bigcatbobcat

I have a customer, well, a guy I sold something to that I won't sell to again, and he's upgrading his dvr from an 8Ch to a 16Ch. He won't pay for a new hard drive "Well, can't you take the one out of the 8 and put it in the 16?" Yeah, of course I can but the 16 is different from the 8 and all of your images will be lost when the 16 gets the hard drive out of the 8 it will re-format it. "Well, caynt (that's how he talks) caynt ewe just back it up fir me?" It would take hours to back up each hour block for each channel and I don't want to do that and he won't do it. Is there a way to back up the entire hard drive? There are tons of back-up options for PC's of course, but I haven't found a good way to do it with a DVR. As always, help is appreciated.

this guy is bad, but not that bad. I would save that last quote for the nice little Korean lady we put a system for in a wig shop who has called 3-4 times complaining "we aint got ah no picture" I finally went out there to see what was up and her husband says "well, I come in here this morning like usual and hit the button to turn it on and it don't show no pictures" I said "Which button? Not the power button on the DVR?" "Yep, right there, that button." Sure enough, it was the DVR power and they turned it off every night when the last person went home. The "no picture" issue was the monitor not coming back from sleep mode. I checked their recordings and they're closed on Sundays and sure enough nothing recorded ever on a sunday. I said to him "You realize, if you turn it off when you go home at 6 and someone breaks in at 8, or even 6:05 for that matter, you don't have any pictures right?" "Well, we got them IR cameras right?" WHAT?! We put a big sticker on their DVR that said "DO NOT TOUCH." I wouldn't have minded except after I explained to him not to touch it, he explained, or said he explained to his wife and everyone else not to touch it, 2 days later "We ain't got ah no picture-ah" and I drove the 160 mile round trip and they didn't want to pay me for a service call eventhough I told them that if there was nothing wrong with the unit or it wasn't a warranty issue or whatever they'd have to pay and they agreed before I left. So we ended that conversation with "You know my other store? You do that one too, ok?" I said "Umm, we'll see." Depends on how desperate I am for business when our next appointment at the new store is.

This is a good question, I think his pc? Could you ever take a DVR hdd and hook it up to your pc and just import the files? I know my laptop has some SATA connection on it. In the words of a little guy on an airplane one time "How dis woooooorrrk?"

Something I didn't think of in my original post, just thought of it when I was emptying my pockets, SCREWS! I use dry wall screws where ever I can, especially in ceiling tiles and of course, drywall but in other things like wood and stuff, they've got deep threads which I like. But you'll need an assortment, and lengths vary as well. I never ever use the anchors or screws that come with the cameras, just think the drywall screws usually work perfectly. Tapcons, dry wall screws, sheetmetal screws are the main ones.

Yeah Johnny, I was in the same boat as you about a year ago. I learn by doing. If you're good at troubleshooting, thinking things through rationally and whatnot, definitely just do your best and clean up along the way and keep track of "Oh man, won't do that again" or "Man, there must be a tool for this" or "That worked out well, I'll try that again." Tools, I've found, you just need a cordless drill, something to hold your spool of cable, fish sticks, electrical tape (I LOVE ELECTRICAL TAPE), the usual handy man type tools, hand tools and whatnot. When you think about it, the installs are easy, it's the building you're putting them in that are often the issue, so you need tools and stuff to deal with that. Our largest job that I took on by myself was a car dealership in a renovated old house that has some serious additions and the only thing I didn't have were assorted wood screws and whatnot. You know crimpers, strippers and all those specialty tools for this business, but like I said, making our stuff go in weird places is where you get creative. As for pay, you make whatever you think is fair and what will get your name out there but not so low that you can't turn a profit. In our case, we thought we'd sell these jobs and have installers come in. Pro guys who do banks and the CCTV is a side deal. Well, we got in a negotiation with a guy in a C-Store and figured we'd given away all our profit if we were going to pay an installer. So, we figured it out and did it ourselves. It wasn't pretty, an 8 camera system shouldnt take 2 guys 3 days to do but we did it, we got great pictures too (did i mention we used premade cable back then?). So we started to think of our time as free, and that's simply not the case. The Way I'd like to price out jobs, is a slight mark up on the equipment and then what we'd be charged by the contractors we used in the beginning, which was $75 a camera and $0.25/foot for cable. I don't know how they came up with those numbers and not hourly, but that's what they charge. We now bang out 8 camera systems in about 5-6 hours...thank goodness. I feel like I could go on and on about it, because it's so far outside of what I thought I'd be doing and I'm kind proud of myself for learning it.

