kensplace

Cant wait until high definition cctv arrives mainstream, digital cams are now very cheap for even multi mega pixel cameras, bout time cctv caught up. How many frames per second is the camera you were using? Can it do 25 or 30 fps at that resolution? Or is it sloooooowwwwwww? Couple that with the problem of how on earth anyone could store the image without a new set of equipment, as I cant grasp how current multiplexers, dvrs, etc would cope, they are designed for much lower resolutions, at least as far as I know they are anyways. Guess that would not apply though, if you got a new system designed from scratch for a mega-pixel cctv camera, although the recording aspect would still be harder to cope with, due to the much larger size of the frames. I cant see why cctv cams cant be mega pixel at a reasonable price, if normal digital cameras can do it, Im sure cctv manu's could if they wanted to - even if they just operated at a few frames per second.

Weird no laws against drunk driving, but use a voip service and they throw the book at you!

DVR is probably recording at a low res, or is a low res dvr to start with. Seems common to see DVR's with crappy recording specs, live viewing always looks great, but your recording rubbish most of the time on lots of dvrs.

Your more likely to lose a load of money than make any, as if you have no experience, you will likely import a load of junk, that causes no end of problems, and have customers complaining, asking for money back and getting on your back all the time about problems.

I would be extremely careful, whilst some hospitals are using wifi-networks, and their may be no problem, it is best that all departments who need to know are informed and consulted. Hospitals use not just off the shelf stuff, but often use custom built appliances, even if today they are not using anything that is affected by what you choose, there is no guarentee that next year someone wont install something that is affected, unless they are aware of what has been installed. If these people dont want the hospital techies to know what new equipment is radiating signals around the hospital, then not only are they probably incompetent and insane, they are putting peoples lives at risk. Any equipment used in a hospital needs to be not only top-notch, it will also need to be safety tested before use (so the techies will almost certainly need to be involved) and documentation needs to be available for any one who needs to check to ensure devices are not going to be interfered with etc. Sounds like these people want to keep it under wraps, I would not only walk away, I would be scared to get treatment in a hospital ran like that. Patient confidentiality would also be an issue, as you dont know where the system will be recording, it could record patient movements etc, and wireless is not usually (if ever) secure.

Check out the metal mickey range (same pan/tilts as used on the uk tv series Big Brother), they can be ballistic proof if need be. Probably pretty expensive though, they have been bought out by extreme cctv recently. http://www.fvcctv.co.uk/

You could try getting a PIR to detect motion, mount it as desired, but use opaque masking tape on the inside of the sensor window to mask out areas you dont want detecting. Just cover up as much of the sensor as you need so it only covers the area you want covered. (by cover up the sensor, I mean the plastic window, not the actual sensor inside on the board!)

Date and time shown look like its from a playback after the event, unless they knew in advance there was going to be a 'impact'' recorded, as the camera was called 'impact'.

If your broken into, then the thieves may just take the DVR or PC with DVR card in it, and all your footage is gone. So you would also need to look into having the footage transferred offsite by the dvr/pc, so if its stolen you have a second copy.

They are both the same, h264 is identically specced to mpeg 4 part 10 standard, according to wikipedia anyways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264 Just different technical standard names for the same protocol, but its letting you know which version of mpeg 4 its using, as there are probably more than one type I guess.

You win some, you lose some on ebay... Had many great bargains on ebay, including quality kit, sometimes even brand new stuff, at a fraction of the cost of even trade prices. But I have also had a couple of few duff items, or items that didnt last long, funnily enough, the last camera's that just arrived from a ebayer were a classic example of how things can go wrong..... They arrived (advertised as in good working order), two no name b&w cams, with lenses and stands. After unpacking the first thing that struck me as odd, was they were metal, mains powered, with the plug cut off - and there clearly was only two wires in that cable - live and nuetral - no earth wire. Weird... Figured they must be double insulated on the inside, but made a mental note to check after having a quick test to see if they are ok. Stuck a plug on, and powered up. Nothing happened, nothing at all. Figured something was wrong, so after making sure the fuse was ok, I unscrewed the camera, to find the camera was 95 percent empty, and the back just came of in my hands, with a couple of inches of mains wire stick out loose... The camera only had the back board, and front sensor inside it. The back board had NO connections to the rear BNC, lens drive, on/off switch or anything - and the mains that went in, just dangled inside the camera - bare wired at the end. Literally a deathtrap waiting to happen. The other camera had its insides, but had the mains cable cut inside, just like the other one. Well dodgy, and obviously both cameras were not "in good working order". Waiting for refund (partial as I am happy with the lenses and stands) from the seller, who apologised saying she got them from a friend, and took their word for it they were in good working order. At the end of the day though, despite the fact they could have probably killed me if the wind was blowing the other way, I still got a bargain, a 3.5 - 8mm varifocal and a 8mm lens, both auto iris, plus two camera stands, plus I managed to fix the other camera (after taking it to bits and figuring out where to wire the power back up insided, and making it safe) and have a spare case and CCD sensor - all for less than 15 pounds, half of which will be refunded to me anways. If your happy taking a chance, then ebay is great, but if you dont know what you want, or dont like fixing stuff then its not always the best place to shop. Its also going downhill all the time, with more foreign stuff being sold, and more dodgy sellers joining up, standards have fell a lot over the last few years.

