Numb-nuts

My dad always taught me, when outnumbered to pick a fight with the biggest meanest looking one. For one thing, nobody will want to fight you because they will think you are CRAZY and for another I always used to fight harder when I was scared. I am too old and too weak for that sort of thing nowadays, and I prefer not to be stabbed in the back by these youths today who don't care about fair fighting. I also do not want trouble with police as they seem to come down HARDER on those that take the law into their own hands than on the criminals or troublemakers. NO, I think this time I will leave this to police, they cannot fail to deal with it as I have handed this to them On-a-PLATE!

Just a thought, for the doors there are wireless door entry intercoms that can be made to snapshot anyone that approaches, again onto a local SD card and can be monitored over large distances. These also have IR LEDs to solve the problem of the subject blocking the available light.

I don't think cameras are the answer. Try a machine gun and sandbags in the front yard. Seriously though, a nice quality wireless IP camera and or as has been suggested security light camera with SD card. She won't be alerted by new security lights but will almost certainly notice cameras. There are also doorview cameras that replace the peep hole scope in your door, or you can make your own with a 19mm hole through the door and fixing in a small bullet camera with wide angle lens. You could run to it using cat5 cable and hide a recording device nearby or get one or two of those DVRs meant for cars that record onto SD card Once the issue is over these can be installed in your vehicles as accident cams

A very dangerous prospect, this is what Law enforcement are paid for. I am amazed you have to do this. Surely if you told police they could mount their own surveillance? I am not making any claims to know how drug dealers behave but from the surveillance video shot by law enforcement and released for TV, I believe these dealers are easy to spot visually by their actions. If you have time keep a log of the comings and goings and together with a few choice video clips, present it to police to encourage them to mount an operation. What you are proposing is very dangerous especially if discovered, you could place yourself and your family in serious danger. I wouldn't risk it. The thought of doing it is very appealing but these are known to be amongst the dangerous people in society. Think and then think again, don't do it. Ask police what you could do to assist them without endangering your family and self. Tell a family friend who you spoke to in the police dept.

Explain that Pansonic make the cameras not the hardware that is left to other companies. What about a wire mesh cage on a wall hinge like the following. You can always remove a section and replace with the plexiglass for unhindered viewing. I have installed three of these and found a spray with mat black paint eliminates any trouble with stray reflections on a sunny day. I haven't even had any spiders webs to speak of. It doesn't stop pigeons roosting though. If vandals throw eggs it breaks them up a treat. Omelet anyone?

I just ordered some more BNC crimp plugs This time though I have not been such a cheapskate and ordered Tyco branded BNC crimps from Farnell . I am fed up to death of cheap unbranded BNCs failing and always at the worst time. I have a good quality crimp tool, it makes no sense at all to buy rubbish crimp plugs. I am done with cheap, from now on I don't mind paying for quality.

TMy point was if a child does it once forget it it's a prank, but when there is a huge mob of potentially violent teens milling around outside your house, and a teen does it, it's no longer a childish prank. Anyway if they do it repeatedly save up the images and go straight to police. What a shock they will have when police tun up with pictures of all those time they thought they had got away with it.

Or here in the UK we have 240 volts ac mains, wire that to the bellpush if the postman wasn't a nice guy. Nice thought, but then I would be in trouble with police, no it's far better to sit back and let the offenders dig themselves a nice big deep hole and record them doing it. Let the police deal with it ......eventually

