rory

Best to use some color cameras only in highly lit areas, and then BW in low light areas. There is a huge price difference. There are IR Day Night cameras but unless you spend the dollars the day image will be washed out color for lack of an IR cut Filter. Color high res is 470-480TVL, Color Mid Res is 400-420TVL, Color low res is 330-380 TVL.

Ignore the specs, its not low light, it used to be, but they changed it a while ago, it requires alot of light. It IS high res and wide angle though (1/3"), and a very discreet camera. Rory PS. if they read this post and they have changed it back to low light Exview, then they need to reimburse us that purchased 20 units after using the original low light version which actually was an Exview camera, since the 20 units we got after that were not low light at all, and their tech support even told me via email they changed it.

What Scott said, it works well, i tested it to count cars passing one way, and passng the other way, it worked for every car, but there is still the issue of setting the object size, which is where there are slight flaws - different sized objects, irregular sized objects, and if you make it too small, it will count objects you dont want.

trust me, the GE XP1 is for FULL LIGHT, it will pixelise in the slightest low light it experiences, i have installed a few of them and never will again, they need full light. Even in a retail store in the evening they are horrible, when their lighting is dipped, but it is still bright to the human eye. Did you turn down the SAT and HUE for the BW cameras? What DVR are you using? I have seen the blue pixelised images before on a few DVRs i had here in my appt, with SuperHad cameras, while BW cameras were also connected, and turning down the Sat and Hue on the BW cameras, got rid of the blue at least. The Pixelisation will stay as well it will always look better on a CCTV Monitor or TV. Rory

Every one is different, they can have different methods of recording also, smart motion recording is getting common, if it isnt already. If you have 8 cameras on a 120fps card and set it to smart motion, it will adjust the recording speed to the highest overall speed depending on how many of the connected cameras are picking up motion at the time. Some Stand alones work like this also, the GE for instance. Now when you look at stand alones that claim 480fps, then you need to think again, most if not all will only record at highest fps in low res mode, depends on the DVR, its just a way of marketing and trying to catch up with the PC based DVRs. I use the Geo and with 16 cameras at 480fps it will record at 640x480, i havent tested 720x480, as well using color cameras it will eat up way too much space, 640x480 alone with a decent high quality color image is eating up 287MB for a 5 minute motion recorded file with MPEG4! Basically with any Decent PC DVR, Resolution generally only makes a difference on how much hard disk drive space it will take up. The faster the speed and higher the resolution you record at, the more HDD space you will need, or you get shorter recording lengths. Regardless, PC DVRs "CAN" give you highest resolution in real time recording on all channels. Rory

Test each camera at the DVR end, but on a TV, CCTV Monitor, or Test monitor, and let us know. Need to make sure its not the DVR first, since only the BW cameras are doing it (?) Also, when you say BNC soldered Tip? Crimp on or Twist On? Distances to the trouble cameras, and distance to the camera that is not causing an issue? Are you using 24VAC for all cameras? Are the cables run by any High Voltage - lighting, etc? Rory

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103232&cp=2032058.2032231.2032289&parentPage=family and minus the plug would look something like this, or you can buy this type ready made and just plug into the power plug from the camera.

If the camera has an RCA end then you use a BNC-RCA Adaptor. Either way, on the Siamese cable you use BNC Connectors, i use twist ons myself. With the power cable, the DVR end goes into the Multiple Power Supply box, pos to pos, neg to neg, and at the camera end, just cut off the power plug thats on the camera and join it to the Siamese cable's power, pos to pos, neg to neg - use a meter to test it before you hook it up, if the siamese cable has red and black, red goes to the center and black to the outer braid on the cameras cut power wire. You can alternatively use a Terminal Strip, cut it into a 4 block and join the power cables like that (cutting off the cameras power plug once again)

i just cut the power and splice together with tape .. or heat shrink if you got it. Video can use BNC connectors. The siamese cable power part you just strip the power seperate at the DVR end and cut what length you need to reach the power supply, and what length video cable you need to reach the DVR.

Okay so the UTP/Cat5 is the long run about 600' right? I would definately use some NVT gear with Interference Rejection and Ground Loop Protection, or some other similar gear, the cheap Hubs may not include that protection. Passive may work, though you WILL loose quality and can have issues, so I would personally not use Passive at that distance on both ends. Active will be expensive, for the good gear, but you are less likely to have issues. What brand do you have there now? With the NVT gear (not sure about the others), if you have a Passive Hub, you can just use Active Transmitters up to 3000', if you have a Active Hub you can use Passive Transmitters the same. Powered Locally, you mean powered in the same area of the cameras, or 600' back to the DVR? If its 600' back to the DVR, then that in itself is a problem. What type of camera is it? If it is an IR camera, at night when the IRs come on, they draw more amps. Hence can be the issue with powering it 600' away on cat5, if it was 18AWG you could get away with it. To trouble shoot you would need to power the camera up at the camera itself, and look at the DVR monitor side. Still bad, check the video at the Camera itself, still powered at the camera. Still bad, hook up a camera at the point where the Cat5 joins the Coax, test it there and look at the monitor at the DVR. Stuff like this should be done before jumping on buying an expensive Active device or Amplifier. Rory

when you install it, choose something like D:\MultiCam or D:\Geo Rory

PCI DVRs are picky enough let alone trying to get them stable on those things, you maybe able to get away with a GV250 though.

