Numb-nuts

I am about to buy some new ladders as I normally use the main contractors ladders and travel in their vehicles to jobs. I have just bought my own van and need to buy some ladders. Unlike the big contractors, I haven't unlimited resources to get hold of all types of ladders, scissor lifts and cherry-pickers when I need them for my own jobs. I have been looking around and I have seen the ladders they call combination ladders. These work as a straight 3 piece slide ladder to the maximum height, but they also can act as self supporting ladders where the highest working point is above the apex. Does anyone know how stable these are and are they a good buy in terms of versatility? This is the main ladder I am considering. The Seller is in my home town fortunately so I can go try the ladders (I think) before I buy. I think they are actually very well priced considering their versatility. There is a taller one too but I am nervous enough of heights and i think this one is at my freestanding height limit. Anything significantly higher and I would hire a cherry-picker and charge accordingly. Also the price breaks my budget by about £50.00. My criteria are that they have to be versatile, they have to be lightweight and a maximum of 3.5m fully closed for transportation purposes and they have to be by a well known manufacturer and lastly they have to be within my budget of £250.00. These are made by Zarges a good manufcaturer in fact almost every tradesman's ladders I have seen on their vehicles have been by Zarges. What do you think and what ladders do you use?

Are you sure it wasn't the local HOSPITAL or mortician that recommended these techniques? When I look at those my heart starts to beat really fast and then I remember It's not ME up the ladder.

to mount a $100 camera? I had to create an account because I LOL'ed so hard at this reply... If you are mounting $100 cameras, do you consider yourself a professional? LMAO. What are you talking about you prune? somewhere your reading and writing has let you down fella, or were you just too lazy to read the entire thread and too keen to mock someone? I'm glad it gave you a laugh, that says more about you than about the members who posted to this thread regardless what anyone said. I asked members for their opinions of various ladders they all gave their opinions, now we have yours thanks, NEXT...

From 10 feet ANY Megapixel camera wouldn't even break into a sweat to give a great ID shot. If yoou read my post all you'd need to do is drill Down on the area of the picture to get a close up. Of course if the face is covered up there isn't a camera on the planet that could get the shot you want. (I just know I'm gonna regret sayin' that! )

Don't get me wrong, I am all for the techno-enthusiast tinkering and having a go, but when you are in business, or the system is bought to secure your home and you've paid to have it all done, it makes no sense at all that you should be allowed to mess it up and pay for the privilege of doing it. In my book that downright STUPID. Some people NEED protection from themselves. In business CCTV is no toy to be played with and playing about with what you don't understand can and indeed does undermine the protection that CCTV brings in the event of a crime. yes in short they have no business messing with what they don't understand. but techno-enthusiasts have a legitimate reason to tinker with their own systems as they generally know how to read an instruction manual

I have inch wide bands that move up the screen which is more prominent at night the other two have the interference but not as bad, but if i disconnect the offending camera by switching off the supply to it,then the other two are fine sounds to me like a grounding issue from the problem camera psu try a different power supply Yes the issues are certainly sounding like an electrically generated issue. By the way if your cameras support 24V AC you'd be better off using it in place of 12V DC. There are two things that immediately spring to mind the first being ground loops, If you tried the humdingers or loop eliminators and they had no effect that suggests there could be a faulty power supply. If you use a single box power supply, (very big culprits) the type with fuses, try removing one camera from it and see if an alternative regulated 12V DC or (24V AC as appropriate) power source causes the problem to disappear from that camera/channel. Try this even if your power supply is new, you'd be amazed how many times I turned up to sort out problems for self-installers only to discover their new power supply was either faulty or poorly earthed. They all say Oh, but its brand new. I think it's called being in denial. If you buy one of these boxed power supplies, there are some great ones out there but there also a lot more cheap and nasty ones that will not give you good performance from day one, better to spend the appropriate money. Here in the UK I recommend Dantech picture shows a typical far eastern Power Supply Distribution Box with very high fault rate.