I've got an installation, 16 cameras, 2 out in a detached garage. It's 160 feet away from the DVR. We noticed there are waves or just a general distortion and thought it was the 277v conduit in the garage that was in the same area (sometimes touching) our cable. Then the owner said "No I think it's your power supply" It wasn't. So we figured it out. I was messing with it and talking to my partner on the phone, as I separated the cable from the conduit, he noticed every time he heard a noise the picture began to distort. It turns out it was the air compressor they used to fill tires or whatever. I switched the outlet that was plugged into, same issue. I talked to our most experienced installer and he said, "Yep, harmonic distortion." He knew what it was but didn't have much of an answer for how to fix it. What do you guys think? I could have sworn I saw there was something you could do to even out the picture, some sort of accessory or something? Any help is appreciated.

Took the camera off the wall, it instantly stopped. We put them on PVC outdoor J-Boxes, so they have the gasket between the camera and the box, they're indoors so not too worried about water getting on the connections any so we didn't completely seal the boxes, like leaving a gap and the pictures are perfect. Must be some grounding issue or something in the steel walls of the building.

Yeah, thanks soundy. I'm just going to have to go out there and try things. The only issue is the owner follows me around whenever I'm doing anything like a lost puppy asking questions and thinking of places I can move the cameras he has to and adjusting the ones we've adjusted 20-30 times. Anyway, I'll test it and reply here once we find a solution.

The DVR will only record 704x576 (TV PAL) 704x480 (TV NTSC) or around what? 520 TVL. I am still unclear if the live view on the DVR will be at whatever TVL the camera is capable of. If you're live viewing, monitoring constantly these cameras, the higher TVL would be advantageous but only if you're connected to a high resolution monitor directly. I always think of it like a bottle neck or a choke, or like in nascar a restrictor plate. Whatever the lowest resolution on a system is would generally be as high as you should go with all parts of the system. Why push 700 TVL if your DVR will only record 520 lines of it?

I meant to update, it does it all the time now. I don't know if they've added any more appliances out there that pull significant power. The issue I'm having is that I've sort of resigned myself to saying "Ok we have to put it in conduit." and I don't want to bear that cost and I'm sure the customer won't either, I had a hard enough time getting him to pay for the system.

Yeah, it helped a little but didn't clear it up. I'm not sure what else to do here. It is a metal building, metal housings, metal screws of course, might put them on a plastic box? I have no idea...

What about supplying the power locally. Currently have the usual siamese cable coming from the main building, approx 175 feet away. If we use a power supply out in the garage would that eliminate the issues?

If it works localy, but not remotely, it is usually a port forwarding issue on the router. If it works for a while remotely but stops working remotely AND still works locally, then the router probably lost its configuration OR the IP address of the DVR moved, so the router can't forward to it anymore OR the router has a more complex configuration on port forwarding - like time of day or total bandwith allowed or some such thing. Does the router limit the bandwidth allowed? Say we take the dvrs and put it on a separate router and then all the computers on another one? Or is the cable modem/TWC (the isp) the bandwidth limiting agent, for lack of a better term?

Had the same issue, when you say it's a router problem, whats the fix?

I'm back on this job. Customer was OK with temporary interference and actually started using a different compressor but the cameras have gone out. We replaced the cameras and the issue immediately came back. Is placing the cable in metal conduit my only option?

http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html I don't understand quite what this means or if it's important to the surveillance community as a whole. Hoping some of you can translate/explain if it's a concern. I use Chrome, I like it a lot actually....not sure if it makes a blip in the big picture but wanted to make sure.

I know it's bad form in a forum to skip to the end, however...for your pole, I'd use composite. Much lighter, same strength easier to deal with. I worked in the lighting field for years before jumping to CCTV and we reped a great line out of Virginia...good folks, alliancecomposites.com. Shoot me a pm and I'll see if we can pull a contact and get one direct (usually they like to go through distributors, reps, etc). Also, I'm up in Youngsville, I see you're in Chapel Hill, we rebrand cameras and DVRs and might have something that could help you keep the costs down, if not in stock we can get it in a like a week. Shoot me a note! Now I must go back and read the 7 pages I skipped....

We've paid installers and we've done the installing. At this infancy stage of our little business, we take what we can get, we're happy to get one under our belt as another referral. That said, I don't think you price things by the hour, like at all ever, unless the guy demands it like in the initial post. We had a guy "pay me $25 an hour to pull cable" well, a 3500' cable pull over 20 cameras ended up being 3 days...just didnt work out and I was freaking out every time the guy got off the lift, had a smoke, called his wife and probably his gf too and you could tell he was dragging his feet. That coupled with the fact he did horrible work, we had to replace almost all of his ends, he'll never be used again, which sucks because he was a friend. There's a careful ballance that every business person plays between max profit and losing the business based on price. Bottom line is everything is only worth what someone would pay. $75/camera and $.25 per foot of cable is what we factor into jobs.

