH Well, Win Some Lose Some. Across the board we were about 50% higher than this other place, and the other Reputable bidder was 400 dollars higher on 1 to no more than 5% and the one with the biggest difference. I always hate getting called in to fix OPM's (other peoples mistakes) since you can end up spending more trying to fix the problem that to just yank it and start over. But with the economy the way it is that is never the route they want to go.

We sell and install Intellicam DVR's and are very happy with the product. Unfortunately we from time to time get an end user that is just not very "Tec Smart" and we need to find an easier to use software than what is provided by the manufacture. I am hoping to find a Software for dummy's type of product, because some of these owners are from the stone age where they still do their bookwork by paper and pencil. They have no computer skills, but have a need for security. Unfortunately these people cannot use anything much more difficult than a VCR and most user interfaces what not hard are just beyond them. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in Advance.

Depending on your unit it may already have either RCA outputs, or in the case of some of the newer or higher end machines you may find S cable or HDMI outputs as well. We do this on many of our homeowner installs just so that they can check out their security system from their recliners.

There are several cameras that are designed to mount in the corner (shaped like a triangle) and they give great coverage on a front porch. You can also get units to convert analog signals to IP as well. More info would help for a better recommendation.

I would say go with the unit, the specs look good and even if you have to spend a few extra bucks to upgrade hard drive space, for what you are going to use it for it is a better quality system than what most people get on the net. I have upgraded several customers to newer systems, most time where they have several locations and want uniform systems (make's it easier for the main office to monitor them remotely) and every now and then I have picked up a outdated but still a quality unit like this. While I would not resell the unit to our customer base (liability issues plus Tec support time) I would not hesitate to give one to a grandparent or relative who I could not buy a new one (would not accept charity) but a unit that I got for free and was headed for the trash would be a different matter. Good luck.

I would rather try and educate the customer to a point so that he can compair apples to apples when he shops my price with the competition. I get frustrated when I put time into a quote and lose it because the "Other Guy" comes in at 3/4 the price with basically a Sam's club special and they end up with junk. I have lost out on several bids to a housing authority and when I went in to do a repair on a piece of network equip I could not believe when I saw a Chinese Mpeg-4, 16 channel 120fps unit sitting on the counter when they under bid us by 225.00 (it was to upgrade the DVR only) and we had bid out an intellicam 30fps w/raid back up. go figure. They had an outside counsultant make the decision and never even looked at the specs. This company has installed complete systems at over a dozen of their complexes and I know that they are using junk equip but price talks.

I am doing a camera system for a club/bar w/6pack & sub shop that wants full intigration with his Silverware POS system. Silverware recomends the Ameta Ipointer (whom they have partnered with) but I have never heard of them and I could not even get the company to give me a reference in my home state (Pa) that had a system in use that I could either call the end user or even take a drive to check it out. I was planning on using a GeoVision system w/1480 cards, I have found out that the output is not compatable with GeoVision network system and that I will need to use a V3-E at each printer (there are 7) to get all the overlays that the customer wants. Any info or advice would be appriciated,

The system I am working on has 11 POS terminals and I am hoping that the dongle will work in this instance as opposed to using the seperate unit's ate each printer. I know that it is compatable just about every other major POS system out there but unable to find out if it plays with silverware and hoping to find someoe who has intigrated the 2 before. I have also used Remote Eyes for some of our installs but know for a fact that it will not intigrate with Silver Ware. Thanks for the help.

Has anyone run into interference from having the power supply mounted too close to the DVR? I had a new installer out on a job site and was busy talking to the customer and he had mounted the power supply closer to the units than I normally would have. While he is a rookis installer to CCTV he has been installing access controll systems for over 10 years so he is not just some smuck of the street, and while I did not like it he had already installed the wires in the unit so I let it go. When I went tp power up the system I had all sorts of interference in many of the channels, worse than ever before. I am wondering if that could be part of teh problem. I am not using high end baulns (have used these same ones for over a hundred installs with only a couple problems that were easily cleared up with ground loop isolaters). The system is a 12 volt system, would have prefered a 24 but am using some other equipment that made it more practical to go 12 volt. Going to reocate the power supply's tonight and give that a shot. Ant other Ideas would be appriciated - they will be forwarded to my blackberry while onsite. Thanks in advance!

Power supply was within 6' of. DVR w 25 cameras

I have an instulation where there is alreasy some shilded cat5 run that tested out fine using a Omni Microtest Scanner and I was wondering if I could use the shielded cable that is existing or if I had to replace it with unshielded cable? I always read that the baluns are for unshielded cable, just not sure if you do not need to use shielded or if you can not. Thanks in advance for your advice.

That's what I thought, I am running my power in the wire with the video (should have mentioned that in first post) and was not sure if that could cause and problems inside of the shielded cable or not. I work fo an IT company and we are getting into the security end of the business sort of the opposite way of most. We have 17 years or network experience and have been installing cameras on for our network customers for years. Have been the IT partner for several other "Security Companys" over the years where they called us in to do what they could not. They have since gone out of business and we have been expanding and 2 years ago decided to do more on the security side from "A-Z". So for us we would have been more likely to set up a campus wide system than the small stand alone DVR with 8-10 cameras. Just a different learning curve.

Depending on how many machines you are talking about I would consider upgrading to a single platform. With what they have come out with in the last couple months alone (and the prices are getting so reasonable) We have switched lines of DVR's and are offering our existing customers to trade up to the newer machines with all the bells (plus the new machines have the capability to send status reports so managed services are possible - we can let the customer know he has a problem as it is happening instead of when they try to download inportant video that's not there). Most of the machines that you probably have will not allow you to do much in the way of remote config, such as changing for daylight savings time) and they probably have pretty low quality recording anyway.

What are the advantages of one over the other for end user sales?

Just saying Hi