RabidDawg

I have a question about licensing. Does one need to be licensed to install video camera systems? A friend of mine will refer work to me if I was licensed, since he claims if somebody had video taken, for example, a burgulary and that video was presented in court, it wouldn't be valid since I wasn't licensed. To me that sounds far fetched, but need more info. If licensing is required or preferred, how and where would I start to look into getting licensed? I'm in Arkansas if that matters.

I have a customer that is looking to be able to view his cameras on the internet, he now has 4, but is looking to expand to 5 or 6 cameras later. The person who setup his cameras has all of the coax running to an upstairs closet, into a multiplexer that puts all 4 cables into one coax and then he can view his cameras on the tv anywhere in the house on channels 21 - 24. Also, in the future he is going to get a wireless pad, something like this: http://www.amx.com/new.product.page.cedia.05.asp?product=modero10in (not sure if you can view the details unless you setup an account. But the overview of the pad, is that is a touchscreen, and will hook up to his security system to control his heating and cooling, security and be able to view his cameras on it too. Mjpeg will be the only way to view the cameras with this device. My questions are, is the Geovision card the best bet for this? Also, is there a demultiplexer that can split the 4 combined signals into 4 different channels so that I can setup his pc to be the video server with this card? That way I won't have to move his pc to the upstairs closet to connect to the 4 CCTV coax feeds. Also as a side note, the person that put his cameras in is recommending this box http://www.vivotek.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=95 to connect to his cameras. A DVR would have to purchased separately to be able to record the video. Thanks for your help.

I've done a search and must not be using the correct terminology to do the search. What is the best way to run cable in a drop down ceiling, without having to mess with every other tile? I've tried using a weight on the end of a string and sometimes I'd get it down the run 20 feet, but most of the time it would only be 5 - 6 feet and it would hit something, is there anything that would work better? Thanks.

I've been asked to quote to upgrade a current system at a daycare. What they have now is a pc with a Geovision 800v3 card, with 4 cameras. 3ghz cpu with 512mb of ram. The cameras are Toshiba (not sure of model will be finding that out soon, they have 10 bit dsp on the side of them). They want to upgrade to 17 cameras total, I'll probably have them come down to 16 cameras so they won't have to buy another pc setup just for one camera. They are looking to have outdoor cameras with night vision and indoor cameras covering the rooms inside. The most distance the indoor camera would have to cover is around 25' and the outdoor ones can be set to view as far as 150' or so even at night. I would like to have suggestions on cameras, what is the best bang for buck and gets good quality. So far my plans are to upgrade the GeoVision card to the 1000 (they don't need audio), upgrade the ram to 1gb and also upgrade their storage space. They want to continue to use the remote viewing feature so the family can look at the kids while they are there during the day. The owner also wants the system for surveillance during the night. Any help in advice on what to get and where to buy would be most appreciated. If I get the job, it would be my first install, I work in the computer world, however with the research I've done it doesn't look that hard. Also, they got a quote from somebody, for 20k for the system (leased equipment) and 5k a month for maintenance, am I missing something or were they just trying to make a killing off of the daycare? The general setup of the system upgrade prices I've seen could easily be purchased for less than 5k. What would be the 5k per month for maintenance, unless they were hosting the webservers to host the remote viewer on? Thanks, Brian

I had eyeballed the 1480, didn't need the audio so thought I'd go with the 1000, however since the 1000 will be phased out, I'll look at the 1480 more closely. Feel free to make recommendations for cameras etc. If you can't post the suggestions, i.e. if there are forum rules against that (I haven't read all of the rules yet and just found this site) then please pm to me. Thanks!