GT500Shlby

Will the software work on Windows Server 2008R2 & 2012? What about 64bit? Will a 75GB OS VHD and a 3TB NTFS iSCSI volume with 8GB of ram and 2 virtual processors work? I have direct video card pass-through with Xen to get acces to a video processor. A number of my XenServers have ATI FirePro's on them for the floating-point processing. Otherwise, the the standard Xen video driver is used. How much per exterior camera? Dome or bullet? Vandal and weather resistence? How much per interor camera? Dome with Vandal resistence? Audio? How much per seat for the software? Can I get 6, 3 int & 3 ext by June 1st?

We are located in North East Philadelphia. As for the $50,000 thats my top drop-dead amount. The less I spend the better. To start I would want to buy 5 or 6 to test with and then go as high as 20 for now. The more money I save, the bigger christmas bonus my employees get. The building won't be ready until February, but I would need all 20 cameras by November for the contractor. I would like to get a few cameras and the server software by June to test with. To help with load, I may run multiple VM's of the server software. A supported linux VM costs me $900 each so that is to be taken into account in the price. I'm assuming it's a couple-hundred for a software license. For 800x600 the iSCSI pipes could handle a max of 8 per VM without causing issues or lag. Unless I could run some sort of "motion sensing" to set off recording with a 30 second buffer on either end. I'm thinking 12 exterior cameras and 8 interior cameras. I'm just using them in key areas, I don't use them to spy on my employees.

I've seen OEM Micro Solutions used for Law Enforcement. As for price, it's not going to break the bank as most Police Departments have been on tight budgets.

My company is moving from a rented office space to our own purchased building and I need a camera system for it. I need: - PoE that will work with standards-based enterprise grade PoE switches. I have 24 port HP ProCurve PoE Gigabit Layer 2 switches that can support up to 365 Watts of PoE power 1910-24G-PoE JE007A. - Software based, so I don't need dedicated DVRs. The company is entirely virtual with Citrix XenServer 6.0/6.1 and I would like to keep it that way. I have horsepower, even though I have 50 employees, I only use enterprise grade. HP Proliant servers with dual 12/16 core processors and 96-128GB of ram with storage on a a high-speed SAN. I have only 15k SAS drives and I can spare 50TB for camera storage. I would prefer linux based or Windows Server 2012 Core (no GUI) servers. I am a SuSe Enterprise Linux partner - but I have used Red Hat Enterprise Linux before and if needed will be willing to spring for RHEL. - Outdoor, vandal resistant, day/night (with IR) cameras. Nothing special. I'm not recording HD movies here. Just enough to be useful in court. 15 frames per second is enough. I just need enough detail to get suspect identification that can hold up in court from between 15'-30' from the camera. Cheaper would be nice, as I can afford to put more cameras. I do not need PTZ. I can't use outdoor flood lights because Township guidlines forbid excessive bright lights after 9:00pm. Any extra lighting will need to be IR. - Indoor, vandal resistant, with audio and low-light. I do not need IR here, as I have "green" security lighting inside. It's cheaper to keep lights on, and in PA I'm required to have emergency lighting anyway. Also PoE. I'm not recording HD here either. Plain, good-enough for court cameras. Cheaper the better, because the more I can deploy. The servers and install are being handled. The building is currently under construction and the contractor is running the Ethernet cable. Software and setup I can handle as I have internal IT. I have a hard budget of $50,000. I can not exeed this. Just for cameras, software & extra lighting. Axis is extremely overpriced. I would like to spend under $300 a camera. I have 15,000 sq ft of interal space and 20,000 sq ft of external. I don't need iPhone apps or any of those bells and whistles. The data records, gets kept for 30 days and deleted. Unless there is an incident, then I pull the data and give it to Police. At most, a simple web-based viewer is needed. Security - I don't need it to be fort-knox. My infrastructure is secured enough.

Yeah, this guy doesn't have the $ for that expensive of a system. I talked to a manager at Q-See and they have a new series which is Mac compatible and they are going to have a firmware update with 16:9 resolution support soon.

