camera-newbie

Thanks Matt.. In this case none of my runs are more than 100' max.. So even at 100' and 24v, I doubt a .1v loss is going to cause any problems in this case (for a light).. In terms of bringing the cable in to a single gang box, I was surfing around and found these.. namely cable glands -- something I'd NEVER heard of before but are exactly what I was looking for! Now I just need to find the right size for the job.. I think this one might be about right if my cable size is about the same as a quad RG6 in diameter (~.27" or ~7mm).. Then I can just screw it into one of the single gang box ports or right into the cover if I want.. Am I off-base here from what you pro's do?

One other question.. I can power the illuminator with either 24V AC or DC per the specs.. I'm assuming I'll get less voltage drop using AC -- correct.. If that's the case I'm assuming I can hook this up to the existing power supply for my two analog cameras since it's 24VAC.. With that in mind, I'm thinking I can probably use my existing supply of CAT5 cable to power this -- even with it consuming 12W max, I'll probably just split the cable equally and have 4 conductors for one side of the 24VAC and the other 4 conductors for the other side.. Is 12W too much to pull in this configuration? Thx!

IR is always good if you've got a camera that can't deal with low light well.. I just bought some Raytec Vario I2's to help mine but haven't installed them yet (just came yesterday). They're really small -- about the size (or a bit smaller than) a box of pop tarts..

No.. I think he meant what he said.. Doh! I think you're stuck with PC based in this area -- I've not seen any Mac design software

All motion detection is done in the cameras or encoders. you will not reduce any CPU power with motions and you should not be using much to begin with. Ahh.. Learned something new then.. In this case it would be in my encoder since the cameras are analog Thanks for the clarification! P.S. You're correct that, in this case, the Avigilon software does NOT use much CPU regardless and was one of the reasons I specifically selected that software over the rest..

We had the same issue with ours detecting motion from moving trees & shadows.. I've switched one camera over to be completely controlled by a single Optex HX40 wireless sensor which you may not find cost effective but if you need to have multiple sensors this is the way to go.. I've got my Inovonics receiver mounted in the garage approx. 75 feet away from the battery powered transmitter inside the HX40. Eventually I'll put a few more of these in place.. I just purchased a used HX40 from 'thebay' for $26+shipping.. I don't believe it's got a transmitter but that can be rectified I believe.. The price was certainly right since these sensors are in the high $100 range when new -- without any transmitter+battery. Anyway, I now only see false positives occasionally now (reduced by about 70-80%) -- usually when it's windy out and blowing a swing around that we've got in the yard. Our side yard gets late afternoon shadows and is breezy so I usually get a few hours of recorded video everyday from the shadows moving due to wind.. I suspect that another HX40 over there to control the camera would be a HUGE improvement and would likely reduce the amount of CPU power Avigilon is using to examine incoming camera data for motion -- hence possibly saving some $$ in consumed power -- that's my theory anyway!

I'm coming in a bit late in this discussion.. I was poking around a dealer site in MA that is going to get me pricing on some Raytec equipment and noticed that Clearpix was a vendor they use.. In checking out the clearpix site I see they offer an encoder -- in looking at it, it looks EXACTLY like the Avigilon encoder down to size, screws, and every other detail. Are their cameras Avigilon's too? I was checking out their 180 degree pano camera and it's also appearing to be the same as Avigilon.. Interesting..

