renz05725

Alright I have a customer that needs help setting up his IP camera system. Basically he has a NVR, 16 ip cameras and 4 switches. The area he is setting these. cameras is wide, so from the nvr location where the main switch is, there is fiber optic cable connecting the other 3 switches back to this same switch where the nvr is connected to. 2 of the switches will have 5 ip cameras coonected to each and the 3rd will have 6 cameras on it for a total of the 16 cameras. Here is my question. Im assumming i need to make sure that all the IP cameras need to be on the same IP segement that the main switch is on, so if the main switch has an Ip address of 192.168.1.1, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, dft gw 192.168.1.0, the is it fair to say all my IP cameras would need to be set to 192.168.1xx (192.168.1.80) and so on with the same subnet and dft gw? Also, do i have to set port fowarding on each camera and if so does it have to be set unidentical, where camera 1 would be ip address 192.168.1.80 port foward 80, camera 2 192.168.1.81 port foward 81, camera 3 192.168.1.83 port foward 83 and so forth? Will i have to input this port fowarding on all 4 switches or just at the switch at the NVR? What other ports do i need to open to view this Ip cameras over the internet? Any help is greatly appreciated...

Is there a away of getting a dvr to view a camera in its normal view and at the same time have it attached to a pvm with a splitter and have the PVm show the mirror image of what the camera view is? I have a install going and seem to be fighting this issue and cant seem to figure it out.

So its normal then to have your PVM show everything reverse? The dvr shows what we want, but the pvm shows right is left and left is right, is this normal and exceptable?

So what would you recommend to resolve this issue soundy?

I say stay away as well. We tried installing 2 8185 dn's at a local facility here and it was nothing short of a nightmare. Both cameras came DOA or Semi-DOA. We set them up wirelessly and had them coming into a Video Insight NVR, along with 8 Sony PTZ's. Basically the cut filter between day and night didn't work. Half the camera images were bw and the other 2 were in color. The camera kept rebooting itself and in doing so kept flipping upside down and causing packet lose and video loss. The recorded video was literally HORRIBLE at best. It looked like robots walking across a screen, no fluent motion and it looked like the fastest slowest robot images in the world. Were it roboted every image, but the images looked like they were passing by the camera at 100mp and it couldn't capture a clear image. We tested them off the nvr and at the office and they still didn't work. I have to say, i am extremely disappointed. It was our first time dealing with Arecont and it was disaterous, it will more than likely be our last time dealing with Arecont products. First bad taste in our mouths leaves a long lasting impression and we are in no hurry to try them ever again.

Why or when would i use a powered video splitter vs. a standard tsplitter? Basically what we are trying to do is have the video camera show live video on a public view monitor that is at the door where customers can see themselves coming into the store and at the same time show up on the dvr as well. Our customer loves powered video splitters, but we have to run 18/2 to them to get them to work, wouldn't a standard standard tsplitter with a male in and 2 females out work as well? WHat am I not looking at? When and why would it have to be a powered video splitter? The average run of siemese cable from the camera to the dvr is about 150-200 feet and the public viewing monitor is about 3 feet away from the camera, so the distance remains the same. help me understand please.

At a $1 a pair, can you send me that contact and used by our fellow members!!!

We are looking at purchasing our first cctv camera tester. We have lloked at acouple at a couple of models, but we arent sure which to go with. What do u guys think of the Byte Brothers Cctv handle held tester. It seems to be a decent tester and installation device at a reasonable price. Up until now we have staged everything before we got to site or where the dvr was located. But this method doesnt always work and we are looking at one of these types of devices to help in our installs. What r u guys using and what do u recommend?

As u guys may know already, my company moved into the surveillance system market about 2 years ago. Slowly but surely we have installed small to medium sized systems, with our largest being 64 channel system. Recently we were asked to install 4 PTZ's on at 240 camera system that has roughly 10 dvr's, controlled by one controller and is connected in a matrix manner that we r not familiar with. Basically it was a simple remove and replace type of install. The new cameras would be the bosch i300 x26 zoom. The reason for us declinig the job was because the previous installer put in 2 of these cameras and had a nightmare installing them and they still dont have full control of the cameras. This is an old system that has grown over time and kinda been patched together. We are growing but are growing due to our good reputation on the work we do. I didnt want to get stuck at this install not really fully sure on how to trouble shoot thru this install and damage our reputation on being over our head at this location. What would u guys have done? Would u have taken it and leanred frommur mistakes or was i better off turning it down?

As already stated i would make sure you use direct burial cable, because no matter how well u seal the joints, sooner or later u will get moister in there and regular cat5 pvc will not do well in time while sitting in water or moister. We do a lot of trenching for fiber and ethernet networks. What we have found is a must also is laying your tape/identifier about 1 ft above your pipe to warn anyone in the future trenching that they are trenching to close to your pipe/path. We also have above ground markers identifing our path for added measurers.