I'm doing a favor for a friend who has a landscaping yard and currently has a simple 4 camera NetProMax system, but wants to add 2 more cameras. I've done some surveillance work before, but he doesn't have my usual budget. I know Axis, Bosch Divar and Everfocus. Looking online for more reasonably priced solutions, it seems that CCTV DVR's are a dime a dozen and they are all the same probably built by the same Taiwanese company. I checked out a Q-See solution but some of the specs and everything just didn't sit well with me. As well as the others I have worked with have some quirks I would like to avoid. #1. - It needs mac compatible remote configuration and viewing. I am primarily mac-based at home. I have a few windows computers, but I don't like to use Windows and I most certainly do not want to use Internet Explorer. I prefer Mac and Firefox 4. #2. - I would like a system that can work with widescreen monitors. You buy a monitor today and its 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio. 4:3 is dead. #3. - I need a system with a less cumbersome backup and archival solution than Everfocus. The USB port on their ECOR264X16 dvr only supports a maximum of 8GB. To backup or archive from the web utility is well, hit or miss. #4. - Low power, or as low as feasibly possible. He only has a 100amp circuit and has been having power issues. Which leads me to my next issue. Do they make Power Supply panels with PFC and the like or do I need to use a battery backup? Using a UPS would cause more of a power drain that I would like to avoid. He currently has 4 regular power supplies plugged into a overloaded power-strip. So he needs an 8camera power distribution panel. Any ideas? Thanks, GT

I got an email back from Axis, the cheapest camera they have is $179.00 and it's not day/night - but the minimum software license for 4 cameras is $649.00

Hahaha yeah, but you aren't allowed to bring those back to the US. And for good reason, they carry some wicked diseases and parasites that could wipe out half the birds on the East Coast. I actually keep a 1989 43' Post Sportfish in the Abacos, Bahamas a couple months out of the year at the Boat Harbour marina. It's a hopping place when all the fishing boats are in, but it dies very quickly when they leave. But, it beats being in Philadelphia, PA in the middle of December to the end of March. That and my boat is registered in the Marshall Islands, so I can only keep it docked in the US like 9 or 10 months out of the year.

A Major Mitchell ****atoo and a Goffin ****atoo, both female. The Goffin is 18 months old. the Major Mitchell is about 4 months old. When the Major Mitchell's is weened I will be putting both in the cage separated by Plexiglas. In the Goffin's old cage, I'm putting a lesser sulfur crested or citron, but the Micthell needs to get weened first before I get another bird.

There is getting what you paid for and over-paying for overkill. Take for example home theater: I have a 92" 1080p TV that can do 24fps 3:3 and 7.1 TrueHD audio, all the components hidden in a closet with a concealed IR extender and universal remote that supports macros and actions. Including Blu-Ray & an HD DVR - all the fixings. Now you can spend hundreds of thousands on McIntosh, Bang & Olufsen, Paradigm, BG, etc... Why? The kings of all HDTV's were the Pioneer Elite PDP-150FD & PDP-151FD and ranged in price from $3,400 to $7,500. Guess what? Not even made anymore and there really hasn't been anything to come along to beat it. Maybe that 65" RPTV from Mitsubishi, but that isn't practical. Most TV manufacturers just add useless crap like 3D to their TV's (which isn't really adding anything, because I can do 3D on my projector and its 3 years old) to cover up their incompetence. Here is the thing, in your eyes - you are saying I should spend $6,000.00 on that TV setup (If that TV setup were the cameras). I spent $3,000. Smart shopping. Is a Denon 4308 garbage? NO. It's MADE by the same company as McIntosh. There are simple guidelines to getting great results. #1: Never buy anything Sony. #2 Never buy anything from Best Buy. #3: Never by anything that you don't need. What I am getting at is, at the end of the day I'm looking at a freaking bird not protecting the crown jewels. I need to monitor their sleep habits and while away make sure they are not escaping. Spending $2,000 on cameras isn't going to make them live longer or not get in trouble, nor will spending $500 on cameras. 640x480 resolution @ 30 fps is more than enough resolution. Heck I can take 4 $17 Logitech webcams and hook it to an atom PC and see everything I need. I would however like something less MacGyvered. Are you telling me that there are no reliable and good quality cameras that just do the basics and aren't woefully overpriced? I find that very hard to believe. I was born at night, but not last night.

I didn't buy those cameras yet. I need something cheap that has a night mode. I can't spend more than $500.00 on this.

Nice camera, but way too expensive. I'm looking at: This camera(geeks.com) and This video server(geeks.com). With 4 cameras and the server it comes in at less than half that that one axis camera costs. Yeah, Axis is the best, but too darn expensive.

