koolmer

The reason is that the mobile phone will not give any useful image as soon as it gets dimm and when it's dark, the picture is just black. The reason is the tiny chip that they use. I agree that HDCCTV sounds good, but the price doesn't drop, it will just fail. IP cameras are established now and give MUCH more for the price.

I doubt that there is an easy workaround to get PNG or JPEG. Hikvision cards do hardware encoded H.264. You will not get them to give you anything else. If you want mjpeg, you have to look for a new card + Software.

I am currently working on getting a Control Room equipped with new screens. We have more than 50 cameras displayed on several screens. Currently there are some CCTV CRTs and normal CRT TVs. I have also tried a 21" LCD together with a composite to VGA converter. The quality is not too nice and you can see the difference between the CRT and LCD pretty easy. The new screens MUST be LCDs. I had two ideas how to get that done, but I am also open for any suggestions you might have. 1. Getting several 21" LCD and converters that would just replace the current CRT. Downside of this is the lower image quality. It just doesn't look as nice as it looks on a CRT. Also specialized CCTV LCDs don't seem to have a better picture. I have 3 of those and the quality is similar/same as on the LCD with converter. The good thing: This is cheap. 2. Digitalize all cameras and display them on 4 or 6 26" widescreen LCDs. This seems to be a real nice solution. I would anyway need new DVR cards, but I have no idea how to do this exactly. Lets say I have four 26" LCDs and two computers for that (each computer has two screens). I would still need a DVR card with realtime (25 Frames per camera) at D1 or CIF4. Then the supplied software needs to be able to handle two 26" screen @ 1920 x 1080 pixels. Also it is unclear to me how the image quality would be. With my current DVR card at D1 resoltion the quality isn't anywhere near the image on the CRTs. Besides that the Software should also be Hybrid. Then I could finally get some IP cameras. So these were my two ideas. I really like the idea of having four 26" LCDs to display the cameras. I see this constantly on pictures of other control rooms - they have nice big widescreens and display many cameras on them. Any suggestions?

Hi everybody! I will have an interesting job in the next year and I am not sure yet how to do it. There are 3 buildings that are 500 m away from each other. They are not in the same Street, but in the same part of town. The building in the middle should have a control room to control everything in all 3 buildings and see all cameras. There are between 16 - 20 cameras in each building. Now the question is how to transmit the pictures to the control room. This is going to happen over IP, but how do I connect the buildings together? I am not sure if I have a line of sight, because the buildings in between might be higher (have to check it). I have checked Ubiquiti equipment, but it really confuses me. Now, is it possible to establish a RELIABLE (also in Snow and heavy rain!) WLAN between those buildings? What equipment should I use? I would like to have 100 Mbps or more.

Hmm - I see your point. Ok, he needs recording. But still a DVR is another additional device and I would prefer IP. One of the computers could act as NVR. I was planning to use "Total Control" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKAtvTCjPXI to directly access an IP camera. Sounds very interesting - I will take a look!

Hi Everybody, My brothers company got robbed yesterday. It's only 1 room. He will install a simple wireless burglar system that sends him an SMS or gives a call to him. Additionally he needs 1 cameras that he can access with his iPhone. It's dark in the night, so IR is needed. It should be an IP camera with VGA resolution that he can setup himself to work on his iPhone. koolmer

Too complex. He doesn't want an additional device. Either the iPhone accesses the camera directly or a simple NVR does the job of sending it to the phone. It's only going to be 1 camera.

I know there have been threads around about baluns and ground loop problems, but I haven't found any understandable explaination of the problem. I am using baluns on many cameras in 5 different CCTV systems. The ground loop problem (hum bar or just a lot of noise) has only occured on very few cameras. I know that separate power supplies can handle the problem, but in some cases I cannot install 4 power supplies just because I have 4 cameras. Please let me know what you know about this problem and how to avoid it. Most interesting for me is WHY this is happening. koolmer

What Software did you use?

Good to know. Thanks! I have the Vista Blade: http://www.vista-cctv.com/products/ref:0362080/inPageMenuTab:gallery/ It's the same.

You have connected web cams to a DVR card?! DVR cards need an analogue composite video input and usually use BNC connectors. What is "medium priced"? What did you have in mind? Edit: I would recommend this: http://www.netvisiondvr.com/ProductInfo.asp?id=33 And here is something I wrote in another thread:

I have 4 cards from Hik and I love them. IVMS2000 is the original Hik Software and is good, but NetvisionDVR is better Software (google it). It is hybrid and has a very nice feature list. Quality of the recording is better than anything that I got from standalones that I tried. The latest Netvision PC DVR that I setup is running for 2 months now and never crashed, never went stuck or caused trouble in some other way. I am running it on XP though. It is supposed to run on Windows 7 64 bit also. In the manual are steps written down that tell how to get it to run on a windows 7 system with 64 bit.

