kensplace

"Only users granted special access can have access to that forum" Guess its in the dealers only section?

Only possible problem that may occur may be a ground loop, as the monitor is 700m away from the head, it will be on a different power source. The monitor will be earthed, as is the pc.... A active receiver balun should eliminate the ground loop, or a humbug if needed. This is not a problem that I have seen first hand, but it's a possibility to be aware of.

Funny thing is, even a brand name may not entitle you to a warranty if its purchased on ebay. The geovision card I just won has a card in the box that clearly states the warranty does not apply if the card is bought from a unauthorised source or FROM AUCTION SITES. Thankfully I got mine direct from geo, so should get good support! That card you are talking about may not have that clause, but its hard to tell if there is no known manufacturer that you can check with. I looked on ebay, found a seller that was selling the same card, and they stated in their auction that the card had a 30 day warranty from them and THREE years from geovision. I asked them via email how the card has the three year warranty when geo does not warrant a card purchased from a auction site. They just replied stating it has a three year warranty. Looks like they are yet another dodgy seller..... If you want to find out more about the card, why not email the site and ask them who makes it, and a link to the manufacturers site for full details of specs? You would be better off getting a couple of 16 channel cards, from a known manu, who is known to make good cards. Is there a reason you need that frame rate? Real time recording on 32 channels is overkill for most purposes (and where its actually needed the most you would usually want FULL resolution recording, not 640x480)

If its doing a dvr equivalent of a scandisk, then it probably will only do that if power was lost whilst recording. Try stopping recording, so its not doing anything, then pull out the power plug to simulate power loss. Now plug it back in, if it boots up and works without the one hour delay then you *may* be in luck. What you would need to do in this instance is get the UPS to signal the DVR that its power is about to fail completely, and tell it to stop recording. Course, I dont know what UPS you are using, nor am I familiar with the dvr in question, so this may not be possible. If the DVR has a input on it to stop/start recording then you would need to wire this to the UPS. Now the fun begins - being able to do this depends on the ups in question. If the ups has a simple output that signals power failure, then its straight forward, as long as both are the same voltage levels (probably ttl compatible, check in the manuals) then its just a straight connect usually. Some UPS models will use the serial port, there are 'dumb' ups models that use the serial port, but dont actually transmit data, they just use the CTS/RTS etc pins on the port to signal various states. Smarter UPS devices will actually communicate via a serial protocol, in which case its going to be harder to interface. It could be possible to get a program on a pc to monitor the ups, and output a signal on the parallel port to turn of the dvr's recording if its a smart ups. No idea if this is possible, like I say, not familiar with the equipment, but if you can get them talking to each other it may well do the trick.

The bbv should automatically return control to the operator if they move the joystick (or press the movement arrows on a non-joystick keyboard) whilst that cam is selected. BBV manuals are available at http://www.bbvcctv.com/products.htm and dedicated micros manuals can be found on the net fairly easy (try dedicated micros own site, or norbain who have lots of manuals). Do you ever have any manual control of the dome, if not maybe something is not set up right, or is faulty..

Does it does this continuously? Or did it just start moving around so you then switched it off? Its normal for most domes to spin/tilt/zoom when power is first applied, during the self test. If its doing it continuously then thats a different matter. Are there any programmed patrols set on the controller? If there are try erasing them. Does the dome do the same thing if its not connected to the controller? What bbv is it going through?

Is it the police who pay, or the customer? If its the police, thats fine, but if the customer has to pay out every time they capture something the police need, then it could work out very expensive for them, and some people may be put of actually reporting the fact they have evidence if they fear they may lose their only recording drive, and have to shell out for a new one.

In the UK though, I thought if the police impound evidence such as the hard drive, its kept by the police not just for the trial, but the full length of the sentence. So a impounded hard drive may end up with a life sentence with the police before you ever see it again. Unless the police make a master copy back at their premises, and give it back to you, but then I would say that *you* then have no proof the evidence was not tampered with, which is even worse than a copy being made (if they want the hard drive they should make a direct copy onto a new hard at your premises, or with you present at theirs, with a drive they supply!)

have not installed audio yet on the 1480, thought I would get the video figured first. But the 1480 has 8 audio sockets, but only four audio plugs to plug in... The manual does not help (heck the card shown in the manual looks totally different!) so I guess I will end up emailing geo to find out what they are for. Maybe they are audio loop outs, or audio out even...... Could be they are amplified / unamplifed input pairs, who knows.