Yes well most clients aren't capable of making or changing settings without getting into a REAL mess. They only need to monitor search playback and backup nothing more. Their time needs to be spent on running their business. If settings do need adjusting, I can do that remotely and usually for free. Mostly they want new user accounts, or to change their passwords etc. It works very well. When control freak clients demand full admin rights, it's not long before they are on the phone saying this doesn't work that doesn't work the DVR is useless and it's ALWAYS a result of them tinkering and to make it smart even more they have to pay through the nose to correct things. One lady telephoned me and said this DVR is rubbish there are black squares all over the screen and the machine is beeping all the time. She absolutely denied tinkering but when I looked, I found she'd been messing with the Privacy Masking and couldn't undo her changes. I went into the log and there it was the evidence that her account had been used to set up privacy masking on four cameras but also that she'd been messing with the motion detection settings and set the buzzer. In spite of her denials there it was in the log. I emailed her a copy of the log, she could not deny anything now. Fortunately I always make a first setup backup disk. I warned her that after this time any such corrections due to her tinkering, would incur CHARGES. THe DVR ? A high end Dahua.

If I stuck to what I knew I'd still be selling microwaves and kettles from Comet as I did age 17 many years ago. Life, the industry and technology move on, and if you don't, you (business wise) die! With respect I'm not sure that expanding ones knowledge and offering a better range of services to your customer is necessarily 'dabbling'. PS And you mr nuts would be inspecting elephant sh1t with the circus!!! That would have mean't PROMOTION!

I am looking to cooperate with other independant installers in the Basingstoke area on a 50 plus camera project. I would be willing to include up to four installers in the deal on an even split of profits and an adjust ment for taking on the responsibility of the warranty and ongoing support. This is an urgent request message me via the PM on this forum first. Up to four independent installers required, URGENT

UPDATE: I hope to have a decision on this project by the week ending 30th November so if successful, I will be contacting a few of you guys who contacted me to see how you're fixed for time.

As if I have an example of every camera available. yeah right!

PIXIM on almost every count but then its a subjective iissue.

What do you mean interference do you mean noise or rolling lines or what?

In most cases, its a trip back to CHINA for the dear little one. My preferred method. (not to be attempted by DIYer's) The only other way might be a firmware update or restore which often asks you if you want to retain your settings before updating/restoring the firmware. Of course the answer will be NO and then you'd have to restore all the settings manually but at least you'd be starting with a clean slate and be able setup a new password and note down your safely. This would be my preferred method. None of MY customers will ever have this problem as the Admin password is always a call away. Yes I lock my clients out because I want them to LEAVE my settings alone. I can always change settings remotely if they want and I don't charge for that service. I recently got called into an ice cream factory where the installer (I use the term cautiously) had reset the admin password and when he learned that someone else was working on the system denied having reset the password. I had to take it to the supplier to restore the default Avtech are one of the few that can be reset here in the UK, personally I don't want to know how to do it it's too risky.

Blooming elephants will eat ANYTHING, in my younger days I was travelling around with a Circus. I was outside the ring behind the curtain talking to a foot juggler who put down her ballet pumps for a second only to see them disappearing down the throat of a huge bull elephant called Rajah who was huge. The following Saturday we were eating lunch in that lady's trailer when a knock on the door interrupted our meal. It was the elephant keeper with two sticks with sh*TE on them, on closer inspection, this was the foot juggler's ballet pumps which had traveled through the elephant's digestive system and been ejected the other end. UPDATE she washed them out and they were good as new, but somehow she didn't fancy wearing them again. But what a dinnerparty story eh? Now see how easily we can get off topic... Sorry, LLigetfa, didn't mean to hijack your thread...

Why can't manufacturers get the message? LOTS of installers are using Cat5 to install cameras, dome cameras are for the most part notoriously hard to use with passive inline baluns as there is nowhere to hide the balun or the BNC & DC connections for that matter. I recently discovered some Pecan dome cameras while preparing a quote and they all seem to have UTP termination aswell as the traditional BNC (and they are all 12/24V) Why don't manufacturers; 1. design in some space into outdoor dome housings? 2. Design their cameras with a UTP option? Surely incorporating UTP into the camera makes it sell better as it's more versatile we all know how minimal the price of a line balun is? We can't always install a camera where there is an empty void above the camera to hide connections so a UTP option inside the housing would be a welcome option. So would a 12VDC 24VAC option although not essential if it impacts on the price GRIPE OVER

