kensplace

If you are talking about the pan tilt/lens from your other post, then no, you would need a telemetry system in place that geovision could control. You would either need a telemetry receiver capable of receiving rs232 or rs485 etc signals (but you would need an adapter for your serial port, or a geo addon to convert your pc serial to rs485) or a telemetry controller that can receive the same, linked to a receiver. Its the receiver that powers the lens/pan tilts, it receives data from either the pc (via geo) or from a controller that receives control data fom the pc (geo). You wont be able to directly interface that pan tilt and lens without additional hardware.

Nice one!

You cant use the same pair for both video signal and power, unless you get baluns specifically designed for that purpose. Your typical balun is meant only for sending the video signal down cat5. You can get baluns that can do both, but I have no idea what they are like quality wise, never used them, but I dont imagine there should be any problems if you get a good quality one from a good manu, as the electronics behind it is well proven and stable.

Usually IPS means individual pictures per second, whereas FPS means frames per second. A Frame is made up out of two pictures, the odd lines, and the even lines. So 25fps is really 50 individual pictures, merged to make 25frames

I would start by learning visual basic and visual C or C++ at a simple level, then learn the windows api, binary, and assembler (not really required but if you understand assembler, you understand how programs operate at a low level, and have a greater depth of understanding) then develop your skills over the years. By the time you master the microsoft languages and api's enough to be proficient enough to write a sdk, you can then learn the low level details of how the cards work, and the functions on their chips etc. Investigate what functions are availalbe in the existing softwate, and contact the supplier for their own sdk. By that time, microsoft will have re-written their languages yet again, changed the windows api again, and most of your learned skills will be rendered useless thanks to microsofts greed and total lack of long term vision (other than it vision for more money). After you realise its all pointless, you may decide to relearn everything another time, or another couple of times, going through the same cycle again. But at some point, you will probably either give up, and decide microsoft hates the development community, or become a highly paid consultant that does not really bother learning the new languages, and start claiming to be a expert in whatever they release a couple of months after its released. Meanwhile, the card has probably been superceded by a completely different one, and the software changed beyond recognition, with any existing manu api long since obsolete. I would not bother to be honest

You will need to post more information, what geovision card are you using? What specification pc is it in, what software version, operating system etc? What is it doing when it crashes, how does it crash? Any error messages etc?

A brand name second hand lens on ebay, is only as good as the description states it is, the honesty of the seller, and the reliability of the delivery service. If you spot a good brand name lens on ebay (and you have made sure its the right size ie half inch, or whatever) and the right mount (C or CS, or you have a adapter, or you have a camera that can take either) then its down to checking the feedback of the seller, the description (check the photos and text carefully to ensure the lens has no scratches/damage to the optics, no fungus growth etc). Its best to go for one where the seller offers a full refund or replacement if the lens is not up to scratch or damaged. Preferably get it insured delivery if possible also incase it gets lost or damaged in the post. Had good luck with lenses on ebay so far, the only ones that didnt work where ones that came as part of job lots, untested ones etc. But not bought any lenses recently on ebay, also when I did I looked for good quality makes (pentax, cosmicar (think they are the same really), fuji etc) second hand.

Pretty much any box camera that takes replacement lenses if you can fit it in a housing capable of fitting a pan tilt head or fit a mounting on, if you use a pan/tilt head and a zoom lens with a co-ax telemetry controller and co-ax telemetry receiver to control the head and the lens. The controller/receiver takes care of all the sending/decoding of the coax signals alongside the video, and controls the pan/tilt movement of the head, and the zoom/focus/iris etc of the lens, as well as auxillary functions such as wash/wipe/lights etc usually.

If its pirated, then we cant help you, as the forum only supports legitimate cards and software. I would suggest contacting whovever you purchased it from with the proof that it is pirated and getting your money back and purchasing a legitimate one.

Not sure what sort of surge protector it is, you could ask them if its a once only protection device, and if it is does it have a visible indicator that the protection has been used? Some mains power strip protectors only operate once, ie once they have protected your equipment the protection is lost, and on some, you dont know its happened, so when a problem occurs a second time, your equipment can fry...

Can you see any illumination at all from it on the camera? If not, the camera is probably not IR sensitive..

Take extreme care if building your own if your not used to making electrical circuits, or dealing with high voltages. Make a mistake in the design or build of a mains psu and you could kill yourself, or someone else, blow up equipment or set the place on fire. PCB tracks to close or to thin could cause problems, insufficent earthing, mains shorting to the casing, wiring overheating, etc etc lots of potential gotchas that may not let you live to try a second time (although I believe if you are in the USA or somewhere that uses 110v its not quite as lethal as in the UK on 240v, but still quite risky I would guess) Other than that warning, its fun to build power supplies, and handy to be able to do so, just in case you need something unusual you cant find of the shelf, or cheap enough.

