hardwired

Here's one I looked at seriously a while back.. a lot of nice features, in fact, full PSIM functionality. Pricey, but not as bad as I thought, for the features. Native Mac. http://www.videonext.com/

For the "real world" experience that you referred to, you can often borrow some, especially on the bigger installs you refer to. Call on your customer's IT department with as much information regarding the scope and requirements of what you intend to install, and use them as a resource to determine whether what you intend to do is feasible on "their" network. Often, if you present the information well, IT departments are becoming surprisingly receptive to the idea of video, it often allows them the justification for upgrades in their infrastructure they've been itching for. Also, getting buy-in from IT departments can give you an advocate on the customer's side of the fence. If what you are suggesting for the customer seems realistic to the IT folks, that can add confidence to the decision-maker's choice to use (and continue to use) you for their video.

I agree that building a separate LAN is the safest way to avoid any potential problems with a customer's existing network.... But, it negates a lot of labor cost benefits of using an existing network already in place that may be perfectly adequate for the task. A number of schools I've installed in have fiber gigabit backbones and Cisco switches, spread over many buildings, that are better than what we would install. Why walk away from the capability of working with that? If you are doing a massive scale install, I would think about a parallel network structure, but short of that, VLAN's, and proper design, can make a reasonably functional network carry video with little impact.

I agree, except save the megapixel for facing inward from the exit of the door, less backlighting problems, and you get a good picture of his face on the way out, with the stuff he stole, not his back. Easier if you are using a deterrent monitor, too.

Yes, he's joking... Take a look at this one http://samsung360.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=4&category_id=7&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1 Retails at about $6000.00 or so.. Then decide what your real expectation for your application is, and we can work with that. Not trying to be unnecessarily harsh here, but what you're asking for is a little unrealistic, unless your budget is a lot bigger than what we're guessing here... Some other manufacturers claim specs like that, but it is usually with extreme slow shutter speeds and, often, outright lies.

I don't know what other people's experiences have been, but I've had significantly more reliability problems with Vivotek(several failures) than with Acti (actually, almost no problems with Acti, and I've installed far more Acti)

I agree, I would do everything I could to cluster as many cameras together to as few switches as possible, you could possibly reduce your link count by half or more. Don't even think about using "WiFi" cameras with the radio's built in, you're just asking for pain. The Ubiquiti 5 GHz AirMax stuff can have a throughput of up to 200Mbps, in a perfect world with 40 MHz channels... In the real world, I've gotten 75+ Mbps through them on 20 MHz channels... still very respectable. It also has TDMA time-slicing for more efficient multipoint access on a single channel. Wireless "N" is much better suited for video than previous A/B/G protocols, especially the way it aggregates packets for throughput. Having said all that, you will still want to plan carefully. I've become a proponent of using wireless, but it's still my last choice of connectivity in an install. Site surveys, bandwidth calculations, and spectrum analysis are a important part of wireless planning.

Take a look at Ubiquiti products www.ubnt.com , their AirMax N rate stuff is pretty nice, very reasonably priced, too. Line of sight and interference issues still apply, let us know a little more about the environment. In some environments, I've had good luck with point to point DSL extenders, if you have internal phone lines running around there.

Yea..... it's up on a pole so can't do much about it now till he adds more cameras and I have the lift again. It is really hard to focus the camera with your laptop in your hand on the lift. You need to be in a dark room so you can see the image really well. When I can't see the image well enough (seems like more often, as I'm getting older) I usually go into the S/W setup menu for the camera, Exacq and Milestone both can show the image file size, I tweak for the highest number there, and it usually gives pretty good results. Also lets you see the results of closing the iris too much, file size goes way up when the image starts getting grainy.

They do vary by manufacturer, and even at the same frequency, there are differences between some manufacturers that make them incompatible. The big name in the industry, HID, uses 125 kHz for their standard readers, and 13.56 MHz for their "smart" readers. Take a look at http://www.hidglobal.com/products/readers.php for an overview.....

Let us know about that firmware and how it works. I couldn't get that version to work with Exacq either, I'll try it with Milestone later. BTW, I'm not sure what you will gain when using it with Exacq anyways, I kind of thought of this new version as a step closer to a standalone platform, like Mobotix. It seems to have some possible applications in that sense.

No fuses? I love the smell of a burnin' cameras in the mornin'. Best, Christopher You should see what happens when someone puts tinfoil around the fuse in a Pelco monitor Scorpion, what the heck are you trying to make with Zener diodes, Bipolar transistors, and no transformer or fusing, an electric chair? That's the offline switcher from Hell!

Just saw they are the dome cameras If that one is one of the initial cams that came out, they had really bad lenses on them, and a lot of distortion in the dome cover. My first ones also didn't have three axis gimbal, had to use wall mounts. Soured me on them a little, haven't used any since. Talk to your Arecont rep about it. I got new lenses for some of mine by asking nicely Been thinking about trying to fit a Computar or Kowa lens in there, even the newer lenses are pretty iffy.

