kensplace

planetcctv aka systemQ. Not bought from them but they do have a decent trade only catalogue.

Tecton are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard when it comes to providing manuals for equipment. I asked for a manual for their old kramplex system and was told they would do one for me for 50 quid... Why they cant just offer a downloadable pdf I dont know....

Pick a set of colours for each, and stick to that religiously, document it so others can follow the same colours if they add to the system at a later date also. It will make life much easier in the long run if the cable colours are used consistently.

I like dual voltage, with a wide dc range (say 12 to 30v dc allowable), easy to replace fuses and robust screw terminals for the wires.

If there not in breach of the DPA (I seriously doubt the figure is as high as 95 percent though, looking around my local area I find only a few examples of obvious DPA breaches, although who knows whats going on behind closed doors....) then they are often in breach of planning laws, to many camera's to close to each other. Or the camera's are badly setup/positioned/maintained. The SIA is a bit of a joke from what I can see, they require that CCTV operators in public space control rooms are licenced, but the company owning the control room does not have to foot the bill for this, the poor operator does! Not only that, but one area in the UK that I know of is using volunteers from the community (like neighbourhood watch people) to man their control rooms - so they have nosey do-gooders manning the public space cameras - and the best bit is - as they are volunteers they dont need to be licenced. So a pro, who does it for a living, who is probably highly experienced cant do it legally without shelling out for a daft licence, but a granny down the road who wants to see what her friends garden looks like on camera can do it no problem.

Visit visimetrics.co.uk. The members area has manuals, downloads of software/upgrades etc. You need to register with them first, you may have to supply serials etc, or email explaining the cirumstances. I did that when I got one of their 'Fastar' dvrs, they set me up with a account, and emailed me the required files etc no bother. Good support.

I guess one factor is how you plan on treating customers. You can either give them room for expansion (ie more drives, bigger, faster drives etc or other upgrades like cpu etc that require more power) so they dont have to buy a new power supply, or a new DVR to upgrade. Or you can design one that uses the exact amount of power needed, and the customer cant upgrade anything without getting a new PSU. If you get a custom PSU, then they may need to even get a new case or entire DVR its its a non-standard PSU. Once things start to get produced in massive bulk, psu's are often just boards bolted onto the chassis, and custom designed or ordered for that specific model. Cheap for the manufacturer, but crap for the end user that needs a repair or upgrade when its out of warranty... Its going to be hard to r&d off the shelf PSU's anyway, as companies source components from different suppliers sometimes, or designs change, and tolerances also mean the quality of the same model psu may vary slightly over multiple units, or time. Like the problem with the electrolytics in capacitors a few years ago, no amount of R&D testing off the shelf boards and PSU's would have stopped them from ending up with dead capacitors years later... Its all a gamble when you dont source and make every bit yourself ...

Mod note - Delete Zedhed's previous post as discussion/support of cloned cards is not allowed on the forum.

If you do any webwork then firefox + the 'firebug' extension is a great combination.. You can do all sorts with it, edit CSS on the fly, check the document code, alter things, its really useful.

Analogue cctv will only give really good quality ID type resolution in a small area, try to cover a large area and your ability to id things drops. You would need either megapixel, or multiple analogue cams, or restrict the viewpoint to certain 'choke' areas people have to pass.

Welcome to the forums, Im sure you will find it a great forum, and that it will be of help in your project.

Sort of, Stepper motors themselves dont actually have any marks or grooves that they read. In fact, the motors themselves dont read or supply any positioning information. Stepper motors rely on how they are designed to keep accurate position, a stepper motor has several 'poles' that when supplied by power, 'step' the motor to the next position. By powering the poles in the correct order, you can 'step' the motor one step at a time until it has done a full revolution. Microstepping is where they provide power to more than one set of poles at a time, in order to get it to move to a point in between the two positions, ie doubling the number of steps. You can provide power to more poles, in order to get finer resolution of the steps. The software or hardware in the driver for the motor keeps track of the position, by counting how many steps it has done. Its also the motor driver that is responsible for stepping or microstepping or half stepping the motor, the motor itself (unlike a normal motor) would not spin if power was applied to it. It would just step to one position and stay still.

It also depends on the country or state you live in, as many have wiring regulations that specify things such as minimum specifications of wires, distances between low and high voltages etc. The wiring regs can be a pain, but they are there to protect life and property... Anyone doing a professional install should always follow them to the letter, or they could face hefty punishment if things go wrong. Even home users should be aware of any rules and regs in the area they live, for example in the UK it is now illegal to do many types of elctrical DIY work in the home, without proper certification etc. Also, say you are doing a home install, and you route high voltage wiring somewhere unsafe, or in a unsafe manner, and at some point down the line, a fire occurs. If the house burns down, after a investigation, if they find out it was down to wiring installed not to safe standards, you can be fairly sure the insurance company wont pay up...

Are the camera's themselves not switchable (either by the user, or by a dealer if they are very expensive cameras) between pal & ntsc?

Advantage - No additional PSU needed, plug and play, and if the criminal cuts the power cable, they could kill themselves... Disadvantage - power has to be local to the camera, criminal could kill themselves if they cut the power cable - possible lawsuit, extra heat in the camera. Usually heavier than a same spec/model non mains camera. There are probably more advantages and disadvantages, but thats all I can think of for now.