Monday 8am sharp..... Show up to site and begin installation of 3 additional cameras on a 32 channel system that is currently only using 28 channels. This is a dairy that in the main hallway is 30ft high and roughly 650 ft long. 1st camera of cable is run in no time, 30 minutes tops since it is only about 75ft away from the dvr/mdf. Cable is siemese cable rg59/18-2. Things are going great! 2nd camera is roughly 60 ft away from the dvr/mdf and this goes super smoothly as well!!! What an easy install!!! IT's going great! 3rd camera is #3 for a reason! I will have to run it roughy 600+ft away from the dvr/mdf and I will have to run it thru the 30ft ceilings while production is going. roughly 2 hours later, this cable is run to a 500ft point where we will cut it and splice it to the remaing portion that will go to the camera. Monday is done and we have spent a total time of roughly 4+ hours onsite. Tuesday it BEGINS!!! Tuesday we finish running the remaing 150ft to the camera from the splice point at 500ft. Total time to run this 150 feet is almost 2 hours because of where it is located, ceiling heights, conduit install and so forth. 1 hour to terminate the 3 cameras at all points and get them onto the dvr. But for some reason none of the 3 cameras are coming up, we spend a little time trouble shooting, but have to head out. This is a short day onsite because of other sites we have going. Wednesday the heat of the hell before us is BLAZING!!! Onsite at 8am, begin to trouble shoot cameras. First we trouble shoot the 650ft run. We check the connectors and they seem to be alright. Next we check the voltage at the camera and so forth. At the power supply it is showing 13.46, at the 500ft splice it is showing 12.27 and at the camera it is showing 12.07. So power is not an issue. So what can it be? Well lets reterminate each termination (4 total because of the splice), while testing at each point before moving onto the other. Guess what... Still not working! 1 hour later, we decide to move onto the next cameras... Camera 1, is not coming up! DAMNIT!!! I run the same trouble shooting method. Check the connectors, check the voltage and reterminate both ends... NOTHING!!! What the hell is going on!?!?!?!???? Camera 2, we had to drill thru a concrete wall and I'm thinking that when we pulled the cable, it might have stretched or over stressed the cable, so we do some quick trouble shooting which is basically what we did to camera 3 and 1 now.. But NOPE it doesnt' come up! WTF!!!! I go back to the dvr and move cameras that are installed onto the channels I am trying to connect these new cameras to. They work fine on this empty channels... What can it be?............ I go back to camera 3 and try to trouble shoot that again... But to nothing.... 6 hours later and i'm fustrated and call it a day. I go and call some buddies in the industry and I borrow his cable tester/certifier.... Thursday... Today... I go and test camera 3 first, since that is the one is scaring me. It's 650ft worth of siemese cable which isn't cheap and it is not an easy run to have to rerun.... From the 500ft splice to the camera the cable passes... from the 500ft to the dvr/mdf the cable FAILS!!! FAULT!!!! WTF?!?!?! We didn't stress the cable over pulling it. So we go and check the connectors again and retest... FAIL AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Move to camera 1, while i think about whats going on with camera 3..... Camera 1 cable test FAILS AS WELL!!!! FAULT AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF is going on here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Check the connectors and actually recompress new ones as well. STILL FAIL!!!!!!!!! Move to camera 2 cable test.... By now u must have guessed it! FAIL!!!!!!!!!!! Now I'm confussed... I'm upset... I'm baffled... What the heck is going on here!!! Screw it... I decide to take the remaing footage off the spool to get to the back end, terminate it at both ends and test the spool of cable. Gues what, 230ft FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ON THE SPOOL!!!!!!!!!! This can't be, I reterminate it as well and retest and FAIL!!!!!!! This damn spool of 1000ft siemese cable is SCREWED!!!! A install that should have been taken care of in 2 days tops is going on day 5 because the cable was defected from the factory!!! I took it to the company I bought it from and I show them what is going on, take them to the site and test with them infront of me, retest at their site.... They say they will reimburse me my cable cost. But i need more! I need connector cost, I need labor cost and I need RECABLING cable cost! Because I'm gonna have to go and rerun 650ft worth of cable in 30ft ceilings and then rerun the 2 short runs! This quick install had been nothing but HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

funny to see how so many people jump to conclusions and don't bother reading the initial posts all the way thru. Tom and Rory are right, it seems the power supply is not putting out the correct amps even though it is showing the correct voltage. I have purchased a AC power supply for these far runs to correct the problem. Now to answer some of the other questions about this install. My distributor for this cable tested this cable with another tester and it is a BAD REEL of cable. It seems they got it from a cable liquidator and it was liquidated for a reason. I told him he will have to reimburse me for this cable and time spent trouble shooting, which will be taken out of my Net30 payment with them. As for the splice. This splice is needed. I wish I could run the cable the additional 150ft from where the splice is, but to do so is to hard and a splice works fine. I had to run the cable over a live milk cartoon tramway that never shuts down and they do not want any particals falling into the milk cartons from pulling this cable. So what I did was throw it over the tramway, splice it thru a hole we made in a wall 25ft up in the ceiling where not scissor lift or ladder fits. Could we have run the full run. Yes we could have, but the amount of time it would have taken and the possibilities of containmating the milk cartons was to great, so a splice is what we decided on. Call it lazy, I call it getting it done in a manner that suites the live enviorment we are in with the specifications of our customer and keeping it within the alloted time frame (that has been blown up) to get this install taken care of within the budget that will either make money or lose money due to time mis-spent. If you where to see how the cable had to be run, you would understand. But then again maybe you wouldn't. So tomorrow we will be onsite to finish this install off and hopefully be able to submit the final invoice. Tom and Rory, check you pm's though i have some questions for both of you. Soundy you also seemed to know what you were talking about in your posts and it was what we were going thru and why we did what we did.