Ok.. So I promised on another thread that I would post pics of my always work-in-progress wiring closet which is not really a closet per-se but a bunch of space in the garage that serves as an end-point for all of the low-voltage wiring in our house. This closet holds / services wiring for the following stuff : Ethernet drops Phone drops - no daisy chaining her mam! Video drops and now Cameras I've had to increase the surface area of the patch-board located between the two 36" Open-House enclosures you can see in the photo below. Please pardon the mess nearby -- I've got a pile of container boxes that are stacked up in the bottom right corner -- holding all of my low voltage supplies I use.. So, in the photo above, I've got two OpenHouse 36" enclosures -- the left serves all phone/ethernet cabling to the entire house care of the large grey conduit on the top of that box. In the top-left corner of the photo is my Cisco 18xx series router mounted on the wall with one wireless AP barely visible just below it and almost out of cameras view -- although you can see the remote mounted antenna for it that obviously hasn't been mounted yet (sitting on top of the enclosure)! The 2nd enclosure on the right handles all incoming video connections (RG6) from various rooms in the house -- 98% of them are spares. In the 2nd photo above, we take a closer look at the wiring board placed between the two enclosures.. The items on the board are as follows (top-to bottom, left to right) : Fronius Solar inverter data acquisition box - monitors our two IG3000 inverters, a used but working Ultrak 24VAC Power Supply for CNB dome cameras, next row : OOMA VOIP phone box, terminal block for CNB cameras - one side is CAT5 from individual cameras, the other goes to the power supply & Avigilon encoder.. next is an 8 way lossless video splitter (don't recall the brand) -- takes OTA antenna signal and splits it without degrading signal quality. 3rd row has the newly installed Inovonics EN4214MR receiver receiving movement notices from an Optex HX40 PIR/Microwave sensor which in turn is connected to the Avigilon encoder as an input. Next to the Inovonics receiver is one of my 3 HDHomeRun dual-tuners for my SageTV setup -- each of these tuner boxes has twin network based tuners -- input an RG6 antenna signal and it will output a stream of digital bytes via the Ethernet port. The next row has the Avigilon 4-port Analog encoder with 2 ports active currently to my CNB VCM-24VF cameras. The last row on the far left has my cable modem -- partially visible along with a power-brick velcro'd to the board. The next picture is a close-up of the Inovonics receiver mentioned above along with my passive PoE injector and the bottom of the picture is part of the Avigilon encoder box. More pics in the next post..

No problem! I've got two computers on 24x7 (one Mac, one PC - the PC hosting my TV server s/w & Avigilon), but we've got a few laptops, printers, and the typical wireless devices (iphones, ipad, nooks,etc).. Why pre-wire for so many? I've been in houses in the past that had no wiring in some rooms and didn't want my house that way.. It was super cheap to do at the time since ALL walls were completely open (and the ceilings too).. In practice, we've got ONE phone jack, in use, in the entire house! " title="Applause" />

Thanks! I've updated the first message in the thread showing the PoE injector -- it's now got a link to the place I got it from.. I particularly liked the price ($20US).. As long as your devices are 48V PoE capable it'll work for you -- this will NOT provide lower voltages,etc.. It's fixed at 48VDC.. I should note that mine has no case protecting it -- when I bought it, they were still getting the cases fabbed up and I wasn't able to wait for several weeks to get the packaged version so I just bought this one -- it works great and has screw holes to mount it.. Just don't screw it down too hard or the board may bend.. I may take you up on the suggestion to relocate the phone/ethernet blocks -- at some point I may need to move from that 16 port switch to a 24 port switch -- I think I'm down to the last port.. Doh! Shows you how much planning gets you! By the way, this does not include another mini enclosure in our bedroom closet that collects all the ethernet traffic from the rear of the house and sends it to the garage on one of those ports -- hence only needing 16 ports here.. I've got another 8 port switch in the rear of the house.. P.S. I'm not going to take any photos of my attic -- I've attached all of the cables using 3M cable stackers like in the image below : It could be cleaner but at least the cables aren't draped all over the floor like I've seen in some attics I've been in over the years.

The next photo shows a closer internal view on the left 36" Openhouse cabinet seen closed in earlier photos. This is where all of the Ethernet & phone wiring comes in from various places within the house. The white cables are from the various ethernet drops. The blue cables in the bottom two patch boards are for the phone connections, the top-two for ethernet. The rest of the blue wires are short ethernet cables -- I would have used white but ran out and couldn't justify buying another box just because the color matched.. I've got a 16 port Netgear unmanaged gigabit switch in the top-right corner -- it's been reliable but the power supply hasn't -- it flaked out on me before 2 years was done -- I just bought an aftermarket one and my problem was solved. Here's another view: Here's a close-up of the Avigilon encoder, cable modem and a white-washed Inovonics receiver.. I've tried to make sure this stuff is as clean as possible -- using Velcro to attach boxes that aren't setup for wall mounting, making custom ethernet cables (pain in the rear), mounting tabs to hold extra long cables in small bundles,etc.. Anyway, hopefully you can get an idea of my work ethic from looking at my DIY job here.. I'll post some pics in this thread later showing the cameras I've mounted,etc..

http://www.passivepoe.com/faq.html POE (passive or active) according to the above FAQ can't exceed 300FT.. You might be able to send 24VAC on a separate cable to the far side and then convert that to 12vdc or similar.. I think there was a thread similar to this recently -- within the past month or so..

