Soundy

Fair enough! Yes! Especially if your feed wire is running through the car's firewall and/or under carpeting, fuse it as close to the splice point as possible - this is done to protect the CAR, not the equipment, as a short along the way to the chassis of the car can easily start a fire. Wouldn't happen - a spike like that in a motor is caused by the collapsing magnetic field from the rotor cutting through the fixed magnets' lines of force. In an alternator, that field is created by powering the stator windings, and as soon as you shut off the engine, that power is cut as well - there's no magnetic field TO generate a reverse spike.

Not really. Vehicle power is 12V when the vehicle isn't running and you're drawing from the battery (and even then it can vary by half a volt either way, depending on the condition of the battery). When running, most vehicles' electrical systems put out anywhere from 12.5V to 15V, with 13.5-14.5V being nominal, depending on system load (lights, blower, A/C, defroster, stereo, etc.) and engine RPM. Put a voltmeter on your battery and rev the motor up and down, then start turning things on, and watch how much it changes. Many cameras can handle the variation (some 12VDC wall-warts output up to 18V) but cheaper ones will blow up within hours. Collapsing field from what? A car's voltage regulator doesn't directly filter the power to the automotive systems - it controls the alternator to regulate the voltage that IT puts out. The only thing "behind" the regulator is the alternator itself. Hmmm, wouldn't really do much. It'll smooth ripples in the voltage supply, but won't do anything to alter the wide swing of voltage you see. If you're really concerned about protecting your cameras from your car's power systems, use a small board-type regulator of your own between your cameras and your power feed.

I don't know about that... I recently "repaired" an enterphone camera for a neighboring condo building, that it turned out was suffering from undervoltage. It was someone's DIY design, a board cam with a pinhole lens mounted behind a hole in the the enterphone's front panel, and was showing poor signal, noise, and low contrast. I brought the camera home and found it worked perfectly on my bench for a week, so I reinstalled it and found the problem still there, even on my service monitor. Then I discovered the cause: there was a board regulator inside the enterphone as well, and it was providing only 10.3VDC to the camera. Then I found that it was being supplied by a 12VDC regulated wall-wart inside the building electrical room, and most of the loss was within the regulator itself. I replaced the 12VDDC supply with a 24VAC/20VA transformer and adjusted the regulator for a solid 12V, and all was good. Overclocking is a different thing than overvoltage. The clock rate driving the CPU is increased, which generates more heat, and it's heat that will shorten the life of the CPU. That's why overclockers usually have to increase their cooling capability, getting into things like liquid cooling and what not. Usually, if anything is done with the voltage, it's DECREASED, to help reduce the creation of heat. I don't know that there's any "general knock against bullet cameras" around here. Like anything else, they have their place.

You'll probably want to go with a megapixel camera of some form, 3MP or better to get the most detail possible. There are camera manufacturers that specialize in license plate capture and recognition, others here with more experience in that area should be able to point you to some websites.

I won't argue with rory's assertion that some baluns are crap... I have a whole tray of them that a buddy got for $5 each that don't work at all As rory says, either way you go, you don't need to put power near the cameras - whether you run Cat5, siamese, or separate coax and power, the standard practice is to power all your cameras from a central location whenever possible, usually very near your DVR. Most commonly this is done with some form of 18/2 wire (18 gauge, two conductor), although we usually use station wire (22/4) - it means there's another pair available for future use, a practice that has save us a few times. "Siamese" cable is nothing special - it's just a piece of coax and a piece of 18/2 attached together for convenience. Also, if you do go Cat5e, you don't need baluns to be able to run power over it. Or more to the point, you don't need baluns that INCLUDE power support. You DO need baluns to run video *cleanly* over UTP. Some *include* power connectors, but again, that's just for convenience - those kind of baluns generally cost more, so we generally just use the type that are video-only, and then split off two pairs of the Cat5 and connect them to power ourselves. Generally I would suggest just going with the Cat5e and *quality* baluns; as rory points out, that leaves you the ability to easily upgrade to network cameras in the future. If you really want to cover your bases, you can pull Cat5e *and* coax, then use the coax for video and the Cat5 for power. Or pull all three and be prepared for anything

I think it largely depends on its quality, no much relation with its power supply. Just two models with different specifications. Bingo. Some cameras will handle a range of input voltages, sometimes up to +/-20% of rated supply... some, you'd better use a regulated supply to avoid blowing it up. All depends on the particular design and quality.

