Soundy

That SHOULD be the case. Most cheap 12VDC-powered cameras of this type have a common ground between power and video, so the black wire would be ground for both.

You can always use a hole saw to make (if memory serves) a 3.5" hole behind it, and do away with the back-box. The mounting plate is designed to attach to a dual-gang box. In alpine's case, he probably would have needed to core out his two plywood shims, but not the eaves behind. Use some 2.5-3" deck screws through the mounting plate, through both shims and right into the eaves.

Whichever way you go, the same rule always applies: you get what you pay for. We've put in a number of cheap (and I do mean CHEAP) standalone DVRs because the client wanted to spend very little money, and had hideous failure rates. We've also put in good units like Digital Watchdog that run flawlessly for years... but cost as much as a low-end DIY PC system. If it's something you're experimenting with or is being used in a non-critical environment, you can go standalone OR PC and cheap out and probably be fine... if security is important, spend the money for something good. Don't let cost be your determining factor; there are lots of other criteria to base a buying decision on: ease of use, space available for installation, features, expandability, upgradeability, etc.

I don't think RAM is your problem, at least not directly. Overall data throughput is probably a bigger issue if you're recording all these cameras - the bottleneck could be the amount of RAM, the motherboard's bus chipsets, the drive I/O, or any combination thereof. At those relatively small bandwidth streams, I think disk I/O speed is going to be more of a problem than the amount of RAM; your machine is probably bogging down trying to do that along with all its other processes. Also, don't expect a "G" router to give you a SUSTAINED 54Mbps with multiple streams like that. That speed, as I recall, is half-duplex, so you'll get "interruptions" as the recorder communications back with the cameras. The more constant load you place on the wireless connection, the more it will suffer. It's not the router choking, it's just a limitation of WiFi spec. In this case, I fully expect that the camera dropouts are caused by network bottlenecks, not by the computer. Try shutting down the CCTV software and browse all three cameras on their web viewers at the same time, preferably on a more powerful machine (if you have one)... if the dropouts continue, and you're only viewing the cameras (not recording them), then the problem is likely the network. One thing you can do, try throttling back your cameras to 10-15fps. At 15fps, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference from 30fps unless you have something moving fast through the scene. Even 10fps will produce fairly smooth motion in most cases.

Most domes you find will be just a board camera inside the dome enclosure, and almost all of them, especially at the lower-cost end, will use the same lenses as other board cameras. The shorter lens should be fairly easy to find, even if, as rory notes, you don't find a camera that comes with it.

You don't need varifocal - all that means is you can adjust the focal length of the lens and thus the field of view. You already know the FOV you need, and you'll need a 2.8mm or 2.6mm lens to get your full 90 degrees (note the specs on that varifocal lens - 3.5 to 8mm and the widest it sees is 70 degrees). Auto-iris allows the camera to adjust better to widely-varying lighting conditions, but watching doors in a hallway, unless there's a lot of outside light coming in, you probably don't need that either. Don't get too hung up over TVL either; in a lot of cases, especially with cheaper cameras, those numbers are "fudged" anyway, and with an FOV that wide, you're not going to catch small facial details anyway unless you go to megapixel. A simple dome with basic 2.6 or 2.8mm lens and a *true* TVL rating of 420-480 should suffice nicely.

"Wired remote" in this case is usually a serial port (most of the ones I've seen are standard DB9M, RS-232); the same codes that are normally sent to the remote's IR receiver are sent to that port instead. As noted, they're commonly used in installations where you want to power a TV on or off and change its settings in conjunction with other A/V components, in things like boardroom or conference room situations. An "IR blaster" or "IR mouse" is just a little IR LED that's placed in front of the TV's remote receiver, and the remote codes are sent to that. Unfortunately, with a range of different brands and models of TVs, even IF they all support IR remote, most will have different codes for changing inputs or channels, which would make it very complex and tedious to set up.

Hmm. My next question then might by, what type of TVs are these? A lot of newer TVs have wired-remote capability for just this sort of control capability (although it's more commonly used for things like video-conferencing - switching inputs in sync with other A/V components, lighting etc.) If they're all the same brand/model, you might be able to run an IR mouse to each TV as well. Either way, when you want to run the "forced" video, you send the code to the TVs to change the channel or input as needed. In fact, if you did that, and had A/V lines running to the TVs, you could probably get away without ANY modulators - just "broadcast" the serial/IR code to switch to the A/V input, and fire up your content. Better still, most newer TVs have discrete codes for POWER ON and POWER OFF, rather than a simple POWER TOGGLE command, so you can ensure all the TVs are turned on regardless of their initial state.