I dont see any real difference in using a good quality external device to capture footage over burning to a cd/dvd that is built into a dvr - as far as the courts go (but I am not a lawyer) They could argue that by capturing the output onto another dvr that records, or a pc with capture card that the footage ends up being re-compressed (hence edited) - BUT that is exactly what happens (as far as I am aware) with pretty much any cctv dvr that has a built in cd recorder or dvd recorder. The cctv DVR will be recording in mpeg4, wavelet, jpeg stream or goodness knows what format, and to save it to the inbuilt DVD it will have to re-compress it to mpeg 2 format (which unless the dvr internally saves in mpeg 2, will involve re-compression). If its saved to a in built cd, then it needs recompression, as the dvr still wont be recording (unless it specifically is made that way) in svcd format or vcd format. So if they allow footage from high end cctv dvr recorders with in-built cd/dvd drives then they should allow footage captured (properly, witnessed etc) on another device.

My girlfriends pc suffers from exactly the same problem, its got 1 80gig ide drive, ecs mobo (same one as I use with no problems) and xp1700 processor (or 1800 cant recall offhand). Boots till it should get the windows screen then often just goes blank, have to restart a couple of times to get it in. Usually I find leaving it off for a few seconds longer than normal will get it in after a couple of attempts. The only thing that I know of that is wrong with the pc, is the battery holder is dodgy (common fault on those mobos) and it often forgets the cmos settings, but it still does it after you enter setup and correct them. I have a feeling thats the problem with hers, as when the battery was not loose, it didnt have the problem... Will have to try and prise her away from the pc sometime to see if I can fix the battery holder. Check the mobo, maybe put a new battery in just out of curiousity, see if any difference. Also check the bios, make sure memory settings are not set to high.

Hi kevin, if the specs say it records at the full resolution then it means that it has an immediate advantage over dvrs which record at a lower res (many record fields, ie only half the available res, some record less!). But - the dvr itself does compress the data when it is saved, so no matter what the resolution, the compression algorithm used, and the amount of compression the manufacter uses will play an important part in the quality of the played back recordings. A good dvr will have the compression set so you dont see artifacts (blocks in the picture), the motion will be smooth etc. Unfortunately the compression is one area that is next to impossible to predict by looking at the specs - two dvrs could list the same type of compression, but have different quality outputs. This would be due to how the manufacturer implemented all the options in the compression. In theory, a more expensive dvr will have better results than a cheaper one, as they will have spent more time and money researching and testing the results.

Only time I had a predominance of a colour on a monitor was when the monitor was not plugged in fully, meaning one of the colours was not connected, or when the cable had a bent or missing pin, or a snapped wire (causing same effect). It may not be that, but those things have caused it for me in the past.

Only problem is if its a intermittent fault the test equipment may say the cable is fine, until the wind blows the wrong way or whatever and the fault occurs again...

Cool, didnt even realise raid had come that far, been a while since I last looked into it.

Dont forget any version of raid that requires multiple drives for the data to be written to (ie not just a mirror of the data, but spread over multiple drives) increases the risk of total downtime for the system should ONE of the multiple drives fail (which they will do at some point). Instead of just replacing one drive and getting the system back up quickly you would either have to replace the one drive, and (if you can) rebuild the raid to recover the data, OR, replace ALL the drives to get it back up quickly and sort it out at leisure.

Yup, you guessed right, its due to me being from the uk, never heard of the hemi, and only vaguely recognised the name yugo (but was not sure if it was a car or cosmetic!). Not that hot with cars (or cosmetics for that matter I hasten to add ), but now I know, thanks for the clarification

A matrix basically is used for larger systems, or where you need lots of flexibility. It allows you to have multiple camera inputs and switch any camera to a monitor, usually there are more than one monitor outputs, so you can view more than one cam (on different monitors). Some include telemetry, so whatever cam is selected can be controlled by the keyboard (panned / tilted / zoomed, and also operation of wash/wipes/lamps etc). Other features can include alarms etc. Usually you would split up a very large system into smaller blocks, say 16 cams going into a matrix, with a couple of monitor outputs (say a main one and a spot one) controlled by one keyboard/joystick. It saves having a keyboard for every camera, and means you can route pretty much any cam to any output you require. They will be designed (or should be!) for expandability, so you can grow the system as and when required, and usually cost a pretty penny, but are robust and should last a long time.