I've got sort of a generic, seemingly simple question: How do I pick a hard drive for a DVR? I saw in some literature that a particular company was using "video specific" or something along those lines. Does the cache matter? I know about size and RPM, of course you'd want higher numbers there but are there any other considerations I need to take into account?

The comment to work as an apprentice isn't far off, I am learning quickly how little I know, moreover, how much there is involved (see thread about 2 DVRs in one monitor). For a one off system, my best suggestion is to keep it simple. I'd use standard cameras that don't take much adjustment, you can drive yourself crazy up on a ladder. Take the time to think it out completely before you even start. Also, go ahead and get the biggest hard drive your dvr will take, set everything at the highest resolution etc, 5 frames per second and walk away. Simple, simple, simple. This is the one thing that is good about a kit, but pick one of those that will have the best tech support, which I don't know but hopefully the other guys might.

I've got a minor problem....I think I can fix it but I need a little "thinking it out" help. I've got 2 GE Symsafe Pro 16 +2 Hybrid DVRs, customer wants one monitor. We bought a "Trulink 2-Port UXGA Monitor Switcher/Extender" but I have plugged two computers into it all using these beefy VGA cables and it appears that the computers and the monitor "see" each other, same on the DVRs at the jobsite but no pictures appear on the monitor. It even switches the resolution on my computer to match the monitor...that whole thing. Experienced installer that I chat with says "yep them thangs aint never work." So, my question: What is the best way to do this? I read in the owners manual for the DVRs that you can add another symsafe as one of the IP ports, but that's IT stuff and I am more iffy on that than I am on the camera side of things. Also, the customer want to sequence the dvr and I think you'd have to manually switch between analog and ip on the front of the DVR. Thanks for your help!

One problem, I guess this is the subtleties of monitors, Using a NEC EA190M, which has DVI-D and VGA input. DVR of course has only VGA out plus the BNC outs. Can't go from VGA to DVI-D according to note when I did a google shopping search: This device will convert a DVI-A connection to a VGA monitor cable connection for monitors and computers that require it. DVI-D can not convert to VGA. Only DVI-A can be converted into VGA. We stuck a second monitor in there...they're happy, I guess... They think they got one over on us since we put the monitor in place of the switch, little do they know, monitor was free to us, we're returning the swtich. Sooooo many things to consider when putting a system together!

I get the CIF, 2CIF, D1 and Frame Rate but then there is a setting on some DVR's for "quality"? I did a quick hard drive calc and changed the setting from 6 to 3 on "quality" and it cut the neccessary space in half while the fps and resolution stayed the same? what the what? I guess I'll have to play with it to see but what does it actually relate to? Resolution is pixels and frame rate is number of "pictures" but quality?

I'm doing my first big install and I'm racking my brain trying to think what I need to ask the end-user about his needs and expectations so I won't be coming back every couple weeks. Not that I don't want to, I just want to be thorough up front and have my i's crossed and my t's dotted if you get my drift. Here's what I've come up with so far: 1) Schedule - First Employee arrives to final one locking the door and any over-night clean-up? 2) Users - My DVR has 3 levels, who and what do you want to have what access to, what are their names and I guess I'll set them up with generic passwords 3) Sort of a sub-question of Users, what if any areas do you want to be covert, not generally accessed by "operator" would be reserved for "administrator" or "manager" 4) Who is your IT guy and when can we get him here to do his side of things (IP assignments and port forwarding, NTP server, etc) I feel like there is more but I just can't think of it... Looking forward to hearing from you wiley veterans and experienced installers....thanks in advance!

I got a little disk in with my DVR, stuff I'm trying out, the user manual is less than fully understandable, but I ended up sticking it in the computer and lo and behold there is stuff that seems helpful on there! This is import stuff. Anyway, figured out what maybe half of it is, what it's supposed to do etc. One I don't quite understand is DVR Centaurus. Have any of you run into it? Looks like, from a brief google that most of the usual import brands you hear about include it or provide access to it. To me, at a glance it looks like a way to turn your computer into the NVR for a DVR or multiple DVRs. What would it be used for otherwise and how is it any advantage? (I'm gonna have to put something in the Intros page so everyone doesn't think I'm a complete bonehead! Between this and my Hard Drive question....yikes)