ChrisH

In your past experiences how important has it been for customers to be able to have the card access system integrate with their cctv system? Getting some static from a potential customer right now because he views this as a priority. Made me think more about how important this may or may not be. First time I've ran into this personally. Any thoughts????

Hmmmm. Quite strange. Does the door have a door contact? If so, this is also still in play. I have a hard time believing that it is the reader on it's own. If it does have a door contact, force the contact into whatever state it should be in when the door is closed by putting a jumper across the terminals in the panel. Now try your door again and see if it goes away. Maybe the door contact even wires to the reader some how. I've never seen that, but then again, I've never had what you are describing either.

Not sure if you are trying to use this to track employees or their time, but be aware that using a card access system alone for time keeping not legal in the US. It must be a timeclock that acutally displays the time on it. Otherwise like the other posters said, any card access system can show history with just card reads.

James, How about another way to look at it. It sounds like you are really gung ho about installing, but have some worries. Why not save yourself the investment and work to your strengths? By this I mean, maybe you should try to set up a realationship with an electrician. You could sell the jobs, provide the smarts and the parts and pay the electrician to do the dirty work. He already has the tools and know how to get the job done. You can support the customers technical needs. I know a lot of guys that would not mind doing this type of work - the dirty part I mean. They just want to do what they know and get out. It takes a long time and a lot of mistakes to know about buildings and how they are put together and how to get to certain areas. There are also building codes to worry about, more so when you get into the commercial side of things. Either way, good luck.

You say you replaced the striker. Is this the electronic HES strike? If it is new, this problem occured with the old and new? Is there a door contact involved in this door setup? Either the strike is bad, the door contact is triggering something goofy at the panel, or the actual door hardware is releasing. What kind of door hardware does it have? Crash bar, 1/4 turn handle, paddle?

Are you really going to have your kids dig a 18" deep trench 500'? That is going to take forever. You'd be money ahead renting a trencher. Depending on where it is, we often times knife the conduit into the ground. This is done with a trencher that has a vibrating blade on it. No dirt to shovel back into the hole. Not sure on the budget though. Directional boring will definatley be the most expensive, but least evasive. Good luck.

Please do not use 1/2" PVC. They should not even make the stuff. For the cost differerence (close to none) at least use 3/4". You would be more than ok with 3/4, but as Soundy said, bury two right away while the trench is open. Leave the second as a spare. Do not put more than 360 degrees of bend in the pipe and you'll be fine. As Soundy said, don't pull the wire as you go. It's much easier to pull it after, especially at that lenght. Also, I would pull an extra wire or two right away. At that length it will be tough going later to add anything. Also to make it easier you can get some Clear Glide, which is pulling lube. A little goes a long way and makes it sooooo much easier to pull in the plastic pipe. Lastly, if it were me I'd pull direct burial cable or indoor/outdoor rated cable in the pipe. You'd be amazed at how much water gets in the pipe over time due to condensation or a poor joint. The better wire will get you a longer life. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Do you mean all the wires per door are twisted, or all wires per panel? Either way, I'd rather keep them untwisted and manage the wire with tie wrap retainers and tie wraps. It helps tracing wires later when not all twisted together. Just my 2 cents.

No problem. I visited these guys at ISC West and they were very helpful there too. Nothing spectacular, but a decent low cost DVR. Especially for free, right Soundy! Glad I could help.

Amazing what a few guys with a plan can take in four minutes! Did the store have any kind of burg system? Even if it did, four minutes is not much time, but just curious. They seemed pretty calm so I'm assuming that no loud sirens were going off during the ordeal. If that's the case, as burg system is a start. Possibly some sort of trackable asset tag on/in the bikes. Also the obvious things like making it harder to get in/out of doors. What I mean by this, is maybe something more secure than a double glass door for and entrance point. It was obviously easy for them to enter as there was not much of a deterant.

Any idea how old it is? They have a five year warranty on them. I've installed a few of these and never had that problem before. If it's in the warranty, give them a call - 866-446-3595.