Yep, I do agree with this as the price point makes it great for disposable tools. The funny part is there are so many contractors that "forgot" their drill or it "died" an untimely death. Most are good people and it makes everyone's life easier by letting them borrow the tools. They're also good for tools that you use infrequently... like in my coworker's Ryobi kit, the sawzall (sorry, Milwaukee brand name... "reciprocating saw") almost never gets used except for sometimes cutting EMT or PVC conduit or maybe small pieces of wood... the circular saw usually for cutting thin plywood for backing boards or 2x4s. Neither see very heavy use, so lower-cost tools are acceptable.

Not on any PROFESSIONAL equipment I've seen. RCA has a distinct disadvantage in that the connectors don't lock together.

Standard multiplexor will do all that. The VCR output of a MUX typically just flips quickly from one view to the next, synchronized to the video fields recorded in each pass of a helical-scan VHS head. You could feed that into a DVR and get alternating views of each camera - the quality would probably suck, but it would work. Or you could take a 2x2 or 3x3 or even 4x4 grid main-display output of a MUX and feed that into a DVR channel - each portion of the image will be tiny, of course, but it will work as well. We did have one site where there was one camera run going to the gas-pump canopy and they wanted two cameras, so someone (before my time) added a simple video switcher *inside the canopy* to toggle two cameras over one feed into the store. It was painful, because the view usually flipped just as you go to the part of the video you wanted to see.

Tell'em you're new to the site and the previous owner/manager/etc. didn't leave any of the paperwork behind Only thing you won't be able to really prove is purchase/install date, which is when warranty coverage usually starts, but if the serial numbers are on the cameras, they should be able to at least determine the manufacture date, and if you're within the warranty period from THAT date, I'd think you should still be covered. And there's always the chance that a problem may be a known defect that they'll repair or replace for anyway - I have run into that before with a broken laptop (was long out of warranty, so I called to see if I could order a part to fix it myself, but they said the problem I had was a known manufacturing defect - they sent a courier to pick it up, had it repaired, and couriered back to me within a week... completely free, including the 1-800 phone call. This was NEC, by the way - they bought themselves a TON of goodwill with that one act).

Speaking of Ryobi... for those of us in Canada at least, Home Depot is currently offering a price drop on most of their Ryobi tools.

Heheh, you bet - I use the systems and I love'em Avigilon is the freakin' Lambourghini of this industry. (where's that :drool: emoticon??)

You could always try contacting the manufacturers and ask about warranty coverage. Worst they can do is say no.

Vigil and Video Insight systems using newer capture cards (XECAP line for Vigil, VJ-series for VI, although both are essentially the same hardware) have both a switched-analog spot out, and a software-multiplexor spot output. I don't know about the VI software, but Vigil supports split-screen display of mixed analog and IP cameras on the software-MUX output. CAMACC/3xLogic make a product (Vigil HD Viewer) that works alongside their Vigil DVRs (although it also works independent of the DVR) that will generate split-screen views of IP cameras to multiple video heads *completely independent of the desktop display*. We've put in systems with three video cards running a desktop display in the office, plus split-screen outputs to four other VGA monitors using this system. VGA baluns allow the runs to be extended easily via Cat5e. The main benefit of this setup is that you're not limited to 480i analog video resolution, which usually looks terrible on LCD monitors - megapixel cameras can be displayed much more cleanly on 24" monitors at 1600x1024

Depends on how you define "enterprise-level", but our big customers are pretty much all Vigil. That includes two of Canada's largest oil companies that have standardized on it, as well as a major Western Canada upscale restaurant chain (we've been gradually upgrading them from GeoVision). In fact, we do corporate jobs almost exclusively, we've largely moved away from "mom & pop" stores and have never done residential, and we're pretty much exclusively Vigil (with the rare Video Insight for lower-cost PC-based systems, and Digital Watchdog for the budget-conscious).

