CollinR

Why do you want round the clock recording?

Point it at a moving fan and enjoy the show. It's a decent enough idea but everything we capture moves.

I guess I will expand a little bit, one foot candle (light of one candle from one foot away) is about 10.75 lux. So as you can see to have something like .3 lux rating you would need to be able to read a piece of paper 1 foot away from the camera and light source (which basically need to be in the same space) and the light source having approx 27/1000th of the light of a conventional candle. 27 thousanths of a single candle's light output, thats a very small amount of light. .3 is realistic I guess, 1 foot isn't that far away. .0000000000000000005 and stuff is totally BS, not possible. Boggle yourself with the .002 Sens-Up value.

Does it have an ethernet port? If so Linksys makes an adapter for hardwired game consoles that will convert to wifi. Rather neato device actually.

All those numbers are basically BS, I'm not going to do the math but you can't directly relate that lux number back to 1 candlepower of light like you should. I would assume .3 lux would be the maximum possible performance, so in your case AGC on. I'm pretty sure Sens-up is tied into the AGC as it too should use gain controls. Turning AGC off may well disable it too.

Oh I see sorry about that, I was on the same track mentioned before that you have an external disk. I now see you have troubles accessing the DVR via USB. I assume this comes down to how the disk is formatted on the DVR. So, maybe try this with an XP system and see what disk management says that is. Also might try reinitializing it in Vista and fomart as Fat32. I'm pretty sure Fat32 doesn't support the access control features of NTFS and so it might work. However the DVR may now say it needs to reformat the disk for it's use at next boot.

Yes you must initialize the disk before you can use it. Then you should format it to NTFS 64k cluster. Then Windows will play with it. This is in Administrative Tools > Computer Managment > Disk Managment. I think you already know that though.

Set it to: Feed = 640x480 Deinterlace Quality = 5 Codec = MPEG4 ASP Sub Pixel Precision = 1/4 Pixel Quantizer = 2 Inter-frame Threshold = 1 Max Keyframe Interval = 30 That last one doesn't really help picture quality but it will help in internet streaming.

Intel GMA x3000 has DVI and HDMI and dual head options. Google ADD-2 if you own one. Also you can get one with an ICH9R southbridge allowing very good RAID 10 (below OS, but uses CPU).

Talk to your dealer/installer. All Kodicom systems in the US are complete, if you bought a card the software is stolen. If that happened report the seller.

How much have you tweaked Geo's compression settings? Basically to go beyond that you'll be looking at custom software to work with normal TV tuners like for home theater PCs. The quality is there but the cost is very high and no interface software that I know of.

x2 Sony not so hot and a Sony imager alone does not equal a Sony camera's performance.

$150 DVRs usually have crap compression, so it's either fill the disk fast and have decent video quality (MJPEG) or save the disk and have crap video (MPEG-4 and CIF). You'll need to spend more $ if you want to actually capture something. At least $350-500 anyway. That'll probably get you a 4 port embedded that can do D1 and hopefully MPEG4.

Agreed, you should spend more time playing with them. You got that deal because they are BW and most uneducated consumers run from BW like the plauge. Get the manuals and mess with the settings on the cam. Sounds to me like you have manual iris and it's open too far.

You are way WAY overkill on the specifications. Intel motherboards are good, stick with that. Find one with ON BOARD video. Get an E6600 CPU, quad core isn't needed. 1 GB RAM is plenty. Go Windows XP Pro, Vista isn't ready yet. Although there are many similarities between a media center or media client PC or theater PC and a CCTV DVR the biggest difference is NO display adapters offer hardware support for the encrypted video decompression. So don't spend the money on a nice video card, it won't be doing much of anything. I have had much luck with the Intel GMA X3000 onboard graphics. Geovision vs. Avermedia is a toss up, really depends on your specific requirements as each does certain things better then the other.

Maybe hardware specifications aren't required in this as it appears the system overall works well? Generally speaking though, you will need to know the make/model of the motherboard of the server at a minimum. This is a sole issue with the IO and the remote client? If IO control occurs on a different port for the video feeds it may be a simple case of port forwarding. So the recording and live veiwing work as expected?

Relay from Darwal,

Rafel, darwal is tring to get his info to you but is getting stopped by the anti-spam measures. He'll get it to me and I'll relay until he has 10 posts or 10 days of activity. You are probably in the reverse boat. Oh well you newbs willl eventually get through. http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=66814#66814 The Alnet system I sold to UDMRanger here is at: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=7803 Thats all I know about them and now obviously they aren't here to look at.

