fa chris

Many companies are nationwide, as in they have branches and installers all over the nation. Other companies have travel crews who do nothing but travel around the US installing something specific. Yet other companies handle project management by subcontracting local installers all over the nation, so you basically higher a construction team who handles all the subs and you have a single point of contact. PM me what you're looking for, system wise and product wise, maybe I can point you in the right direction.

Nope. Light shouldn't effect a PIR at all.

Try a heater/blower housing.

I have a dewalt 20volt max li-ion hammer drill / impact driver combo and love it. things are very light weight, battery lasts forever & charges quick, and the impact driver makes driving screws super easy on your arms. Also has 3 LED's around the chuck so your stuff is always lit up. As for a store for cctv specific items, see if there's a local ADI Security near you and register with them. http://adiglobal.us/Company/Pages/StoreLocator.aspx . They carry all the products, installation materials, and tools you'll need.

To bad, it was a useful little encoder, put a bunch in not to long ago. At least they gave us a replacement before discontinuing the old one, how often do manufacturers leave us hanging these days? Typically if we're using video encoders it's on older cameras anyways during a head end upgrade and they get swapped out when the camera is finally upgraded to IP in the future, so I'm not sure why H.264 would even play a part. Is anyone really upgrading an analog system to an NVR then replacing analog cameras with more analog cameras?

Panduit PanTher LS8E hand held printer is pretty awesome. Not cheap though. It's more for telecom guys who will spend an entire day labeling patch cords.

We put surge suppressors on any copper going outside, all your coax, power, data, or cat5. http://www.ditekcorp.com/product-subcategory2.asp?ProdCatID=16 http://www.protectiongroup.com/Surge/Data-Line-Protectors/Application/CCTV-Surge-Protector I'm don't know the MSRP of these but both of these manufacturers put out solid units, you can probably find cheaper though. You could also try grounding any conduit or junction boxes around.

This is why I try to avoid using PTZ's at all anymore. They're never looking the right way and are only good for active surveillance with a security guard somewhere controlling it and a few specialized applications. With 180/360 degree cameras out now there's no need to have one constantly moving back and forth "monitoring" an area.

You might review ZoneMinder since it's free, open source, and works on linux. Those three things are pretty unique these days.

Was that a squirrel at the end?

http://www.transition.com/TransitionNetworks/Products2/Family.aspx?Name=SISTP1010-380-LRT&ProductID=45374 Lots of industrial switches out there for this, but they are pricey.

I've used a lot of Aaxeon switches which are similar. The power input is a terminal block, not a plug-in style, might make a difference on a residential install.

It's a solid effort Shockwave, and sometimes it's funner to figure things out for yourself. Everyones right on the negatives of auto tracking though. You gotta keep in mind with our comments the difference between the mindset of a hobbyist/DIYer and a professional. The professionals are always very critical because we gotta sell this stuff for a living, and if it doesn't live up to the expectations we get burned. Auto-tracking is something many here have in fact, been burned on, so yea it can touch on a nerve when someone is trying to use it. The hobbyist/DIYer just wants something cool in their home, which is perfectly fine and which other guys like yourself will appreciate. I don't think I'd ever sell an analog to a customer ever again if I have the choice, but I'd still put them in my own home because price vs quality still hits the spot there, but our customers expect much more. The best luck we've had with auto tracking is using video analytic's with thermal cameras watching the entire scene which move and zoom the PTZ to wherever the incident is at. Was. Not. Cheap. But oh man, it was so sexy.

I've had good luck with Veracity's Highwire stuff, but haven't used it extensively or tested distance with it either. I'd give a shot for what you're doing though.

What if you need to make changes? Then you need to access outside where the camera is, then possibly also the inside too? What if the inside is very hard to get to? What kind changes? Don't need access to the splices/connections to refocus or clean the camera. You can run the conduit horizontal outside the building and stub into wherever it's easily accessible, or go straight into the building and mount the box where it's easily accessible, you have a little bit of room to play with. If it's not possible to stub into the building to minimize penetrations, then I'm a fan of putting a box next to or above the camera and running flex conduit over to it.

I try to put the box on the inside if possible, then stub conduit outside to the camera.

Not familiar with either or what you're trying to get out of them, but I'd go with the first one if I was blind buying one to learn about current CCTV. The first one was published in 2010, and specifically says it talks about IP based equipment. The second one was published in 2006, so it will be dated. The commercial industry has completely changed in the past 6 years, going from almost exclusively analog to almost exclusively IP for new installations. Residential is still on analog because of the price points but it will catch up sooner than later.

Most DVR's use their own format (usually some variation on one of the standard formats) to make them proprietary and include a special player to play the video. Make sure you're using the proper player or you won't have any luck. This isn't meant to make things difficult on the end users, but it's to make sure nobody could tamper with the video if the case gets taken to court. If someone could have tampered with it, it wouldn't hold up as evidence.

It's been my experience, any underground conduit eventually ends up flooded so avoid what you would normally use indoors.

Two schools of thought on refurbished. One being red flags because it already broke once or is used equipment, the other being a bench tech has checked it over and verified it's all in working order, so it should be better than a new unchecked product rolling off the assembly line. I know some people who swear by refurbed products for personal use.

This? http://plusteksecurity.com/support/compatibility-list.html

I see, just need a PoE injector. I guess I could see integrating an injector into the end line device.

I'm not sure why it would be needed. I assume if you have a power line you already have power, you can't send 48volts down 120vac line, but you can put any normal PSU at the end of the 120vac line and get 48volts.

ssnapier, are you using software raid? you may need a better raid card.

to much overhead for raid 10 and the speed typically isn't performance isn't needed. we use raid1 for the OS, raid6 for the storage.