I have done analog CCTV and some IP CCTV for more than a few years now. I was just asked to come up with a solution that I've never ran into. A customer wants a camera (type to be determined) at a remote site. This remote site has no electricity and what he wants to do is to watch a certain area durning mostly the daytime. Obviously this needs a solar/wind powered solution. The other problem is the DVR. Is there a way to remote into a DVR via GSM or are you stuck on going to the device and watching it locally? The distance is too far from his home to this site for a WLAN also. Like I said, this is totally new ground for me and any info or suggestions are welcome. Thanks

So can you tell me more about VideoIQ. I looked at their website enough to be curious. It appears that they make cameras with built in analytic engines, thus not needing VMS to do the processing. Do they also have local storage on the camera, via a SD?

Tom, those are interesting setups. The one that trasmits via 3G must use quite a bit of data streaming back to a remote site. Have you ever used either of these? I have given the mobile DVR a thought and transmit via GSM/3G for search and review. Anyone have experience with a cellular router?

Thanks Soundy. I did try to do some searches, but did not come up with much. Not using the correct key words probably. I think the distance will be too great to cover via a WLAN, thus I'm trying to look into other possible options or even other possible ideas. The customer will not be viewing on a regular basis, it will be more for searching and reviewing, but I do realize that this will still use quite a bit of data. Just exploring my options at this time.

Soundy & tailbone, Thanks for the advise. As you mentioned the cat5e model that we were supposed to use is with stranded core. Can you advise which Belden cat5e comes with stranded core? Thanks again! Is there a reason that you do not want to work with the elevator company to get a pair of their wires which are already the correct type and in place??

x2 Depending on the elevator company, they usually want you to use their cable instead of putting another cable in the shaft. Around here they are pretty strict about anything outside of their wire in the shaft. Just call them up and see.

I have a pretty basic parking lot senario. I have a 200' deep x 400' wide parking lot running parallet to a 20' high factory building. Currently they have one PTZ on one end of the building covering a loading dock and some of the parking lot. That PTZ has gone bad and want to replace that one and add one or two more PTZ's. What are your thoughts on PTZ's? They are fun, but I think near worthless unless someone is watching/controlling them. Put them on a tour and you can only cover so much at one time anyways. My question is, do I forgo the PTZ's for fixed cameras? The only bad part it not being able to zoom on something for the few times you want to. Thoughts? Thanks

Multimode is going no where! We put it in every day. Government projects where money is no object are migrating to 50 micron and 50 micron laser optimized but short runs will be multimedia for a long time to come. As a general rule Multimode is used from MDF to IDF closets and short run building to building. I agree. This is what I see in my neck of the woods also. Multimode is the correct type of fiber for this install. You can get 1gig across 62.5 multi all day long at this distance. 10gig with 50 micron As far as connectors, LC are just a smaller form factor, so if you have just a few stands, you don't need to worry about space. SC's are easier to work with to terminate due to the slightly larger size. It's really does not matter though.

For anyone interested, Caddy and BLine make a large assortment of low voltage cabling accessories and also fastening solutions. Check them out. Time saving parts. Good pic by the way.

So I was talking to the Arecont rep yesterday and he claimed that I should be using a high def laptop when focusing a MP camera. He went on to say how much you are giving up by just using a standard VGA laptop monitor. This all makes sense, but I'm wondering how many people actually use a high def laptop to focus in there MP cameras?

Beam clamps are easy. Whether you use them to mount a junction box first and the camera to the j box or just using them to mount the camera directly. The other thing the beam clamps do for you is no drilling of structural members. This may sound goofy, but in some areas the building inspectors are very strict about this. Unless you want to get a structural engineer to sign off saying that the holes you made are ok, just just the beam clamps and walk away with no worries. Just my 2 cents.

I have to believe that more company's will be coming out with the auto focus option. Let's hope at least. Seems like a very value added feature. One that if you don't have it, you may be loosing out on the market in the future.

The cold just makes it that much worse too. Especially when you start to loose feeling in your cold hands.

Ridiculous. I do it just fine on my 1024x600 res netbook screen. I just set the camera display to full zoom and scroll the screen to the area I need to focus on. Resolution is the same at full zoom whether I'm viewing it on a 1600x1200 screen, or cropped on a 1024x600 screen. That's where I was confused with his comments. He said like you Soundy, to zoom into focal area and set the focus when the pixels start to enlarge. This way you can see the focus easier. Then zoom back out, check and zoom in again to fine tune if needed. When zoomed, you won't have better resolution on the HD monitor as it's only as good as the image your looking at. Hence my post, as I was wondering if I was maybe missing the boat on this one.