chesterfield

If we werent hemoraging money on benefits, including to those who claim assylum after being convicted of terror offenses, we may have enough money to pay for more police officers. Good old out of touch house of lords have just voted down a bill that wanted to see an introduction of a cap on benefits (welfare) to £26,000 ($41000) per year. Apparently this would have affected over 40,000 families in the UK. 40,000 families receiving over £26,000 per year in benefits. And full time minimum wage is under £12,000 - where exactly is the incentive to work. What exactly is their argument against the cameras? If they arent breaking the law or planning to break the law - where is the problem?

The only people with anything to fear from cameras, are those who are up to no good. How many of those residents would be asking the police for help if their shop/business/home was broken into? What if that camera recorded the offender? Its playing the race card for the sake of playing it. If the muslim community policed itself like they want us to believe they do, there would be no reason for them to feel "targetted" would there. There is no wonder the rest of the world laugh at the UK. We breed terrorists within our own borders, and then we cant take measures to police them. We daren't even deport convicted terrorists for fear they will use human rights legislation against us to allow them to stay. We just keep on supporting them. We really are a laughable nation when it comes to dealing with crime in our own borders.

Mine is purely a residential setup so load is minimal at present with only four cameras, 3 x 2mp, 1 x 5mp (although the 5mp is still not on as it is on its way from Canada at the moment). Cameras are 2mp domes (Avigilon - H264 compression) and 5mp Dome (Avigilon - JPG2000 compression) Ive calculated load at only around 60 Megabit for now (the camera install utility from Avigilon showed the 2mb cameras at 11-12mb when running at full 30ips), if I expand to the 8 cameras I envisage (a further 3 x 2mp and 1 x 5mp) then Im probably looking at around 120-150 Megabit depending on the bandwidth requirement of the jpeg2000 5mp cameras. Maximum client count at any one point I envisage would be two, with possibly a third remote viewing on the web or mobile. Obviously accounting for overhead and the need to communicate with cameras, clients and the NAS, using a single ethernet connection to do all the work, I could envisage possibly running into problems at a lower camera count than if the NAS and server had their own ethernet link to each other. As mine is just a domestic installation I will probably/hopefully never come close to that camera count though. For larger corporate size installations I would assume a dedicated nic for the link to the NAS would probably be more appropriate.

ReadyNas can do iSCSI, it is just not supported by Netgear and is a custom hack. http://whocares.de/readynas-goes-iscsi/ I do not own a readynas, nor have I attempted the above, so I cannot vouch for how well, or indeed if, it will work.

You can record to the NAS if it is set up as an iSCSI device. It does not need to have its own dedicated eithernet port to the server. This is exactly how I have set up my Avigilon server. The Avigilon software needs direct access to the drive root I believe as I noticed that once set-up the drive appeared to have only 5GB free (out of 2TB) even though the server had not recorded any data (no cameras attached at the time). In laymans terms I believe it creates an empty database within the space on the drive and begins to fill it/overwrite as necessary. I have no diagram of mine but I have all cameras connected to the 10/100 POE ports on a POE switch that has only 2 Gigabit ports. The server is connected to one Gigabit port on the POE switch, the 2nd Gigabit port links to a non POE 24 port gigabit switch. This non POE switch has all other network devices connected to it (pc clients, media NAS etc). It also has the NAS for the Avigilon software connected. The reason I did not have the server and Avigilon NAS connected to the same POE switch, is that I wanted gigabit access to the server from other clients within the home. I did not test trying to set up the NAS as a mapped drive, but looking at how the Avigilon server software addressed the drive, I doubt it would be possible without some serious tweaking of the server OS, and that would no doubt put a lot more requirement on the server processor than a simple iSCSI. This does however mean that you will only be able to use the NAS for Avigilon (or at least the portion of the NAS you assign to the iSCSI volume). Hope that helps.

Ill be following you in the DIY route for my install over the weekend. Just awaiting one more camera that should be arriving from Canada early next week. Depending on the install I can see where costs can mount up though for installers (does the job require other equipment hire like scissor lifts, scaffolding, more time required to route cables through harder to reach areas etc etc - without knowing the exact layout, its hard to judge iof someone is trying to rip you off or not). I dont mind giving up my time to install my own equipment as I also enjoy playing with technology as a hobby. If it was a job I didn't want to do myself or didnt enjoy, then I would probably be happy to pay for somebody else to do it for me my time with my family at weekends and in the evenings can often be more valuable to me than the money it costs to pay somebody else to do the work. Having now built the server and installed the avigilon software, gateways and configured routers etc to run the network the way I want, I can see how anyone that is not knowledgeable in the world of IT / IP could get easily confused and require the help of a professional. Getting the cameras in this weekend and configured etc will be another learning exercise for me but I am perhaps taking my technical knowledge of IP and networks for granted and not considering how much that knowledge could be charged out at if I were doing the install for somoene else. Its a bit unfair to say the job the installers do isn't worth £4k without knowing the full scale of what was/is involved but it depends how much you value your own time too. If you were a CEO whos hourly rate was £500 an hour, would you be taking a day of your time out to install your system - or just paying the £4k as its actually the cheaper option etc.