ANYONE that thinks Sharia Law will EVER be introduced in the UK has a Noodle loose. You are right though, I moved away from Wembley in London in 1998 because it was becoming too saturated with foreigners. Now the foreigners were NOT the problem at all, just the sheer numbers of them. I have just had to move my mother into a care home there, and the population of Wembley has exploded so many fold it's almost impossible to walk the High Road. The school kids now run riot after school, so much so that mounted police patrol the High Road Wembley and pin offenders to the wall with the horses. I kid you not, its a hell hole. Where I now live the teenagers binge drink and try to cause trouble and harass and bully the neighborhood, only these days they are violent with it. Yeas there is some satisfaction in capturing the offenders on camera, however the bubble bursts a bit when police say they cannot identify the person and don't turn up when the offender is outside the property or in the viscinity and can be readily identified in a crowd. They wait until the offenders are gone and then say this could be anybody... Great fellas thanks a bunch. I am still hopeful taht the girl in the picture will frequent the neighborhood again and I will be able to identify her to police or another neighbour will know who she is. If all else fails I will offer a reward for anyone identifying this person which leads to a prosecution. Say £50.00 Reward what do you think? Police were smiling heavily when I showed them the PTZ camera I will be installing install soon.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, perhaps I should post a second warning sign, "Take your top off, I'm gonna post your pic on the CCTV Forum" Seriously though, it just shown that if you have the right frame rate you can choose from a better range of snapshots. I printed three, one on the approach, one as you see here and one leaving. The time stamp is crucial here because it shows she was not ringing to ask for a glass of water, she rang and left immediately the whole thing taking seconds proving the intent of harassment. Personally, I'd like to give the *** a good slap in the face but then I'd be breaking the law. My whole purpose in having CCTV was to restore law and order to the neighborhood, especially in the vicinity of my home. We suffer drunken teens, criminal damage to our fences and have our cars vandalised regularly, urinating in our/ my garden, having our plants puller up and strewn over the road. If there is anything in the street like a stick or a rock it usually ends up being thrown at our cars or windows, so if wee see something on the street we quickly remove it. I am shortly going to introduce my 27 X day/night PTZ camera to the front of the house in full view from a wide area. It is, I would think, quite unusual for a domestic installation of a PTZ ( In the UK at least) and so I am hoping they might think it is a local authority camera with police monitoring. I heard that the UK has more CCTV cameras per head of population, than any other country in the world, anyone know, is that true?

I am not a professional so don't feel qualified to advise on a whole system, but I just wanted to say nice diagram hope you are successful in setting up a system that works well for you. There are plenty on here that will give you ideas and advice. Another idea is to get estimates and proposals from local professional companies. (Obviously make sure they are free estimates) I think your approach is very realistic and honest. Wishing you all the best.

You are quite right, RG58 is 50 ohm (suitable for radio-telephone applications) whereas RG59 is 75 ohm and suitable for CCTV applications and the termination plugs must be designated to one cable or the other or they will not be suitable also. Not being a fully trained technician, I am not sure what makes it so, but I have always understood it to be so. I have always considered it good sense to just accept what those that know advise me.

It's crimps all the way with me, I was just saying I like using the boots n caps for a professional finish! I would agree with this statement cable boots do make a clean professional finish, and I generally use the black ones but yellow ( the appropriate color) with the CCTV applications. When I tried out the pressure fit plugs, I had to use glue lines heat shrink although I believe it's probably not necessary if all the promises of the manufacturers are to be believed, I just thought it worth doing. Illogically perhaps, I don't always do things because it's essential, but often just because I like to.

FYI, RG58 is not appropriate for CCTV... wrong impedance. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, I used to work in two way radio and we used RG58 and BNCs, PL259s N types etc etc and that is why I have a legacy crimp tool from that time, which is made to crimp both RG58 and RG59 crimps. Just thought I'd clear that confusion up.

I have been wondering about the use of the alarm inputs outputs on my DVR and how and what situations I might use them to best advantage with my system. I am forever tinkering with my setup because I just love tinkering. Could someone please advise in general about how best (and in what situations) the alrm input/output facility might be used to good advantage? Can they be used to trigger PTZ to look at and record a particular preset?

I have two cameras covering my portico at home, one B&W and the other is colour. At night they are supported by a lw ebergy light that gives sufficient light to see any subject, but I have noticed the pictures are extremely grainy. Both cameras give a sharp crisp picture in natural light. Can anyone suggest what this might be due to and what I might do to improve the night vision. I have already ordered a IR floodlight to cover the area beyond the portico and to add some light in the portico but is there something else I should be trying? Many thanks for any suggestions...

I have just found a source for Amphenol, Tyco and Multicomp BNC plugs. They are quite a bit more expensive than the ones on ebay, but are likely to be far less troublesome. I would use them with my favorite treatment of glue lined heat shrink tube to seal and act as a strain relief. I always use 3:1 ratio shrink as it is more substantial and can grip onto the cable tightly. Strangely, when I used the RG58 and BNC crimps they seemed to grip far better than the RG59 with BNC crimps, I am not sure why this might be. I can only assume it was because I was using high quality crimp plugs which were supplied by my then employer" Storno". Anyone wanting a source for quality connectors in the UK can try Farnell UK. but they are not cheap by any means.

