hardwired

Slightly off-topic, as I am not using Avermedia cards, but we have been building DVR's and NVR's (30+)for about a year with that Gigabyte board, and not had a bit of trouble.... Usually, I've seen problems when you go outside Intel chipsets (SIS had been a problem) more than between different models of Intel chipsets, as most DVR manufacturers build their systems with Intel in mind.

Yeah, the Rapport unit is pricey, but it's sort of the Swiss army knife of testers, a lot of times you don't need much else... As far a the Test-Um NT750, it has a display that adds a few good features, like showing DHCP results, PoE power presence and voltage, flashing the link light on a switch it's connected to, and two of the units can ping each other... I had the kit you have first (which does work fine, too), and kicked it down to one of the install guys and got the 750 kit.. Actually, my most recent test equipment purchases have been the Ubiquiti AirView2 and 9 cheapie spectrum analyzers, considering how much wireless I've been doing recently. Thinking about getting the Aaronia HF-6080 Handheld Spectrum Analyzer, But it's over 2K.. Not bad for a spectrum analyzer, but probably not in the budget for a while...

What you are looking for is a PTZ receiver (I know, you are only talking about controlling the lens, not necessarily a pan/tilt mechanism, but they are almost always combined, since a zoom lens without pan/tilt capability is pretty limited). Several manufacturers make items of this type, the Pelco one here is one example http://www.pelco.com/global/en/products/camera-solutions/range-presentation.page?p_function_id=9510&p_family_id=10231&p_range_id=2926# I've also seen quite a few on everyone's favorite, E-Bay... You'll need a controller, too, either a joystick, or a DVR with RS422/RS485 data out to control it (Pelco P/D formats are the most universal, you might look for that to start) *******Edit******* Your second response is not necessarily the best way to get more help here.. I'm going to chalk it up to frustration, but some here may not be quite as friendly......

One of our guys swears by the Rapport 337 tester it is nice, monitor, multimeter, signal generator, and PTZ controller... I spend more time using this one, the Test-Um NT750 kit.

Is the 484 designed to be mounted like that? Are both sections of the white clam shell waterproof? I have the 502, and I thought it was designed to be mounted under an eve and that only the lower clam shell and dome was designed to be exposed to rain. Think that might be a WV-CP484 box cam in a enclosure with sunshield, not WV-CW484 dome.....

Marshall Electronics makes a high temp extended pinhole lens that might work for you... http://www.mars-cam.com/optical.html That way, you could keep the cam out of the high temp area.

Some of it is splitting hairs, the Mobotix IS the only one I know of either that does use VOIP-specific SIP protocol with QOS for audio... But yes, many other DVR's are capable of 2-way audio, and if you've properly set up the routing, and you have a decent bandwidth WAN connection (for example, the DVR I typically use needs UDP port forwarding for audio, where video is over TCP), there's no reason why it will not work either. The Mobotix IS nice in that the microphone and speaker are in it already, as well as a number of nice features (wave a magnet across the right spot and it speaks out your current network conditions, and a number of other nice features as well)

If you stick with a reputable manufacturer (Tamron, Computar, Fujinon come to mind), you probably will not go too wrong, even without specific Day/Night correction, because the Panasonic you chose will refocus itself during the day / night changeover. having said that, there's no specific downside to choosing a D/N corrected lens, other than the price. Do try to stick to the smallest varifocal range you can choose, though. A simpler lens calculator can be found here.. http://www.pelco.com/sites/global/en/sales-and-support/downloads-and-tools/tools/lens-calc.page Remember to set the calculator to 1/3" to match the Panasonic's imager size.

I have a similar setup with an Esprit running fine on an Acti encoder /decoder pair, and a pair of Ubiquiti Nanostation units in a WDS bridge. It also allows NVR recording, as well as analog viewing/ control points.

The MAC broadcast for this type of application WILL make it through most types of layer 2 or 3 LAN switches, unless MAC broadcasts are explicitly filtered in the setup (unlikely). It will not make it through NAT masquerade routing, though (MAC broadcasts are filtered there, to stop them from being broadcast onto the internet). Usually, these applications can find the cams, and in some instances readdress them, through different subnets, but with some you have to change your local IP to match the same subnet before being able to readdress them.

