tweak'e

Lol, I guess you have never priced CCTV equipment. You should just buy a consumer camcorder. thats probably the better option. simply record what you want, as per event or violation. security cams are better for recording things constantly so you can review and see things that you miss.

check what the recording fps is for that resolution and quality. often companies will advertise the recording fps for the lowest resolution not the highest.

if its an unknown brand they often will use an existing format. i would download software from a lot of the main companies and try them. fingers crossed one may work. otherwise rip the unit out and fit something better. the last thing you want is the ambulance ripped off and police can't access the footage.

usually you need to load the software onto the pc, connect hard drive to pc and then use the software to look for the drive. even tho the operating system can't see the disk the DVR software will see it.

sorry it was just past sun up when i got to the nearest set of lights. my cheap 420 no name board camera picks up the traffic lights ok in the lowish light. just not sure of what it would be like at night. you might get away with just a basic camera. see if you can borrow one and find out.

those recorders are incident recorders and won't work for your situation. i got through traffic lights early tomorrow morning, hopefully its still dark enough to see what the lights looked like with a cheap camera.

the BIG problem with outside mounted is any rain or dirt fouls the camera lens very quickly. unless you can find a self cleaning lens that will fit or some way to direct the air flow so it pushes the rain/dirt away from the lens. thats why people fit the cameras in the vehicle behind the window wiper area.

trouble for is i don't have many traffic lights around here. i don't have any stills of any incidents at traffic lights to show you. i will have to look through some footage and see what the lights look like especially at night. trying to work out what bare minimum you need is a bit tricky. any good box camera with variable lens will always work to a degree, it just may not work as well as you want. the simply problem is with low resolution (due to dvr) with a wide angle lens makes small objects hard to see. more so at night which is the real tricky part. if you look through threads theres plenty of recommendations of good camera brands. if the streets are usually fairly well lit at night then a non IR low light camera i would be the go. how that all fits in with the rest of the system, eg can you fit multiable box cameras in the cab of the vehicle ??

just having a quick look at that setup. you do realize thats its not actual a mobile DVR. you will have to make a mount for the unit and make a regulated power supply to run the unit and cameras off. its a 4 camera DVR so you could run one camera for your forward view and one with a narrower lens pointed in the general direction of the traffic lights (assuming that in your country they are all roughly in the same place). your limited to 420's with that dvr. in all honesty i would go find an actually mobile DVR and one that takes much higher quality cameras. quite a few here use avermedia ones http://www.avermedia.com/averdigi/product/Detail.aspx?id=210 the cameras themselves, size is often the big problem. if you don't mind full size cameras then the skys the limit. but often vehicles end up using mini cameras which tend to be a lot lower quality.

how many cameras can your system take? and what quality are you recording at ? you may have to have one dedicated for it. trouble is most use wide angle lens for a front camera and you will need very good quality to pick up the lights as they are often high above or off to the side and usually at a fair distance away.

did you check the power at the camera? could simply be low voltage. the other thing is is earth loop through the power cable. also sometimes you can get problems when the floors are on different power phases.

what make/model hardrive? some hardrives are to slow in spinning up so the DVR thinks its corrupt/fresh and reformats it.

i would recommend active splitter. i had just a T join but a simple plug fault at one screen took out the entire video feed. an active splitter is more fault tolerant, so a fault in one section doesn't cause failure in another. you can get cheap basic 2-4 way active splitters.

i'm not really up on cable type systems but easiest way is just to put analog in on an unused frequency range. make sure that range is blocked so you don't back feed to everyone else up the street. depends on what input you have to the tv's, you should be able to split that signal back out and go into the tv's analog RF input. the big problem is trying to find a frequency or preferably a band that isn't used thats big enough to fit the amount of channels you want down it.

golden rule of installs is NEVER put a connection in where you can't get to it later. trouble with splicing is you never get the shield 100%. also the dielectric suffers. but hey i've seen plenty just twisted together and taped with electrical tape that have been fine to. F's don't unscrew if done up properly, especially if you use lock nuts. biggest problem is the centre wire can pull out.

me to. forget splicing, its a poor way of doing it. it works okish but not reliable. poor connection and poor insulation. BNC's are just big and bulky. couple of water proof F's + F joiner, bit of sealing tape and its all good...expect if they pull hard on the cable and pull the centre core out of the joiner! (same problem with some bnc connectors) F connectors are just much more tidy way and seals better.

i would go D1. try it and see. you don't need to have such high frame rate, 6fps would be bareable.....just.

you can get flooded underground cable easy enough. its just silicon filled to stop water traveling through it. however i would always put it in conduit of some kind. direct burying of cables, especially under roads/driveways, the road tends to compact down and the cables get crushed or broken.

something like mobile watchmans EDR event recorder and rig it to car alarm system. there is also the DVR version of it. event recorder is probably better for the parked up recording due to power usage. even then you would want to run it off a separate battery.

it depends a bit on what he wants it for. a lot are for monitoring while driving. however there are some which can be connected to alarm systems and record when it trips. have a look at http://www.mobilewatchman.com/

whited out picture? sounds like the IR is reflecting off the dome back into the lens. if its just one bright spot it could be IR is to narrow beam, ie to much of a spot light and not a flood light. in any case probably better to disconnect the IR and run external IR.

1 foot is fairly minimal. will depend a lot on how much power is going through the power cables.

i don't know that system but dealt with similar over the other side of the world. couple of things, latency can cause a few problems with some servers. because your pc takes so long to respond it thinks your not there. the other is proxy and web acceleration which i see on their website that is built into the modem. see if there is a config panel that you can change the settings and disable the web acceleration and/or proxy.

do not put video cables in the trench with power cables. very easy to get interference and its a pain to fix later. a bit of flexy water pipe is ok to put them in but i prefer hard pipe (ie electrical conduit) so the ground doesn't squish the pipes. if the pipes are fairly straight just bury it with a few pull cords in it to drag cables through. tho a couple hundred feet i would put cables through before burying them. also check how the pipes come out of the ground, you want them to breath so any water can evaporate out of them. otherwise they can fill up with water and they can do weird things,especially any type of twisted pair cable.

there can be big differences in led's. output of the individual led can vary depending on make/model, then what the quality is like. also how hard its driven. some will under drive them to make sure they last while others will over drive them to make them brighter. don't forget IR is often split into two different wave lengths. AFAIK the ones that glow lightly red work better with cameras but of course are not totally invisible. might pay to stick an amp meter on the led and see what its really doing. a guesstimate on efficiency should give you an idea on what output it really has.