Well, number one reason to have it in the cage is to see both sides. The cage goes up against a wall, and it has to because it provides a feeling of security to the birds. If the bird is facing the wall, I won't be able to see the front of the bird. Number two would be that I have two birds. I don't need to see every single solitary inch of the cage, but have enough views to get a majority view. Three, would be clarity. From a few feet, it's hard to see little details like if their eyes are open or shut or see if their foot is raised. I know it sounds crazy, but the way a bird sleeps provides a significant amount of data to determine their health and well being. These are very rare birds and in the wild they are extremely endangered. They are also masters at hiding illness and stress until its too late and they are feet up at the bottom of the cage, apneic. Then there is a $6,000 bird down the drain and it would probably take significant expense and time to find another one. My thinking is having one camera in each top front-left corner and one camera in each top rear-right corner at a slight downward angle should provide the best views. I can always use the current axis as a "big picture" view outside the front of the cage. As far as a power supply, I can order one online cheap. However, I don't think this one is PoE, it may be too old. I used to use it to look at robotic drug discovery platforms to make sure they were operating to spec but that was years ago (2005-ish). I can probably design a cmos sensor on a chip with a fish eye lense that runs on PoE, but it takes months for my design to make it to a physical prototype and then to a production ready unit. I'm looking more for a current off the shelf solution. In the cage or out of the cage isn't the main issue. It's more of finding the best bang for the buck camera because I have very limited experience with these systems. When I worked at big pharma, I just bought the most expensive camera on the market and paid the manufacturer a small fortune to install, configure and support them. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a $20MM yearly budget to blow. I'm looking at some geeks website that has camera systems and cameras for $20 - $60 each with an IP video server for $90. Yet, I have no clue or assurance that these products will even work with each other or if they will even work they way I want them to. I'm out of my element with this. However, I do appreciate the questioning of my requirements, it provides a "Devil's Advocate" point of view which is helpful. Maybe I don't need it in the cage. I don't want to stay with tunnel vision - I'm open to all ideas. Thanks, GT

I know it sounds weird, but I have two parrots, both extremely expensive. I purchased an 80" w x 40" d x 74" h double cage (each side is 40" x 40"). I need a day/night camera system for the cage that can be put into an acrylic dome to protect them from the destructive beaks of the parrots. I wanted a PTZ, but looking at prices they are too expensive. I set up a Lorex system for a friend (he bought it and stuck me with it to make work), but its garbage and I don't want to spend $700.00 if at all possible. I do have a spare Axis 2100 network camera, but I'm missing the power supply and it won't fit in a dome. Basic Requirements - day/night functionality - able to focus inside a 40" x 40" cage - able to be mounted in an acrylic dome inside the cage (I can make the dome). - 4 cameras total, 2 for each side - PCI-slot less. I am 99.999% mac based with mostly all laptops and mac minis but I do have a Zotac ZBox Atom PC with Windows 7 Ultimate on it so USB or Ethernet would work - Cheap. Like $400 - $500 for the entire system - Decent enough resolution to be able to see if the bird is sleeping on one foot in the middle of the night Lighting This is the kicker. Over the cage, the birds need a special light which is actually two lights in one. During the day I currently have a 5500K full spectrum daylight with 5% UVA and .4% UVB. During the night, a soft blue "moonlight" stays on. However, I am replacing that with a custom designed LED system that can do even higher UV levels but the same 5500K white light. Apparently it reeked havoc with the Lorex cameras (garbage cameras, I know) because they stayed in night mode. Obviously, I need a camera that can operate in those conditions. Environmental I keep the entire bird's room at 85F with 55% relative humidity 24/7/365. But it is indoors, so no rain, sleet, snow, hail, etc... Resolution At least 640x480. At a distance of 15-20" I need to be able to make out black feet on white bodies at night with only a very dim blue night light (0.6w 3-LED diffused). Sounds weird, but with the Lorex system I was testing at my place before I set it up at my friends, I couldn't tell from a distance of 3' (outside the cage) if the bird was sleeping on one foot or not. Yeah, a WorstBuy special is going to be the worst of the worst. Because that's what they sell, overpriced garbage. But, I am darn sure NOT going to put a $1,200 Axis camera inside a birdcage. I don't need wireless 18,000 function fullHD 3D super framerate camera. I need a barebones $50 dome style camera and a $200 usb or ethernet encoder or whatever I can do to connect it to a mini computer or laptop. Sound isn't required, but would be a nice value add that I would spend $75 total extra for the entire package, so a total firm maximum of $575.00. But the cheaper, the better. Please Advise. Thanks, GT