Could be lens hunting, as its only affecting outdoor cams. The iris is closing to let in less light, but then the iris control circuitry is set up wrong and tells it to let more in, so it opens, then it tells it to let less in, so it closes. The iris just alternates between opening and closing, which could show up like described, try adjusting your auto gain controls, iris controls whatever the cams have.

Wet contacts are tied to a output voltage, ie they turn things on and off, you wire contact to a voltage, and it switches that voltage on/off to whatever is connected to the other end of the relay. Dry contacts just turn on / off or changeover, whatever the relay is designed to do, they are not wired to supply a voltage, and are the ones that you would normally wire a sensor to. They short or unshort whatever is connected to them. If in doubt on relay contacts or wiring, contact a electrician before doing any high voltage work using them.

Are the police not capable of doing their own covert ops? Sounds iffy to me, are they expecting you to do this for free? Will they expect you to testify? Will they provide witness protection if anyone gets nasty? Have they made this a formal request, in writing?

If your recording a test signal DVD then (in general, not used geo myself) those should be outputing a nice *stable* output, with little to no variation in the colours, ie a red is red, and stays at the same level all the time. A camera will in general have a slight variation in the colours of each pixel on each frame, also their output can be 'noisier' than the nice clean output from a dvd with a test disk. The compression has to account for all the changes between frames, so the more picture noise or movement, the more it has to compress, and the risk of the picture quality degrading increases. Also, pictures usually look better on a tv than they do on a standard PC monitor, and TFT monitors (at least mine anyways) are even worse.... I usually watch my avi's/mpegs on my tv via a tv out port on my graphics card, and the improvement is vast compared to watching them on the 19 inch sharp TFT. You may find using different compression settings (if geo allows it) would improve things, also try watching the recorded output on a TV, see what it looks like...

You would need a very good pan tilt to move around a 20 Kilogram lens, plus the weight of the hardware needed to secure the camera to the lens so it doesnt just snap the camera in half, plus any lighting, control etc. In addition to supporting the weight (which could easily exceed 25 kilo) it would need to be very, very smooth moving, as the *slightest* angle of movement on the pan tilt head would equal HUGE movement at the end of the zoom. The longer the zoom, the harder to control it is.

Stay away from the pico type cards on ebay, unless your budget is very low, as they are not that good.... When you say you have the bnc/rj45 connectors and cat 5e cable, what have you installed already, and how are you planning to wire the cams? You can get line fed cameras which get their power over the video signal, but they are not cheap, and not common these days. Your probably better off looking into siamese cable which has power and coax in one (not used it, but it sounds a good idea) I personally went the other way, and have just one input on my pc, but its switchable through multiplexers and a matrix (got way to much stuff on ebay lol) so I can control/view any camera I need to.

