kensplace

Welcome to the forum, its a great place, lots of interesting info and opinions, I learnt a lot here, and hope to see you around.

Out of curiousity, are stepper motor failures common with cctv domes, just I have loads of steppers (none of that spec) from printers, very old computer stuff and gambling machines, and never actually come across a broken stepper motor yet. Its always been the driver circuitry or wiring, or sensor circuitry/controller. If cctv stuff is breaking steppers on a regular basis, then something is wrong somewhere... They should be very hard to break in normal operation.

Seeing as you can get a load more channels on even a cheap tv coax, its suprising I have not seen these that can do several cams over one cable, should be possible...

The lens is normally controlled by the camera, although its a AI lens, and will have circuitry, at the end of the day, all that does is amplify the video signal enough to open/close the iris depending on how bright the scene is. There is the remote wire, but that is not controlled by the camera, thats normally controlled by a controller that has preset settings for iris/focus/pan/tilt positions. You can try wiring that up to see if it does anything, if you look at the wiring schematic you will see its easy enough to use a potentiometer to vary the voltage on the wire as they do in the example. Chances are if the iris is stuck, its stuck, but guess it could be worth a try, although you would have zero auto controll, but the electronic iris on the camera can usually cope if you managed to get the iris open enough.

After double and triple checking all wiring/connections/settings on cam then if still no joy then probably its either the cam or lens that has a problem, I think you said another ai lens works on that cam so it could be the lens. On non zoom lenses (not taken apart any zooms yet, not had to luckily) that were AI I have fixed a couple that suffered from broken wires inside where the connections had came of the board. Another had a broken potentiometer, I ended up just wiring a big one on the outside as I had non that fitted (hey it worked ) Also check non on the wires are snapped, a continuity check between the end and the connection inside on the board with a multimeter can rule that out. Once one end of the galvanometer spring thing had came of its mount so it had no tension, I (JUST) managed to get it back on, and it worked ok, but it was touch and go. Another one with the same fault I bust totally, and ended up forcing the iris open fully with a bit of paper and letting the electronic iris in the camera do the job instead. Dismantling lenses is not for the faint hearted, or those with less than perfect eyesight/lighting and patience.

Many people in the uk cant even afford to pay heating bills, never mind worry about owning a undervalued million dollar home... But in the uk I bet the powers that be will still be looking in on the poor, not just the rich......

Any one used any of those outdoor dummy cameras, the ones that sort of look like real outdoor housings, but obviously are fake. Especially the ones that come with the flashing red LED as a big sign to thieves that a dummy is in use. Are they actually waterproof, or even semi-waterproof (enough so a bit of sealant would finnish of the job) and do they have a good quality front glass? Reason I ask is I am really tempted to get a couple and stick real cameras in, then if any toe-rag see them, they will take one look at the obvious fake, complete with flashing led and ignore it - without realising it actually is a real camera disguised as a dummy.

Almost bought one of those, or a very similar one, a while ago on ebay, but got outbid. My problem is, as I just do cctv for three reasons 1. For Security 2. For fun 3. To learn, its a interesting field, and one that naturally goes with being a programmer. I find it hard to spend any significant amount of money on kit due to the other half complaining about me buying "junk" Although she is the first to say "check the cameras" when its needed, and only the other day asked for another one to be installed..... But she complains when I spend, so I have to keep spending to a minimum (plus I am tight fisted when it comes to spending, like to get a bargain, even if it means doing lots of research/work. I find doing it that way is a great way to learn, anyone can throw cash at a problem and solve it, but they may not understand how it was solved.......) Your right about the not 100 percent vandal proof bit, oddly extreme disagree, and state in writing its totally vandal resistant - maybe they should update their ads Nice idea though, and one I would install If I got one cheap, to see what the quality is like (you can never tell by ads alone, learnt that the hard way, and scarily learnt that some manus dont even care if they break the law with their ads, they just dont care......)

Absolute classics those I may knock up a case in a similar style, must have a old rubber ducky ariel somewhere I could stick on top (but I love the look of that one shown, so cool), and leds are no problem The faker looking the better (people in the uk are used to cameras, and in some areas people see a nice camera and dont think, darn a camera I cant burgal here, they think, hmmm I could sell that camera system down the pub for a tenner, or they decide that building has cameras, lets terrorise it....) As covert is a dodgy area legally in the UK, a obvious non covert (but covert as they *think* its not real) is a good way to go covert legally without problems. At least I think it is

Yup, seen that sort of thing, I was refering more to them selling ones that look fake, but are real. The problem with the sanyo (or any make) ones that actually look real, is the bad guys literally have no idea if they are real or fake, they could be real, so probably assume they are real. Im more interested in ones that they look at and think, thats a fake, so dont bother trying to a: Steal it, or worse decide that they have been caught on cctv and have no choice but to follow through and steal the recording equipment so there is no evidence. b: Smash it c: Disable it (either permanantly or temporarily) d: Avoid detection on it. e: wont say, as it would give bad guys a clue. If they think its a fake, they will just ignore it and do the naughty deeds all caught on camera.......

