tweak'e

i'm not up on the play with digital cable. sounds like you haven't selected the output channels on the modulator. i'm assuming analog output. you will need a spare channel thats not carrying cable signal. you will also most likely need an empty channel on either side. do you use set top box to receive the cable or does it go straight to a digital tv? if you use set top boxes you may need to split the analog signal back out and feed into the tv the main thing is is modulator output must be different frequency to the cable signal. if thats confusing then get a tv/cable guy in.

what frequency's are the cable tv channels on (are they digital or analog?) and what frequency's the modulator outputs? we don't have much in the way of cable here so i have to guess a bit on what system you guys have.

i'm used to F connectors rather than BNC. but i havn't seen 2 piece F's on the shelf in 10 years. i do them different. twist/screw on's you strip the cable like your doing a belling lee plug. the single biggest fault with both twist and crimp plugs is lack of shield length due to installers useing speed strippers (cuts outer and inner core in one go). a lot of the time the crimp misses the shield and you have a low pressure crimp and a shield thats loose inside the plug. with high frequency signal (UHF/IF) the losses are low, but with low frequency signal the effect can be huge.

i cannot believe i'm seeing this twist ons are for amateurs/diy who don't want to buy the crimp tools. in no way are they superior to hex or radial crimps and i havn't seen a pro use twists ons for the last 10-15 years. most twist ons i see are usually done badly as well, there is a few tricks to do them well. however they are handy if you run into odd sized cables. mind you i used to be in aerial industry and got well used to sparkies doing dodgy connections with twist ons.

i can't see the screen when driving. (more to do with legal issues). however i did manage to check the HD light on the front. with moderate bumps it lights up solid. to many bumps and it goes out for a long time, which corresponds with the lack of recording. its stuck to the spare seat at the moment so its not exactly getting big bumps either.

they the international version? theres also a US (ntsc only) version.

did a bit more checking today......i noticed it had cut out again ! did a little vibration testing (like hitting it !) and found that its fine for up/down and side to side. however the slightest hit front to rear and the hardrive starts seeking and if continued it cuts out all together. sounds like i have a drive that has a weak spot. any ideas on the max power draw you can have with the hardrive ?

water itself won't kill it. what normally kills electronics is the corrosion. simply take it home and put it in the hot water cupboard for a few days (or anywhere warm and dry). check for any corrosion and if none then it will be fine.

these units use IDE hard drives not SATA.

the HD problem was they would only run on WD green (lowpower) silly thing there is i was running one of the WD blue series which is on the hardrive compatibility list for the 1304mob. do you know what the hardrive power limits are ? i might get another of the blue drives or get the bigger version (more cache but more power hungry).

going by the age i would say old version. tho this has vga and bnc output and front usb (tho not double as in pic). this is the older IDE version not the newer SATA version. what sort of HD problems where they having?

i wouldn't run it off the trunk light feed. run a separate feed straight off the battery. trunk feed is just open to too many problems. eg boot vibrating and light flickering on makes spikes to the DVR. talking of shock, i noticed todays recording it cut out for 6 minutes but there is no bump on the road where it started. it had cut out when i hit the big bumps on the unsealed road and it didn't resume recording either. i checked when i stopped, the HD light was dead. it didn't do that with the old drive.

i think your meaning scuits install picture, i havn't put one up of mine. cameras run off DVR output and DVR feed is straight off battery through a relay for on/off. scruit ....i had a thought. what cache is on those 2.5" drives? proberly only 2meg. bigger the cache may give it more time to recover between impacts. but that only works if the drive can write twice as fast as the data is coming in. if your maxing out the drive it won't help at all. also a rethink of the foam on the HD. it may help. i forgot about the weight of your 2.5" drive. the stock rubber may not actually work because the drive is so light weight. might be better to go for a standard 3.5" desktop drive, a bit heavier, certainly faster and has more cache.

well my test is not going good. at the moment i have the DVR sitting on the front seat (fixed to the front seat actually). its not going to get any more bump resistant than that. no video corruption just looses big chunks of footage. unfortunately once again another incident was lost for some reason the drive doesn't recover, in fact it lost a few lots of video where it was only on for a short time. i'm wondering if these have an issue with being turned off/on all the time.

thats just it...very hard to recommend something. maybe silicon gel pads (like some of the mouse/keyboard arm rests). the other thing is the IDE lead. its not split like my Chinese one is, so its a lot stiffer and would be more prone to bad connections. your comment about power got me thinking, possibly loose connector in the back. just vibrating loose enough to drop the power slightly ?? i do not know why they didn't just make them like car audio connectors.

that setup will stop shock but INCREASE vibration. every time it gets a bit of shock instead of a single hard impact it bounces back and forth repeatedly. if the head can't be controlled during that bouncing then it will not record. problem of course i have no idea in practical terms of how much bouncing the drives can take before they fail to read/write. ideally you need a shock absorber, something to dampen out the vibrations.

i did fill out an online form about it but not heard back. will try the help desk a bit later. i'm not sure if its shock that does it or vibration. mine was fairly well padded but adding padding turns shock into vibration. also i was reading a bit on carmp3 forum about possibly because the shock/vibration is on the same direction as the head movement. ie hardrive fails to control the head. some of the more power hungry hardrives may have bigger head control coils. power wise.....mines direct from battery with relay so it operates only when ignition is on.

i've just swapped it over to flat as well so i'll give you an update in a few days. was starting to really **** me off as it would cut out 10-15 minutes at a time and ended up missing some important events.

by the time IP cam comes down to analog level we will all be old and grey or long gone. its frustrating when the technology already exists and there is applications that can readily use it but no one is making it. it would be nice to able to use existing cables without converters which add complexity, cost and take up room. it would be a simple upgrade path for many. very easy to sell and install. i don't agree IP is everything. there are certainly many things you do not want accessible by anyone and everywhere. that idea of everything plugged in has been round for an awful long time already yet its still fairly rare and most of the automation systems i've seen in homes are proprietary anyway.

silly question time.... your typical cctv signal is 1v p-p, why not do what audio guys do and run 4v p-p ?? used to have audio gear with variable output as some gear was 1v, 2v or 4v.

its not something you can download and run. last time i came across this tech (many years ago now) it worked on the fact that hardrives are fairly crude. they opened up the drive in the lab and read the drive directly using a very very fine head. what they looked for was the imprint left over from previous data. bit like rings in a tree. whats collected is really raw data which has to then be put through the drives firmware and then try and arrange it back into a recognizable form. your probably looking at months if not years to put all the data back together again. CSI eat your heart out my guess is you would sell your house to pay for it. also drive tech has changed since then so i don't know if that technique is even possible anymore.

i don't see anyone with actual cameras or dvr's yet.

are u talking about HD-SDI output ? or ? anything i'm a little new to all this but i do see a few things being proposed about having mega pixel non-ip cameras with digital output over coax. but it seams to be only in design stage at the moment. maybe its not in manufactures best interest to make low cost version of IP cameras. it would be very good to have a range of mega pixel mini cams for auto use, tills, shop counter etc. especially with hidden cams. i see theres a few that do a IP cam with a remote camera but you still got the big control gear for it. it would be good just to be able to use existing wiring and have a small camera without IP camera cost. one big advantage would be to get away from the picture quality issues analogs get due to interference and cable quality.

true. i would like to see mini digital output cameras (non-IP). especially with coax connection so can be used over existing cabling. but you would also need digital recorder to match it.

any ideas what would cause this? i hope its not yet another faulty camera. its only on one of the cameras.