I just hope they keep the good things that made pelco, such as customeer service, open protocols, good support etc...

If the product is on ebay, and its listed in, or sold from China then I have learned the hard way to stay well clear.... If the product was in a cctv store/catalogue/dealership etc then it would not bother me where it was made, what would bother me is the track record of the company, its level of support, the specs of the equipment, its record on the net (ie search for that company on google, see if there are positive or negative comments about it.) A product could be made anywhere, I really dont care, as long as its a good product, with honest specs, support and a good seller behind it.

For home use, I have One In a wall socket (not ideal, but its easiest), several on a ptc fused 8 way 24vac power supply, and some on pc-atx supply (not ideal as if one shorts, they all go down). All apart from the one in the wall socket are backed up with UPS's.

Yikes, Even there website is dead, they didnt even keep that up to inform customers about the news, and the steps people should take to file claims etc. Mind you, cant say Im suprised, even though they have been in business 20 years, in my opinion they had a really bad attitude when it came to support and customer care. I even emailed them and told them that there attitude was likely to lead to their downfall, or words to that effect, as they didnt care that they had ripped me off with false advertising, and that others would innovate whilst they stagnated with their closed loop secret systems, nor would they ever release any protocol details despite the fact I had a device I could not use without them, purchased on the strength of their false claims. I personally think the company got what it deserved, it acted like a dinosaur and it went extinct. Its just a shame for the poor workers, I hope they dont have to wait to long for their wages to be paid.... and also the customers who may never get their goods, and may never get a refund, even if they do, if they had a large order they could go under waiting for it to be paid back.....

I am having difficulty figuring out what the electrician meant when he said it was because you had to many wires connected that caused extra resistance. After all, that power supply is rated at 7 amps, so unless you had so many cameras you were exceeding those 7 amps, it should not matter how you load the supply. It puts out a voltage, and some is lost on the way, either too much is getting there, or not - but I cant figure out why multiple connections would make things worse (other than from a wiring/fusing/asthetic standpoint) If anything, extra resistance would cause a drop in voltage, as least as far as I understand electricity, meaning less likelyhood of a problem, rather than the reverse! As for the cams, some 12v cams can withstand more than 12v with ease, others cant. If your particular cams are rated at a max of +/- 10 % of 12v then that is likely to be the absolute max they can take, they probably have little regulation inside them, and rely on the external power supply being well regulated at 12v. Some cams have voltage regulators that can take a lot more, and step the voltage down to 9v or so, before stepping it up and down to the required voltages needed inside the cam. If your lucky, you may be able to identify whatever component has burned out (if you have a working cam, I suggest you open it up (if you are comfortable doing so, and dont mind losing any warranty etc, make sure its disconnected from power/video etc first) then photographing in detail, close up the boards in the camera. That way, you can compare a pic of a working cam to see what the burnt out component is you need to replace. It may just (and probably is) just a part of the power circuit that melted, and a local repair shop may be able to fix them real cheap, especially if you can provide them with part no's of all the burnt components. No guarantee something further down the line didnt blow, but its worth a shot possibly.

Have you tried the cameras local, ie with a short test cable going into dvr? If they work ok that way, then its a cable or power issue. Is the monitor ok, have you tried viewing something other than cameras on it to see if the flicker goes away?

Well, the laptop with the dark screen issue, I had to send back, and the seller gave a refund (but Im down the 20 pounds it cost to send it back.....) Got a claim in with the couriers for the other laptop, waiting to here about that one... To top it off, the PSU i bought for that laptop, a proper, compaq one (but from ebay) turns out to be one that was recalled by compaq due to the risk of them starting a fire... Emailed hp, waiting to see what they say. Also emailed the seller to tell them about the problem, will keep an eye on the seller, to see if they do anything about it. Got a refund for the chair, so just time wasted.... Gave the money I got refunded for the other laptop to my girlfriend and she bought a laptopp on ebay (a old toshiba) that works fine, no problems at all yet - lucky her!!! Peanut, happy to help where I can with cctv advice, just ask in the forum or pm if you want As for the portable, its a compaq evo n160 and it wont turn on at all now. Power socket looks fine, no loose connections I can see. Probably will just get another similar one if I get refunded and swap motherboards. Theres also a evo n400c that works fine on external monitor, but the portable screen is just lit up, backlight on, but nothing else displayed. Cant see loose connections, could be board, connector or screen I guess. Shame I didnt have a spare to swap bits to know for sure which bit to replace! As for selling on ebay, I used to do it a lot, used to sell of a load of memory I got, as well as bits and bobs lying around. But the fees were getting way to high, and like you I started to get idiotic buyers... Ebay never seems to investigate things properly, Im sure they just flip a coin to decide who wins a dispute Apparently its getting worse now, sellers are getting suspended all the time, something to do with "seller performance" but ebay wont give exact details away. But oddly, some powersellers with WORSE performance than those being suspended are allowed to trade away un-affected.

