Soundy

If anything, I'd think having the cable spooled would have more of an adverse affect that it being strung out, as there would be a minimal amount of added inductance. In other words, if it works fine with the wire spooled, it should have no problem unspooled. The only other concern would be whether your cable runs pass close to other sources of EMI - motors, light ballasts, HV feeds, etc. But those sorts of things can cause problems with any cabling, and in my experience, twisted-pair with baluns often handles those situations better than standard coax.

It will work for a while but not for ever box cameras need to be install in housings with heaters/blowers when installed outdoors. Not necessarily with heater/blowers... that depends largely on the location and temperatures. I have cameras that have been in simple weatherproof housings for close to a decade without problems. Domes like the one you show are fine if they're out of the weather (like under the eaves), but a bigger problem they have is that bugs can get inside too easily - spiders, flies, bees, etc.

Well, I didn't say it COULDN'T be done, or that there was no use for it... just that there wouldn't be a lot of call for a network port on a portable system, since in a situation where space, weight and power consumption are important design considerations, a network jack would be a lower priority

how is that a moving part?? The iris moves; it's motor-driven.

Ha, not in my world About once every six months, we get a call for a "camera down" that turns out to be a "camera stolen", almost always from one of our gas stations. The last one, just about a month ago, they climbed on the roof of the c-store and ripped down a camera that was on the roof parapet in an EH3512 housing on a short pedestal mount. We're pretty certain it's always for the same reason: people with grow ops or drug houses want cameras to watch their approaches, and they don't want to go buy them. Stupid thing is, a lot of these places still spec these kinds of housings rather than the domes... one site, there are a pair of IQ511s in EH3512s, attached to the front of the building with the standard bundled wall mounts, no more than 12' up... and they're not attached to much more than the Alucobond buildign shroud. Toss a rope over the mount, one good tug, and you've got yourself a $1000 megapixel IP camera in a nice weatherproof housing. This, mind you, was the spec of the oil company's head office, and there's no changing anyone's minds with reason. Thankfully, we were just sub-contracting on that job... Funny thing is though, I drove past that site the other day... the cameras are still there, some 4 years later. Wow. Tempted to go nab them myself

Ahhh, nice... mobile camera platforms, cool.

Seems to me that network will be somewhere further down the design priority list for a mobile unit, as very very few are going to be networked WHILE mobile...

Okay, so go with the NEW desk lamp Anyway, I'm just thinking that an articulated arm like that would be more effective - the thing I've generally found with goosenecks (having spent many years as a live-sound engineer and dealt with goodeneck mic stands regularly) is that they're either really stiff and hard to move, or if they're easy to move, they tend to be so weak and soft that they don't stay put, or at least bounce and shift a lot after you've moved them. A good arm with properly loaded and balanced springs and well-designed joints (Teflon washers, etc.) would probably hold the camera a lot steadier while being far easier to move and position. If budget is no object, you could probably even look into something custom-built... like I say, it's the same type of arm often used for surgical lights, so maybe a manufacturer of those would be interested in helping out.

Hey, slight topic shift... there was a news item locally today, it's the seventh anniversary of our "Bait Car" program here in BC... widely regarded as the largest and most effective program of its kind in North America (according to the news copy, anyway). Some classic videos to be had too: www.baitcar.com "The Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT) is serving notice that we are turning up the heat on car thieves with the introduction of new ‘Bait Car Live’ technology in all of our Bait Cars. ‘Bait Car Live’ now provides for live audio and video feed which is viewed in real time by the police dispatcher. The dispatcher will immediately be able to tell the police over the radio how many occupants there are, their descriptions, whether they have any weapons and what other crimes they are talking about."

Wonder if you could get an articulated-arm desk lamp and modify it to suit the purpose? Something along these lines: Could even find a used/junked one where the lamp itself doesn't work, and just salvage the arm. This is the same type of mount used for a typical surgical lamp, I believe.