he's a member on the forum, so can PM him, or wait for him to come on. Sal from Digital Watchguard also knows everything about them, see add top of page. Rory

Check out the advertisers sites, look under Recorders and Embedded 4 channel units, you should find some decent units there. $1700 is around the cost of a GE Embedded DVR, so if you were spending that I would suggest the GE over the Nuvico. You're basically buying high end at those prices. You could do a great PC based system real time and loaded with features, for alot less than that also. I cant speak on the Nuvico cameras, never used them, but if the client/friend are on a budget, your better off with a budget Color only camera, and BW cameras in low light areas - bullet cameras - vandal domes will cost much more for decent quality and mounting options. Also being on a budget, you can save them money with a 13" color TV .. Honestly if they dont need a ton of features, a budget 4 channel DVR is all they will probably need, the brand does matter so post what you find. Rory

The Comart cards are great also, I havent used VI's software in person but looking through it it looks impressive - the dell international deal was the only thing that kept me from buying. I used Netpromax which uses Comart cards, and it worked very well also.

also, you can try setting up an additional admin user and try it from that profile. Security Rights may have been adjusted on the system though, you may also have to look at that, its in the control panel under Adminstrator Settings, and Security.

Most if not almost all DVR companies use Cards made by manufacturing companies. But to make sure it will be stable they write it for a specific card. Honestly Geo has the most stable PC hardware ive used in a long time. The cards are very high quality, i know the actual manufacturer and its a huge difference between their products and some others. Ive used others, the cheap ones, and we have had nothing but problems, sometimes the cards dont even work at all (maybe badly written drivers either way its before we even get to the software side), then there are the software issues. I mean i need it to work 100% of the time, we had a 50% failure rate with the cheap ones. For a home user and Tech, you can get away with almost any card, but to sell it to a client for a security system, you need the most stable system you can get. It takes literally less than 5 minutes to install the Geo Card, Drivers, and Software, and get up and running, i just did it tonight with a GV800 for someone ... There are some cheaper, but not cheap ones, like the iview, that work great also, just the software has much less features, features I need for clients, nothing special, but full screen login, more advanced user admin, download AVIs remotely, etc. The E c l i p s e (rebranded DigiFlower) is one we had nothing but problems with, when it worked it was okay, but the software also has major issues in my opinion. The ebay specials are even cheaper products, and i think those are really where you get into serious problems.

GeoVision is a software developer, their cards are made by a manufacturer in Korea. Either way, you ARE paying for the software. There's a huge difference between something like go1984 and GeoVision software 7.0, or WebCam Pro and MileStone. .. the more the pay the more you get, you get what you pay for .. the Card Manufacturer though can and will sue but we;re talking about China is its not easy to do. As for regular capture cards, they are useless without decent software .. unless you want to use AmCap/VidCap and some generic software like go1984 .. but those are no good for proper surveillance systems. It takes money to write software that is stable, works on various platforms, drivers, and Codecs arent free, it takes time and time = money. Bugs appear as you have thousands of companies using the software on all kinds of different PC hardware, and they have to be addressed. People go PC based for features, quality, speed, and thats why they have to stay up to date and keep uprading, otherwise if you want cheap, its cheaper to just get a basic standalone ... Anyway, you're preachin to the wrong people, we wish it was all cheaper also ...

Its not the same hardware. GeoVision is a software developer, their cards are made by a manufacturer in Korea.

Comart is the card, LuxRiot is the software, 2 different things. Video Insight uses Comart Cards also ..

no i havent used them, but the size doesnt matter if the DVR cant support it, current highest recording size is 720x480. Stand alones generally dont produce the same size image when evidence sharing.

ive never used a DVD myself, but basically wont be the same quality of a TV camera ($10s of thousands for one of those) but should be exceptable if recorded in 640x480 or 720x480, i playback on a 21" CCTV monitor, from a PC based DVR and S-Video output in 640x480 and its very good. I doubt the quality recorded from a standalone will be as acceptable though, but can only speak of the ones ive used and their evidence sharing quality is not very good at all compared to a PC based.

tryin ta sleep ...

we all work on sundays on this forum .. 22/7 or nothing ..

sounds like you have a browser hijacker. Clean up the PC for malware first, download and run these programs, use defaults for anything they tell you. http://www.misec.net/trojanhunter/ http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ http://www.ewido.net/en/ note - for the Trojan Hunter and Ewido, dont enable the guard, just run the scan. Ewido needs a fast PC btw, 2.4+Ghz and 512MB+ RAM. The other 2 run on almost anything. Run the 2 Cleaners i linked above again, after you run these. The more difficult program I linked to should do this, but either way you want to make sure to delete all TEMP files in the c:\documents & settings\username (logged in user name) \local settings\temp\ set View Folder options to view hidden files and folders so you can see that local setting folder. And last resort, set up another ADMIN user profile, login on that and test the IE activeX then, as hijackers tend to use User profile accounts, so in a new profile you should be okay. Rory