Not if you use split screen Lets say you use a 1280 x 1024 screen for a quad display and the DVR supports the native resolution of 1280 x 1024. Then you have 640 x 512 pixel available for each camera. If you display 12 cameras on a 1080p screen then you would have still 480 x 360 pixel for each camera. This still gives you quite a good image.

Good DVRs have different camera setup for 16/9 screens. I use NetvisionDVR and if I choose a 16/9 resolution the setup looks like this: Of course there are more available setups, but this is just to give you an idea. Also good DVR Software should support 1920 x 1080, so that you don't loose quality because of interpolation. It is quite amazing how sharp a camera is displayed on such a DVR + 1080p screen, even when only a few centimeters big! There is much more resolution available for a VERY good and clear split view.

What about rain & snow. Does that influence the Mbps? Could the connection break? Would a system made for longer distance compensate for the possible loss through rain and snow? @ hardwired How does that work with the multiple links? There are lots of words in your post that I don't understand

I had a look at WaveSprint. It should be enough for my application. BUT it says "optimised for use up to 1Km. With up to 54Mbps you...". I hate this unprecise "up to". I would like to know what I WILL get and not what I might get. Has anyone tested this system? How does it react to heavy rain or snow? What's the price for 1 complete system (for one bridge)?

16 Channel real time H.264 hardware encoding cards exist from NetvisionDVR. Software is hybrid with no additional cost up to 64 cameras (analogue + IP). It has a remote client, iPhone client and Android client. The whole package is WAY below 1000$. It's chinese, but I have it and I am very happy with it.

Sony chip doesn't mean anything. The camera can still be crap. I don't know KT&T. There are many very good Camera Manufacturers, but most of them are MUCH more expensive than CNB. Samsung, Panasonic, Pelco, etc - just to name a few. Now, this is all analogue we are talking about. For IP it looks little different. The first quastion should be "What's your budget?".

Ok - I actually have a setup where I could test that. It's a Netvision server and a client. The client is only 20 m away from the server and everything is connected with Gigabit Network. Usually the Client is only used to display 6 cameras in D1 @ 12fps. I don't know if it really reaches 12 fps, but it looks quite smooth. The delay is about 1 second. However when I choose more cameras to be displayed (16) at the client, the refresh rate on the client gets VERY poor. I don't know why this is. The bandwidth should not be the problem and the PCs cannot be the problem either. Both computers are very powerful. I have to find a program that tells me how much bandwidth is used. Does anybody know a good one?

Hmm thanks for the reply. You will see that I edited the post. It is only about 500 meters actually. The cameras are watched 24/7. I am not good at calculating the necessary bandwidth actually. You can see in the image how many cameras there are. Now lets say I would want to transfer them in D1 with 6fps. Realistic? I am using H.264 hardware encoding cards from Hikvision. Edit (only saw this now): Yes there will be a server at each building and only live images get send over. I am planning to use NetvisionDVR cards for the servers and then access them in the control room with client Software.

If you buy Hikvision cards, you can always use the original Software from Hikvision (IVMS2000) and it's for free. IVMS is good, but better Software does exist for Hikvision cards. I would recommend NetvisionDVR - this is the best that I found so far. I tried Skyvision (crashed regularly) and IVMS2000 (good and stable, but looks like it's 10 years old) You are asking for a program that can be minimized or run in a window and has basically a normal Windows window around it - I have never seen this. All these programs run in full screen and usually overlap any other window. koolmer

I have a Hikvision DS-4016HCSI with Skyvision Software & license file. I really need a Software update, as the current one freezes every few hours. I was told that Skyvision doesn't exist anymore and is called Ever-View now. I don't know if this is true, but I have written e-mails to Skyvision AND Ever-View. So far I have no response and I am really not sure if these companies still exist. If these companies are dead, is there any free Software for Hikvision cards? I am not talking about Trial versions, but full versions - maybe open source or whatever. Thanks in advance. koolmer

It will say in the product discription if the card has Hardware encoding. If it doesn't say anything about it, you can be sure that it has Software encoding. Biggest benefit of Hardware encoding is that the computer will practically be idle and respond very fast. I have 32 Channel systems recording in D1 with 10 fps and CPU usage is around 19%. I have used Software encoding in the past and would not do it again. I would recommend netvisiondvr, but I must also tell you that I haven't used any other Hardware encoding cards yet. Anyways, I am happy with my system and it runs with the cards from Netvision. The card will cost you around 500 - 600 USD.

Thats interesting. Did you manage to fix it or did you just send it back? I would send it back if my warranty hadn't ran out. On the other hand I think it is interesting to open up this camera and see if I can fix the issue. Isn't it like 1 AM in Canada now?!

Hi everybody, Since a few days one of my GE CyberDomes (26x) is broken. The IR cut filter goes stuck from time to time and I get a blurry B/W image in the day. If I push the button to switch between B/W & color, it will work sometimes. My warranty has run out, but I still want to fix it. Has anybody here done that? What would usually be broken? Could it be just dust or dirt? koolmer