hardwired

You noted that you are using two NVR's connecting to the same cameras, is that correct? If so, Arecont cameras do not like feeding more than one stream at a time. You may need to make some changes, if this is the case.

..Second that. We had one of the 484's installed on a ceiling that had a leak, water ran out through those slots, not a drop of water in the cam itself. The cam comes with self-vulcanizing tape to seal the BNC/ power pigtail. If you've ever seen a Pelco, etc. dome doing double duty as a fishbowl, you will appreciate the difference in design.

The injector we got at Arecont training was this.. http://nitek.net/products/IPT148.htm I've been using this for a while now: http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=features&pathtype=purchase&sku=WEBBNCNJ220SYS ,it is a 4 port managed switch with PoE power and passthrough on one port. Sourcing PoE out of a laptop would be difficult, you would need to add a DC to DC inverter to boost to the 48 volts necessary, and if you had a class 0 or 3 load (up to 15.4 Watts), at the laptop battery voltage(12VDC or so) that is at least 1.3 amps additional draw, not counting inverter inefficiency. I am looking at building a small Lithium-Ion battery pack to do something similar, though.

I have a cattle prod that does wonders for fixing intermittent problems for warranty items..... As far as your unit, you are going to have to give us something more to go on, model number sticker info, something, before we can help you... And my mind really wanders wondering what you have to delete!

My (fairly well connected) rep recently told me mid-August..... We'll see... It looked really good at ISC, and the 484 style housing is a treat to use compared to many others. I'm hoping to get one soon! As far as pricing, our rep said "about $100 too much" ...Ugh.

Exacq has a desktop hybrid server that will give you 4 analog channels, plus 8 IP channels, and they have a plugin-free web interface. I've used it with IE, mobile IE, Firefox, Opera, mobile Opera, and others. They also have an OSX full featured client. You can order the system with either XP or Linux as the OS, too.

You should be able to do well better than that if you shop around. We sell it for quite a bit less than that, but we're not really set up to retail it. Any takers on the forum here want to step in and offer something up for him?

I'd second the motion for Acti camera's, they are hard to beat in terms of cost versus performance. Their NVR software is pretty funky, though. you might look at Exacq software, the price isn't bad, and they do have motion recording, and a plugin-free browser access that works great with Firefox and a Windows mobile phone with Opera I tried, along with a client software for Windoze or Linux....

..Stay tuned.... I am finishing a covert system we build right now, and it will have one Arecont AV5100DN, and one VCC-HD4000 in it for a back-to-back comparison. At first glance, the Sanyo seems really nice, and I like the auto iris especially. It seems that too many megapixel manufacturers say manual iris is fine, and ignore the fact that when you have the lens set for a good day image (F 4.0 or so) that the night image is going to suffer, and would on a CCD imager, let alone a CMOS. The price is pretty comparable, when you factor in the cost of a really good Fujinon lens on the Arecont.

Not sure, where I have the 3511's is pretty well lit 24/7. Would think it would be comparable to the 7411 (IE in B/W all the time, but a pretty good B/W picture), if that works for you. Bars are tough for CCD, let alone CMOS.

Thinking back, I think it was just a Color only/ B/W only/ auto switch. I don't have one handy right now to check, but I've got one coming in soon, & check it.... BTW, the threshold was 7 lux, not the 4 lux I said before...Another hiccup with the 3511 was that the rubber isolator between the lens and IR LED's turns the camera when you put the dome on. You have to start with the camera pre-turned a little to compensate.

You are going to have to be much more specific about the country (frequency allocations), quantity of sites, spacing, line of sight capability, and bandwidth requirements necessary before anyone will be able to give you really useful information on the subject. You are going to need all of that information in any case, whether trying it yourself or asking for quotes from a 3rd party vendor. You may want to consider recruiting the services of a wireless internet provider in your area, they often know better than anyone what will work for you in your area, because they have to to make their systems work. You may want to coordinate with them in any case to avoid interference if you are going to use an unlicensed frequency.

I do like the 3511's, I did find a couple of issues, though. They are not a 3 axis gimbal, and the day/ night threshold is a little high (4 Lux), and not adjustable in S/W like the 7411's. In the application I installed, we had to fabricate wall mounts, and the cameras oscillate between B/W and color even in pretty good lighting. They do deliver a pretty good picture, though, and the price point is good.

Good lord, I can smell the smoke from here.... Is anybody besides me concerned about the fact that after you factor in losses from cabling, connectors, interference, and compression artifacts, you are lucky to get a (perceived) 250 TVL at your monitor? I agree that starting with a good, high resolution camera is important, but that picture quality can have more to do with S/N ratio, WDR, lens selection, camera placement, and low light capability more than raw TVL capability. Somewhere along the line, we have to remember that our customers are looking at a picture on a screen. If that picture gives them useful information to work with, then we've done our job. If it does not, we haven't. Let's focus on factors associated with that, and maybe this will be a little nicer place.

