the toss

I have always found that when the initialisation (installation) process doesn't complete it is due to a faulty hard drive. It will usually give a message " No HDD " or " Can't find Hard drive " but not always.

Typical of a cheap camera where they have tried to overcome its poor low light performance by decreasing the shutter speed when in IR mode. This results in a moving subject within the frame (a bit like time exposure) and results in the blur you are seeing.

When they are on the lot & parked or as they enter/leave?

All good advice from shockwave except for the twist on BNC

There is no problem running multiple cameras on one cat 5/6 cable as long as you keep power/distance requirements in mind. Those pre-made cables you have are nothing but shielded audio cable and are a constant source of grief. I have never seen a solder termination balun , only clamp or IDC. The termination of the cat 5/6 pair to the balun will be a point of possible fatigue or fracture for years to come.

Tip #1 - Get CCD not CMOS cameras Tip #2 - Any stated IR range can be halved & the result will still be disappointing.

Yeah , a description of "the job" would be good

So the left, right, com, auto connectors are just empty show offs? No they are not empty showoffs. They are the control connections for left , right & auto as previously described. But this is done by a switching arrangement NOT by RS485.

Your DVR will control the PTZ via the RS485 only if you have a PTZ camera designed with a RS485 receiver/decoder. Your rotating base is simply that -a rotating base NOT a PTZ

Does it do this continually all night or only at a certain level of darkness?

By connecting "left" & "com" together via a switch the camera will pan left. By connecting "right" & "com" together via a switch the camera will pan right. By connecting "auto" & "com" together via a switch the camera will auto rotate. When I say via a switch it can be via anything you wish to arrange.

I doubt that those terminals are RS485 but rather switched contacts. Connect "left" & "com" and it will pan left , "right" & "com" and it will pan right.

What you need is a composite to VGA converter, not a VGA to composite. It sounds like you have used a computer screen , you could always go out & buy a cheap flat screen TV and just plug straight into the video input

One of those would do as a temporary measure but I'm guessing they are shot which is why you were given them in the first place.

Then I'd be checking the videol lead connection (BNC) & if you are sure that is ok but it is still not working then scrap them

Ok, so they are 12Vdc. The camera board should be warm to touch. If not the camera is shot. If this is the case & you are going to be playing around with cameras a bit then there are lots of salvageable parts. Dome body , IR led board , and camera lens. Like most modern MSMC electronics it is not worth the time , effort or expense to try for a repair.

A few questions - are these 12Vdc , 24Vac or dual voltage? Is the camera board warm when powered up? Do you have a multimeter & test monitor?

Don't know where you are but in Australia - the newspaper adverts (tenders) , sign up to a tender search organisation (not free) , get approved as a preferred supplier for Government (near impossible compliance requirements), make yourself know to developers/project managers/construction companies. I've done one bank (never again), one Police Station (never again) and one railway station (never again) & I was left with the opinion that you need to quote 3 times the calculated cost to ensure you come out ahead. Things will change, costs wil increase & you have very little wriggle room because you are bound by a watertight contract thet you had very little (if any) input. Schools used to be a PIA with their specs ( conduit saddled exactly every 200m & no printing on the conduit showing type of thing) when it was all through the Education Department but now that schools have a fair bit of autonomy they are not too bad if you can get over the problems with the type of buildings they construct. Mostly my large jobs are shopping centres which came from doing one in a small country town that the developer couldn't get anyone to do. It helped that I did security, cctv, phone/data and PA/BGM. But getting back to your main question- most of my work is word of mouth

You won't get any colour information when operating under IR. It looks like the settings relevent to each other are set & cannot be changed. I'm thinking this is a fairly cheap camera

There is nothing unusual about the output of that camera, any analogue DVR will take it

The last two settings are as they say. The points at which the camera switches the IR in & out. The 1-100 scale is the amount of ambient light (1 being darkness & 100 being light) For most purposes the default setting will be ok. You cannot have the settings the same or you will get to a point where the light level is such that the camera won't know if it should go to IR or not & will rapidly switch between the two. I'm guessing that those default settings should be 30 & 50 not 3 & 5. So for example (using the default setting of day-night=30 & night-day =50 ) you might have a lot of ambient light in the area and want to delay the switching to IR to retain colour information for a bit longer. Simply make the day-night setting 20 and it won't switch to IR until it is a little bit darker. But as I said there is usually no reason to change these settings.

Why did you choose to use cat5 & baluns?

Why?

The joy of wireless!

I had the same problem with that style of camera (maybe not the same manufacturer) a while back. Unscrew the centre glass covering the lens and let it dry out, then replace. I had no further problems with it.