Should also give you a clue in device manager, system devices, look for the same things, sis, via, intel etc.

Hi intelli-home, welcome to the forum Never used that dvr, its specs look fine for recording, but you can never really go by specs, as each dvr uses different compression ratios and or algorithms. It appears to support full pal resolution (or full ntsc if thats your format) so in theory should be fine with any normal or high res pal/ntsc camera. Course the only way to know for sure is to give it a test! There is no harm in getting good cameras, especially as the better models (usually higher res) often come with better features, such as wide dynamic range, proper backlight controls, more control over camera settings etc - plus the build quality improves (usually) with cost. Even if you had/have a dvr that didnt record the full resolution, its always handy to have it for live viewing (which is almost always shown at full resolution, uncompressed) and for future use if you do improve the dvr. ... Hi Karen, welcome to the forum! If the dvr works, and your happy with the picture quality, then thats what matters at the end of the day (as long as your happy that it can identify what you want it to when you replay the recordings). Would not worry about friends thinking your crazy, people think Im crazy, being into cameras and computers and electronics and photography etc, come to think of it, they are probably right Its all useful stuff to be into, great fun too... What is a HEMI by the way? Come to think of it, whats a hugo?

Not using the card now, but from memory, I am sure it was higher than the 320 or whatever it is you are getting now. Think it was at full pal resolution. The pic *should* look better at a higher resolution, if you can get it to work, the card is capable of it, it even says so in the auction (768 x 576 (PAL) ) Depends on the software, and the card - but in general the higher the res, the better the pic. My problem was the pic quality with the software I had with the card was just not very good, especially with any moving images, like a zig/zag effect. Gave up on it in the end and just stuck a tv tuner card in (same actual bt788 or whatever chip, just better software). There must be a option somewhere to change the resolution, so you can see if its any good at a higher res, maybe this new software is better, no idea! Never used the new software so cant say without looking at it first hand.

I had the same card a while ago, but with the pico-2000 software that turned out to be not legit.... Not sure what your software will allow, the card itself is based on the bt878 if I recall, and is capable of full pal resolution, but I never had much luck when I had one, it had lines showing when things moved as the de-interlacing didnt seem to be very good. No idea if its better with the new software. Do you have a link to the software manufacturers website, where the new software is that is used with the card, maybe able to see some clues from that. Might even download a demo, see what the differences are between what I got off ebay and what they are selling at that place.

I needed one as I was using a pan/tilt unit and a zoom lens, they didnt have any control electronics, so needed a controller board to control them. If you have a dome camera that supports rs485 and a protocol then it will already have its own telemetry receiver built in.

What are the markings on the pins on the camera end? What is currently connected to what? I have a similar adapter, mine only has 4 pins, (d+/a and d-/b, gnd and 5v) but I managed to get it working with a rs485 telemetry board (after figuring out the darn address settings were marked wrong on the board!) and only used 2 pins the d+/a (going to rx+) and d-/b (going to rx-). I also connected the ground at both ends (cant remember if it worked without the ground, its all in bits at the moment, so cant easily test) Your cam may be marked (if your lucky, I have a dome with no markings on, still trying to figure out what goes where!) with something like one of the above - are there any clues on the cam?

Termination resistors are used to balance the signal down the wire, if only a short distance is used, and your baud rate is not too high then you could well find you wont need one. But if you have a longer connection, and or fast baud rate then its more likely you will need to properly terminate the rs485. A google search for rs485 termination will give lots of results on the topic, but basically the 120 ohm resistor is just a small electrical component that can be purchased (very cheaply) from pretty much any decent electronic hobbyist store/catalogue etc that sells electrical components for making circuits. Often equipment has a termination resistor built in, that can be switched in or out of the circuit by a switch, but not always. What model camera are you using? Is there a weblink for a manual for it? Also, try lowering the baud rate if possible to a low value whilst testing, I dont know what you currently have it at, but its easier to get stuff working if you set it fairly low, then up the speed when its all fine.