Well, you could stick to cameras and DVRs that DO support Mac... don't give your business to the companies that don't support you. Of course, some remote software will work in a Windows virtual machine on the Mac using something like Fusion or Parallels.

More importantly, if it's 2% milk, what's the other 98%?

Keep in mind that a most bullet cams are just board cams in little metal tubes...

I don't follow... When a domain expires, it remains "on hold" for a period (usually 60 or 90 days, depending on the TLD), during which time you can still renew it and nobody else can "snatch it up". It will often continue to work for upwards of a month after official expiry, via cached DNS entries.

Can you provide screenshots or stills of this effect? It's not uncommon for day/night cameras to switch to night mode and DVRs to show color artifacts in the B&W video.

If you don't need a permanent system - ie. you just want to catch this one person and aren't worried about having camera coverage all the time in your house, I'd go with something like the covert PIR cam as well, such as in the flyonthewall.co.uk link. You might want something that you can plug-in to power just so you're not constantly swapping batteries, but that sort of thing will allow you to pop up a couple of inconspicuous cameras with no additional wiring needed, get the footage you need to prosecute, and then either store the cameras for future use, or sell them off to recoup some of the cost. I've seen similar types of cameras built into all manner of everyday devices - smoke detectors, desktop pencil sharpeners, computer speakers, clocks... the one company whose products we used to use has since vanished from the market, but there are plenty of others out there.

I guess the question is, then, is that noise inherent to the camera, or a result of the recording? Most DVRs use pretty heavy compression because storage time is an important factor; many allow you to adjust the compression/quality balance and even use different codecs, but pretty much all are still using some form of lossy compression. The NLC5700 should give you pretty good output on its own... for a time there, our main fuel-services client was spec'ing NLC5500s for general store views and NLC5700s for the front-door ID shots and anywhere else a higher-quality picture was required or difficult lighting was encountered.

Omniscape does it all internally as well - as I recall, it's a 3MP camera with a 360-degree fisheye lens and integrated DVR.

Hmm, I sense much confusion here... We're talking 64-bit processors and operating systems, and whether capture hardware drivers and recording software is compatible with them. What sort of processors are in the cameras are completely irrelevant; all they need to do is spit out a data stream, and the software needs to be able to decode it.

Most "pro-quality" IP cams will do at least 15fps at 1MP, and some will give you a full 30fps at 2MP. For example: So, you run at 1.3MP, get your full-motion 30fps, and you still have four times the resolution of analog camera.

Arecont makes a 360-degree model - essentially four cameras in one housing, and the images are stitched together internally for a single output. Also, take a look at the Capture Omniscape: http://omniscape360.com/home.htm

Like I said, see if you can track down some used National NLC5700s. They have a rotary switch for selecting your shutter speed in the setup panel. AFAIK there's also a switch for disabling AGC, so the electronics won't be compensating for changing light either. Screw on a standard C-mount or CS-mount lens, and you're good to go.

Yeah, I could go along with that. They're building a system that's going to require completely new cameras, and completely new capture hardware, and it's still going to be limited to ~2MP (assuming they adhere to HDTV spec). The main purpose of megapixel in the first place is to get past current resolution limitations of analog video, so bumping up against another pre-defined limit before you even get started does seem pretty backwards to me. It still won't address issues of poor low-light performance, because that's a limitation of physics and sensor size.

You should be able to order a replacement dome directly from Pelco (or through your local distributor).

Hmm, here again, I'm going to recommend Vigil systems (www.3xlogic.com) - no, I don't work for them, but we use their systems a lot and are very happy with them. They fit all your criteria, and then some... of particular interest to your needs is the fact that the latest version also includes built-in video analytics, which allows far more complex fine-tuning of alarm triggers than simple motion detection (so you're not getting alerts "everytime the wind blows"). They have 16- and 32-channel models and can nicely handle a mix of analog and IP cameras. I'd give more details, but right now I have to head out the door... but if you have any more questions, I'll try to answer them when I get back