Yeah you'll actually have to use an email sending service outside of the forum to get it to go through. Luckily you are only a few posts away from being respected by the system. Do realize all new members go through this, and it has slowed down the rush of crap that can overcome a forum. Before Larry started these measures it was much much worse.

Sure shoot it to me, Collin (a) Low Voltage Online (dot) com I think that message says 5 posts but in reality I think the rule is 10 posts or 10 days. Could be wrong though, those rules came after I had been here a while.

Yeah that does look really good!

Maybe you should keep some of this public, so: Others know that you know what you are talking about. Others know the issue is actively being resolved. In the future you won't have to fix this case by case, when they look for support. The customer is educated and net savy they will often come here before attempting support from the manufacturer. Normally I don't expect the manufacturer to provide end user support. So posting here may well be more benfit then actually tring to keep up case by case. With end users. When dealer/installer/integrator calls, thats totally different. I can call GE, Panasonic, Honeywell, Avermedia, Geovision on and on. Thats totally different. Unless you tighten up the qualifications on system builders you need to expect educated integrators to bypass them when they see the systems have been improperly designed and configured. It makes no sence to me to call someone I already know doesn't build DVRs properly to get help fix one. All that happens is the distributor gets free training from me, I don't like that and it takes too much time. Thats a very tough burden to bear, I have no idea how Geovision and Avermedia have kept their reputations. The flaws in deployment of the Alnet systems I serviced would have also rendered their products worthless over time (any DVR, the storage was botched). You have to have a good understanding of the hard and software before you can build really reliable DVRs. For all I know both of our problems were/are very easy fixes, if a common installation mistake is happening CCTVForum can be a key to getting to your goal. Functional systems with satisfied customers. It really makes no difference weather the solution comes from you, me, Darwal or reposted by someone else. Getting problems solved only benefits you/Alnet and Alnet customers. You can PM after 10 posts or 10 days, however there isn't any point in doing that. It makes you appear shady, basically what it comes down to. The only reason to keep it private is if you are unsure of the outcome, in which case it would probably get posted publically anyway so just starting in public. _____ Now Darwal the ball is in your court, rafel has been very attentive to this thread. You need to provide him with the info he requested, PM him the dongle# but post your system and network specifications here. This way in the event it's totally not related to Alnet possibly someone else here will chime in with a solution to that. You can't rightly expect rafel to troubleshoot every Windows/hardware/networking problems that can possibly exist on a DVR. Only issues related to his products.

So will Avermedia, but you have to buy hardware for that.

Due take it for what you paid for it. I can say without doubt, I personally was the third contract or brought in to get a convience store chain remote connect going. This was a request from my new good friend the CEO of the stores ISP service providing the connection between stores. I emailed support and recieved jack, however I cannot find the actual email. I know I have quoted it here before so their is a good chance I can pull up both sides of the story. Basically I got no satisfaction, nor solution. Basically it was contact the local distributor, the same guy whom assembled the machine. The next trip to a site 30 minutes later I had a Geovision system in and running, connected and redundent recording. All I did was install the drivers and swap the cards. Within 2 weeks I had converted the entire chain. Of course I have had to go back a couple few times to fix the way the rest of the DVR was configured, this won't help your situation at all. I don't know how the Alnet system is supposed to work you may have no control like Geovision. You need to come here, a bunch. Help everyone you can and spend special attention to Alnet customers whom need help. You could post the 866#, so the thread starter could call it. You need to focus on fixing the troubles this users have with your product, then the label will disappear. If you fix it once publically on this forum it's recorded forever and your future users can also use that. In the same way how could you possibly have a lack of support when you are here everyday? Did you guys get screwed by royally hacking off staff member here? Probably so, you do have the power to prove me wrong but posting stuff like Fix the guy's issue, thats one way to demonstrate you work for one of the best on the market. You saying you are as an employee doen't quite carry the same weight. So Darwal did you get a PM / Email from Alnet? I did notice as of currently the Alnet website has been remade, it DOES NOT have a help/support link. Oddly my browser locked up tring to access your "site map" so I quit looking. I did notice you have an 8**# however it doesn't say support next to it. You used to have forums, I know I requested access to post on them. They seem to be missing as well.

<<< Thinks ATI is the devil. It really doesn't matter too much, no video card supports hardware decoding of any of the codecs used in the CCTV world. Except the GV2004 and GV2008, in which case the old Nvidia 4400MX would. I just use plain old Intel on board graphics, never had a problem.