Willie

I just installed a camera at the end of my driveway. The total distance from the camera to my 20 inch LCD monitor is about 600 feet. I used an unshielded twisted pair for the 600 foot run, with NVT baluns at each end. In general, I am pleased with the picture displayed on the monitor. However, there is one artifact that bothers me. About every 15 seconds, a dark horizontal band (about 2 inches wide) starts at the bottom of the screen. It then progresses from the bottom to the top of the screen in about 15-20 seconds. I have two questions: What is causing this, and how can I get rid of it? Thanks, Willie

The one concern I have about the Extreme camera is its lack of electrical heating. Here in Minnesota it gets mighty cold in the winter. I wouldn't want the camera to freeze-up like our cars do!

I am installing 4 cameras around the exterior of my house. We plan to live in that house for a long time. So, I want to buy the best cameras in hopes that they will give me excellant service for many years. I am willing to spend up to $700 per camera. And, what I have in mind is a bullet camera, low light capable, IR for night vision, heated for my cold winters, auto iris and varifocal lens. With that background, here is my question: I am looking for a camera manufacturer who has the reputation for making the best cameras. If you know of a particular model from that maufacturer that is the best, please also let me know. Thanks, Willie

The maximum distance for the IR detection is about 50 feet. One camera needs to have about a 45 degree field of view. By this I mean, if you draw a line down the longitudinal axis of the camera, the camera needs to see everything from the axis to 45 degrees to one side. The other cameras only need 25-30 degrees for field of view. I hope this helps. Willie

I am having a CCTV camera installed so that it covers the outside area of our front door. I would like to have outside lights come on, to illuminate the front porch, and the camera to be turned on when someone approaches the front door. To make this happen, I thought of using a motion detector to sense when someone is at the front door. I would like to mount it under the eave of the roof and pointed straight down at the front porch. I would also like to confine the sensor beam to about a radius of 36 inches on the surface of the front porch (the sensor would be about 16 feet up when mounted under the eave). Could someone suggest a model of sensor detector for this project? Thanks, Willie

I' sorry I didn't fully explain my situation in my first post. I have no intention of recording what the video camera sees. My problem is, I have two junipers, each about 10 feet tall flanking, the front porch. There are similar junipers along the rest of the front of the house. I live in Minnesota. With snow and rain storms, the junipers sway back and forth by at least two feet near their top. It was my guess that if I used typical motion detectors, the junipers would give me many false indications and be turing the lights on numerous times. That's why I was looking for a motion detector that would not see the junipers, but would only see the front porch. My office is in the basement of my house (that's where I am now). If someone approaches the front door, at night, I would like to look at my monitor and have a good look at who it is. Also, if the person who is at the front door is there without a good reason, I think the flood lights would make them think twice about staying at the door. I hope this better explains my situation. I really appreciate all of the interest in how I don't need a motion sensor. But, I would really apprreciate a direct answer to my question: does such a sensor exist? Thanks, Willie

The primary reason for the motion sensor is to cause the flood lights to come on. This has the added benefit of illuminating the front porch so the camera has better light. Is such a sensor made? Thanks

I have spent 2 hours searching the Web to find something that may not exist. I am looking for a small SINGLE device that includes the following and can be mounted on the 4 inch trim around our front door: 1. a standard door bell; 2. a CCTV camera to hardwired to my monitor; and 3. a motion detector. The camera can be on all of the time. I like the idea of the position of the camera because it should look straight into the face of the person on the front porch. The doorbell doesn’t need to do anything but ring our current bell. And, the motion detector, if it detects motion, will turn on the outside lights around the front door. I know this can all be done by adding a motion detector and a camera to our current doorbell. But, I am trying to pass the “wife approval testâ€

I am installing a CCTV camera at the gate to our driveway. The camera has 480 lines of horizontal resolution, and IV p-p 75 Ohm composite output. The total distance from the gate to the monitor in my house is about 600 feet. I recently asked on this Forum for the bandwidth of a 480 line CCTV camera because I was wondering if it was worth ignoring the camera manufacturer’s recommendation of using RG59/U and using RG6/U. Now that I have done some more searching on the Internet, I believe it would be better to use a twisted pair, without shielding, instead of coax. I talked to one of the technical reps at NVT and they suggested using one of their passive baluns (Model NV 214-A Video Transceiver) at the camera and their active receiver (Model NV 652-R Video Receiver) at the house-end of the run of twisted pair. I have 2 questions: 1. when I talked to the installer about NVT’s suggestions, he thought I was wasting my money on an active receiver. He said because the resolution of the camera was so low, I wouldn’t notice the difference between an active receiver and another passive balun. Who has the better approach for the best signal I can get? 2. What is the reputation of NVT and is there a higher quality manufacturer I should be looking at? Thanks, Sam