We tested Hikvision 2MP camera outdoors.. it is not a good performer unless you have a lot of night lights. But then again even Arecont, Bosch, AD and others (coincidence is that most of such manufacturers cameras use the same chipset from Arecont) higher MP cameras are under performers during the night anyway... One of the posts in this thread shows night picture using Mobotix camera - it looks good as long as the area is very well lighted... I wander what the picture will look like if they turn of half of the light or more... There is one box camera from Grandstream - http://www.grandstream.com/products/gxv_series_surveillance/gxv3601/gxv3601.html - that we will test soon. According to its specs, it is a low light camera and ability to stream H.264 video... I guess we will see how it performs soon enough. The imagers are not Arecont... Arecont, Acti, and almost all other manufacturers using CMOS imagers, are using imagers from Aptina Imaging http://www.aptina.com (previously Micron).

Exacq and Axis are a bit clunky too. Who has a good one? Best, Christopher Onssi and Milestone are very good but your gonna pay for it...... I don't know what your mean by clunky but with Exacq I don't have problems unless the server and/or the network is slow. If you use the client on the server the video loads very quick..... How many hours are you trying to load at one time? If I try and load 7 days worth of megapixel video I takes some time. The Exacq is slow on playback mostly when trying to view cameras, especially megapixel, over a slower WAN connection (DSL, etc) than being a issue on a local LAN. Milestone's playback is pretty nice, we have a fair number of customers with it.. But, as noted above, you are going to pay for it (3X or more per channel, compared to Exacq) Interestingly, those of us who have used many different platforms may be a little more biased than our customers might be. I did a recent install with Exacq, and the customer felt that it was as good or better to use than our previous DVR platform that I felt was much easier to use....

For a PTZ, the Pelco Esprit /Spectra have electronic image stabilization. For a fixed cam, you could look at the new Panasonic WV-CP504 or the Samsung VSS series cams with electronic image stabilization.

you might try this one from Pelco http://www.global-download.schneider-electric.com/852575770039EC5E/All/DF45FED8CFDF047185257633005BBCC0/$File/c784.pdf That lets you use a DC lens on a video drive camera, which has a variable DC output for lens control.

I've used a few, they work fairly well on the Arecont 5mp, I digitally cropped out a lot of vertical area (sky) in the cam settings. Finding a outdoor housing that doesn't vignette the corners of the field of view with the housing or sun shield is difficult.

If you really want to eliminate that distortion, and are willing to spend a fairly large amount for it, (~$450.00 retail) Theia lenses, http://www.theiatech.com/ will do the job, I've used several on different jobs, and been pretty happy with them.

I think that setting is only to limit output bandwidth to clients, and has no effect on inbound connections, but I haven't checked that side of it. (the throttling on the outbound side does work, I've used it to see how a client connection will look over a lower bandwidth connection).

Please add me back to the Integrators section, I guess... The expansion of groups seems like a little much to allow enough people to talk between each other, though.... We could fall into Installers, and Manufacturers, to some extent, too.... how much will be available between groups?

+2, Be everyone enjoying fortuitous holiday happyness

4CIF OK, or just D1? And what frame rate per channel are you looking for?

Fair enough. Give me a few days (Christmas and all...) and I'll try to post some images of the color-shift I'm talking about. You'll be able to see the difference with no prompting. I'm currently on vacation and logged into one of my Avermedia installs. I wish I could save about 5 - 10 seconds of video to post but my IE 8 keeps crashng when try to save video. I have an indoor Acti 3511 and I am currently observing it go from blue to red tint and flipping back and fourth. Can't see to make up it's mind if it should be using the indoor color setting or the outdoor settings. It is not pointed toward a window and the lighting is fairly consistant in the room but it still can't settle on a setting. Very frustrating because all my Acti cameras do the same thing, the 7411's, the 4200 and this 3511 camera. Summary I have he same issues with color shifting. I've seen the same color shifting on a few of my installs, but only under artificial light (fluorescent, metal halide, etc.) which makes me wonder if the camera is actually seeing, and reacting, to the slight color shift that occurs in those type of lights through each cycle of AC power, as that does actually turn the lamp on and off at 60Hz, and the color shifts through each cycle as it does. When I get a chance, I'm going to log into one of those installs, and try changing the shutter speed, and see if that changes it.

I live here in Fresno, I can go to the mountains near here and play in the snow... And then get away from it!

I've used quite a bit of Ubiquiti complete units, as well as their mini-PCI cards, and been very happy with it. BTW, they are coming soon with a grid dish unit, http://ubnt.com/products/airgrid.php ...wireless "N" data rate...... For $29.00 MSRP! Many wireless Internet service providers use Ubiquiti equipment for all their sites.

The client is totally browser based (with Flash), will run on almost anything. Not bad stuff, and is more reasonably priced than you'd think, given the features. The server will run on Mac, or a custom build of Red Hat Linux.

640x480 or better and I can read Sorry, re-sized too small, here you go....