TVEngineer77

Sorry for the newb question, but is it possible to remotely configure IP cameras? I'm considering some Arecont cameras (2155DN) and want to know if I can somehow remotely change the day-night settings without having to climb a 15 foot ladder to reach them!

I have an Arecont 3105DN camera with a Computar 4.5-12.5MM F1.2 lens on it. I have a problem getting the entire shot in focus, particularly around the edges of the shot. I'm wondering if I setup the lens focus wrong somehow. Things look great right in the center but toward the edges it gets blurry. What baffles me is that you'd think that if something was in focus in the center of the screen it would be that way to the edges of the screen, but it appears as if there's a circular blur around the entire edge. Does this have anything to do with the backfocus setup on these cameras? See the attached pic as reference. Any help is appreciated.

as they say in my industry: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

I run Exacq as well and am curious as to the "defect" you speak of. I've had my system power off due to outages (before UPS was installed) and when it came back up the timezone was still set properly. Did you set the time server and IP camera time server info? I just use time.windows.com so it always pings the internet for the correct time.

one more question, it was mentioned that I can use a 2/3" lens with this 1/2" CMOS Camera... are there any negatives doing that such as picture crop or (?)

might I suggest investing in a UPS?

thanks for the help gang, much appreciated. Will look into a different lens setup.

OK gang, I am really in need of your help. First let me give you a little background of the system I have now and the issues I have with it. I aplogize in advance for the length of this post, but I'm in dire need of help and second opinions here. ________________ I had a system installed by a company for our HOA. It is to monitor our entrance/exit gates as well as a few other common areas of our property. The system consists of 2 separate systems, both similar in design; 2 systems were installed because of separate gated entrances/exits to our community. System 1: (4) SC-Black BLK-CPD126VS Outdoor IR Dome cameras (1) OpenEye OE-129 Embedded series DVR (4ch, 120PPS, Mpeg-4 compression) System 2 (now): (2) Samsung SCC-B9371 Bullet IR cameras (1) OpenEye CM-300 Dome Day/night camera (1) OpenEye OE-129 DVR, same as above (originally System 2 had 3 of the SC-Black cameras to match System 1, but they were changed due to crappy picture and issues with the IR reflecting off the reflective warning strips on our gates) The requirements were that we would have a detailed system enough to make out license plates and clearly identify vehicles that come into and out of our community. Also we needed to monitor kids that wait on one area as a bus stop, for their safety and ours, so facial details were important to a degree. I said from day one I wanted a system that would do 30FPS on 4 cameras. I don't necessarily need that but I wanted to be sure our system was powerful enough. Currently we are running System 1 at 2CIF at 15PPS, Ultra quality. That is the maximum this DVR can handle as I learned after the fact that the 120PPS capability is based on CIF (352x240) images only. That is not enough detail for me. System 2 is running a mixture of qualities, I believe the bullet cams are running at 2CIF 8PPS, and the Day/Night cam is running at 4CIF 15PPS. On both systems the cameras are all analog composite feeds to the DVR, not IP. ___________ Ok, now that you have the current system, I need suggestions on what to do to improve the system. I'm open to anything, including replacing the DVR and cameras to whatever new ones you suggest. The cameras are all mounted about 15 feet up on an aluminum pole. The pole is not more than 20 feet from the intended target view of the camera. I would post pics from our cameras but I guess I cannot until I have 5 posts. That sucks. Anyhow, I have questions like: Do you think switching to IP cameras with a high megapixel would work better? Do you think getting a DVR that does MJPEG would be better? Is using analog composite video from the cameras a bad idea nowadays? It's really important for me to get much better picture quality. I don't necessarily need high PPS, just need to be able to handle fast motion and give me a clear picture when I freeze it. Any advice is very much appreciated! Brian

thanks survtech, I was confused as to what was the 5mm spacer because it also came with (what I just read) a 0.5mm spacer ring, for use with C mount lenses. The lenses I have are all CS mount so I left the adapter in place. These also have backfocus adjustments as well which is good.

