rory

the way consumer electronics go, and false alarms .. we'd probably have alot of planes dropping out of the sky ..

the quads i use are 1.5amps .. i use 2amp power suppies .. and they are a Cheap OEM model ... so I dont see how that quad only uses that little. some cheap mini cameras or bullets, specifically budget BW, are only 100ma .. though dont expect amazing quality from those. .. most cameras range from 300-500, with the decent IR ones from 1am+

Agreed. If I had known how much time I'd be putting into tuning this camera I'd have gone with a true LPR from the start, or simply not tried for LPR functionality. just throw down some spike strips attached to a siren and run out there with your camera when it goes off or put a wireless camera on a dog and let them chase around the cars .. you will even get the underneath of the car then ..

Cool man.. she looks good Though like you said .. you spent alot of time on it .. most installers cant charge the client enough to keep going back and forth to the clients location over and over ... man after all that labour and gas, they may as well just get the LPR one time ..

where's the night picture though .. or is that at night? Anyway, as you can see it can be done without an LPR specific camera, but for someone making a living out of it, its really not worth the extra time, when there are so many other things they should also be doing.

600TVL 0.01 Lux BW Camera. Though it is still the same Effective Pixels as the 480TVL color camera. Dont pay attention to those 0.000000000000000000 ... etc specs, its all hype. If anything when they spec 0.001 Lux thats really 0.01, though ignore lux from manufacturers anyway as most the time it is not even close to being accurate, especially the OEM cameras, which many times have been translated too many times or over sold by hungry sales people with no experience in the industry. Anyway to answer your question, not all cameras have the same features, you get what you pay for.

Its reading off the hard drive, the hard drive is always a bottle neck in a PC system, if its old or going bad, it could take longer to read from it .. If its doing live video the same time you are trying to play back, that also affects the CPU. Do Ctrl-Alt-Del and check the CPU usage when you are doing that ... playing video still uses alot of CPU. I had a hard time playing back video on a 1.8Ghz the other day, even on a P4. 3.0Ghz while there is live video going and trying to playback the same time, it can be touchy .. Dual Core is the way to go really .. if you can afford it, the 2.4 Core 2 Duo PS. I have a 2 Ghz myself, had it for like 4 years now, had a DVR card in here with only 2 cameras on and off for a couple years, I always have to stop my recording (live video) when i want to play another movie, or it is jumpy. Lastly, XP on a 1Ghz is pushing it anyway, even on a 2Ghz it is slow.

Hi, firstly I would check with Kodicom or one of their system builders as they dont sell cards to end users. But more then likely its due to the PC system itself, 1Ghz CPU is very slow for Windows XP embedded or regular XP. Also, if the system is that old, it could be a bad hard drive also.

Just get some twist ons for now, they are cheap, replace them and put them on properly, and see if that fixes the problem. You should be able to pick some up for about $1-2 each from your local electronic store. If you have issues with putting on the connectors, another alternative is to buy a ready made cable (with a BNC end and they normally are just RCA type cable inside, center is video, outer is ground), then splice (cut the wire) the ready made cable into your siamese video cable using the center for video and the outer braid as ground ... tape it up good once you know it is working Also as mentioned above, check each camera on a CCTV monitor or a small TV first.

Yes, some of the older units use to hang (the network side) sometimes if you just exited wavereader without disconnecting first. The newer ones dont normally do that but its possible. Either way they typically would still be recording on the local side. Rory

1-Use the Snapshot feature on the WaveReader software, to create a Bitmap image of the video being played (still camera icon). 2-Use the monitor out to a VCR and record to Tape as you playback the video. 3-Same as above, but use a Capture card in a PC to get the raw video as a full non/slightly compressed AVI file. 4-They use to have really expensive video printers, you would use them on the monitor output as you play and freeze the image you want from the video coming off the DVR - i think one of the above options is much better though.

Hey Ken, couldnt he just use Movie Maker?

Well people will care about uptime ofcourse, they dont want the DVR crashing all the time, but other than that QoS and the others are of no use to the majority, not in a budget market that is. You'd be lucky if they even have an internet connection, let alone care how much bandwidth they video will take up on the rare occasion they actually use the remote video feature. Ps. its the ghetto market mostly ... but will pretty much be the same for the many other budget residential and retail installs.

PC parts are cheap these days, I can point you to a config (purchased from any PC retailer) that can run a Geo GV250-GV800, for around $170 (monitor and XP license not included).

I could use some of those down here to sell

Yeah, not debating the security issue, anything can easily be taken down with a paint gun, huge surge or other means .. but while Id still call that Video Surveillance, I wouldnt quite consider it CCTV myself.

Learn the product and the industry .. its no good selling and installing something that doesnt work properly, unless you are only in it for the money.

I wouldnt call crawling through attics technical .. in fact you can hire anyone to do that .. even the sales guy Personally Id rather let someone else do the sales so I could concentrate on R&D .. but then we are all different.

I agree, there is nothing stopping them from buying some common professional high res cameras, examples being: Pano Day / Night WDR box Camera Bosch Night Sense box Camera GE 815C Color box Camera GE B/W VFA Vandal Dome camera Sanyo Pan Focus Day/Night Vandal Dome Camera Extreme CCTV EX-82 Day / Night IR Camera Day / Night PTZ (pick your brand) Extreme CCTV Reg-L Camera (they wont want Exview as it will cause to much noise for the demos) Though all they really need are some indoor box cameras to demo. Other than those professional cameras for the best quality from CCTV, at very low cost could also be these: 1-Fixed 3.6mm 1/3" B/W Bullet Camera - typically 380-420TVL 2-Fixed 4.0mm 1/3" / 3.6mm 1/4" Color Bullet Camera - typically 380TVL 3-Fixed 6mm 1/3" Color/IR Bullet Camera - typically 380-420TVL 4-VFA 4-8mm 1/3" Day/Night IR Bullet Camera - typically 480TVL with IRCF

is that really CCTV though? In other words, i dont think its closed circuit at that point .. VGA or LAN input to the PC right? Looks good though, except you need to water the grass

if its free, i dont think you need a license, its like a party, if you dont need a license to distribute beer at a party in your area, then it should be fine. Make some big rubber darts . give out free non alchoholic Bahama mamas, Pinacaladas, etc .. some free conch fritters well heck just have happy hour there every day!!! free pizza bits??

or six 4's, or ADMIN in all caps.

Free beer, always works Actually, one thing to definitely have is recorded video demo .. I just did this with Geo, as you can use their backup system to create a stand alone version of the View Log .. basically you can manually dump any videos, even from a couple years ago, into it, and do a database rebuild .. its cool. No DVR card needed and you can run it right off a USB stick or even a CD. and its just like using their regular DVR ViewLog software. Maybe get some decent recordings and give out free CDs with some recorded video on it .. dunno, just an idea. .. have a dart board with some mini wireless cameras mounted to the darts .. let people throw the darts at the board ...

nah thats AvTech, either will work, but he has different DVRs as far as I can tell. There was a generic software going around, that the various budget DVRs used (not AvTech though as they have their own). Black, with green or blue.

Where did you hear that? I have some still installed in some of the hottest locations here in the bahamas .. those things just run non stop .. Heck i got the Kalatel 16 channel mux here in my appartment now and its left powered on in the day while im out, and lets just say .. its reeaally hot in my appt without A/C! The hard drives will go before anything else .. The enviromental max temp is 104 degrees F. or 40 C. as per user manual for the cbr-10cdt/cbr-16cdt/cbr-16mdt they just dont want you to stick it in an oven . .. they work in much more heat than that