I would agree with this, it would appear that the main concern is the weight, for both safety and security. If you can remove that vulnerability then you can remove the tip/theft danger somewhat. Although not in the security industry our business does have lightweight portable items that are of value to our business, if they cannot be secured to the floor, the they are made heavy. To prevent or record in place vandalism though you would need the assistance of the others here for designing a small scale mobile surveilance system I would assume.

If they arent smart TV's, then another option (although costly) would be to have a small pc for each TV. I have used a couple within the home of the very small pc's that are designed to fix to the back of a monitor and feed the hdmi out from these to the TV set. That would do it, but as I say, would be fairly costly to do for all tv's.

Im guessing you sign off your own H&S paperwork I was offered a lift in one from a builder friend in order to decorate a Christmas tree, I passed on that. Dont envy you working at that time this morning, its not got above around 4 degrees all day as far as I can tell. Its ben very mild ofr the last couple of weeks too - just luck that it turns brass monkeys when you need to work outside. I have some jobs needing doing outside tomorrow too, and Im not enjoying the frost either. Hope all goes ok tomorrow

So you wrote all that just to point out your initial response to the thread was utterly useless? The post by the OP asked if it was a viable place to store a DVR, you stated it may not due to security (if there was any useful information in your first post), and I responded offering other alternatives if that were a concern for the OP. Apologies if my attempts to help the OP with other information he may find relevant opresses your desire to be queen and fountain of all knowledge here. Dub thing. I have a similar dilema to yourself. Dont want wires everywhere, want to kee as much of the equipment out of the way as possible, but if I do need to access the data/recorder, I dont want to have to make a trip into the loft very often. Depending on the age of the property in the UK (due to various building regulations), location, and the insulation used it may be fine to store an electronic device in the loft (here I am speaking from experience of several years dealing with IT including home servers from time to time). If temperatures do not fluctuate beyond the operating temperatures stated by the manufacturer then all should be ok - but other things to consider are moisture, amount of temperature fluctuation and air flow around the location you intend to site the DVR. As per fa chris' post although the operating temperatures may be within the specification, the exagerated fluctuation within these limits within in a loft space could shorten the lifespan of any drives.

You can use drive mirroring in Windows 7 to have the same data stored on two drives. Its a bit like software raid 1. Now if one of the drives were an iSCSIor eSATA, then you could mirror a drive within the machine with a drive external to the machine too. Heres an article on drive mirroring within Windows 7 (only available in professional or above): http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17926/use-drive-mirroring-for-instant-backup-in-windows-7/ hope this helps. Edited to add: If one of the drives is an external iSCSI or similar then you could have raid within that, adding an extra level of redundancy protection of you really wanted.

That would also suggest that in 87% of cases entry is not made by the roof. I intend to have all equipmet accessible, other than the raid array doing the recording. That way if an intruder finds the rack full of home server, cctv server, switches routers etc, then they may just remove that, leaving the raid array that has the actual vieo on it behind, as this will be located elsewhere. If it is a DVR, then you coule always run long usb cables for the mouse and keyboard to the location of the DVR, and then simply put an old redundant pc shell next to them with a "CCTV recorder" sticker or similar on it. Then any intruders would likely just do a runner with that and not realise its a dummy and the actual recording is taking place elsewhere?

Do you have any equipment running during the times that the camera is affected? Motors, fans, compressors, fridge units etc etc.. It sounds like there could be some electrical interference from something else causing this. What switches on at around sunrise and switches off at sunset in your building? If you can find that, then try switching it off and see if that is whats causing your problem

Now that I have found a provider that will sell me the software I want for my domestic use I have another decision to make. I can either use a standalone server and have the software record direct to that or theoretically I could create an iSCSI link to a raid device located away from the server. My thinking behind this is that should intruders break into the premises and also remove the CCTV server as part of a robbery, then I have no footage. If however the server is actually recording to a NAS drive located in another part of the building (attic) then if they remove the server, the footage would still reside on the NAS box located elsewhere. I would envision a server with two NICs, one on the same subnet as the cameras etc and the other NIC dedicated to the iSCSI link. Has anyone set up a NVR in this manner? Any positives/negatives of doing things this way?

Can I ask why the thread discussing business models etc was locked? Is it acceptable to have threads running to 4 pages from installers etc discussing how to avoid "smart" customers, berating them for using methods of getting quotes and then trying to do it cheaper, but when a customer has a thread discussing the business model of installers etc it gets locked? Why the double standards? To then not even be sent a message advising why its locked is poor moderation at best. Is there some written rule that we can only discuss and complain about customers tactics and not those of installers?