I don't think you will have any problems with that setup. You may want to create separate partitions for the SQL database for the System Galaxy and the video storage for safety's sake when they fill up. Unless you are running those 3511's at full frame rate and resolution, you'll have a pretty lightly loaded system. Make sure you do at least occasional backups of the Galaxy database, rebuilding all that data is a ugly job. Trust me on that one (1300 users and 14 door configurations redone at a customer site, arrrgh!) Galaxy's tech support is pretty good, though. Looking at your setup, you may want to spend the money on a separate RAID controller card, rather than the "fake" motherboard raid. Performance and recovery capabilities are usually much better that way.

Take a look at Exacq software for the recording. You can do a version of the time lapse/ speedup with it, and they have a Linux version, as well. It's quite a bit less than Milestone, and has a lot of the same functionality. ZM is a nice product, but Exacq is a commercial product, with people that will pick up the phone if you need them. I've only done a few installs with it so far, compared to lots with Milestone, but it is shaping up pretty well. The remote access is a little slower in that it has to download/ buffer a chunk of video before playing.

Let me say this.... My office is less than five miles from Pelco. I use the Panasonic whenever possible. Along with the other things people have already mentioned about the Panasonic, it has another nice feature, it is much more tolerant of installation problems. The connectors are sealed from the camera body, so if there is water intrusion, it only gets to the connector, not into the camera body, where the Pelco can be a fishbowl if installed wrong. .....And also, it simply has a better picture, hands down.

If you have a controller that's outputting Coaxitron (up-the-coax) control signal, and you are not using that, try turning it off in the matrix/ controller, I've seen interference from that a few times.

The Speco dome you're talking about is the HT7426IHR , it has a separate back box available for that type of mounting. It will look down a wall, but the dome cover is a REALLY tight fit, you have to fiddle with the mount a long time to get it right, and you will probably scratch the inside of the dome. We have used a lot of the Pelco's too.... I'm still just kind of lukewarm about those, even though I'm in Pelco's backyard. Jury here's still out on whether the French will kill or cure them. The Speco bullet/ dome hybrid, HTINTD8 , is really nice, good picture, and the back is sealed, so all you have to weatherproof is the pigtail connectors, and the dome body would not have to seal perfectly to the wall. They look good in a commercial setting, too. I've gone out too many times to look at a failed Pelco, etc. dome and found it looking like a fishbowl half full of water. Conduit makes a great water pipe into the dome, if your installer is not careful.

As far as the matrix, you can manage them and save setting profiles through the RS-232 port on the back, the S/W is here ftp://www.pelco.com/SupportSoftware/CM6800/CM6800%201.03MGR/ , their site has the manuals as well. What is the other Pelco part you are talking about?

Thx a lot for samples What software do u use ? Mostly Milestone, but trying a few installs with Exacq, mostly because Milestone has gone a little insane with their pricing recently. On the analog / hybrid side, we have been using digi-it cards/ SW for quite a few years now, works really well.

I put a few here http://www.flickr.com/photos/9313929@N02/ but it downsamples significantly. Anyone know where I can put them at full resolution?

I have sample images from 5105, 5100dn's and 3105dn, 5155dn, etc... what is a good way to post them at full resolution?

The initial AV5155 shipped with a really bad varifocal lens, and no 3-axis gimbal ability. The replacement lens was much better, but still no match for a fixed focus lens. The dome cover is pretty distorted, too. For low light, though, it's hard to beat the 3130, but there's no H.264 version. Plan your storage/ network speed accordingly. You can get 15 FPS at full resolution from the 3130, but I doubt you will really need even that much (we use 5 FPS for prison hospital isolation rooms, and it's fine). Higher megapixel rated cameras will always have lower light sensitivity, you are putting the same amount of light onto smaller pixels. Milestone will allow different frame rates / resolutions on recording than viewing, you could view the 5105 at 30 FPS, 1280 x 1024 and record at full 5MP, 9 FPS, but it does use ActiveX plugins. Exacq will not do that, but does have straight browser viewing, and a full Mac client S/W as well.

At a hospital we did, there was an extra twisted pair available in the traveler cable already, just added a set of Nitek amplified baluns. You may want to check with the elevator people there to see if that is the case, or if adding a replacement traveler with the extra pairs is an option. It is a little electrically noisy, a really good set of baluns helps. Good luck, BTW, the elevator people here are the unfriendliest people making $275/ hour I've ever met, will not let you touch a thing in the elevator cab directly, we have to point them through the install. Using WDR cams, helps, too, there is a big contrast when the doors open and close.