camera-newbie

Ok.. Thanks! I'll file that in the back of my head..

Doh! I guess that's something I was NOT aware of regarding the 940nm vs 850nm wave lengths.. I guess these are out then since they won't give me the coverage I need.. If you don't mind.. With a 850nm light source like these or some of the other non-ebay varieties, is the red glow really that noticeable? I think I read somewhere that it's only visible/obvious if you're standing directly in-line with the light but may not see if if you're off to one side or the other. I guess I'll keep looking and doing more homework! Thanks for the heads-up! You saved me from a costly mistake!

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread.. Just curious how far the suggested ebay dome model can throw light? I'm looking into my IR options for lighting our backyard and need something that will be fairly wide angle but can also light up an area approx 50' wide by 50' deep give or take. The specs on the Bosch Extreme ex26 look interesting but even at $290 for a refurb is almost out of my price bracket since I'd need a few of them for other areas as well.. If these little ebay domes can throw a nice pool of light out over a wide area perhaps they're the right light for the job but I'm a bit hesitant to try one without further info.. P.S. I do see someone ebaying the Bosch ex26's for $175 with buy-it-now but their description is a bit messed up -- mentioning 850nm and also 940nm.. But if you look at the model # mentioned it appears to be the 940nm model with 60 degree throw.. For that price perhaps it'd be OK to try one out..?

I'm using analog CNB cameras with an Avigilon encoder that can handle 4 cameras.. The encoder takes PoE and is considered a single channel when used with the Avigilon s/w (ACC) so it's fairly easy (IMHO) on the pocketbook.. I'm not sure how many cameras you're talking about but if you can divide that by 4 and get that many encoders it may not be so bad..? I'm very pleased with this setup but didn't know they (CNB) made any NVR.. By the way.. The specs for the CNB NVR seem to imply that you need a fairly beefy server to run their s/w (client/server) -- server requires Quad Core 2 Duo or better, the client requires a Intel I5-760 or better and both require Windows 7.. Avigilon claims it needs a quad-core Xeon 2Ghz but can be used with a variety of Windows versions -- someone here on the forums is running the Avigilon server, client & remote gateway on a Atom based system which is not exactly a horse-power wielding machine and said it ran great -- you can read about it here. I doubt that would be the case for the CNB but I might be wrong.. Make sure you download the CNB manual for their NVR -- it's a bit terse at something like 15 pages long and barely goes into the setup before it's over.. YMMV..

Are you looking for a single camera or a series of them? If your total budget is only $400 you're going to be limited in what you can do.. Of course, you'll need, I would think, a cable running from the camera back to the house where the video can be recorded/archived -- for that you'll either need to run a trench and bury the cable or use some sort of wireless device to get the video back to the house -- there was a thread on here a few days back about such a device as I recall but I do not know the specifics.. I'd personally opt for the hard-run cable but that's just me. With only $400 you're stuck with analog cameras which is probably OK. I'm sure others will chime in.

Hey Smith.. Aren't those what they had in Jurassic Park? Hope they're no Dino's running around with the power out eating your cameras!!

You can certainly do that for individual IP (non-analog) cameras but the problems come in when you've got multiple cameras -- how to tell it you want to monitor camera #1 vs #2.. In a setup like this there must be a webserver and I can't speak to how many NVR's have built-in web servers as that is likely to be some sort of mobile add-on/plugin (my hunch) that costs extra $$. I'd guess of the vendors that offer services like this, an app is required to communicate using a custom protocol/API between the mobile device and the 'service' hiding behind your router/firewall. These are my speculations and may not be correct but my hunch tells me that : They're not built-in for free They do not natively have a generic web-server to be used with your favorite browser Perhaps I'm completely off on these hunches but I'm sure someone else that knows better will chime in.

I've got no experience with their software -- I opted to use an Avigilon 4 camera encoder and go that route and am very pleased for the cost and high quality I've seen so far,etc.. I suspect that most people may be using these cameras differently or perhaps integrating them into an existing camera infrastructure so they have no need/interest in switching that part of the equation out if it still works OK.

Doh! Perhaps that's an indication that the ONVIF protocol could be interpreted differently and may not be completely clear.. Not that I've even tried to read the spec but assumed if two items are ONVIF complaint all would be good.. This is good to hear (or I should say to be aware of).. Hopefully they can work the kinks out if there are any issues, and I will certainly keep this in mind if I'm in a similar situation in the future! Thanks for the heads-up!

Take what Mike and Soundy say as they're spot on.. I was reminded of these facts when I took my ESD refresher course (an annual requirement) last Friday.. Also make sure it's not too dry (low humidity) which can increase the possibility of static shock.

If you're thinking of powering your 12VDC camera from 55VDC, I would not do it -- I'm sure you'll fry the voltage regulator in the camera at the very least. I'm not sure why you're thinking of using a PoE injector if you have no camera that can use it -- ? Are you just looking for a power-supply that can get your 12vdc to the camera?

