Adam Daley

I'm curious what you guys all use on your iPads for walkthroughs? I currently use Notability as it allows me to take notes/pictures and it saves it all as a single PDF which I can than review/email later. Some folks I work with use Evernote, but i'm not a fan of their software or the fact that you have to pay for it (Notability syncs with dropbox). I use the dropbox iOS app so that it syns my iPad photos as well so I have a backup of the large images. What do you guys use during security walkthroughs?

I've had success putting OEM firmware on a HIK vision camera... can't say if the newer models will work but i'm using some of their older models that have been out a while.

So im having some issues wondering if anybody knows anything. I build DVR's all day long, you guys know that. I switched from the P4 chipset to the i3 and i7 1156 chipset a while ago. Had great results. Much faster systems and great stability. I was using a Gigabyte GA-H55-USB3 motherboard which has a Intel H55 chipset. Worked wonderfully. Unfortunatly for some reason my distributor stopped selling that particular motherboard. So recently I picked up a few Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3. About same price, gave me an extra PCI Express 2.0 slot which is nice, one less PCI but thats okay i rarely if ever used 3 pci slots. Well our first build was fine, we had 2 1120-16-A cards. The builds today however had issues. I typically in a 32 system use 1 800-16 PCI and 1 800-16 PCI Express. Well it used to work but today my guys could NOT get the system to boot with a PCI card in. They tried 3 motherboards, all using 1 800-16 PCI card, nothing worked. I ended up giving them another 800-16 PCI Express card i had, worked just fine. So it seems im having an issue with that motherboard. Its using a Intel Z68 chipset. So right now im going to try a Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3 which uses a Intel P67 chipset. Looks like same board as im have now, only different chipset. Its also about $10 cheaper. Anybody have experience like I have???

Anybody else having issues with the GeoVision IP cameras, constantly recording at night when its dark? We do a lot of interior IP cams, and im noticing in the dark, they recording constnatly due to the noise they pickup at night, since they can't see well in the dark. Causing non-stop recordings at night, eating up space.... any idea how to fix this?

Anybody else getting these Software Incompatible With Location errors... i got them once on a DVR, last year, didnt know what it was. Now lately im getting them on a LOT of the DVR's in installing. So far about 10 or so DVR's have this error. I've asked GeoVision and they just ask me for the serial #, some of which I don't have as we installed them and forgot to write down serials. Other times i've given them the serial and they said they'd find out from corporate, but i never get a response back... im not sure whats going on, but we're installing DVR's for clients, they MUST say on, otherwise whats the point in a damn DVR. I cant risk having the DVR's turn off because of this error... Usually its on a 32 channel system I see the error, but not everytime... anybody know whats causing this? 99% of the machines are running Windows XP Pro

You should be able to fit that in there. Its a pretty small camera, i have one at home.

Yeah just uninstall your old version, reboot, then install new version, reboot. Should work fine. I never touch drivers. I've gone fomr 8.4.0.1 to 8.5 and to 8.5.3 without installing new drivers, no real need honestly.

All depends. I don't know your exact system specs but YES it will work. But it may fail/crash the system, lock up the system. I have a lot of problems running dual PCI cards. I like to run 1 PCI and 1 PCI-Express, much more compatible. I have though built MANY 2xPCI systems, but again, it all depends on the motherboard. Im using an Asus Mobo now and i3/i7 CPU's (1155), SandyBridge, and I need to use 1 PCI express and 1 PCI. I tend to use 2xPCI-Express and have rock solid performance. I also have good performance with 1 PCI and 1 PCI -Exress but since I can support dual PCI-Express, i go that route. I've also had good luck lately with the newer B version cards, not that you picked those up for $100. But $100 for a GV-800-16 I dunno... that sounds fishy. That's WAYYYYYYYYYYYY below what they should cost, im talking WAY below, you sure you didnt end up with counterfeit cards?

Question... anybody know how to backup the LPR settings when using the GeoVision LPR software? I have to replace a client's hard drive. I've backed up the main GeoVision system but im not sure if that backed up the LPR software settings. It'll take me a whole day to fine tune the settings/colors/etc... we did with the current LPR setup.

NY here. Am I happy, not really. Then again its not exactly on the same price level as the high-quality stuff. It KINDA works. You really need the LPR camera aimed dead on with GeoVision. I mean it works if you need it to keep track of vehicles coming/going but you don't need rock solid results. We get a lot of false readings picking up company lettering/etc... When it does capture plates its not bad. The recognition works decently. Im not as thrilled as I'd like to be though, really wish they'd put more work into their software. Its also a pain to configure, way too much fine tuning. We spent hours/days driving around in circles trying to get it right, to the point where it worked great on our test vehicle... but then a truck/car that was different would come through, and it wouldnt pick up. As for backup, i ended up copying the entire directory which seemed to do the trick.