Thats a nice looking case, lovely big red thing on the front (reminds me of those flashing led lamps for bikes). Manufacturers should sell dummies with real cameras in them (instead of selling real cameras with no internals as dummies, or just dummies that dont look real) that way the bad guys would have no idea if a dummy is real or not.....

Wire up the power (red and black wires) to the corresponding ones on the cameras iris socket, connect the white wire to the video signal on the iris socket, you should be able to ignore the green wire. The green is for 'level remote' and is used to overide the iris circuitry in the lens itself, usually the lens will read the video signal from the camera and adjust the iris to suit, but the level remote allows you to remotely overide this. For auto use, just ignore level remote. Your camera will also be switchable between video or DC iris control, make sure thats not the problem, it may be set wrong. Should work, unless there is a problem with the iris, or its wired incorrectly. (ps the iris does not have a motor, its galvanometer controlled, basically a little spring like coil moved by current)

what is the model number of the lens?

O.1 Lux (Day Light) - that seems very good for a colour image in daylight, wonder if the specs are accurate?

LCD's can suffer from image persistance, but usually when a problem like that occurs you can eliminate it by either turning of the display for a long time, or displaying a totally white background (or a exact opposite image of what was causing the problem). If displaying a white image turn the brightness down to extend life of the backlight and leave it on for a long time. LCD's should not normally suffer from burn in faster than a crt, but I have not used any of the big screen ones, maybe they suffer from it bad. (actually, its not burn in like on a crt, as it does not actually burn, they just get a memory effect that can usually be reversed by doing the above) There may be a bit in the manual for the lcd about it, but its often buried deep in some never read area.

What sort of video analytics? Sounds like interesting stuff that.

Simplest method is just to connect a battery (a 9v battery will do ok on a 12v lens, if the voltage is a bit less than the rating the lens just zooms a bit slower) one way for zoom in, and reverse it for zoom out. Remove battery and connect it to the focus wires one way for focus near, the other for focus far. Thats the method you can use to quick test a lens, but its not really much use in the real world for a proper cctv setup. Before I got a telemetry controller/receiver I just wired up two 9v batteries to switches, direct to the lens. You should not need a relay usually, unless your lens is a long way away or a weird high voltage one (never come across any yet). The batteries were connected so I had +9v 0v -9v available, or I could have used a power supply with both pos and neg 12v available (for a 12v lens, always check the lens wiring details to find its voltage, as say 12v on a 6v lens will spin motors twice as fast and cause undue wear/damage, and if there is any electronics it can blow it, although usually the motor bit is just motors.) There are different ways of connecting certain zoom lenses, what model lens are you trying to connect? The following is a quick diagram showing how you could use a couple of batteries and a couple of three way toggle switches (left, center off (normal pos), right) to control both focus and zoom. This is for lenses that have a focus, zoom and common connection. [/url] A example of a pentax lenses details, which has the required common, zoom and focus to connect to the above... If you have two wires for zoom, and two wires for focus which are direct wired to the each motor then you can connect one focus and one zoom wire together to make the common (you will need to make sure you get the right ones so the switches dont operate in reverse for zoom or focus, experimentation is often the only way if you have no wiring diagram for the lens) The above assumes the lens has nothing more than a motor controlling the zoom, and a motor controlling the focus (we are not connecting anything to the iris circuits here, you do them seperately if needed) which all I have seen are. You can use individual switches if you want instead of toggle switches, just rearrage the wiring to get the same effect, but be careful the user cant press zoom + and zoom - (or focus + and focus -) at the same time as that would short out the psu or batteries. Remember a small votage drop will usually not stop the lens from operating, but it will make it slower as the motors have less voltage to operate. So... You could use this to your advantage, you could make sure the lens will get the correct voltage for full speed operation at all times, BUT put a varialble resistor (potentiometer) into the circuit to lower the voltage as and when required, this could be mounted on a diy control panel next to the switches and could be used for fine control, ie very slow focus/zoom when required. If you want better control you can use telemetry, decent up the coax or rs485 telemetry receivers can control lens functions, but they cost a lot... Always check wiring/manuals etc before doing anything where possible, dont blame me if anything blows up, its at your own risk..

This is great, I want one, but would probably have to win the lottery first. Cant wait until this stuff becomes common place, and replaces the normal tv...

If your worried about cooling, extra fans can come in handy, or even better a proper rackmount server case/mobo that has temperature monitoring built in, they often also come with fan monitoring to alert you if any fans fail or to a rise in temp. Be careful of those hard drive mounted coolers, the ones that sit on the hard drive with a fan built in, bought one of those a while ago and the fan failed, causing the hard drive to become even hotter than normal! If possible try to mount the hard drives with plenty space in between them, often two or more drives are mounted on top of each other in pc cases which restricts airflow between them, and also means the heat from the first one rises straight up to cook the one on top.