The actual prices didnt bother me, it was the way they hide them and the way I couldnt check them. I also have a supply only quote if I like too. Chopped the 3mp domes down to 2mp where necessary and its down to just under £4000 including VAT, delivered to my door. Happy Bunny Just need to decide on whether I go for the Avigilon software preloaded onto the server, or provide my own server. Will start another technical discussion now that I have a route to get the hardwareand software I want

You will be pleased to know I now have my quote. For the software and cameras it comes in within budget. 3 x 3mp outdoor domes with heater and 4-12mm lens 2 x 3mp indoor domes with 4-12mm lens 2 x 5mp outdoor domes with heater and 4-12mm lens 7 x conduit bases for domes 1 x 8 Channel standard Avigilon License Those particular components within the quote (which contains server & poe switch) comes in at £7,600 including VAT (taxes). Having chatted with installers and looked at the quality from 2mp cameras, I may be able to exchange the majority of the 3mp domes for 2mp domes in reality, as some only need to cover a 6m x 4m area. I am not an airport/ship dock or customs house. Just a house.

When I worked for a large IT company in the UK some years ago, I was involved in the rollout of wireless within their buildings and the research of wirless WAN links too. For this distance you will almost certainly be looking at point to point WAN either by radio or microwave. I have not kept up to date with this technology in any way, but as a start you may be looking at the product offerings of companies like these two (although there are doubtless countless more companies): http://www.meridianmicrowave.com/ http://www.trangobroadband.com/solutions/wireless-wan-outdoor-wide-area-network.aspx Hope this helps.

You could try ffdshow available here: http://www.dvd-guides.com/downloads/category/6-playerscodecs If it doesn't play the file directly try altering the file extension to avid, mp4 or even mkv. H264 is a codec standard that can be used within those file extensions so that could work. Hope that helps

I know there have been recent cases of people being exempt from prosecution but I believe this is more a result of the cps taking note of the growing public anger toward a system which appears to favour the criminals rather than any specific change in the law. I believe Ken Clarke's justice bill adding clarification to existing laws was passed by parliament in November, but Im not aware of any changes to laws, just notes of clarification for existing ones. i.e the use of reasonable force can be undertaken if you perceive a threat, you don't have to wait to be attacked first. I think the bill is still possibly with the house of lords at present.

Thanks for that will have to see what the installers come up with and let you know. Hopefully they should get back to me at some point next week. Any views on budget for that list of devices? A simple yes its possible or no its not is ok if people dont want to give prices out etc...

uk law was changed 2011. you can protect yourself in your home or small buisness The law was not changed as far as I know. Plans to "provide clarity" to the existing law were spoken of, but there wer no changes to the rule of "use reasonable force". i.e if you shoot an intruder, you will still be arrested. Though gun ownership is still relatively rare in the UK. Plus you cant just have them lying around either, you must store them in a locked police approved storage cabinet. Usually made of steel, and you cant have the key in the same room as the safe. So you cant just grab one quickly The video above states that they cant think of a single American that ended up in prison for killing an intruder. Over here there are people in prison for just injuring intruders, never mind killing them. It truly is an incrediby stupid situation. I hope the evidence gathered for the OP is useful and the theives are caught. But then thats a whole different topic of what punishment they will receive. In the US you at least seem to deter criminals, or thats the impression we have over here. Our justice system just hands out Mickey Mouse sentences half of the time.

Over here its a completely different game sadly. As above, if its not the original source, it is inadmissable. There is a whole load of red tape associated with our legal system At present, if somebody were to come onto my property, break into my house and I protected my family by just pushing them down the stairs, if the intruder breaks their arm or something, I can be arrested and taken to court and ordered to pay them compensation. There is a famous case in the UK of a farmer who shot two people that had broken into his home, he killed one and injured another. He was initially convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The injured intruder three years later was awarded legal aid (state funded aid) in order to sue the farmer for loss of earnings because of the injuries he sustained while attempting to rob the property. The case was eventually thrown out however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_%28farmer%29

Services that are set to manual may be started by other processes other than a human restarting them. If there are other services installed that rely on the services set to manual in oredr to run, they could start the manual services. Any programs set to start up in the background or on a windows system to the taskbar, can also start services that are set to manual. Hope that helps

Id go with the H264 indoors if the 2mp was enough for the living room - which I think it will be. However for the garage I would like as much detail as possible and I did not think that th H264 with auto lenses went above 2mp. The present garage installation calls for about a 4-5mm lense to cover the width of the garage at the distance of 5-6m. The 5mp externals would need 5mm lenses given the distance to target and scene width. Ive been using this calculator to come to those conclusions: http://www.plugnplaytechnologies.com/av/avigilon%20-%20the%20best%20evidence%20-%20%20camera%20resolution%20and%20lens%20estimator.htm Ideally Im looking to get around 75px/ft or at minimum 60px/ft. I know I cant cover the whole house at that resolution for the budget, but pinch points of entrances, out buildings & entances/exits to the property, and doors to the building along with two rooms internally should hopefully be possible. The installer will hopefully be able to advise on different lenses to cover the relevant areas, but hopefully Im not a million miles out. What do you think - is that equipment within budget or am I way out? The lenses are the one item I havent found any prior evidence of pricing on. Clearly if they are $1000 a piece then I may be out of luck, but I hope they aren't