Voipmodo

According to their website: 12v 25W so that rules out poe.

Also please note that it most cases a lens setup with different focal lengths on the m12 will take about 3-4 weeks as they have to build them special order in germany. Last one we did took a little over 4 weeks.

You learn the basics about the camera, and can say you are certified. We havent done it since already have knowledge of the products, years of telecom/video experience, and the closest training is 500 miles away and the airfare, hotel, and training doesnt make it a must have for our business. Basic So, one course for 600$ and you become Mobotix certified partner? What advantages do you get after becoming certified?

We are putting it out there If anyone cant get in touch with mobotix give us a shout and we can see if we can help. We are by no means be all experts but can try and give free email or chat support. A side note, Mobotix is having some serious customer service issues worldwide right now. Its a great product but distribution and channel sales departments dont seems to care about a customer unless they are doing large installation projects not realizing 80 customers buying 2-4 cameras beats one 100 camera deal. This may look good on marketing materials but you cant have a sustainable business model with that attitude. We are also getting a lot of complaints about us online retailers and selling below the prices they have fixed per country. If you havent noticed, buying even at msrp is over a $100us cheaper in the USA then anywhere else in the world. The complaint we have heard is that we sell worldwide and offer lower then msrp prices. I am sure a lot of dealers here may have opinions on this and would love to sell at msrp but in order to compete with the over 20 online shops that are box pushers, ebay, and even amazon.com now, we need to be competitive. In terms of selling worldwide, I have clients in Australia that buy from us and pay $$$ in shipping fees just because we have stock on hand , answer our phones and email, and give support. This is the same in the states where we have had several customers whose local integrators installed the cameras, didn't set them up correctly, and won't/can't support them. We love the products and recommend people buying them, but if Mobotix keeps growing and wanting to compete against arecont and axis, they really need to work on their support and channel sales.

Mobotix USA only has a small staff and a bunch are at the ISC West show right now in Vegas. From our understanding, Mobotix wants customers to only deal with the integrators or installers who sold the camera and then provide support when needed to these partners. This is one concern we have had with the company, is that they still view the cameras as a specialty industrial product. I have had many discussions on how IP Cameras are now considered a retail product, in most cases not needing an installer to configure or install. We sell quite a few units monthly and these go mostly to homeowners and Company IT departments. Your best bet is to contact your reseller who you purchased from, or if you bought the item used, contact a local VAR and see if they can get things started. We have gained many new Mobotix customers from other dealers who did not want to deal with a single camera sale and the support, so if you still have trouble getting help, and are in the US PM us and we can try to pass things up through our channels if all else fails.

1. The benefit is you can have the camera record directly to an internal card or directly to a network hard drive. once you start adding a few cameras to a traditional camera setup you not only need to deal with a fast computer to record multiple megapixel h.263 streams but have to have the bandwidth available to do so. If you have remote cameras via wireless or 3G this becomes an issue. In most cases you can use a companies existing IT infrastructure for the cameras, where for a standard h.264 based camera system you may have to have a dedicated network to prevent QOS issues. Price out a system to record 10-20 Megapixel IP cameras with h.263 and you will see the benefit 2. Actually you don';t need a PC, with the built in SIP functionality you could just use a low cost video IP phone(under $250) or Iphone to view the cameras. How many people sit and watch footage non stop in most installations unless its retail shrink protection or high risk areas. 3. If the internal sd card is not enough, then use a low cost NAS device or attach a usb memory stick or hard drive directly to the camera for more storage. 4. Software is free with no licenses. you can even add third party cameras to the system. Price out a M24 at market pricing and compare it to a standard 3 megapixel IP camera price and you can see how its pretty close in price. Factor in weather sealing and the advanced features then you start seeing the value. 5. Having 2 sensors falls inline with having no moving parts in the camera. Most cameras that have day color and night IR have a filter that gets moved in front of the lens. this can wear out or malfunction. The reason is Color megapixel sensors have really poor night performance. Adding a night sensor gives you a megapixel night sensor that performs great at night since its what its designed for. So two sensors gives you great day footage, good night footage in b/w and has the added benefit of a super rugged design that works in harsh conditions. How often would you want to climb a pole to replace a camera with a bad IR filter or heater (which Mobotix doesnt need) in -20 degree weather in a blizzard? or just have it work when it has too.

I am not sure how much it costs in your country but the basic course is $600 here in the US and they usually have a promotion where you get a free Q24 for attending. The prices and info for courses is on their site.

Have you tried reinstalling the mobotix application? Based on your error I would try un-installing the mobotix software, then going to control panel, add/remove programs and un-install the version you have of the Microsoft Visual C++ package. I am currently running windows xp and have the 2005 version installed and its mxcontrol center runs fine. Looking at microsoft's site you can get the latest version here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en The control center application is self contained and i believe i written in Visual C and is somehow not running correctly on your system. This may or may not help as there a 1000 different variable which could cause a program not to launch including, drivers, conflicting preinstalled software, outdated windows components.. This is why I switched to MAC and its stability and ease of management.

While far from being experts, If anyone has questions on Mobotix feel free to PM me and I will if we can help. We will be adding a wiki eventually to our site with frequent problems and solutions as we find them or help our customers on the Mobotix Cameras. Example: Mobotix M24: We have had many customers contact us about setting up a new camera and having blurry images after installing the lens which ships un-attached. Solution: Most customers do not tighten the included lens tightly enough to seat correctly into the camera. The solution is to tighten the lens ring, by hand only, until it feels snug. Turn on the camera and watch on the browser the camera feed. Slowly continue to tighten the lens ring by hand past the point it feels snug in quarter to 1/8 turn increments until you have achieved optimal focus for your location. The initial lens snugness you feel is the bottom of the lens unit against the rubber gasket inside the camera for weatherproofing and most people stop at this point fearing over tightening the unit. Nothing unbelievable, they are CRAP when it comes taking care of customers. I sent support email them two days ago, no reply. Local distributor is useless, cant help. Thats what you get paying such a high price

I thought of doing the same thing, but parallels puts alot of load on a system and requires an install of xp to run, a container runs with less cpu load and its what a lot of video game vendors are using to port PC games to the Mac.

