cctv-dave

No worries. Your experience paints a familiar picture of former DM customers who will never go back to them again. They are still run (owned) with the level of arrogance that they had when at the top of their game, as they fade into insignificance.

The M3G board don't have support for a memory card so all of the software has to go on the hard drive along with recordings. In later designs the memory card was used. On the M3G it didn't have it fitted (didn't work correctly, or wasn't on the design, can't remember which). They use FAT32. If the drive is over 2Tb and the software version supports it, the drive can be partitioned into multiple partitions and is then treated as if it were multiple drives. That's going to be hard for you, because looking at the software in your image grab, the NVD0 boot loader is at branch 12, but the browser software is at branch 18. IIRC, branch 12 didn't get 2TB+ drive support. I forget exactly how to check as not in front of one, but IIRC fdisk or format is the command and it will recognise the bigger drive if it's working. Try the release notes but it probably wont tell you... The other option is to look at the debug out of serial port 1 115200 8N1 during boot up. As the system boots the NVD0 bootloader checks the drives in the system and reports back the info. The browser application goes through all of this again, replacing everything that was previously done via the bootloader. You may get some good info from there. Hint: Use Putty and increase the scrollback to 20000 Hyperterminal is cack. DM still use the PAR system on these because it's a damn good system (I could write essays on how craply other manufacturers handle the file system. DM nailed it). You can set the PAR size (suggest 150Mb for a 2Tb partition) and so on via a file in the etc folder, disk.ini or drive.ini, something like that. What I'd suggest is a smaller drive, or a compact flash, SDcard in a SATA convertor (see ebay) used as HDD0, with all of the installation files on it and your hard drive as a second drive HDD5 (these units have 4 sata ports but support port splitting so 5 drives per channel with an extra bit of kit) . Don't record to the HDD0 drive. But tech support will struggle to help you on that even tho it is supported - not officially. You will need to edit the drive ini file I mentioned earlier. Use the serial port for debug. If it's got a 169 and it's dropping telnet, it's rebooting most likely. Debug will tell you why. If it's in safe mode, then it will reboot after five minutes IIRC. Codec Incompatible mode is like engmode. The system is pissed and not running correctly as either the codec file is missing, or the browser is not compatible with it. Infinitly configurable, but hard to work with unless you spend a lot of time with them. Christ only knows why so many customers have left DM.....

AMG Panogenics Dewarped on board, outputs like a typical PTZ, but 4(??) independant channels. Dedicated Micros do too, but only in a 2MP; although it's PTZ control is very good if you can stomach the low res (VGA dewarps). The AMG is based on a reference design from the chip fab house DM used to own. There is supposed to be some sort of Intellectual Property issue on in-cam dewarping IIRC. Which is why it's thin on the ground - so I was told.

If there isn't the feature, use VLC to convert the incoming stream into a MJPEG stream. You can host that on the HA PC, be it Linux or Windows. This might help you: http://www.contaware.com/content/view/91/32/

i. HD PTZ Camera x 1 to 2 pics ii. Recorder iii. 3G/4G Router iv. POE switch Solar & wind with batteries for night and still days. BTW, your kit list has far too many components. PTZ with in built recording. 3G routers - see TP link products. - come with wifi too, so build a mesh network.

A dredge from the past, but I was reading a newer post by yourself and it referenced an older (this) discussion. Pelco state on their PTZ's (Spectra and the HD) datasheets a Maximum Temp of 50C and an Absolute maximum of 60C. WTF does that mean ?? Well, according to the A&E; the Absolute maximum of 60C is for only two hours. Given that there is an alarm for temperature in the dome for on screen alaert of email et al, I imagine that they are also storing the max temp attained and duration into non-volatile in case of any warranty issues arising from high temperatures. Also what people tend to forget is that these are the internal dome temps, not the ambient. So welcome to the Middle East, where internal temperatures may well get above 50C depending on location and mounting arrangements. It would be interesting to see the failure rates - fat chance ! Given the opertunities in MENA, I imagine that Pelco are quietly replacing them even when they fail on bigger projects due to over temperature.

This is a list of some of the sensors used by Hik, taken from their firmware for the DS-2CD8254FWD. I need to obtain one of the units and have more of a poke around. Somewhere in there will be a TTL port and I'll wager given the content of the firwmare file that the unit will spit out what sensor is fitted during boot up, becasue most DM365/368 based products (or cams that run linux TBH) do. MT9P031 5MP 1/2.5 2592x1944 aptina AR0331 3.1MP 1/3 2048x1536 aptina MT9D131 2MP 1/3.2 1600x1200 aptina MT9M033 1.3MP 1/3 1280x960 aptina AKA AR0130 MT9V136 PAL/VGA 1/4 680H x 512V aptina A3372E3 2.1MP 1/3 1920x1080 AltaSens IMX122 2.43MP 1/2.8 1984×1225 sony IMX035 1.3MP 1/3 1329x1049 sony EFFIOP 960H CCD DSP sony EFFIOE 960H CCD DSP sony CXD3191 sony ? MN34041PL 2.1MP 1/3 1944x1092 Panasonic a9m033 ??? SS3 ?? It's not an exhaustive list and there are a couple of unknowns in there. The newer bullets released in August dont have frimware uploads at present on Hik Euro site. No surprises all the refrence design sensor and processor combinations are in there with the usual sensor suspects. An awful lot of manufactuers are using essentially the same reference designs. The difference comes with the software and there are massive differences between skills of whomever is writing this for different companies. I've seen good software ported to what was a bad camera and big changes in functionality, image quality and performance. Some OEM's are quite good at that... It's still a question which sensor they are using or how exactly they are doing it. They could be using a combination of row and column binning and skipping. This could give different results if in 3MP mode or 1080 mode. Or just as many sensors produce a 1080p output from more pixels than required and software scale the image, there could some skulduggery taking place. Aptina do an essentially VGA sensor (IIRC MT9V136) which scaled up to PAL/NTSC equivilent resolution. Depends how much you want to get into it to find out

They are actually SATA drives with a SATA <--> PATA convertor built onto the drive PCB. A bit cheeky really. The controller used is not compatible with DM kit. The Marvell convertors work best with any SATA drive, expect with ECO4 and D4 units.