kensplace

Whats crazier, apart from the poor field of view (one camera shows mostly sky!), insufficient night lighting, and general crap setup is the fact they have spent a load of money just to end up educating the public how bad their border surveilance is, and how easy it would be to get past those cameras. Not to mention opening themselves up to denial of service attacks, hacking etc by making the cams public....

They should get a pro to re-install many of those cameras, really bad quality, you cant make anything out on some of them. Could probably smuggle a herd of elephants over that border if thats the quality of the surveilance.

Hi, welcome to the forum. PICO is software that comes with many of the ebay cards, I had one in the past it was not very good..... Those cards are usually clones, and the software is ripped off from another manufacturer. Geo cards have much better software, support, and general quality than a pico card. But they do cost more. If you purchase one on ebay, you will not get a warranty from the manufacturer, even if the seller claims you will - dont believe them. If warranty is not a problem, then you can pick up a second hand geo card for about the same price you want to spend on ebay, just be careful you get a 'real' geo card, there are counterfeit cards out there. Personally I would avoid the cctv stuff that comes from taiwan etc, you know the ones, cheap buy it now or opening bid price, but massive postage costs (so they avoid ebay fees.). Its pretty much all junk, nice looking, nice sounding, nicely marketed junk. Just to make that clear, avoid the foreign rip off high postage cost sellers in the cctv sections. Avoid the too good to be true looking ones, search for uk only, and even then, some uk sellers are importing the junk and listing it from the UK, so if you recognise a item from a uk seller that is mainly sold from one of those foreign sellers, be wary. Second hand stuff professional is usually better than the new no-name foreign imports. Look for decent stuff, good brand names, there are good quality bargains on ebay if you keep looking and dont mind the risk that it may arrive faulty, not as advertised etc. The way I look at it, even if occasionally a purchase isnt ok and I lose on that one, I still have save bucketfuls of cash on other purchases, so still winning! It can work out expensive though, learning cctv via ebay, so avoid starting out with the low end stuff, and just get something good to start with, it will save money upgrading countless times. Another thing to consider, even if you get a good dvr card, the PC has to be able to handle it. To slow a processor, or to slow a hard drive, wrong motherboard/chipset, insuffient ram etc can all cripple a system and reduce its frame rate.

Check the iris, and the power. Measure the voltage on the camera, check its ok.

Change isp....

Geo is nice, but has a long way to go on the software front, from issues like that, to many list boxes/grids that are not sortable by clicking the titles etc. All little issues that would take a programmer no time at all to fix..... Good point rory about the vb thing, I did that a few year ago (back in vb 3 days) to hook into some software to do some custom stuff, so should it should be possible to hook into geo's windows, but its been a long time since I did vb, forgot most of it Im tempted to get the sdk, its reasonably priced (but still expensive for me!), although should be free really, at least to demo..... Will have to get back to geo to find out more about whats in it, as im not to sure....

How many cameras are you wanting to watch? If its just one, then a low price tv card would do the job if recording is only secondary. Course, recording is only secondary until something happens that you wish you had recorded, and spend a long time regretting the fact it wasnt....

Depth of field, and field of view are totally different things.... Still cant see how the meter will be able to tell if Im focusing on area A, or area B (area A could be further away, area b could be close or vice-versa). If its a shallow depth of field, the meter will work, but otherwise, I cant see how it could....

Just curious, what stopped you from chucking a heavy duty (suitable for outdoor use etc) cable down the 30 yard drop, and having it wired?

Not sure what the exact prices are for ups in the uk, but second hand ones with new batts seem to be about the price you would pay for a new one, if not more... 40 dollars for a ups in the US? Does that include battery? I know prices are cheap in the US, but wow thats cheap.... Or is that 40 dollars for a regulator, not ups?

UK prices are normally more than US prices, and we normally dont ever see any of those 'rebate' offers the US seems to have. We dont even get the ability to send the batteries back to APC for recycling like in the US. Second hand UPS prices are dirt cheap though, compared to new - just take a chance with the state of the batteries..... Course if it was for business use to sell to a end user, would have to be a new unit, but just for me, I prefer saving the money Looking into getting either a nice big 3000va unit, or a few smaller units (think I prefer a few smaller ones, less chance of a big failure) to get more backed up.

They may work right out of the box, but what about years down the line, when the batteries are failing? Will they accurately report failure, or give false positives? Google searches indicate many 'dead' apc units brought back to life with new batteries. But they should not be 'dead' they should fail properly, not give random faults, or say all is fine, when its not....... Maybe the one I got is faulty, dont know for sure yet.....

How does the meter know when the camera is in focus? I could be focusing in on any particular point in the scene, depth of field could make the other objects out of focus - how does it know when its focused in on what I want it focused in on? I cant think how it could do it, unless its just a generic its a sharper picture so it must be in focus test, but that does not tell me if its focused on what needs focusing on.

Objectives change though, often peoples first objective is to see as much as possible. When a system is installed, people love it, they can see a nice big area, and as long as nothing happens, they could be happy for years. Their objective will soon change radically when they replay the footage, and realise that the nice wide shot does not give any detail, or the low resolution and or high compression settings they chose to get longer recording times mean they cant identify the difference between a elephant and a zebra at 10 meters. Unless its permanantly monitored, and ptzm then I would go for two cams, one for overview, and one focused close up on the car+a tall persons height all around it. The camera close up to the car will provide a boring view 99.99 percent of the time, but will be worth its weight in gold if it gives a nice clear close up shot of the culprit. Mind you, you will always have to park the car in the same spot every time If you do set up another cam, make sure you go out in the dark, and pretend to break into your car, to see if the replay can make out enough details - often what looks fine live is not up to scratch when recorded. In a instance where that happens, sacrifice recording time for quality, whats more important, a couple of weeks worth of recording of not that good quality, or a day or two only of top quality recording?