If you're in IT, how about a network-based solution? Push the video out to everyone's desktops/laptops. Or put it on an intranet page, email everyone a link, and embed some code that produces a popup they have to click when the video is done - then you can track who's watched it and who hasn't.

How do you define "pixelated"? Keep in mind that a lot of remote/web viewer setups will recompress the video to take less bandwidth, and that typically means more compression artifacting than viewing directly on the DVR.

You need a "CATV modulator". Try googling that phrase, there are hundreds of products out there.

You'd have to have two or three larger frames (covering 2x2 regular frames), if you want everything to fit perfectly within your 4:3 box.

That's good enough reason right there Correct. Video only requires one pair of wire; you have four pairs available in Cat5e, so you can actually run up to four video feeds over on cable. Yes... or "wall wart" transformers... or whatever sort of power supply (or supplies) is suitable. Correct. Because the wire is such small gauge, however, you usually want to use two of the four pairs for power. For example, I'll usually use (and mind you, this is just my own color scheme; it's not a universal requirement) the blue/blue-white pair for video; green and orange pairs for power - green/green-white both connected to ground or neutral (depending on whether it's DC or AC) and orange/orange-white to V+ or "hot"; and leave the brown pair for future use, or use it for PTZ control if applicable. Depends what you mean by "the only way". Pretty much all cameras have power terminals that need to be supplied; if you're using Cat5e (or any sort of UTP), you can run power over extra pairs in that; or you can power the cameras locally; or you can run separate power feeds alongside the UTP... in the end, that's your choice as to which works best for you. Some baluns simply have a pair of screw or punch-down terminals for video connections... In this case, you'd split off the power pairs yourself. Some have RJ45 jacks on them and split out the power connections internally to a pair of pigtail wires; this is functionally no different from splitting out the power connections yourself, it's just done for convenience and a clean install. It does mean that you have to terminate your runs with RJ45 plugs or jacks, however.

Exposure basics are the same regardless of what kind of camera you're talking about, film or digital, analog or IP, photo or CCTV.

Oops, hit Submit too soon. So, where this would apply here, is if you were monitoring snow conditions, those aren't going to change much in the matter to a few seconds, assuming you use really long shutter speeds. Now in "standard" CCTV uses, you might want to limit the camera to NOT use longer shutter speeds, to avoid blurring of moving objects. However, this could potentially reduce the camera's low-light response in very dark conditions. In an instance where blur is not a concern, such as monitoring snow conditions, it might be acceptable or even desirable to allow the longer shutter times in order to improve image quality.

How would that help? Or does snow look better with a slower shutter? Hello Rory, Admittedly, I am still new to cctv (just got into it about a year and a half ago), and am not 'hip' with setting up shutter speeds yet, so I dont know how that would help. I was just making a guess at why a ski resort 'might' do that, as somebody else had suggested the whole ski resort thing. Excuse my ignorance sometimes when it comes to shutter speeds and focal stops. But hey, thats why I hang out here with you guys! I am still learning a lot about cameras each day Quick primer on exposure: Exposure is a balance of three things: imager sensitivity (whether film or an electronic sensor), lens aperture (the size of the iris opening), and shutter speed (how long it remains open). Assuming the sensitivity is fixed (and ignoring things like AGC and other methods of boosting the signal, just for the sake of illustration), as it gets darker, you need to either increase the aperture to allow more light, or leave the shutter open longer to allow the sensor more time to collect light. Now assume that the iris has reached its maximum aperture, and the camera has reached the limit of its AGC and signal boosting ability, and it's still too dark - the only way to get more light is to increase the time the shutter is open. As long as the shutter is open, it's constantly collecting light from the image it's looking at. If something is moving through the image while the shutter is open, that movement will be captured as blur across the image. The shorter the shutter time, the less movement will occur during it, and the less blur you get. Other ways to get around this are to use a lens with a larger maximum aperture, or a camera with a more sensitive imager, or better gain-boosting circuitry.