Ebay is getting worse all the time, I blame the TV adverts, they seem to have attracted all sorts of people to ebay, not all good ones! Recently I purchased a chair, real leather the description said, not fake leather like the others are selling on ebay the description also said. Cool, I went for it, as the last chair I got on ebay was a horrible fake leather (more like some sort of plastic). Guess what, the chair that arrived was identical to the last one I bought. Seller is sending out a replacement, but I bet he sends a identical chair..... Next. a laptop I bought for my other half failed after a few months, so I bought another on ebay, described as a 'excellent' laptop, with just a few scuff marks as to be expected with age. The laptop arrived today... Hmm screen is so dark, cant see what is going, looks like either the invertor or the backlight is dead.. External screen works but 'flickers' when the laptop is used. Plus the H key dropped of the first time it was touched. Not to mention the screen has scuff marks (to me scuff marks with age dont mean a scratched screen!) Waiting for the sellers response to a refund request - first response was it worked when I installed windows, and before I shipped it, and I did say it had scuff marks. Funny thing though, checking the sellers buying record, he recently bought 5 of these laptops, all sold as seen - without warranty (so that seller didnt figure on them lasting long) - and that seller specifically mentioned the screen damage.. Still waiting for my laptop to arrive, as I bought another one for myself (last one was for my partner) - lets hope that one works ok. I did buy a new battery for mine, which arrived, but guess what, its not a genuine compaq battery, its a no name clone, odd seeing as the pic in the auction was for a genuine one. Cant grumble to much about that though if it works, as it was a bargain. Will have to wait to see if it works, if my other portable arrives this week. To top it all off, when I was searching for a laptop on ebay, I very nearly bid on a compaq laptop, until I read the small print which said "this auction is for a SCREW!" Needless to say I reported it to ebay, who promptly sent a standard reply saying they will investigate etc. Guess what ebay did... Nothing. Not a damn thing. Someone has paid 50 quid for a screw by the looks of things (the seller did say by email he would send the laptop to the winner, but oddly never publicly updated his auction to say that, nor did he think anything of showing a description and pics of a laptop, in the laptop category, with one line stating you are bidding on a screw!) Ebay really could not care less. I also bought a PIC programmer via ebay, that turned out not to program the chips it stated it would, and to top it off, used software it was not allowed to use (ie pirated). Reported to the seller, and they refunded, and promised to stop selling. They didnt stop selling them, and they still are powersellers, again ebay could not care less. bought a cheap camera a few months ago - ebay cancelled the auction AFTER i had paid by paypal, and then refused to refund my money. Needless to say, I never got the camera! I miss the old days, when it was rare problems occured - and I used to buy a lot more back then compared to what I purchase now.... Stopped selling ages ago on ebay, as the fee's just got way to high also.

Im still waiting for the courier claim to be processed, but I did risk it again, and purchased another laptop on ebay... Thankfully, this time everything went fine, got a nice thinkpad r32 refurbed, with 1 year warranty. Added some extras such as more memory, and a wireless mini-pci card, and I have what looks like a new laptop, running fine for less than 200 pounds. But I bought one set of memory on ebay, guess what, advertised as DDR, but it was DDR 2. Seller did refund though, but still a pain. So its a mix of good/bad now for me...

I saw one forum go for 250 thousand UK pounds not long ago in the UK, scary how much sites can go for... Its not like it was youtube or anything, it was a general business forum.

I dont think there is really such a thing as a standard, they come in all different shapes and sizes, from the tiny ones, up to the gigantic ones that are all over the UK, the ones with IR/Washers/Wipers etc bolted all over them. You would probably have to find out the dimensions of what you want to fit inside, then look for one bigger than that, so you know it will fit in. Allow a bit extra room at the back in case it has heater/fan/circuit boards etc. A little extra height, as you need to mount the camera inside it..., and a little extra width to work in..

If no joy with cleaned heads, new tapes and a different mux, it may be possible you need to have the VCR serviced, heads and belts replaced. The timelapse VCR heads come under a lot more punishment than on a standard DVR and will need replacing at some point. I picked up the same mux you have for about 50 pounds on ebay a year or two ago, so probably even cheaper now. Timelapse VCR's are very cheap on ebay...

Agreed, VHS is quite old tech now, a good dvr would be a big boost... Im a little confused as to what the problem is, are you saying it only works when you play the footage back through the multiplexer? If so, thats correct, as its multiplexed, and without the multiplexer would only show a a blur as it shows each camera shot in turn... As you can see all 7 cams through the multiplexer, and pick one to view full screen, that seems normal, is there another problem Im not understanding?

If it was not alarmed, or it was tampered with then thats not the alarms companies fault. If it was not installed correctly, then they should compensate, their max of 500 dollars liability in the contract is laughable. But on the other hand, the owners of the alarm presumably did read and sign that contract, so may not have much of a leg to stand on, unless the judge finds the contract term unfair/unenforceable. After all if you took your car to a garage to have the brakes fixed, and you were told they were, and went out and died after the breaks failed again, its likely the garage would be in deep trouble... An alarm system not working at all (if that is the case, as said it could have been tampered with or not on) due to bad workmanship on install is something that the company should be liable for, in a fair world that is, but the world isnt fair usually. Forensic examination. looking at the alarm logs, examining the alarm system will easily show if the alarm was tampered with, set, or plain just badly installed....

But if you were to install it on a 1000 amp psu, you have to make sure its fused well, as a short on the cable could start a fire at those amps....

Surely there will be alarm logs to prove it the alarm was active, and the correct zones enabled at the time? If it was active, and it failed to alert the lines had been cut (do those alarms do that?), then it failed to pick up the broken glass via glass sensor, then all the internal motion sensors failed, I would see why the owner is justifiable peeved off at ADT.....

We still can use antennas for analogue tv, but they are being phased out for digital (either by dish, or antenna (same one as for analogue)) We only had 3 TV channels back in the 70's early 80's... Atari, I remember drooling over a maplins catalogue when I was about 7 or 8, looking at pics of an atari 2600 and its carts (especially the basic cartridge)