When you try and access the cameras webpage, do you see the title bar change to something about GeoVision? If so that tells me its seeing the camera. I used to have a lot of issues accessing IP devices, where it would never load to the login page. GeoVision of course couldnt figure out the issue. Try from another machine, see if it works. But if the title bar doesnt even show GeoVision then theres another issue. I forget how to reset them. I think you power it on and then hold the reset button for about 60 seconds

GeoVision tech support baffled??? Noooo really? (rolls eyes). I find that i usually start up a chat session with them just to blow off steam, and fix it myself. Theres a few good eggs there who will look into an issue (Chee for example), but some of them, especially this one girl, are about as usefull as asking SIRI for help... Anyway, yeah windows 7 is prolly your best bet if it solved your issues. Im still using Windows XP in my ghost images too... REALLY need to upgrade one of these days but im lazy and just like what i know works... but im getting hit with memory liimts and HD size limits lately so i really should start doing this. Maybe Friday I will since i may have time, hasta be done.

You remembered to turn on the service on the DVR itself right? The DVR itself has the control center service that has to run that connects to the Control Center server itself... its a little thing but its usually forgotten about...

Not here... all I can think of is maybe your cable isnt working in the cold... I try and get my guys to use an 18/2 cable, but most of the time they ran a cat5 cable. We're not using outdoor cat5 cable as the cables not outside really. We have a hole behind the PTZ mount and the cable goes out the wall, directly into ptz housing. For those cases where theres a covered cable that goes above/below the camera, its protected in a plastic housing. So my question is what kind of cable did you use for the 485 and is it outside?

Yeah what rory said.... also keep in mind even if you increase the recorded resolution it may not show up full screen. If your monitor resolution is say 1024x768 and the image is only 320x240 or 640x480 it will show that size... you can still zoom in,m but its not going to pixalate it by zooming in by default, its going to show it AS recorded.

I was going to suggest calling Keyscan, great tech support. Also just for future reference, in keyscan panels, make sure you power up your netcom boards. They may light up without power, but they DO require power. Also a good tip is to swipe a card and the panel will actually flash the bit type, look in manual for that info where it describes which leds to look for, very helpful.

Yeah welcome to my world. I'm a Topaz dealer and they are making me buy it. I need the newer software so that it works under Windows 7, since everybody is switching to Win7. They are making me buy it. I've refused to so far. I shouldnt have to pay for the upgrade.

So im assuming you want to replace what you have with GeoVision and you have 60 cameras? You have 2 monitors and some computer hardware. Well you'll want two seperate systems, each with 2 16 channel cards. I'd recommend the GV-1120-16 cards. They do have the video out but you dont want the card for that, you want it for the higher FPS. Each card will have 1 video out but its only good for 16 cameras, so you'd need 4 monitors between the 4 cards. Instead you'll just use the onboard vga (or the card) and display all 32 channels on each monitor. You'll have 4 blank spots, so i'd either leave 2 blanks on each or 4 blanks on the 2nd DVR> As for storage, im sorry i wasnt paying too much attention, but just hookup each DVR with the NAS, etc... so your recording. THe hardware SHOULD do the trick. I tend to use i7's when im doing 32 channels of video per DVR, but an i5 should be sufficient

Is it all the channels that are going black or only some (like all in the same column: 1/5/9/13 or 2/7/10/14 or 3/8/11/15 or 4/9/12/16) Maybe a little more info may help... you sure the dongle itself isnt maybe bad? Those can break sometimes. You say it comes on and then goes black... maybe your getting something shorting out thats causing an issue? A rogue camera maybe that has voltage going over the coax somehow and shorting it out (unlikely but hey, its happened to me before)

Thats not really a bad failure rate honestly. I mean I do hundreds of systems a year and I get about 2-3 a year that go bad. Typically the issues I have is an entire channel bank will go dead (i.e. cameras 1/5/9/13). I have not had much experience with the B cards yet. I just picked up one the other day, no problems yet with it. Its good if GeoVision is coming out with new hardware, usually when they do that they fix/tweek some bugs. The biggest thing you want to watch out for when building a DVR is your memory. We used to use memory with a voltage of 1.65V with the i3/i5/i7 series chipsets (1155) and after having issues and contacting Intel, learned the memory was too high. We had to switch to memory thats 1.5v and that solved a LOTTTTTTT of problems. OC isnt really a good idea when it comes to GeoVision, just stick with it out of the box. (not that your question asked about that, figured id let you know since it sounds as if you are building a DVR)

You cannot pair an earlier model GV-800 with the newer GV-800B series. I've verified this with my distributor AND in the field first hand. You'll need to pair either the earlier A+A together or the newer B+B together. You cannot use an A+B. Sorry for the bad news.

Contact your GeoVision distributor. They should be more then happy to provide you with the new software.

Ive never done it with a DVI cable, but i have with SVGA cables... give it a shot, id try a short cable first to see if it works

We always return to our distributor and it takes about 6 weeks usually id guess for RMA's. I just forget about them half the time. I believe they are just swapping out the cards we send back, not too sure. GV-IO boxes i think they repair, depends on whats wrong with the device

Like others said you need the codec. I always tell clients to hit the "save as exe" this way it saves the player/codecs it needs.