With the MX Control Center software only available for PC users, there has been a hole left for Mac users wanting to use this great software resource. We have just put together a special container using WINE that allows the Control Center software to work in OSX. We have tested basic features such as connecting to an IP camera and importing recorded files. So far the only feature that is a little buggy that we have found is the site layouts. Performance overall is pretty good. MOBOTIX should be releasing a MAC native application later this year, so this should be a good stopgap until then for those looking to get experience using the software and for those looking test out the features. As this is not an official supported use of the software, we can not 100% recommend using it in a production environment. If you are familiar, you can create a container using WINE and the MOBOTIX downloadable package or if you email us or reply on the link below we can send you a prepackaged container for free. http://www.voipmodo.com/contacts/ or email us via forum

I am sitting here live at the MOBOTIX USA partner conference and wanted to share some images of the new products coming out. I have attached a picture of the new Door camera coming out later this year which looks great. Also on the way is a new and improved CamIO module that has a built in 3port poe, and a special 3G USB data stick slot, available sometime 2nd quarter. Coming later this year is a new M14 dual lens to replace the M12. New features will include faster proccessing, better framerates, and will have user replaceable lens options. I personally see this as a great improvement over the M12, as a custom lens configuration now requires a 3-4 week lead time and swapping out a lens can cost ~$300 I will post new details and product information as it arrives. As with all new products, i am sure exact specs may change before release, but the features I have mentioned should stay the same.

I agree that you should look at the new cameras. You will get the warranty (2 years) and the piece of mind of not having to try to get a used camera to work. Its a great camera and works well so there must be a reason they are selling it. In terms of software, it is free of charge and you can download it directly from mobotix with no license at http://www.mobotix.com:80/eng_GB/content/view/full/1723 i think you will be buying an expensive dummy camera. without the ip username / camera id you will not get it to work unless you know the company that installed it. and to have the camera re flashed (can only be done by mobotix) will cost you £350-£400 and with that cost and the auction price you could buy a new one. oh and you will also need the software and licence it would have been on a disk with camera. (free) if this is not with the camera add another £100

All of the instructions on use can be found on the mobotix website so you should be set there. One thing that is a must if you are buying it used, is that you know the admin password and IP address of the camera. If you don't know the login, things will be a lot harder to setup. Also if you want to use the camera for audio, you want to check to make sure the audio circuits are not "burned" out. All mobotix cameras have the option to permanently disable the audio for compliance with certain local laws. Once this has been done, it cannot be undone.

And the best part of Mobotix is there is no cost or license fee for the software or any updates.

Ok, we are finally back from the wonderful Mobotix Partner Conference in Florida and can upload the rest of the photos that I took of the new products that we saw. The New door station has a 180 degree 11mm hemispheric lens, door opener capability, plus is expandable with a number of options including a keypad, light control and other access control options. Also the T24 model introduces a new SIP phone menu system. I have attached a screenshot as seen on the Grandstream video phone. The interface is very clean, and vastly improves the old phone control menu. With the T24, and a few video phones, you could easily create a full featured single access point system. If they add this new menu control to the rest of the camera models, I can easily see using a video SIP phone as a low cost monitoring solution for a guard shack or remote manager. They would simply be able to dial in via an extension and have full control over the camera and have 2 way audio to boot. From the way the sales reps were talking it looks like Mobotix is expanding into the access control market and will be having more products upcoming that fits this market as well. The Q24 night version is now available as is the M24 Hemispheric in day, and night being released in about a week. We saw some engineering drawings of the M14 which is still being developed and it looks very close to the M12 but with a more rounded appearance. The M14 will be using the same chipsets and boards as the rest of the generation of new cameras, have user replaceable lens's and will promise faster frame rates at full resolution.

We were told sometime late 3rd quarter at the earliest for the m14. If you have a project I would reccomend using the m12 unless you absolutely need to interchange lens options

I think this could technically be possible. You would have to play around with a variety of telephoto lens converters and spacing to get the right focal point for the setting you want. I see a few drawbacks though: 1. Most likely any add-on lens and mounting solutions would not be weatherproof and would easily fog or become water saturated. 2. Depending on how much time you spend making a solution that works and overcomes drawback one, are you losing out on time that you could be billing to clients? It may seem like 300 is a lot but when you factor in the value of your time, may be a good deal. You may also consider adding a second camera to augment your current functionality, maybe a M24 with a 43mm lens Just some ideas and food for thought.

I just got word that the Q24 Night versions are now available and ready to ship. Same price as the day version at $998 retail MSRP

This week is the US National Partner Conference in the US so we should find out more info on the Q24 Night hopefully then.

Any recommendations on the mesh radio?

A good idea may be to look at specific solutions you can target your company towards and fit yourself into a niche market. In order to compete against the multitude of competitors out there you need to find a way to standout.

The M24 has a manual adjusted zoom when you choose the Vario lens model.

The Q24 has a fixed lens. There are two versions available to choose from at purchase including a 360deg 11mm or a 90deg 22mm. The Q24 is designed for wide coverage areas and if you wanted vari you should look at the M24 with 24-54 vari which has the same performance as the q24.

You can also check out the NUUO POS-SCB-C31 It is an IP POS integration device I have sold a few of their NAS devices which are decent and know they offer this. I dont know much about POS integration but may be an option. http://www.nuuo.com/product.php?id=18