rory

He could have disabled the siren also .. outdoor one would be simple .. if he took time to disable the phone line, he might have even got in then disabled the alarm .. plug and battery and its dead, normally have a delay on the entrance and depends where they installed the alarm .. if its just motions he could duck under them in many cases, body temperature in relation to the room temperature effects their probability of working. Glass breaks probably just didnt work .. heck they may have even installed different type of glass since they were installed - plastic / hurricane proof wont shatter or make the same sound as regular glass. Maybe all they had were glass breaks, which is useless IMO. Or maybe the alarm wasnt even armed! Man there are many variables .. maybe they just didnt install and test it properly from day one .. lots of lick and stick installers over there in the USA .. especially the big companies.

how did yall break the cards?

im surprised GeoVision hasnt come on the forum yet .. think they may be to busy?

Good idea

put razor blades all over the top of it .. rope goes over, they pull on rope and rope gets cut ..

put the camera inside an iron bar cage .. seen it done around here in the ghetto a few times. Same thing we do with our AC Wall units

He just needs something that can recognize the DDF files, either just to play it back, or even convert to another format if possible .. basically its a DDF file but that format is typically used for other well known technologies .. I tried to open and / or restore it in so many different apps but nothing .. also tried to decode it using ffmpeg but nothing still. Any ideas?

Some alarm panels allow you to set phone line tamper, we rarely use it down here though since the phone company has their own issues, and it means constant signals to the CMS, same goes with low batter restores. Anyway, if they cut the phone line, and there was a back up to that, it would be a radio system which would send the data to the CMS. Now that the home owner's phone line is down, there is no way for the CMS to alert the home owner of anything. They could call the cops or a security service and have them goto the location, but by that time the home owner could be dead. In this case it did not mention anything about radio backup, only that some form of backup was supposed to alert the home owner. I imagine they meant tying in the phone line tamper to the siren, but this is also not mentioned, and its not a backup per say. As to Glass Break Detectors, unless they have the sensors tested occasionally, there is no guarantee that they are working. That would need to be an additional service and it was not mentioned either. They have Glass Break Detector testers just for that. Another thing to note that we are not told whether the system is wireless. In this case its possible that the CMS had low battery signals and alerted the home owners, and the home owners never had the batteries replaced - this is common due to the expense of both the battery itself, and the service for those that dont want to do it themselves; which is the majority of home owners (at least down here). Bottom line is noone should depend on an alarm system, or any other security system, to ultimately protect their life. An alarm system is essentially designed to make an alarm sound when there is an incident, but that will greatly depend on what alarm devices are installed. What happens then is up to the home owner, or if they are lucky, the cops. Personally I live with Iron bars on my windows and doors, but even that is only a deterrent and may slow them down. That along with weapons, alarm, and cameras, are all just tools that will help, but do not guarantee anything at all. Put the blame where it rests, on the criminal that killed the victim.

I dont see them winning that case, and if they do, its a serious problem.

BTW i know what you are saying essentially, a way to handle loads of cameras with DVRs and take the stress off the PC ... and I agree there. Quick question, is that 32 channels 640x480 30fps for each camera? (960fps 640x480 live and record)

Good Dome Cameras with IRs .. thats like a oxymoron

It doesnt take any time to change a CPU or Memory, and even a Mobo can be swapped out in only a couple minutes. It doesnt matter how fast the card's compression is, if the PC is old and slow it is still going to be slow - it still has to save the video to the PCs hard drive. As to space, that is a non issue now, with 750GB drives @ $200 USD and 500GV Drives @ $100 USD .. the less compression the better, cause nowadays we can add as much storage as we like. As to H.264, ive yet to see some real life comparisons from manufacturers. And if you are doing hundreds of Cameras, thats a whole different thing, infact I would then venture into the IP area for that.

We still can use antennas for analogue tv, but they are being phased out for digital (either by dish, or antenna (same one as for analogue)) We only had 3 TV channels back in the 70's early 80's... Atari, I remember drooling over a maplins catalogue when I was about 7 or 8, looking at pics of an atari 2600 and its carts (especially the basic cartridge) we still only had 1 channel here in the bahamas until just a few years back .. they just started a 3rd channel a couple months ago, but they are all the same, all unprofessional and basically the same, all play religious services all day sunday too Needless to say I dont watch any of them ..

5 fps? You can get well over 20fps per camera with the Geo Cards. With PCI-e and Quad Cores, even Core 2's, you can easily do 20-30fps per camera, in 640x480 mode. And with the Combo cards, they are all real time preview. Actually China's requirements are typically much lower, at least in every other regard Also, most CCTV cameras dont benefit a single bit from 720x480 (D1) especially OEM cameras which typically dont have the effective image pixels to match. As to H.264, no comment, other than I have yet to see anything recorded in that codec that impresses me. More compression means lower quality, no matter how great people claim it is.

always best to test the video first (as mentioned above) before putting it on the DVR.

Hi, dont think most people here have experience with webcam recording .. which is why they probably havent replied .. mostly DVR and NVR types on the forum .. But ..might want to check out LuxRiot, but its not free. There are tons of free webcam motion detect software out there, as its really simple to create, even in VB6. All i have seen just handle a single webcam though. Kind of old but check this out: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2021

GeoVision cards are made in Korea

Darn, seems they are spending the $$ there for testing .. those cameras arent cheap Pity about Acti, maybe its a competition thing with them or something? Rory

probably just be Acti .. Taiwanese ..

when we used an antenna to get American TV stations didnt have a worry in the world, and had no bills .. i used to get chicks easier than now ... less bald and all anyone remember atari?

I downloaded everything I could from relevant sites, but nothing would play back/open that file .. ddf is also something to do with raid data storage .. dont know if that helps. There seems to be some video in it but not knowing their location in the file, nor their format, it would take forever to get it out of there. Sorry, did all I could, maybe someone else will come along. Did you try to contact that company link I posted the link to above?

seems to be PI Codec or something, or Mjpeg .. also something to do with this manufacturer: http://www.hdh.cn/eng/product/intro.html

welll .. they chose a really great file format .. ddf is : 1-ACDSEE file format 2-BETRIEVE data file and some others ... also seems the DVR was carried by quite a few including: http://www.koreadvr.com/eng/pro_picaso/product_picaso_in_01.htm course going to the picaso web site there is no software in their download center Also I used the converter but it would not work on that file. What type of DVR was this, Windows PC based, Linux PC based, or Stand Alone? How many channels (looks like 16?). Was there a model number. Thanks Rory

Ok thanks, downloading now.

how big is the file? if you send it to me I can see if I can convert it to a useable format. If you dont want to send the exact file, you could send one without evidence, of the same format, maybe something smaller. Its a command line conversion tool i use, if you are interested in doing it yourself, do a search for ffmpeg.exe