Ok I just received all my new Arecont AV3105DN cameras. They came with the 5mm spacer ring and the instructions say to use it with any lens I attach. My questions is where does it go? Does it go behind the C-CS adapter (flat up against the camera) or does it to between the adapter and the lens? Help!

bitter much? That's pretty low if you ask me, especially since this could apply to any camera. Oh well. I will figure it out.

Just a quick question, I'm buying outdoor housings for some new Arecont cameras I'm purchasing, and I have the option for the heater/blower. Now I live in FL where it's plenty warm most of the time, so I wondered if the "blower" part actually works as a fan without heat when needed? If so do I really need this? Maybe there's something I don't know about like the potential for fog on the enclosure glass that this would eliminate? The temps can get down to the 20's in certain times of the year so does that make me need this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156229 TrendNet TPE-S44 10/100Mbps Switch 4 x 10/100Mbps Auto-MDIX POE Ports (1~4) 4 x 10/100Mbps Auto-MDIX Fast Ethernet Ports (5 ~ I would be running no more than 4 Arecont cameras, each drawing no more than 5 watts a piece. Do you think this switch would handle it? One guy on the Amazon reviews said he had 4 AV3105's on it with no issues. I've heard mixed reviews about the Netgear switches, and really want to avoid spending the big bucks for a Linky or Cisco. But if I need to do that, I will. Thoughts?

Quick question - is there any reason a Cat5e power inserter would be less desirable over a PoE ready switch? Would it be safer to go that way rather than rely completely on the switch itself (and thus if it fails, the entire system is dead)? I do realize this is contingent upon the number of cameras in the system, and as it sits now I will have no more than 4. Thoughts?

went ahead and bought the systems from Logic Supply. Very nice people to work with, answered all my questions. They're even building and testing it so when it arrives it will be fully functional, all I have to do is install the NVR software. SolidLogic Atom S145 Mini-ITX System - Mainboard: Intel D945GCLF2 Dual Core Atom Little Falls 2 - Case: AOpen S145 Mini-ITX Case with ATX PSU - Black - Daughterboards: None - Memory: DDR2 667 RAM 2GB - HDD Standard & Flash: 3.5" Seagate SATA 7200rpm 1TB - CD/DVD Drive: Panasonic SATA Slot-loading CD/DVD Writer (UJ-875-A) w/ Cable - Operating System: Windows XP Pro (requires hard disk) - Build and Test: Build & Test - Standard (3-5 full business days) - Warranty: 1 Year Warranty (Standard) Total cost was $607.00 per system for everything.

see, in the application I have, the NVR is local to where the cameras and PoE switches are, which is in a locked NEMA enclosure by our community's gates. Any time I need to get data off the NVR, I remote into it via the software. That way the video processing is not being run off the server, but rather the client software. I know what you're trying to say here Rory and I agree with you, but in this application where local video playback is not required, the Atom 330 performs just fine.

Rory, this is a dual core 1.6 Atom 330 processor. I think its the fastest Atom processor released at this time (?). I could up it to an actual core 2 duo pentium, but with wireguys' success running that many cameras on the Atom I know I will be just fine. @ TWG - no I hadn't planned on having them build and test it since I bought the HDD's from another source. I will just do it myself when it arrives.

This is very encouraging news. I'm glad the ATOM processors can handle the constant flow of data from network to HDD. That link you posted earlier to logicsupply.com had some great systems on there, about to purchase 2 of them myself: SolidLogic Atom S145 Mini-ITX System - Mainboard: Intel D945GCLF2D Dual Core Atom Little Falls 2 (No S-Video) - Case: AOpen S145 Mini-ITX Case with ATX PSU - Black - Daughterboards: None - Memory: DDR2 667 RAM 2GB - HDD Standard & Flash: None - CD/DVD Drive: Panasonic SATA Slot-loading CD/DVD Writer (UJ-875-A) w/ Cable - Operating System: Windows XP Pro (requires hard disk) - Build and Test: None - Warranty: 1 Year Warranty (Standard) I already purchased WD Black 1TB drives to go in these units. The whole system came in right around $550.00 (each).