Handy little looking gadget that, lots of uses, but the marketing worries me.... Imagine the hubby installing the cam on the wall, problem would be with such a tiny screen you would not be able to make out any details of how the baby is doing, so I can imagine some mother looking at the image on the tiny screen and complaining to the hubby, saying the babies face is not filling the screen like on the advert - make it do so. So the poor hubby ends up mounting the camera about a foot over the babies head (which is what I guess it would take if its a ultra wide angle lens) to get the same sort of results as shown on the advert. Great, the missus is satisfied, nice clear pic of babies head. So they go to bed, and turn the lights out in the babies room. IR illuminators on the camera come on, and the baby ends up staring nice and close at the 6 ir leds about 1 foot away from its face all night. By morning babies eyes are probably damaged for life (they may not be, but there is no way I would stare at 6 bright leds from a close distance for any length of time). Marketing at its best

Not a camera I have used before, but it looks nice on paper (or pdf as its via the web) especially for that price. I like the gaming mode, that is not something I have seen before, ideal for anyone wanting to use the cam in a pub / club / casino where there are gaming machines. Even nicer is the fact its pelco-d or p compatible so you can remotely configure the camera, rather than fiddle around at the camera with the menus you can do it at the monitor end in comfort - and see the results of the fiddling. Day/night filter is remotely controllable which is another nice looking feature, not sure what I would use that feature for, but its nice to know its possible should it be required. Looks like they forgot to fuse it properly when they built it, hence the need to use your own 1A fuse externally within 4 inches of the camera if powering it of 12v, but thats a small price to pay for the fact they managed to design so many features in to a nice small case. Its even got masking, another nice feature if you need to set up a privacy mask to avoid looking into areas you should not be seeing. Often you would have to do that at the recording or telemetry part.

The recent thread with multiplexers got me thinking about something that was bothering me before.... Multiplexers - which ones record fields, and which ones record frames? As far as I understand it a field has half the amount of info in it as a frame, and from what I can see most multiplexers record only fields. BUT they claim full resolution, are they doubling every line to create the illusion of a full frame (bit of a [edited, no I will rephrase that, massive con] con if they are....) Ok fields mean more cams per second, but if each cam is only having HALF the info recorded, isnt that a little odd? Or am i missing something? And why do some of them crop images, they dont mention they crop a significant portion of the image (in fact one person is in prison on a murder charge and part of the problem in establishing the guilt or innocence of the person was confusion over that issue). Its got nothing to do with "black borders" so you can see them in quad view as the robot website would have you believe, thats just a cop out. Anyone know which models dont crop, and actually do full res, and which ones do fields vs frames? Are there any other issues to look out for also?

Sounds like the termination switches were set, so as mentioned earlier you get a double (150 ohm) termination. Usually they would be set to loop through, so like you just said, it would not matter which one you used either would be fine. Flick the switch though and its no longer a direct short between the two, its a 75 ohm resistor in between the output and the input.... As the cam already is 75 ohm terminated you get two terminations, hence 150 ohms and lousy pic. Worrying the installer didnt actually notice the bad pic on all cams before he left.......

decided to email honeywell yesterday to see if there are any firmware upgrades for the dvr, as the pic quality is not what I would expect for a so called security product, so hopefully the will have a upgrade available to bring it up to a standard so it operates as advertised. Wonder if they will ever reply.....

Managed to buy a honeywell hrtl-one single channel dvr, nice and cheap - about the same price I would have paid for just the 250 gig drive that was in it, so iI look at it as if I got a hard drive and a bonus dvr... It will record fine when I switch its input to any single camera, but if I switch the input to either the VCR out on the mux, or even the monitor out on the mux, it falls over. It will display video fine from everything, but just states system error when I tried to record when connected to the mux. Its 'supposed' to be compatible with most multiplexers, and supposed to be a drop in replacement for vcrs both normal and timelapse. The mux is the old tecton kramplex, it has settings for many different timelapse vcrs, none of them make a difference to the DVR. I dont know the pinouts for the tecton, so I dont know if it has a VCR swipe pin to sync with the mux, Im guessing that could be the problem. Weird how even the monitor out on the mux fails to record though when I hit record all I get is 'system error' - maybe the mux is using blanking data/spare tv lines to encode hidden data, and maybe so is the dvr, and they are conflicting? Who knows.... The same output will record on the liteon dvr and on my pc(but its not decoding on the mux when its played back). The hrtl-one appears to be a 250gig capable version of the 120g version previously made by silent witness, now owned by honewell. Opening it up reveals its actually a av-tech av 721 inside. Anyone got any ideas on anything it could be that is causing the mux to be incompatible with the dvr? Maybe its something obvious that I have missed.... Failing that, anyone used other (or even this model) single channel dvrs, and multiplexers together, and if so, which plexers were compatible and which were not? Or anyone got any clues if the tecton has a vcr swipe pin (ie anyone know the pinouts, or the pinouts for a drax, maybe they are the same...)