Thomas

Generally it helps to go above the min specs. Now with some companies the min specs are a joke (try installing Win2k on it's min specs.) and with others it's reasonable.

Thier documentation doesn't mention it. Why not just do a serial port capture?

Okay, the problems we have with 32 channels is simple. You can't run every camera at 640x480 without flooding the cpu. It also tends to be very tough on storage.

You can't do anti-virus on XP embeded, unless the manufacture installs it for you. If you isolate it from the outside world, you should be okay. Floppy based viruses generally don't work in XP embeded due to the fact you don't have much that can run files.

You can do more then 16 channels per machine. We have a card capable of 32 cameras.

PCI-E should clear that bottleneck, but the boards with it are pretty pricey. And as far as I can tell, no capture cards are being designed for it.

I called them once to verify some stuff for a PTZ protocol, they were pretty nice about it.

Naw, best to keep the trash in a garage. Bears don't startle much.

The AVE box is what we have on our demo and it works alright for text inserting. But that is all it does.

Bah, just do the set up like the guy with the hunting site....PTZ mounting then use a relay to fire.

They make outdoor housing units with built in heaters. But don't ask Rory about them...he doesn't get this snow thing.

This is grossly over simplifed: ||| = Color pixel. Each line is one color (RGB) || = B/W. Two lines, one for black, one for white. The B/W takes 2/3s the space of a color pixel, so you get a better density from the B/W CCD.

Some of the others can correct me, thier field experance is better then mine. There are two uses for security. Deterance or dectection. One is that the cameras simply being thier and visable stop an illegal action. The second use is detection. Which leads to the question of what you're trying to detect. Are you trying to view/prepare evidence of vandelism or break-ins? If so, why would you need more then a few frames a second to be able to identify the person? Or do you need to see slight of hand? If that's the case, you need a few more fps. But those tend to be casino systems or LP types trying to watch the tills.

The chips do an analouge to digital conversion. There is some degree of compression that occurs at that level but it's not what you're looking at when you see the recorded files. Mostly you're paying for the software. And tech support. And R and D. And generally at least one layer of markup.

And then you run into the problem of MPEG in court. But the time lasp recordings from the VCRs were 1 fps.

Um no. Compression on the card is much more expensive. Generally most cards are using the CPU to compress video.

It's just you.

The only thing I would worry about with the flash is that the suckers are pretty fragile. The failure rate on those flash drives is not what I would consider good. For evidence, I would want two drives.

Hypethical questions time! What kind of things could a company make that would make your life easier in selling your services? I've got a test box on my desk that's a small form factor PC, one of the ones with a handle, and I figured that maybe some dealers might like them for on-site demos without hauling something around heavy machine. Anyone have anything else that they feel is simple but yet isn't made?

Yep, it's the Asus. We build something closer to that Rory, but it's a bit bigger. We took a case that is ment to fit into an overhead bin and put a motherboard, CPU, card, a few cameras, small drive, ect for demoing. Heavier then the box with handles, but better then having to check it for longer trips. Resisting the urge to put some wires and road flares in it was the hard part.

In answer to the second question, yes you can store to a second machine. It's under File->Data file management. You'll have to map the drives. Have fun in a workgroup setting. For the second one, I'd set up IIS and use it's SMTP server to do that. Might be iffy with the ISP.

My boss got that e-mail too. Given his prices and that he's based in china....I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

It's not about your sensitive data...it's about the box becoming a bot in a spam net or some box in a DDOS attack. Do not DMZ the box, do not put it open onto the net.

Yes and no. No firewall will help with latenacy, but it's kinda dangerous to not use one.

If you build the machine and buy the hardware for it, then you are an OEM. You can use the OEM version.