I apologize that it did not occur to me to check if this question had been asked before. I should have searched to see if indeed it had but I can now see it has and several times too. It's a fair comment that you use what's most available at the time, but I am talking about your ideal preference in a given situation. I have to admit to liking the pressure fittings very much but I have always liked the 3 pce crimp plugs until I started to experience the cheap chinese offerings, I am not a professional so I would not benefit from buying a new tool and switching to the new pressure plugs. Instead, I will stay with crimps and seek out better quality ones rather than the rubbish flooding the market now. What are your reasons for preferring one type over another?

Ive had a bit more of a think about your tests and looked at the bullet cam I am going to replace my color door-view camera with. It is a 600TVL with IR sensitivity of just 0.005 lux, the sensor is a 1/3 inch Ex-view HAD CCD. Having read your post, I am confident it will at least be better than what I have now and stand a good chance of giving me the best of all round performance in the circumstances. With regards to my existing light. I have decided to move it's position slightly and to replace the bulb as suggested. I have also bought a 12 LED IR board on ebay, and found a dummy dome camera in a thrift shop for £1.00 I have now fitted the board to the dummy dome and have a cheap IR illuminator. (Not very professional I know) I can fit it on the portico ceiling and see what kind of result I get. I originally wanted to fit the IR board into my corner camera housing but cannot figure our how to effectively blinker the lens from the IR light so I didn't use it for that because the camera would see only the reflection of the IR.

That is very interesting. I won't pretend to fully understand straight off, but if I take a little time to read and understand that correctly, I am sure it will be of great help in understanding the problem.

The B&W camera is an Eneo VK-1317S Board Camera with 3.8 mm lens and fixed Iris, I choose this because it has a 600TVL rating and the need for colour was overridden by the need for a clearer picture, and so far it ha sbeen fine apart from the graininess in low light. I have plans to add more light since the area it monitors is backlit by daylight during the day and street lighting at night. I have to be quite honest that I have no idea about the other camera. It's a door-view camera not a cheap one, with wide angle lens (2.5) and doesn't appear to have an IR cut filter because even in low light there are traces of colour. I have plans to replace this with a high res 600TVL B&W bullet camera when I can figure out howI will mount it. It is interesting that the graininess (Noise) is always there but can't be seen during the day, presumably because of the quality of natural light? You say it's the camera trying to boost the picture and being asked what the lighting is, I have a clue my problem is down to the lighting and wether or not it is sufficient for purpose? I suspect not. I use a low energy light bulb in a bulkhead light housing through the night and suspect that this is not sufficient although it has worked reasonably well so far. I will tray a brighter more a natural light bulb and report back the result. Thanks for your responses so far guys.

Like everything else on ebay, it's buyer beware. . You generally get what you pay for and sometimes get a real shafting. I have been fortunate in that I've only once been caught out and in the end got my money refunded by Paypal. If you have found a seller that is responsive, I would say save that seller and in furure at least you can have some measure of confidence. Prices drop, thats a fact of life and it really grates when you buy something and see the price plummet soon after. But thats just life! I have learned the hard way that if you want a good picture on a CCTV camera you have to pay for the privilege. simple as... anyway, hope it works out for you with the latest camera.

I am not sure yet as until I setup my PTZ and the presets the menus aren't accessible. I will try the operating manual as soon as I have done that in a couple of weeks. I hope that is something my DVR will allow but I will have to look at. I know mine will send emails or SMS (providing a SMS service is available ) For example, when would it be appropriate to change alarm activated recording quality? Regarding trigger devices what I think you are saying is any intruder alarm type trigger can be used is that correct and in the same way the outputs like lights and buzzers can be triggered too?

Well that at least gives me some hope that I am on the right track. Thanks for that! Now if I can only fit the dome to the wall without dropping it....

As I found out at great expense. They are not that cheap either. I'd rather pay a good price and get a great camera than pay a cheap price and get a crap camera. Hard lesson learned. If you really want to set up a CCTV supply business look for manufacturer's websites and look for distributors in your country, some of them will even dropship for you. Sell cheap stuff today and spent tomorrow pacifying angry customers. Anyway, who said you have to be the cheapest to make a living? Good luck with your new business.