rory

dust, pollen, insects, etc, common place with IR in many areas. Is this near a source of water like a pool or pond?

That one looks fine. Maybe take that cover and switch it with the other?

Now thats strange. Does it happen on the other domes or do you only have the one?

Biggest problem ive had with the covers is the scratching and the glare/reflection from Sunlight and other light sources.

the polycarbonate scratches really easy, even fingers Ive found damage it. I guess they cut costs on the scratch resistant coating, though perhaps that could cause some focus issues also. Ive found eyeglass cleaning cloth to be the safest thing for it. Make sure you are focusing it under low light, the lens isnt that great. Are the settings all default? Other than the sharpness

I checked with CNB tech as this also interests me. They dont have a clear vandal dome cover, but they say they have a clear cover for their indoor dome that will fit the vandal dome. Order ‘Clear Bubble dome for D2000 series’ as a misc. item. But it wont be vandal as mentioned.

You're right that is a Bosch... Also is your cabling really that messy over there? ..Jeez I thought the Irish were bad!!! they probably left the extra slack incase they wanted to walk around with it on the balcony

Yep .. or in the services list should be "Shell Hardware Detection" Another fix for that, especially if plugging your USB drive in other computers, is to create a folder on the root drive called autorun.inf, typically the malware that was the issue at one time was stupid enough not to be able to remove the folder and create its autorun.inf file. If anything this at least stopped the spreading of the malware.

Make sure auto run is disabled otherwise if someone sticks in a USB drive they could get infected.

Could be a virus or other malware.

Id have to disagree with some of that, its been my experience most people want the widest angle, so that can be done prefocus in most cases, in a controlled environment for more precision focusing eg. no bright sunlight, objects with alot of contrast, bright and low light setting etc. It only takes a few minutes to do this at the office, then when one gets on the job its plug and play, unless ofcourse the cameras need to be zoomed in on something or objects close to it throw it out of focus. Prefocus is even more beneficial when dealing with Infrared and day night applications.

for the sunlight issue ive been using a black tshirt over my head and the monitor .. a little dangerous on the ladder though so only when I had no choice. Wait for low light otherwise or cloud, best not to try focus in full sun light anyway. Size wise I use a 9" monitor for cctv cameras and could still do with larger but it works and others use even smaller, but you are talking about MP cameras so may differ. Acer make light netbooks, not sure how well they would do with MP cameras though, would probably need to make it smaller like 1.3MP so the CPU doesnt max out.

2 way radios and cell phones, been there done that, not my preferred methods to get optimal focus, then again neither is carrying a netbook up 20 feet .. I agree prefocus whenever you can. I like the sound of remote focus cameras even better though

This is for networked video only right? Have you tried the desktop software? Looks like they sell alot of different units, which model is it?

instead of a laptop why not use a netbook instead, most of the 10" netbooks are very light now. Get a portable DVD player case that will fit the netbook then you could put it around your neck and use it like that?

just open it up and change the hard drive.

A few threads on this already: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=908 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=22938 viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23601 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20867 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20347 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14238 viewtopic.php?f=31&t=18423 viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4219 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11050 To answer your question: Q) "which type is best?" A) The type that works best for you and your application.

Thanks .. looking forward to it

no, just buy a 9 channel + DVR.

1-Should be a dedicated PC 2-The software normally has a feature to lock a user out from going to the desktop 3-I agree, unless selling alot of them, probably best to use ready built, though PC comes ready built also. 4-Simple change in power settings 5-I agree, one of the main reasons Ive gone back to non PC, plug and play barely any setup time One thing you left out though, standalones (non Windows DVRs) are typically really basic hardware, can plug them in the hottest environments and not have to worry about cooling them with a ton of fans, that is what has really drawn me back to them due to clients needs, but also I just dont want to build DVRs anymore unless for the right price. In addition to that, standalones are typically cheaper now with enough features for most. That said, still wont get the evidence sharing features typically found in a Windows based DVR. And as mentioned other features like advanced search, and they also mention POS though I have no experience with that myself. Plus you normally arent stuck to only 1 type of compression. So IMO both types of DVRs still have their place.

Just getting to this camera ... Mike were you ever able to backfocus this camera? I cant see any normal backfocus ring on this thing. The thing the user manual says is a backfocus ring (unless Im reading it wrong) looks to me like a C-CS adapter ring. Anyway leaving it all default it stays in focus in low light and bright light, though Im focusing it at night right now to test. Ive used alot of Box cameras over the years (though it HAS been a while) and I cant find anything on the camera that looks like a normal backfocus adjustment. If I adjust that ring as would normally adjust the backfocus, I lose alot of FOV. I have the Pano here also, that auto backfocus is nice It almost focuses the lens for you.

So they totally changed the EB then? Cause the 1304's some clients have is nothing like anything in the images above. Also that is only 1 brand, cant judge all based on one brand.

If you think that's the case, you've been using some pretty sorry PC-based DVRs. Id say its the other way around, as in using sorry stand alones (or old ones), as most can be just as complicated or complexed these days as a PC DVR for the average non computer literate end user

How so? Please explain, and also to the OP, please explain your argument for it being too complicated also, I would like to hear both sides in depth, thanks. Ive found, with current stand alone DVRs they can be just as complicated, and with older ones those can be more of a PITA for end users to operate not having a mouse for example like the new ones.

No problem, I normally use Linksys routers. But I also used a Netgear the other day and that worked fine with DynDns also.