Well I tried to do a telemetry decoder, but was a bit stumped when I got some sample chips and they were tiny (and I mean TINY) surface mount ones. Perhaps if I had bionic eyes, and dexterity surpassing that of the finest open heart surgeon, then I may have been able to solder those chips... So anyways, at that point, when I figured investing boat loads in surface mount soldering equipment was going to far, I decided just to go and bid on some 'real' telemetry stuff. Miracle of miracles I won (two, one has arrived, the other I have to pay for, just won it). Its a nice (and new) modern dedicated micros drx400p model, its got the 24v option (which I didnt need, and asked the seller if it was possible to use it for 240v instead, and he said no..) Five minutes after opening it up, I figure out the first problem, the mains transformer for the 24v is loose, so I tighten it up. Second problem, its not outputing anything on the pan/tilt or lights/washer etc outputs... checked and there is no damn fuse in it (is it normal for a new unit to have no fuse?) so I stick a fuse in. Nothing. Remove fuse, its burned up, blown. Hmmmmm, another check for shorts (unlikely as no wiring installed yet) and all looks ok, so try once more - fuse dead again. Guess the transformer is shot, pain, but not a problem as I dont want 24v on it anyways. I unplug 24v transformers plug, and plug in the (obvious spare connector) which is mentioned in the manual to convert from 24v to mains (which the seller said cant be done...) and it works fine - panning away right this moment. Total cost, 25 pounds, hate to think how much these things actually cost (not sure, as the websites just say contact sales for pricing....) Still not figured out the iris control for the zoom lens (cosmicar/pentax h10zme 2p), but the zoom/focus is set up now. It uses relays to control the pan/tilt which is a bit of a pain, having to listen to the click click click all the time when the joystick is used (and a bit worrying, how long are the relays going to last? Cant figure out why they did not use solid state stuff, instead of moving parts?) Got a feeling I will probably have to mess around more with the lift/gain controls, as they are set to 250m cable length, and I am using 2 meters... Knocked them down to improve the pic, and on the TV the pic is fine, but now I have weird lines going down the pic (the lines are not moving, just present) on the PC capture card input (only on the cam with the telemetry) Hopefully thats just those gain/lift controls, but will look tomorrow, way to knackered now to mess around inside it. Will probably need to take a trip down to b&q (hardware store) to see if they sell cable glands also, as despite the fact these things cost so much they are afraid to publish the price, the manu's are such cheapskates they expect you to drill your own holes and install your own cable entry stuff. Any suggestions on best way to hande cable entry? Im guessing at just drilling holes, sticking cable glands (one per cable) - but do they need additional cable supports or do the glands keep the cable still and resist pulls? [edit] Guess what the most annoying thing is though, wanted telemetry so I could stick a camera out the back yard - it arrived a couple of days after tina, our yorkshire terrier got stolen from the back yard (at least we assume she was stolen from the back yard, the front was on camera recorded all day, and she didnt get out the front....) Police just said its a sign of the times when I said were always getting burgled and stuff like that. Fingers crossed they find her, she was nicked once before, and turned up miles away (the police told us were to collect her).

You can get all in one PIR with voice message, google for PIR with voice message. They let you record a short message, then play it back when the PIR is activated by motion. Or you could use a high end PIR instead if needbe, and link that to a relay that activates a voice playback system linked to a seperate high powered amplifier to scare the pants of any intruder...

12.5v is very close to the ATX spec limit of + or - five percent tolerance on the 12v line. 12.6v would be the limit (12v + 5 percent), anything over that could risk pushing past design tolerance for anything connected to it.

Main problems I found using underspec'd psu's were it can cause the capacitors to fail earlier in the psu, and even on the mobo, if the voltages go out of spec due to the psu being over-pushed and failing. Its one of those problems that can take time to show up, but can be fatal to a pc..... Classic sign is the bulging capacitors, although often they can fail these days on their own accord, due to the **** up where someone stole the forumala from a rival manu, and loads of boards are failing early. When you look at a PSU, the overall wattage can be misleading, as its distributed over the various power rails (3.3, 5,12,-12 etc etc) you need a psu that has enough amps on the rails used by the equipment you use (intel relies on the 12v rail mainly If I recall, but worth checking). Different quality PSU's will have different amp ratings for the rails, they are usually shown on the psu itself.

http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/Help/Calibration.htm has a few sources on it for test dvd's, they also pop up on ebay a lot (but I have no idea how accurate the ebay ones are.....) and there a lot on google if you search for pal test dvd or ntsc test dvd etc.

You could get a dvd with a test pattern on it, and play that into the dvr, record it and play it back on a monitor. Then you will be able to check the output to see how much resolution is recorded, according to the instructions with the test pattern dvd. Or get a test generator, and do the same, but they cost a lot....

What is the quality like on a typical low end price cctv drv, is it better than / comparable to or worse than say a hauppage pci wintv capture card at full resolution? Is it better than VHS or S-VHS? They seem to have (if the mention it at all) low recording resolutions compared to the display resolution, are they worth looking into - I dont want to get one if when it comes to the crunch vital quality has been thrown out of the window when it recorded. Also what about a standard domestic hard disk based TV recorder, they seem to have good reviews, are they suitable for CCTV (any one tried one?) How do either/both cope with recording from a multiplexer, which was designed for recording onto timelapse?

cool, cheers.