joecctv

Hi All, I am trying to get some VCL orbiter PTZ domes I recently aquired working with my PC. I am using a serial RS232 to RS422 converter and have T+ and T- on the RS422 converter connected to Data + and Data- on the dome. I have set all 8 dip switches on DILSW1 to on which should set the address to 1 and I have tried setting the dip switches on DILSW2 to both pelco D and pelco P protocols. I have tried using both the PTZ control in Geovision and a third party control software called PTZ Controller. I can see the sys.ok LED flashing when I try and control the camera from either program but the camera doesn't respond. If I set the protocol on the camera to pelco P and the baud rate to 4800 in either software I get the RS422 DATA LED come on and the sys.ok flashes when trying to control but still no movement! Interestingly the RS422 DATA LED only stays on when address 2,3 or 4 is set on either software. I have tried two different cameras with the same setting but still I cannot get the camera to do anything. All 3 cameras were pulled from a working system about 3 months ago so I know the cameras work. I'm pretty sure I am almost there now but I have some sort of addressing problem. I have also set the jumper on LK1 (RS422 Termination) to off which is the only way the DATA LED stays on. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks

Will be great if you get yours running, orbiters are quality domes. How are you planning on connecting your dome to your pc?

Never got this working, ended up buying an old Tecton controller that has the VCL protocol from fleabay. Have since bought a stand alone DVR with a PTZ output, have tried various settings for pelco d/p with my orbiters and had no success at all. So far have only had success using my cameras with controllers that support the VCL protocol.

For anyone that may be interested I fixed this by setting the card to 640x480SW in video source and it is perfect. Also the fault was what I believe the pro's would refer to as motion blur. Anyways all fixed

Hi All, I have been playing around with an old GV750 6port card that I bought last year off of ebay, got everything installed and running fine with the two cheapo B&Q (soon to be upgraded) "test" cameras I had already up at the front of my property but I am having an issue with moving objects. Anyone or anything that moves sort of stripes across the display and is very unclear. I remember this fault from a few years back when I did a GV install with a friend and I'm sure that in the end I googled it and found I had to change something in the registry but cannot for the life of me remember what it was. Any ideas? I also have 2 x VCL orbiters not yet installed but when I test with them I get the same fault so have ruled out the test cameras. I think I am running V6.0 software, I'm not sure what firmware is on the card? Where does GV tell me the exact version? Also what is the latest version that will run with my card? I remember back when I installed a couple of these cards a few years back that I had to take them to the local CCTV supplier to get the firmware changed so they could run the latest version software. Sorry for a whole heap of questions, just seems GV has moved on a lot since I last played with it, and the old memory isn't quite what it...........used to be. Thanks Joe

Hi all, About 5 weeks ago I parked my car in the communal carpark at the back of my house, I didn't use the car for two days because we did a couple of day trips out on the train with the kids. Went to use my car on the Monday only to find the front of my car caved in. No CCTV cameras in the carpark and no note left or witnesses so unfortunately I had to ring my insurance and get them to sort it. Luckily I had a protected no claims so apart from the £100 excess things wern't too bad although I was still pretty pee'd off to say the least. Anyway, Thursday (this week) on my way to work I take my normal route pull up at the roundabout in the left hand lane ready to go straight across, just as I pull out some ****er in a white van decides to shoot past from behind me in the right hand lane at 50MPH+ onto the roundabout I have just joined then tries to turn left in front of me and smashes straight into the front wing. The insurance company are now saying it is difficult to prove liability on roundabouts??? If I had a front facing camera there would be no dispute, this guy was driving like a complete moron and not following the highway code. Basically I am now looking to fit both of our cars with CCTV systems with front and rear cameras that will record over night in the carpark and obviously will record whilst driving. I've seen some very basic all in one units but I am looking for something slightly more covert that uses fitted cameras that will record front and back to a memory card based DVR. I've seen some single camera wired systems that only record a max of 4hrs but obviously I want 24hrs+. Also want something that won't cause me to need the RAC out each morning to jump start the car because the battery is flat. Anyone know of a good system or where I can get components to build something myself? Any help would be much appreciated. Joe

Thanks scruit, this has given me a few ideas i can incorporate into my battery backup system. Picked up one of those md80 cameras in the week from ebay for £13, it arrived yesterday and i must say i am surprised at the quality of this thing! I tested it just clipped to the passenger sun visor in normal daylight and the recording was amazingly clear. Will try and upload a sample vid later today... Will probably take apart today as well lol