I've just installed a pair of the CNB's and they're really nice in low-light situations if you're supplementing ambient lighting with IR. For us, I've not gotten any IR setup yet but even with ambient night lighting the images are way better than I would have expected -- that's with no backyard lights on. If I turn on a pair of lights on the back of the house (~75Watts each -- NOT floods) I can see all the way back to the rear of the yard -- a distance of about 60+ feet. You won't go wrong with the CNB's.. I've not had any experience with the other camera but have heard good things about them.

If it's ONVIF compliant I'd suggest Avigilon.. I've only had it a week and love it but no Dahua's are listed on their compat list but I think you can use any ONVIF compliant camera and be OK -- I think.

While I can't comment on the picture quality issues you mention in your latest post, I can confirm that just about every Windows based system I've ever used needs to be completely wiped and re-installed every few years to clean the garbage out-- I don't know what it is about Windows but over time it just seems to get slower and slower and slower. I used to know someone that would wipe their system annually to keep things fresh. Also, disk drives can get very fragmented over time with large files having little pieces all over the place which can greatly slow things down as the drive must work harder to piece everything together instead of finding it all in one area of the drive. Running a defrag utility about 3-4 times would probably be a first (and cheap) step to do.. One utility that we used to have here at the company I work for (a large corporate environment) was Executive Software's Disk Keeper which was run daily to keep things defragged.. You might consider trying that first -- but I'd also invest some $$ in extra drives if you're going to stick with your existing hardware and of course make sure you do your backups!! By the way, there are some great systems out there based on the Intel Z68 chipset that are way faster than your existing Pentium hardware -- I built a server recently that is very power frugal (you probably don't care about that) and super fast at the same time based on an Asus mobo..

Ok.. So I was able to get Avigilon going on our server and it's working like a charm even though the cameras have only been online for a few hours. However, I'd like to remove the video clips I took while playing with the cameras -- I noticed that Avigilon ate up about 650G -- some of that I'm thinking may be to support/preallocate the required space that they need to do their recordings.. I checked the users guide but didn't see any way to delete recordings.. Keep in mind I'm a newbie in this area and may not have the philosophy down quite yet.. Anyway, just thought I'd ask.. I've since dropped the framerate down to 15 (from 30) and enabled motion detection to ensure the cameras don't free-run which ought to help. P.S. I'll need to add a few more disks to this server I'm thinking -- perhaps 4Tb ought to help..? Thx!

correct.. it's been a few years since I did any windoze development. Regardless, I was able to shut it down this evening and resize the data down from 640Gb to something closer to 250Gb for now until I get a dedicated drive.. Overall, very nice software..

So, this is an IP camera -- with that in mind it does not necessarily need any IR's -- some vendors have them, some do not. What that means is that you may need to add external illuminators whether they be IR or regular lighting to help this camera out in low-lighting situations. I'll be doing that with my cameras to help them out and have these lights controlled by a motion detector. Anyway, I've got no direct knowledge of this camera -- looks OK from a spec-sheet perspective I think.. Perhaps someone else here will chime in if they have tried it.

yeah.. I was poking around in the video folder it created and it reminded me of an enterprise wide document management system I used to work on (as a software developer -- my day job) -- lots of directories,nested files,etc.. I didn't look at Avigilon's that closely but it looked similar in structure in an effort to avoid issues with too many files in single directories,etc.. I will admit that I was a bit hasty in setting things up and may have missed the dialog asking how much to allocate -- I do recall it asking where to put the archive since I've got two drives on this system -- one a super small SSD and the other a 2TB drive..

Thanks! I figured that 'delete' feature was not going to be an easy to find item for the reason you state. I'll admit that I was also amused to find the data base taking up that much space for <30 minutes of video from a single camera (in this case).. Seems like (and I think you confirm) that they effectively pre-allocate the space to avoid those -- oops -- ran out of space moments.. I'll look into this tonight when I get home..

