bigglebowski

Just curious what you mean here do you not pass the savings to the customer or do you charge what "equivalent" brand names would cost but supply Dahuas.

Pretty sure there is not an option within the camera settings, not sure if there is a command that you can send to disable. Certainly it would be easy to just disconnect the wire harness inside the camera.

I just realized I did not convert that FOV I gave you from feet back to meters so adjust that. The camera is on a construction project that is out of my control at the moment. I will probably get it back in a couple of months. The IR should be similar to other illuminators that operate in the same spectrum. But in front of them at 50m you will see them in the dark.

Full zoom at 150 meters gives you about a 28 horz x 21 vert field of view which would be tough to identify a plate standing still. The effective range of the built in IR is 20 meters but the zoom will be able to view your driving away from camera scenario well beyond that distance. Search for a field of view calculator to test some scenarios your self, the max zoom on the camera is 84.6 mm. The IR LEDS are very bright in darkness when viewed directly, they are less noticeable at a tangent though considering the housing hides them somewhat. Since you mentioned casual observer I will mention the camera also has a very loud audible click when switching in and out of day/night which would be accompanied by the LEDS going on/off.

+1 on soldering, weller makes a really nice iron that runs off butane. Its also surprisingly easy to solder wires together with a lighter too.

If you are comfortable working with IP cams and NAS the ubiquiti stuff shouldnt be difficult. I am sure there are calculators that will tell you what the battery lifetime would be but if this is something that has to be done I would say start with one battery and see how it goes. We used to maintain some police radar trailers (they sit on the side of road and display speed to drivers) that ran off of 2 full sized deep cycle batteries. Certainly this setup with a constant running radar, large multi led display for the speed display and car counting equipment was a higher current draw overall. They had a 1 foot by 2 foot solar panel but all the stuff was late 90s tech so im sure the solar panel was no where near as efficient as modern ones are as well as the other electronics. This setup was expected to run 2 weeks before a recharge was needed.

Since you have a "free" PC the. Search for NVR / VMS / CMS software and look for a page on each of their sites that shows what cameras they support. You should see a handful of brands that work on all software, these are the cams I would look into purchasing. Then when you find a brand you like look and see if they offer free NVR/VMS software. This only works if you stick to one brand, which may help you spend a little more on each camera. Acti has some models that have just come out and a few more that should be out soon that are low cost even for the outdoor ones. Their NVR 3.0 software will support up to 16 cams at no additional cost.

So are you saying my $2000 budget is too low to get something decent ? Decent is a relative term. Figuring 8 cams, NVR, wiring, networking etc... seemed low for analog let alone IP. At that budget look into the brand Dahua. It seems like +80% of the recent posts on this site are about Dahua so info should be easy to come by.

You could run the camera staight off of the battery since it does 12v input. Depending on the other electronics like router etc. you may want to find some that also run off 12vdc so you dont have to use any kind of converters that will rob some of your battery time. Can you add a small solar cell panel to the mix that will at least keep the battery running longer? They have some solar charging devices that you can hook to the battery and it will also act sort of like a regulator and output the 12v DC. I cant remember on the ubiquiti units I have worked with if the POE injector had a mains plug or a wall wart which would probably be the wrong voltage anyway (24v?). Of course an inverter would work but it will eat some of your battery just to do the conversion. Seems like 2 parallel deep cycle marine batteries would give you more than 2weeks, maybe one battery with a solar cell could do 2 weeks.

I wasnt even thinking about he power when I looked at them on amazon, I just knew there was a cheaper deca. It would be possible to put power down the coax with the use of splitters but the passive device is a cleaner way to do it and probably not worth the savings. Is power for the camera already there? Depending on voltage could tap into that power.

Yes they require power at each adapter, get ones that come with an adapter like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/DIRECTV-DECA-BB1MR0-01-INTERNET-BROAD-BAND-ADAPTER-MRV-/121049720569?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2f2026f9 There is no TX/RX and you could actually have them work off of splitters like the SWM (single wire multiswitch) splitters that Directv uses for their systems. So you could have one at the router and others off of splitters going to different IP devices.

DIRECTV SERVICE IS REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM TO WORK (DECA adapters) Is this true ? No, it just uses a block of frequency between 450-650 Mhz on the coax for ethernet. But if you wanted to share that coax it might only be compatible with Directv.