Guys, thanks for the replies, tweak'e, the watchman setup looks good however it doesn't seem to be available anywhere in the UK, although I think using various triggers to record could be the way forward. scruit, I have seen a number or hand held units similar to the MD80 here in the UK for around £30 ($60), usually advertised as handheld camcorders, coincidently I have been toying with the idea of dismantling one and seeing if I can fit it into my rear view mirror. I've seen a unit over here called the falcon which is basically one of these units specifically packaged to be used as a car CCTV unit, it fixes to the windscreen using at suction cup and retails for around £199 ($400). I thought it was a rip off as it only supports upto 2GB SD which means max of 4hrs recording. There is also a version that uses a seperate camera but I think its sells for £400-500!! Not that price is the issue when you consider the increase in insurance if I lose my NCB but I'm not in the habit of paying through the nose for something I could build myself much cheaper! For watching my car over night it's a bit of a shame, on the house I have a geovision GV650 running with a VCL orbiter watching over the back garden and a couple of nice little nightvision cams at the front. The shame is that the carpark starts around 200yards to the right of my back yard so the ptz camera is in totally the wrong place to cover the carpark, I have two spare orbiters in my garage but if I was to mount one of them high on my house to cover the carpark it will be looking directly into the back yards of around 10 houses adjacent to the carpark and would cause privacy issues. The only option would be to get permission from a neighbour further down to mount a small external dome on their back wall, not sure if I would need to get permission to run the cable along the other neigbours walls? I was thinking of building some sort of battery backup unit that charges off of the ignition switched 12v so as not to flatten the car battery, really I need to work out power consumption of one of these MD80 units and work out how much current a fast charge of an appropriate size battery would take. Although I didn't use the car for 48hrs when the damage happened I rarely leave the car for more than 14hrs so this would be the range i would need. I was actually working on a dual battery altenator charge switching unit for a friend with a rather large in car entertainment package a few years back and when we did some testing it was surprising for how little time a car battery is actually charged when it is only used for starting the engine. We found on my friends car that it was only being charged for around 5-10mins, although the battery was only around a month old and the alternator the same. Definately will look at using different triggers to start/stop the recording, I used to work as an in house prototype engineer for a manufacturing company so I am no stranger to etching boards and building circuits so wouldnt mind having a look at your schematic for your power circuit. Thanks Joe

Hi, I am currently running a geovision system at home on a 6ch GV750 card and have recently aquired some second hand outdoor ptz domes. I have searched all over the net and cannot find any way of identifying them. The reason I need to identify the cameras is that I am looking to hook these up to my geovision system and don't know what protocol etc to use. I presume that these will work using a RS485 connection and all I would need to buy is a GVNET card? Also the units look to be mains powered? Any help would be much appriciated..

hi survtech thanks for explaining that, it all makes sense now but are you saying that you think RS232 would work over a short distance? For example if i connected Tx on RS232 to Data + on the camera and Gnd on RS232 to Data - on camera because they share a common ground?

Hi Soundy, I got a bit bored last night so decided to have a play around using the 232 port after reading your post. Firstly I wired the Data+ and Data- to RxD and TxD on the 232 port, I then set the camera address to 01 using the DIP switches then set the protocol to Pelco P. Next I fired up Geovision and went to Sytem configuration and the PTZ setup section, I set the protocol to Pelco -P then set the baud rate 9600, com port 1 and PT Speed to 1. I tried several different settings, protocols and addresses all to no avail. Any ideas? Also I don't understand why all the 422 pinouts I find online show a Rx+ Rx- and Tx+ Tx- yet the camera only has connections DATA+ and DATA- used with a GND and SYNC left unterminated? What should I be wiring to what? It would be good to get these working as I've seen on a couple of other forums people asking whether Orbiter domes are supported.

Hi Tom, Thanks if you could send the manual it would be a great help. I see that these cameras support both rs422 and coaxial control, are there any simple third party controllers available that will work? I'm only looking to use two of these cameras and dont really want to go down the route of a massive control board and matrix. I was thinking of buying a USB to RS422 interface, configuring it as a com port in windows and seeing if I can use the pelco protocol in geovision to control the camera because apparently I can set the dip switches on the dome pcb to pelco D and P protocols. Do you think I'm wasting my time? As you have probably guessed I'm looking for a cheap way to control these cameras and could live without the ability to remote control them through geovision.

Yes pcbs have serial no's but I have googled them and none marry up to cctv equipment. However one of the camera's had what I thought was VPL very faintly left on an external sticker so I think you have hit the nail on the head, must have been VCL. I have had a look around and it seems honeywell/vcl use their own protocol that doesn't seem to be supported by geovision? Do you think I am right about the protocol and should I see if I can salvage the controller aswell? Many Thanks