Personally, I can't praise Milwaukee tools enough. My dad has used them for years (including the original Sawzall). My first one was their 2.4V cordless screwdriver, that I bought in 1990 when I started working in car audio installations. It was about $220 with the fast-charger and two batteries, but could keep up with the other installers' 7.2V Makita drills in most instances, while being a lot smaller and lighter. It saw 8 years of pretty steady use before the first NiCad battery died completely and wouldn't recharge... the second one went three years after that. Milwaukee still sells the exact same design today, including the same kit with two batteries, fast charger and carry case. Definitely NOT your average "cordless screwdriver".

How would that help? Or does snow look better with a slower shutter? Maybe they just have day night cameras? Maybe they have exview B/W with SDNR? Or maybe they are using a 1/2" EM-CCD or Thermal? Many other alternatives to slow shutter. Slow shutter = slow video. Eg. DSS was introduced as a cheap method of obtaining low light video, instead of using the right cameras which cost more money. I think the point is simply that a slow shutter isn't an issue in this situation, since what they're actually looking at doesn't change much in the course of two seconds (or two minutes, for that matter... or even two hours, most days). There'd be no point in paying big money for advanced low-light technologies when all you want to see is how the snow looks... and thermal would be particularly useless in that instance. alpine0000, forgive rory - he's in the Bahamas, he doesn't know what snow is

Depends on the application. Snow and weather conditions at a ski resort are one such example. Best, Christopher How does that work? Well, the ski resorts around here have cameras mounted at the top of the mountain just to monitor snow conditions, and the probably dont care if the people skiing are a little blurry in the picture. I guess they use a slower lens, or slower shutter speed, but I dont know? If they want to see snow conditions at night, in the dark, then no, they wouldn't worry about a 2s shutter speed.

Just because YOU have never needed in the past, doesn't mean you won't find an instance where it's useful in the future, and certainly doesn't mean it's "useless" to everyone else.

Slow Shutter speed is USELESS for CCTV. Yes, but having the ability to set the shutter speed isn't - not to set it at a low speed, but to lock it at a higher speed, even if it means underexposure. It's usually easier to pull details out of a dim, sharp image than from a bright, blurred one. Edit: and by the same token, there may be instances where it's acceptable to sacrifice shutter speed for better exposure... not necessarily in "standard" CCTV applications like identifying people and vehicles, but in certain circumstances. The point is, it's ALWAYS useful to have more control over your camera's operation.

yeah I just checked the menu setup didnt realise that it was there, typically only find that in Zoom CCTV cameras. Not something one wants to use for CCTV anyway. What isn't? Shutter speed settings? Auto-backfocus? I can think of plenty of times I could have used either...

Hey, on a side note, maybe you can answer something for me: I discovered (while on a site, and only after several different calls to Panasonic tech support, argh!) that the CW484 disables SDIII when you plug into the service jack - drove me nuts trying to set it up when I couldn't access the main output connector. This is apparently a design decision, I can't even begin to fathom why. Have they fixed this with the SD5s?? You're right, these Panasonics are definitely in the "you get what you pay for" category, but even then, there are still some little oddities to be aware of.

Most of these power supplies are the same basic design: a big transformer feeding into a terminal strip, some with fuses inline with each output. Unless you get into something that adds substantial filtering, I don't think you'll see a difference. Check my message again - it really sounds like your problem is related to grounding, especially since it disappears with individual transformers.

Depends somewhat on the number and type of camera (specifically, how much data the switch will be required to handle). One site, I have seven 3MP Areconts channeling nicely through a D-Link DGS-1008D 8-port gigabit switch (a budget model, retails about CDN$55) There are also seven ACTi domes routing through another DGS-1008D, that are having what appear to be traffic-related issues, but those are MPEG-4 vs. the Areconts' H.264, and they're in high-traffic areas, meaning they're streaming a LOT more data through. For smaller installs, I've used a number of D-Link DSS-5+ and DSS-8+ 10/100 switches without problems; some have been running for several years now. I've also used the LinkSys SFE-1000P on a number of sites - it's got eight 10/100 PoE ports as well as two GbE/fiber ports, and works GREAT for running PoE cameras, along with a DVR and NAS plugged into the GbE ports. It's also a bit pricier, I think retails about CDN$300, but they've proven to be a very solid performer.