Was that a satellite radio connection? I think they use SMB connectors, see if this is correct: http://www.hollandelectronics.com/catalog/catalog.php?product_id=Satellite-Radio-Jumper-F-Female-SMB-Jack Before you buy the DECA adapters go to ebay and search for "directv deca" and you will find a much better price. Directv has a couple of different versions of their deca devices and any will work. The white brick looking ones with the green label might not come with a power supply. They all do the same thing, but the white ones use a large power supply that usually is used for powering the dish. Look for either of the black ones that come with an ac adapter. These retail for much more but I think a lot of installers and whatnot that have receivers with built in deca end up selling these on ebay when not used in an install.

Search on this site for the word: balun

You could have the splitters up in a drop ceiling for instance so it would not be obvious the cable was split and the alternate DVR is hidden in another location. Splitters will generally require power which may be as simple as tapping into your cameras power supply if they are the same type of voltage (DC or AC), if not you can use converters. If the cameras can operate on 24vac OR 12vdc then it would be easy just to tap into the incoming power to the camera. The alternate DVR could be whatever you want, h.264 and remote view is pretty much standard.

Not sure how "cheap" the cameras that you were working with before that were "junk" but $2000 for 8 cams some of which are outdoor doesnt seem too far off from cheap. Not to mention the cost of the the wiring, switch and NVR.

My point was your Autozone analogy was a great example in this case... The other point you quoted was sort of what you said. A customer has lots of expectations and no budget and think that because a pro installs a wholesale club system that by some kind of magic it will work out great. What I am saying is that you make $1000 off a small install but then cost yourself $2000+ of your time constantly fixing it. With each site visit the confidence of your customer diminishes more and more. I have not touched a Dahua product, but I seriously think that this is exactly what will happen if I installed it for a client. I would be interested to see if other integrators/installers disagree with my assessment.

The difference is a proper professional mechanic for the most part WOULD say you are wrong. A lot of the stuff sold in autozone, advanced auto and such are the Dahua equivalent chinese type parts. Not saying they dont sell brand name proper stuff but this is where you go for cheap chinese $30 rotors when proper ones cost more than double that. Not trying to beat you up here but it might be hard to build your business if you start out all wrong. It is hard to fathom but there will be times where NOT selling a system to somebody will be the best move.

So you are going to install a system that costs you less than $1000 and need a 50% deposit? I agree with tomcctv, it is just a bad idea to professionally install a DIY system. Buy your stuff from somewhere that at least sells low voltage products, even if CCTV is not their primary business. I would hate to have a customer shopping for a giant bag of cat food walk by a shelf and notice the same system they had professionally installed. Is anybody out there installing Dahua professionally?

Curious what the analog and IP camera brand/models of OUTDOOR cameras you would be using in this scenario considering your statement in the last part of the sentence. Also would not be a fair comparison unless the demo showed night and day lighting.

If you want blurry you got to go with fire, not only will it be blurry but it will give the viewer one hell of a show.

Many modern cameras do allow either 24v AC or 12v DC on the same connection. So it makes sense that they mark the polarity for when using DC you dont want to reverse the wiring. With AC it does not matter so you would just ignore the markings. Do verify that your camera will do 24v AC before hooking it up just in case. If it does 12v DC only there are simple and cheap regulators that your can hookup up to the incoming 24v AC.

Just start with the splitters first before buying anything. I think you will find that the video going through just one splitter will not be acceptable to you. Unless you have them for some reason buy get a pair of RCA to F adapters to hook up the cables. Simple way to tell if your coax has a steel core would be a magnet. Solid copper conductor is just not needed for RF signals since they only travel down the skin of the conductor which is where the copper clad is. With DC for powering LNBs and video which is basically a DC signal it occupies the whole conductor. That is why running video over TV grade coax at long distance is not ideal. RG6 has a thicker center conductor of 18 awg and RG59 is 20 awg.

While I have not used them Honeywell and Digital Watchdog are brands I see a lot with sales and specials at ADI, and I think they sell a lot of them. Cant comment on securitycameraking but personally Im not a fan of stuff without a brand name on it. Your comment about better quality would lead me to say this would not be better, if anything this would be lesser. The cost of parts for the install was about $2500-3000 easy, so if you want better shouldnt you be budgeting more for better since your labor is the savings.

Asking the customer to pay up front for what should be a turnkey install seems like a bad move, particularly if you dont know the person/company. There are certainly instances where this may not apply like a long term multiple phase project. You might as well have the customer buy the parts and you just sell your labor. How much profit margin also depends on things that dont have to do with a scale of a job. I did a repair today that took less than an hour, I charged $100 for and had $5 worth of material to do it. How much profit did I make? Well after opportunity costs, taxes, rent, employees, electrical, water, gas, other gas, insurance, other insurance, loan, phone, advertising, dumpster, warranty work, internet... I am not talking about any expenses at home here either. Advice? Dont quit your day job just yet.