Hey all, just had a system installed for our HOA. Our instaler put in the SC Black model BLK-CPD126VS outdoor IR dome cameras. I was wondering if anyone has opinions on these cameras or has used them in the past. I have to admit, so far I'm not impressed with their resolution. Maybe it's just something set wrong. Here's the specs: Imager Manufacturer Sony Imager Size (in) 1/3" Imager Type Super HAD Color CCD Min Focal Length (mm) 2.9 Max Focal Length (mm) 10 Lines 550 Effective Pixels (K) 380 Horizontal Resolution 768 Vertical Resolution 494 Lux 0.003 IR Range (ft) 60 Day/Night Function True D/N with mechanical cut filter Electronic Shutter Auto/Manual 1/60 - 1/120,000 flickerless Originally, the spec was for Samsung SCC-B9371 bullet cameras, then the guy "upgraded" me to these (of course at his cost). I'm wondering if I got screwed here and if I should demand a better camera. This is paired with a OpenEYE OE129 DVR. I don't know if the quality is due to the camera or the DVR, but I think it should be better than it is. I will try to post a pic so you can see what I'm talking about. Thoughts?

glad to see the tests are going good, I may pull the trigger on that setup today.

I'm looking at installing IP MP cameras and an NVR. I know that since everything is streamed over IP, I assume I can connect to a single camera via a web browser provided I have the right IP address and port forwarding setup, thus bypassing any NVR software frontend... My question is if I were to do this and make the link to a camera available for people in my community to see it whenever they want, would it affect the performance of the streaming signal to the NVR? I could imagine several people COULD be watching that camera at any time.

the idea is to allow people to see a streamed view of a camera, separate of the live view from the NVR. That way they would not be able to change any settings or see any recorded video since they wouldn't be using NVR or camera remote view software, just a standard web browser. The #1 question I'm asked now that we have cameras monitoring the entrance/exit of our community is "Can we see that online somewhere?" - I've been telling people NO until I can make sure it can be done and most importantly it won't affect what is being recorded by the NVR. I should add that the NVR and camera IP network are located at each gate area and are always connected to via remote. There is no local PC on the network. For an internet connection I have Verizon FiOS 20/5 service.

Ok so I'm just about to fire the security company that installed our system because it is not what I expected in terms of image quality. Remember this guy installed analog cameras with 540 lines of resolution (still 380k pixels) and the image quality is terrible. I've asked him to see about providing IP Megapixel cameras, which he can't get. He also won't get me any other DVR except the OpenEye that I have. He went on a tirade saying that I won't be happy with any IP camera that I install, that they're more susceptible to lightning damage (?), that other clients he's had with IP systems pulled them out and went to analog cameras. I say all that to ask this - am I wrong in thinking that I will get a much better quality system (yes at additional cost) if I go with IP Megapixel cameras and an NVR system? I need details in the pictures I see and it just makes logic sense to me that a 380k pixel analog camera is far inferior in terms of image quality to a 2MP IP camera. I feel that my guy is just saying all of that because he cannot get me what I want. Do you agree? What other challenges might I face with switching to IP MP cameras from analog?

right now I'm looking at using a Nuuo NVRMini, but I'm also considering a QNAP NVR-104P as well. Thoughts on those choices?

Part of the issue is I don't know if the DVR is causing some of the quality issues as well, I have a hunch it is, but don't think it's solely to blame. I was out with the installer and looked at a shot directly from a camera to a portable monitor, and it was decent, noticeably better than the recorded image. While we're talking about it, what's a good DVR to go with? I already have a specific enclosure it needs to fit into so it needs to be a self-contained DVR or if it goes into a PC, it has to be small.