Ahh.. You need that cool software they use on the CSI shows that can take an unfocused image and turn it into a properly focused one in no time flat and with any image..

I think you'll find that most people on this forum will say "good luck" and leave it at that -- hence the lack of responses. If you search the forum here for things like "q-see" or similar you'll see a pattern -- all of these pre-built systems are generally garbage.. To better define what you want out of your security/camera system, you need to provide more information.. Namely, are you looking to have something that will provide good enough images to provide to the local police dept or something more like -- "ooh a burglar taking my TV while I'm not home.. Too bad my camera can't make out the guys face! Oh well.. Off to Best Buy to get another.."? None of those packaged systems are going to give you anything that will allow you to see the perps face -- unless they stick their face right into the camera filling the entire frame.. Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit but you probably get the gist. Anyway, you need to think about what you want before you just go buy something..

Anyone here ever order anything from rayled.com, which is a euro-zone company? They've got what appears to be half-decent pricing on the Vario's over the lone price I've received so far here in the US from a local dealer I've used in the past.. Just thought I'd check..

Are the cameras analog or IP? I'm going to assume analog based on your comments. I've got a pair of analog cameras running with a single cable -- one CAT5e to each -- carries both video and power (24VAC) -- no need for the extra cable unless they're very power hungry, have integrated heaters that are power hungry,etc.. For the PTZ camera you may need an extra cable but I'll let others chime in on that one since I've never used any.

Yeah, but that doesn't make the camera decent per the specs -- it's still a toy and not much beyond that. For a good name-brand/supported IP PTZ camera you're looking at somewhere between 10x and 15x that price..

It doesn't seem like the IR is even turned on -- or the LEDs are REALLY weak-- I'd bet with a decent IR illuminator the camera would work great at night -- of course a decent illuminator may cost more than the camera did (I didn't look at the price but am guessing). Just my 0.02 worth..

the other option would be to change to a more standard bullet camera that has a CS mount lens and then go shopping just about anywhere for the lens of your dreams.. Just my $0.02 worth..

double your price range and you'll have many more to consider -- likely with better known brands.. After setting up my first two analog cameras and playing the go-back-n-refocus (x N tries), I'm thinking it'd be REALLY nice to have a camera that can focus itself remotely via software -- no more need to dig out the ladder to make a 5 second adjustment.. Just like I'm currently toying with the idea of an IR illuminator that has a remote control (the Raytec Vario) to configure it (power on/off, brightness, etc).. It's all down to that old addage-- you get what you pay for..

without knowing these cameras specifically, you might consider forcing them to go back to factory defaults and see if that changes anything.. They could be bad if that doesn't help any..

Your best bet is to see what others have done.. Do a google search on the phrase "structured wiring" and you'll get tons of hits. I've got mine in the garage, on the wall and have 2.5" grey low-voltage plastic conduit running down from the attic into some panels.. I've got probably 75+ cables coming in this way for phone, video, ethernet and stuff for monitoring my solar panels inverters.

Never heard of it.. Just keep in mind that you get what you pay for in terms of quality/features. I'm going to assume these are analog cameras (I didn't bother searching to see)..

Sean is right.. There was another thread here somewhere talking about IR + Babies and whether its a good thing or not.. I won't get into it here -- you can use the search feature in the top-right corner to locate the thread and make your own decision.. Also, I hope your baby isn't wandering the neighborhood at night -- hence the need for the 300' IR..

Cameras that can be remotely focused, in this situation, would seem like huge feature to keep you from wasting a bunch of time running back & forth playing focus-master on your ladder... I'm not sure what all vendors have cameras that fall into that bucket but I know Avigilon does as Matt indicated above. I'm sure there are others..