I am installing a CCTV camera at the gate to our driveway. The camera has 480 lines of horizontal resolution, and IV p-p 75 Ohm composite output. The total distance from the gate to the monitor in my house is about 600 feet. I recently asked on this Forum for the bandwidth of a 480 line CCTV camera because I was wondering if it was worth ignoring the camera manufacturer’s recommendation of using RG59/U and using RG6/U. Now that I have done some more searching on the Internet, and read the information on this Forum, I believe it would be better to use a twisted pair, without shielding, instead of coax. I talked to one of the technical reps at NVT and they suggested using one of their passive baluns (Model NV 214-A Video Transceiver) at the camera and their active receiver (Model NV 652-R Video Receiver) at the house-end of the run of twisted pair. I have 2 questions: 1. when I talked to the installer about NVT’s suggestions, he thought I was wasting my money on an active receiver. He said because the resolution of the camera was so low, I wouldn’t notice the difference between an active receiver and another passive balun. Who has the better approach for the best signal I can get? 2. What is the reputation of NVT and is there a higher quality manufacturer I should be looking at? Thanks, Sam P.S., I have also posted this question on the transmission line Forum, but so far have gotten no responses. So, I am sorry if I have made you read this twice.

Hi Rory, Thank you for replying to my post. The camera is an option for the Chamberlain Elite 25 Keypad and is on a card that is installed in the keypad. The keypad is located at the gate near the entrance to our driveway. By using the keypad or the internal intercom and the image we see in the house of who is wanting to get into the yard, we can control who comes through the gate. The Spec for the Elite 25 does not give the manufacturer of the camera, but Chamberlain's model is: EL25DVRCAMKT. If there is anything else from the spec for the camera, I will be glad to give it to you. But, the "Effective Pixels are: NTSC: 512 (H) x 482 (v) with 480 horizontal TV lines. The scanning System is 2:1 Interlaced, amd the video output is IV p-p 75 Ohm composite. It is 1-1/2 inches square. I hope this helps.

I have just had a security gate installed for my driveway. Part of the gate electonics includes a color CCTV camera referred to as a “Low Lux cameraâ€

I am at the beginning of my first CCTV project. Please help me understand very fundamental aspects of CCTV, and forgive me for asking such basic questions (I have spent a couple of hours trying to find answers to these questions on the Internet and in the FAQ section of this Forum without success). I have had a security gate installed at the end of my driveway. The gate includes a keypad for entry of a code to open the gate. The keypad is made by Chamberlain and is called the “EL25â€

Thank you for the information. That was exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks to all of you for the helpful information. Rory, I don't have any cable installed yet. The purpose for this post was to decide between RG6/U and RG59/U. The RG-6/U I had in mind from Belden uses a solid copper core center conductor, but it does have a shield that includes an aluminum foil as part of its 100% shield. Looks like I need to keep searching for better coax or turn to CAT 5 cable. The Pelco Video Amplifier/Equalizer seems ideal for this situation. It appears to allow me to adjust the amount of gain both below 12 MHz and above. This will allow me to have a much flatter frequency response. But, that leads me back to my original question: what is the bandwidth (i.e., how high is the highest frequency) for the video camera I have bought (as described in my first post of this string). I probably gave too much detail in initial post, so I am going to try another post with my question asked more simply.

I'm sorry I didn't make it clear in my first post. The distance from the entry of my house to my monitor is about 35 feet. So, the total distance from the camera to the monitor is about 1,110 feet. I guess the reason I like to make things hard for myself is that I like to dig into a subject and try to understand it, instead of just blindly following the manufacturer's instructions. If I simply use a video amp and use the suggested RG59/U cable, the amp can only amplify the signal it is given. If the higher frequencies of the video signal are attenuated, compared to the RG6/U, they are going to be amplified but will still be lower than the lower frequencies. Won't this result in a reduction in the resolution and the finer detail of the image? I'm sorry to hear I won't like the image I see on my monitor. Can you tell me what the problem is and how it would look different from a CRT monitor? Is there a way I can get around this problem? Thanks for your help. Willie