You could stick the Arecont 3130 on a Pan/Tilt head, and use a controller/telemetry receiver, that would give you the pan/tilt part.

Yup, lots of possible things people could hypothetically sue over, you probably need your signs in braille, for the blind, and also with audio playback of the content of the sign so they can hear it... Or they could say they didnt see/feel the sign... Dont forget the audio would need to be in every language presently known to mankind, just to cover your back.. So would the braille... Plus, if you have a sign, theres always the worry your camera may fail, and then someone sues you for not having recorded footage of any incident that they would have expected to be on camera... Then there is the fact, that even with all those signs, it may not be accepted into court anyways for any one of a multitude of reasons, especially if the judge is having a bad day.... Dont forget someone could steal the sign, then someone else could come along 5 minutes later, and do something wrong, but the sign was not there, so you would have problems....... You may also need a sign warning people that they may hurt themselves if they try to steal your sign or your camera, just like that fast food chain that got sued because they didnt warn people that hot coffee was indeed - hot.... Heck, in the UK if you catch a burgler in your home, and you whack him over the head, chances are its not the burglar that ends up in jail, its the home owner for not using 'reasonable force'....

Does it only occur when the DVR has been used for a while? If so.... Is it overheating? What if you turn it of for half an hour and turn it back on, does it work fine for a while? Does it only occur when the DVR has recorded lots of footage? Probably bad sotware/firmware/lack of testing - manufacturer is probably trying to duplicate with a unit that is fresh out of the box, not one with footage/log files etc on it. If there is any way you can test it 'fresh out of the box' ie, with a empty drive, you can see if this is the case. If it works fine with no files recorded, but starts getting worse the more you record, then its the manu's fault.

Its like a exact copy of the normal software, but remote. Seems to be faster than using the normal software via xp's remote desktop. Does not work without the dongle, tried it and it just states "cannot find keypro" My geo system is currently down for maintainance (read, replace psu that blew up) but from memory its the same as the normal, apart from something's didnt seem to work (Im sure the main thing I noticed was the events search that lets you see the motion events for the day)

Funny thing is, when I bought it (its a compaq evo 160) I thought it would be similar to the one I got my girlfriend (a evo 400), as thats made from a solid magnesium alloy casing, very well built. This compaq on the other hand is nearly ALL cheapo plastic and the build quailty is rubbish compared to the other one. The 400c you could chuck around, the 160 looks like it needs to be treated with kid gloves all the time.

Yeah, it was in a box, with bubble wrap around it, but even boxed with bubble wrap, I still would not want to drop it onto its corner onto a road.... All the weight concentrated into that one small corner.... Packaging looked fine for normal transport, but not for dropping The laptop wont even power on now to re-install anything, and when it was powering on (occasionally, and even then it would not stay on long, longest was one hour) I tested it by leaving it in the bios (also reset bios settings) screen and it still turned off suddenly.. Its like a loose connection somewhere. I fixed the screen hinge area, but cant see anything obviously loose, reluctant to dismantle it to get at the power jack area (as that would involve completely stripping the whole thing down, and could screw it up more) if I can get the courier to pay up. The battery got to about 60 or 70 percent charged, but it wont work of the battery alone, nor will it work of AC+Battery, nor even just AC alone. Tried removing the battery and AC for ages (which did seem to help originally), removed/reseated memory (known working) and drive. The bios itself is so dummed down it only has date/time/passwords and boot device order in it, so nothing much to go wrong in that. Windows itself was fine, once it did power up, until it just switched off no warning at all (at that point it also stopped the battery charging and the battery charge light goes out. The AC light remains on, but the portable remains dead till it decides to come back to life...) Seller has 100 percent positive feedback, and has sold other laptops in a similar state before with no problems.... Hope I get something sorted, thats 3 laptops in a row now. Our local PC world just started a offer - a free laptop if you sign up for their broadband (or pay 15 pound, and get a better laptop). Only catch is, you have to sign up for 2 years, and you have to sign up to a package with a 2gb usage cap, which would be no good for for me.... Kindof hoping its something simple, or that the courier will cough up, and I can get something sorted. Really needing a portable now... PS - did I mention my geovision computer went up in smoke the other day, talk about bad luck! Shut it down as it crashed, powered it back up and there was a bright flash, a bang, and a horrible burning smell. The psu had blown, the capacitors had blown.. Luckily no other damage, mobo, drives, ram, cpu , graphics card and geo card all fine... It did trip the UPS and blow the mains fuse though.... Turns out the fan in the PSU had stuck, also one of the internal fans (originally from a zalman flower heatsing) had warped and got the fins stuck. This must have caused tremendous heat inside the psu, which must have caused the caps to blow. Didnt half make me panic