Oh and just incase the question is brought up. I tested the cable with a Jdsu Validator cable teste/certifier.

how many cameras are you running on your 16 output power supply. 650ft (200m) you have 12v at the camera end you also need another test. amps. your power supply is 1.2 amp per outlet .... you will not run a camera at 650ft at that amp. what type of camera are you using I have 9 cameras on that power supply. I am using digital watch dog cameras. Why would amp's cause the cable to fail its test on the tester? I dont get that at all, u dont even connect the power to the tester. The tester showed fails on the coax at 300+ feet and at 230+ feet on the spoil. Just for more info. I tested another reel already that is 1000ft whole and it passed with the same tester. The spoil is bad. Ptz i was taught to use siemese cabke and it is what i know. As far as using cat5 or cat6 with balums is concerned. I am not sure about it yet. How good is reliability? Points of failure and so forth.

the power supply is a High Power DC Wall Mount, 16 Output, 17.2amp power supply. I have 3 other cameras at the similiar distance running at 12.07 tested on my multimeter at each camera with no video problems at all on those.

I am cheap.. They use Ryobi on the field for regular day to day work.We check these drills and power equipment like every 3 months to make sure they are all accounted for. The heavier work we have Rigid, but that has to be checked out and checked back in daily!

In order to bring in monthly reoccuring income, are you guys or do you guys charge for ddns service and mobile phone viewing? I've seen a couple of free ddns sites that also charge a minimal fee for a greater capacity yearly and was wondering if this is another avenue to try and bring in month fees? How are you guys getting RI on a monthly basis from the systems you install or are you simply installing and charging for that only and there is nothing to be made after the installation?

I have a home owner that called today and asked us to trouble shoot their dvr. They say they can remote view it via IE, but it keeps going down every 3-4 weeks and they have to reset the system because it says network connectivity is not available or something to that affect. I told them basically if they have a dynamic ip address and not a static ip address, everytime their isp gives them a new/renewed ipmaddress of course they would lose connectivity because that path is lost and needs to be changed to the current ip address. Is there anyway around that or is a static ip address only way to always have a true path to that dvr? What other methods could i use?

Does anyone know how good Prodigy is in reference to their DVR's and cameras? I've never heard of them and I have a vendor pushing them on us and giving us excellent pricing, but I'm not sure what type of quality they are and support they have. Have any of you guys dealt with them? Are they a decent Quality system? What about Vitek cameras and dvrs?

Its easier to offset cost and make money when u r supplying the equipment and doing the installs. But i do agree that each customer is different and u got to feel them out on a per customer basis. Small businesses and residential customers tend to be more into cheap pricing though in my neck of the woods. Mid level companies and above will usually not try and penny u to death!

The amount you charge is really going to very from what others of us charge. I am in Texas on the border. So I can't charge what they charge in East Texas. Why? Because their are laborers from down south and companies here locally that use cheap labor to be able to screw our market with low rate systems and installation rates. I wish we could get $125 a camera here, it would be more like $50-$65 from where I'm at to be able to compete and get the work. There are people here that will install a 4 camera system with system included for about $400. Can't compete with then and really don't want to. But they screw up our market and people want to start paying that rate!

wow, seems like this thread went from what dvr or pc based card to what compression method is better. I would like to also know what cards you guys prefer and is being used. I bought a 32 (2x16 channel) geovision unit not to long ago and it is a good unit. Just wondering now if maybe we should have built it ourselves.

Do you all sel maintenance aggreements with your surveillance systems? If so, can you give me a little 411 on how you are structuring them. We recently started pushing for them, but I'm not sure if we are approaching it in the right away and if they are beneficial to us in the long run if the systems fail or cameras fail. I know ADT, Birch and these big companies do it and make their money off these aggreements. What do you guys think? How do you guys approach this?

we use labelers for all the network cabling we do. but we use the cheap wal-mart lablers. They don't stick well on cable directly, so what you do is space out 10 large font spaces at the end of what you are going to print and when you have it cut, you wrap it around the cable you are identifying and then stick it to itself, kinda like you would on a wristband, only thing is you have a long tail on it with the identifying information. I don't see a reason in ever spending that much money for a labeler and we use ours alot. I think ours are the $15 ones from walmart with replacement cartridges costing like $4.

What we do and I know this is not what the question is, but we have on head installer at the DVR site and his asst. at the camera making the adjustments being relayed to him by the head tech. We usually do a pre-focus at our shop and make the slight adjustments needed at each location as needed.