Yeah, hard to say without knowing what camera you're talking about. Most cheap ones will almost certainly be cooked. Better ones will withstand the reverse voltage for a short time... some will actually work that way (ie. they're not polarity-sensitive). If it is dead, it's probably NOT repairable, as most cameras that would be damaged by that are small board cameras that use mostly surface-mount components.

This really sounds to me like a ground-loop issue, albeit one you'll normally just see with cheap 12VDC cameras that share a common ground between the power and video. How are these cameras mounted? Are any/all of them attached to metal? Is the DVR itself grounded? How about the power supply? You could try a ground lift on the DVR and/or power supply and see if that helps...

Welcome aboard! If you're lucky, your dabbling in your store's CCTV systems will lead you to a far more rewarding career than pumping gas Just one note of caution: you might want to check if your region requires any certification or licensing for CCTV installers, and look into obtaining that before continuing much further. You don't want to leave yourself open to liability issues!

Cost and number of cameras would be the main concern, to me. If you're only talking one or two cameras, injectors would probably be more cost-effective than a whole new switch. Beyond that, though, individual injectors can become a logistical nightmare, as each will probably also have its own wall-wart power supply - you end up with a mess of power bars, power adapters, and injector boxes. If you have structured wiring in place (camera feeds into a patch panel), a switch is definitely cleaner and easier to integrate.

For me, the most common failure I see is a dying sensor... most often, it seems, in older Panasonics (CP214s and the like), although some of the old Sanyos on our sites have developed similar issues - color balance and contrast start to go, the image gets softer and softer no matter what lens you have on it, etc. If you're handy enough to do some repairs yourself, it can sometimes be cost-effective to combine two or three dead cameras into one - take the guts from a cam with a bad sensor and swap them into another of the same model that has a good sensor but bad guts, for example. But as survtech notes, by the time most cameras get to this point, they've reached the end of their designed service life and there's a good chance they'll just fail again soon. Such cameras I find useful to keep around as service spares - go into a site, find a dead camera, and have to wait for replacement approval, or backordered stock, or whatever, you just slap in a "refurbished" old camera to keep up the coverage until a new one can be installed.

Back in the day RIGID tools were top shelf, I don't know if they still make their own stuff nowadays. If you want to pay the money Hilti is a great brand. Bosch is great. I still use the 'Bulldog" made by them. SDS bits are great. As for Dewalt, they are OK for throwaway tools and Ryobi are pure crap. True about the Ryobi, but they do have their place. One construction site we worked on, the super kept a Ryobi kit around - drill, impact, skill-saw, sawzall - for any of the trades to use. He figured, they were useful when needed, and cheap enough that if something walked off, it wasn't a huge loss. My co-worker picked up a seven-tool Ryobi kit for about $250, stock with Nicad batteries, then later added a pair of Lithium batteries, since both are designed to Ryobi's "One+" system. That setup has served him well for a couple years now, as it's quite versatile for the price... although it doesn't come close to keeping up with my six-year-old Milwaukee 14V drill Common sense, alas, is not so common anymore...

Only three years behind the rest of the industry...

If it's the same two-pin connector as the CNBs, I can mail you one... or several.

IR LEDs are cheap, so they provide a good workaround to give cheap cameras acceptable low-light performance, rather than actually spending money on a camera that does well in low light on its own. Of course, IR illuminators can also be used with GOOD cameras for even better low-light response... but in general, they're a cheap hack, particularly for cameras with the LEDs built-in.

The problem is, if you try to display two machines on one 16:9 display - whether it be a single 16:9 monitor, or a 2x2 or 3x3 or larger video wall - you either get only half of each machine's display; one PC will have to be a small PiP display in the other PC's large display; or worst case, both will have to be stretched vertically to fit. Draw an imaginary vertical line up the center of your current display and imagine how you'll fit two computers' displays in that, one on each side... that's what you have to deal with. Plain and simple, your best course is to have a separate display for each PC, whether that display is a single large screen, or a matrix of multiple screens.