Does it give good results because its REALLY expensive compared to the Pecan or Honeywell or even Alien offerings which it has to be said aren't far off that price with 3 yr warranty instead of two. I know they all use a similar base and casing and are genericaly the same camera. I want to see some internal domes with UTP and especially the eye cameras with UTP as hiding a balun is expensive and often very difficult. I have to cut a 20mm hole in the ceiling and insert the connections to hide them, if the clients could see they'd have a conniption-fit. But of course you can't do that in brick without making a real mess. Oh why do I get hung up on such details, "it's coz I care what it looks like wen itz finished init." ahih ahih ahih

I am not particularly familiar with IP cameras yet, but I can make a few helpful observations. If you buy two cameras then ensure they come with the management software (NVR) and that it's compatible with your computer PC OR Mac not all are. With analogue cameras to get an operational requirement for Identification, it is required that you need to fill the3 screen 100- 120% of the height in this case with the target you wish to capture. If you are using IP megapixel cameras that is no longer so important as your default image from the camera can monitor a wider area, and then by dragging a marquee to frame the head and shoulders of an individual, you should be able to view a close up with no discernible quality difference. Its this zoom in or 'Drill Down' as it's properly known, that has to be capable of filling the scene with enough clear image to make a legally acceptable identification. This gives you a lot of scope to get the absolute best out of your camera. Remember that Megapixel cameras are not great at night but they are improving all the time. If you are prepared to invest the money go for about 3MP camera that way it could watch over the entire restaurant from the back and when you need to you can drill down on images of customers who's manners are not what a reasonable person might expect in public and garb an image for printing off. Do some tests but unless the restaurant is huge this will do for you. Don't be surprised if police ask for footage from time to time, usually the outside camera. Again carry out 'drill down' tests with it to decide where to center the focus. Any money you invest now is going to pay dividends after when you need to expand to more cameras and a physical Network Video Recorder (NVR) I recommend four cameras require a a proper physical NVR but then what do I know? Be interesting to hear how it all pans out. We aren't just here to help when you need it feedback is always a help too. One point I failed to make is that drilling down does not have to happen in real-time, it can be done retrospectively from the recordings, this is a point that many people fail to grasp. It's to do with file information. If you do drill down in real-time, the camera is still recording the entire camera view so if something normally covered by the camera happens off screen when you are drilled down, it is still recorded. Neat Eh? Take a look at this video it will help you understand IP cameras

Qvis cameras I hev only fitted their Eyeball domes to date and not one of the customers bought the mounting ring. The ring is a reak rip off as it's merely a spacer and not the least bit water resistant either and the price even at trade is enough to put customers off buying them. You are right about the domes being whats inside. I have had comments like I can buy that one on ebay for £20 and you sell it for £130/ They are different cameras and the ones I use are the top of the range. I am beginning to detest them too. Which QVIS Domes have the UTP features, I like dealing with the UK agents and I would buy them but the distributor don't list the UTP as a feature. I have just prepared a quote using the HF2 cameras they seem to have all the features I wanted except they don't list the UTP as a feature. If it is that'd be great. Quotes are in now anyway so too late to change the spec. I'll have to wait until work starts.

Keep looking, I've been seeking something like this for years.

I haven't worked with a K Guard DVR although I have seen them working they are awsome for the money. In your position I would contact the manufacturers website, they appear to be well geared up to assisting individuals, as the kind of outlets they sell through are mostly not technically minded. here is the link click here K Guard Support

Let's hope so either that or get a chocolate hat (just in case)

Could be but I am sure that there is still a place for analogue especially since almost every DVR now has netserver integrated. When the price of IP comes down I see a rapid decline in the need for Analogue but I don't see any real evidence that the price of IP is coming down significantly, do you?

I am not cussing any specific manufacturer I was being more general than that. There are hundreds of the frogeye mini domes on the market but try mounting one to a brick wall or concrete post and try hiding the connectors...! The answer, is to charge £10 -£15 for a plastic "ring" which in effect is a plastic spacer which often isn't water resistant and makes the camera look strangely out of proportion. I reluctantly have to put IP66 boxes on the wall next to these and frankly it looks appalling. Ordinary indoor domes are the worst offenders, it simply isn't acceptable to put an outdoor junction box on the wall adjacent to the camera. Often it means getting into the ceiling often finding no void and having to make some real compromises. The whole thing is severely disjointed.

Hope you never have to eat one of those hats