Kinda guessing that it is mostly a firmware flash to existing camera models, they already have open collector I/O's on the back. I'd been wondering about doing something like that myself, but I could never get any info on how to write code to interface to it.... Wouldn't necessarily need to be a zenon strobe, you can make a pretty whomping bright strobe with LED's with the right drive circuit. Even free-running at 5 fps or so with an IR strobe synced to that with the fast shutter speed would be pretty useful to me... If anyone finds out if it's just firmware, let me know!

I, too, would suggest wireless, and probably Ubiquiti, but I don't think his application calls for mesh, just a simple point-to-point or multipoint. If he's looking to do the shot from that distance, it means he has reasonable LOS (leaving out Fresnel zone stuff, for the moment), and 2km would be no problem for something like a pair of Nanostations. Mesh has it's own set of hairballs, including bandwidth loss through multiple hops if you are only using one radio as a repeater.

There are a number of different manufacturers of what you are describing, http://americanvideoequipment.com/ is one, TVS is another, they were absorbed by Honeywell, not sure if they are still around.

Here's a picture of the lens (thats 3.3-12 on the lens marking, BTW) In looking closer at it, it does seem to only have the IR cut filter, and not DC iris control, only found one motor on the board, and couldn't hear anything move in changing lighting (other than the cut filter) BTW, the newest firmware offers some interesting new features (event triggering, FTP and HTTP upload paths, SMTP config, URL based notification/ video push, and more. Looks like the folks at Acti looked at Mobotix....

I hate to break it to ya... but I'm afraid there will never be an end to your delima. Once you get rid of your current theives, you will aquire new ones. In a world driven by money and greed there will always be thieves. Hence the professional CCTV industry... Do yourself a favor and invest in a good quality, permenant solution. Don't waste your time and money on cheap Ebay all in one kits. Your problem isn't a temporay one and it isn't going to go away with firing the people you catch today. It can only be limited and controlled with the proper equipment... What do you think? Well said. One of the things I encourage owners of new CCTV systems with an internet connection, is to set an alarm clock for some bizzare hour, and when the employees "know" that no one responsible will be there, and then make a phone call to someone there, commenting on something to do. Doesn't have to be negative, maybe "move that mop bucket in the hall", or something like that. Once you create the mindset that someone's watching, a lot of your problems will go away... And that's an argument for a obvious, overt CCTV system as well. It's often obvious to me when installing a system who needs to be watched, just by seeing the employee's actions.

Try refocusing at night, under IR. It looks like you have enough focus shift at night to make it fairly fuzzy, and with the iris fully open, it's more critical. The image during the day will have the iris closed down enough that (hopefully) it will not be a problem. Also, my images were with some frame integration... But not anywhere the slowest, motion blur doesn't seem to be a problem there. I'm not a big fan of slow shutter, but in a lot of instances, 1/15th (2 frames) or so isn't a big problem.

Here's the Panasonic link... http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-electronics/support/PetCams/model.BL-C111A I'm not even going to comment about the fact that they are in a section called "PetCams"

Actually, the 7411 does have a cutfilter... here are some day, dusk, night samples. I've been pretty happy with them, overall.

In good faith, I'm going to do something I probably will not do again, and post a link to some analog wireless stuff... Take a look at http://www.astrotelusa.com/product_info.php?products_id=248 . I have not used this particular product, but I've used other wireless stuff from them before, and other sites sell their stuff as well. Seems to be better stuff, out of a bad lot.... Good luck, may the force be strong with you, you've been warned...... We beg of you, repent soon...

For illuminators other than the Extreme, you'll probably want to use specs associated with performance at 850nm wavelength, not too many other illuminators are at the 730nm range, and cameras will typically be much more sensitive at 730nm.

If you have to do it this way, try to create some kind of "hood" that attaches between the camera and window to block out inside light from the area between the camera and lens... Black cloth, something like that. Also, if you can keep the lens slightly off-axis (not straight at the window), that will reduce internal reflections.

DSL is horrid down here, 128KB max upload speed, cable is the way to go. See, everywhere is different, what might work there might not work here, and vice versa. I would say if they are hell bent on wireless then stay clear of network wireless and go CCTV wireless, works well when using the right product and installed correctly. But mostly as they are not asking about an NVR system. CCTV wireless is real time video, I dont like either but Ive used CCTV wireless by VideoComm and it worked great. On the DSL stuff, I was referring to a point to point DSL link, using the customer's wire, not going through a service provider. If you look at the manufacturer I mentioned earlier, they can provide equipment that will create up to a 100Megabit, full duplex link, several thousand meters+. As far as the wireless equipment, I gotta disagree with you there, I have a lot of successful installations in place using IP wireless stuff, including ones that needed analog video passed through (used encoder/decoder pairs), and ones that needed a lot of cameras in the same area that would have caused a channel availability problem with analog wireless links. Also, wireless IP gives the customer options to add computers, viewing stations, etc. through the same link, kind of a value-added thing. The OP never mentioned what type of video he needed, so it's speculation at this point what may work best for him.