Hi all.. So after running the gamut of camera questions I'm ready to have you all criticize my home-brew design.. I took some images of our property from Google maps and trimmed off anything not adding value to the discussion.. I've got two images - one aerial view and another front view. A few things have changed since these photos were captured care of google which I will allude to below. The first photo is the aerial view with red stars showing camera locations and blue arrows indicating the direction the camera will be monitoring. I will note that in the driveway next to the green p/u truck is a 24' class C RV that is very tall hence the interest in having a pair of cameras monitoring the front. The RV is currently parked just above the blue arrow in the picture below (in the driveway) so that one camera pointing to the street will be able to see if someone is messing with the RV entrance among other things. The other front camera will be pointing diagonal (paint wouldn't let me draw an angle with the arrow) towards the hood on the truck and monitoring the remaining area of the yard. The other two cameras in the front are to monitor the side yard which is about 5' wide and about 50' long. The side yard on the top of the photo is where the electrical panel is and our pair of solar panel inverters which we've had issues with in the past (people turning the breakers off,etc) -- we're fairly sure it's the neighbors with the pool in the photo. I want to ensure I can see anybody walking down or crawling over the fence. The two rear cameras are to monitor the backyard which now (not shown in the photos) has a large chicken coop and more fruit trees -- all of which get fooled with by the neighbors (during one week last summer, our plum tree in the bottom left corner of the yard next to the shed had ALL of the fruit removed within 2-3 days -- during the night). Go figure! The yellow box represents the location of the chicken coop -- which is about 15' by 5' and could be used to house a PIR or other motion detection light since it's got its own 12V system charged by a solar panel. Oh yeah.. In the photo below, west is to the left edge of the photo, east to the right -- late afternoon sun can be very bright -- this is in the Los Angeles area for reference.. And, yes, I know by yard is a pig-stye -- we remodeled a few years ago and we've not had a chance to 'fix' the backyard which took a huge beating at the time -- everything just about died.. Below is the front-view of the property -- the RV is currently sitting where the silver minivan is parked. The right most camera (yellow star) will pan out diagonally to cross the yard not picked up by the left most camera as mentioned earlier. In terms of cameras, I'll admit that I've been all over the map -- I've been in the digital camp then the analog camp and both even (yes, I'm aware that mixing tech here requires a hybrid DVR or similar).. I like the images I've seen with the CNB monalisa's and KT&C's (KPC-N501) analog cameras but will be receiving a prior generation Basler IP camera (1.3Mp) I'm getting from TheWireGuys here (Thanks!) and I've also been in talks with a local electronics broker with some prior gen IQEye Sentinel 2,3,5mp cameras for a song that were taken out of service and tested fine -- still working on that. If that does not pan out then I'll be likely using the CNB's (The bullet equiv of their popular dome mentioned here frequently -- I think that would be the CCM-24VF?) since I can actually afford 5-6 of them and a DVR from Sean -- but need to check the pricing on their bullet equivs of the VCM-24VF's -- hopefully the pricing is similar.. In terms of camera types, I'm definitely thinking bullet style on the side yards since they can be mounted under the roof eaves (no soffits here) easier than a dome I think and would be easy to point down the sides.. Perhaps a pair of bullets also for the two front-yard cameras and probably bullets for the backyard since they'll behave better in the late afternoon sun.. Although I could use domes in the front yard possibly -- not sure if any of you have suggestions on that..

I agree completely regarding your CNB observations. I was able to mount both of them this afternoon outside after running CAT5e cable in the attic, fiddling with EMT (I should probably take a class next time on bending EMT!! ) and spending all of yesterday re-wiring my network panel in the garage -- finding space for the PoE injector, 24VAC power supply, adding more power outlets,etc. Lots of work but worth it.. I'll post some pics soon.. I've got a few Avigilon control center questions but will create a separate post for that.

Another followup.. I received my package today along with my order of Baluns from Apex and was able to jury-rig my first analog camera with some scrap CAT5e cable I had sitting around.. I was able to connect up my Avigilon 4 camera encoder to my PoE injector and loaded up the Avigilon software.. Unfortunately the licenses couldn't be activated due to a server error on the far end -- a quick call to Avigilon support rectified that and about 5 minutes later a quick re-try worked like a charm.. I was then able to setup the software to view our lone analog camera on our ipad2! " title="Applause" /> Worked like a charm.. I later went to the local Home Depot to buy a 2x6x8 to use tomorrow for mounting the camera (and painting it) under the eaves on the side yard. I'll post some pics of that in progress. I'll also be cleaning in the garage to mount up the PoE injector and the Analog 8-camera power supply I got -- next to the rest of my network 'crud'. So far, I've been VERY pleased with the Avigilon hardware & software.. Very well designed! P.S. The CNB analog cameras (VCM-24VF's) are really nicely designed cameras! I was of the opinion that the case was a thick plastic housing but the mounting based part of it is a very sturdy metal enclosure and gives the camera a nice beefy feel -- not cheap in the slightest!

I'd probably get a nice speedy Intel Z68 based motherboard at the very least. They can take up to the i7 CPU's or as low as the i3's for most boards. I've got an Asus and it's very frugal power-wise aside from being a workhorse. Also, it'd probably be a good idea to get a board with a true Intel gigabit ethernet adapter instead of some which have the Realtek ethernet ports which I gather are not quite as good. Just my $0.02 worth..

I've heard good things about the Trendnet stuff and their corporate headquarters are here in town (good for me should something fail ). I just visited the local Fry's last weekend and picked up one of the Trendnet PoE injectors and it works great with my new Basler camera. I've also received but haven't yet used my 8-port passive PoE injector from WifiSoft -- that's up for this weekend.

Yes, anytime you use a non-standard (other than 80) port you'll have a URL in the format of : http://mydomain.com:1234/foo/bar where 1234 is the port in question (e.g. 8080,etc). If you need to specify username or passwords on the URL you can read up more about the format of the URL here..