NIB usually means New In Box. Where is the card for sale? If its a auction site, then its probably not legit, or if its legit, its probably a old card. Even if its the latest legit just made yesterday model, then if its from a auction site or unauthorised source then you will NOT get any warrenty from geovision. (Despite claims from some sellers that you do - you wont). Are the sellers authorised geovision resellers? Ask them. If they claim to be, then go to http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/7_0.asp and see how to check direct with GEO to see if they are lying. If they are, do other buyers a favour and report them to geo. If the seller states they are not authorised, then remember you will get no warranty/support from geo. If its second hand, and the warranty is not a problem for you, then the question is, why is it still new in box, if its second hand?

If you mean a one that was a lot like spam, then yes, I got one to....

No idea if geo will work with vista, it probably will, as geo would not be that short sighted. But - will the older cards work with it, will current cards work with the next operating system after vista? O/S support does not last for ever, look how hard it is to get older hardware working on new machines, find drivers for old cards in general etc. Software that used to work on older versions of windows is not always compatible with the newer versions. With any pc based solution, the long term future of the system is always in the hands of the software manufacturer - and their decisions on how long they keep writing drivers for older cards for the newer o/s's. I hope geo will write drivers for years to come, so my card will still be running in 20 years time - but even if they did, I doubt the new motherboards would have a slot suitable for the card!

or the new software will only work with a new operating system....

if its just for short term surveilance you could always look into battery power, some quality high amp hour sealed lead acid batteries should do the trick for a 24v pan tilt head, camera and lens. Obviously the length of the surveilance operation would dictate the size and amount of the batteries required, you could use solar power to charge them a little to extend their life, but I would plan it as a battery only job, recharge before and after use.

Is geo setup to use the right address for the camera, check under camera mapping, address. The cam is set to address 0, I would try address zero on geo, and also address 1 on geo for luck (sometimes the addresses are one out on some equipment for some weird reason). Do you have a manual for the camera? Does it list what commands need to be sent to control the zoom?

Hi rory, found a bit info on it, http://sturgeon.apcc.com/techref.nsf/partnum/990-2129/$FILE/990-2129-EN.pdf According to that (last page) its a step approximated sine wave, otherwise known as a simulated sine wave, step approximated sine wave and many other names. Its not a pure sine, but not a straight square wave, its a square approximation of a sine wave, so it goes up and down in blocks, like a sine wave, but not as smoothly as a pure sine wave.

The GEO card arrived today, all nicely packaged up - looks like its going to keep me busy for ages figuring it all out I am looking into a better system to put it in, but will cross that bridge later. For now I thought I would give it a whirl in my normal pc, which is way off-spec for a geo system, considering its 1. AMD XP 2000 processor 2. SIS Chipset 3. Old ECS motherboard 4. NVidea ge-force graphics card On the plus side, it does have 1gig ram.. Well I can pleasantly say I was *very* impressed with the performance, right out of the box it worked, the picture was brilliant - *MUCH* better than the hauppage tv card, and the pico2000 card. Not played around with much yet, there is so much to look at, I have increased the recording resolution to 768x512 and its working great on motion detection only recording. Currently got 7 cams plugged into it, will try to get 16 hooked up, and see how far I can push it fps wise on this machine. Think its currently doing about 6 or 7 fps, but not tested properly. Cant get over how good it is compared to the other cards I have had in the past. Still need to try the dsp tv out on it, will wire up a cable to the tv later, thats if I have any rg59 left after wiring up those cams! Thanks to geovision for sponsoring and the to the forum for holding the contest - its a great card!

Still looking into upgrading the pc after christmas, but for now its still working fine. I emailed geovision days ago about the sdk, and also how to add a custom ptz (for a non-supported controller) but not heard anything back so far (just emailed them again in case it didnt get to them). Whilst waiting for a reply, I managed to figure out how to add a new ptz to the list and managed to get my BBV tx1000 working fine with geo for pan/tilt/zoom and focus. Had to set it all up for the bbv protocol, but seems fine, only thing I didnt bother with is the presets, as I have no pan tilt head with feedback pots on, so cant set up any presets to test them.. System slows down a little some times, but its still useable even with geo running, and browsing, and reading emails etc. With a bit of luck the price of dual cores will plummet soon now the quad cores are out... Tempted to wait even longer, intel reckon 80 cores in about 5 year...

I have that with a bad connector on the tv sometimes - exactly the same lines, wiggle the connector, it goes away. Will have to fix it sometime

I use a set of tools from rs components, stripper part no rs 739-540, also crimp and coax cutter. Probably cost a bomb new, got them from ebay for about 3 quid, say about 8 quid in total with postage. Used to use whatever I had handy before, another teeth stripper Love the proper tool though, cuts perfect pretty much every time, just stick the cable in turn one way then the other, remove cable, pull and its all stripped back perfectly - the right lenght every time. Adjustable to, removable blades so you can have different cable heads setup, find it hard to imagine going back to life without one now!