cctv_down_under

Very good point, that is why in most of my posts I recommend going through a distributor, however you do get warranty from a manafactorer, but yes as you rightly pointed out it is at the expense of waiting for that unit to come back. I noticed Rory that you promote Kalatel a lot in these forums and I would never like to advise anyone to shortcut a distributor, but in some cases you are paying far too much for the gear. For example you buy some cameras from Pro Video that originally come from Korea www.koreacctv.com so you are not buying from a manufactorer. The problem is that manufactorers are starting to sell direct and this will mean that you will eventually have end users buying direct and although this will only happen till something actually breaks and they have to wait for their gear to be returned. What tends to happen is that they get exposed to the price, even if they dont buy.. this causes you grief because when you go to sell it to them they compare your price to the Manufactorers and talk you down in price. This may not happen where you are but is a big problem for people in larger countries as there soon will be no margin at all.

You can buy them from Asia and have them imported. they cost $200 US so I assumed someone would have already been importing them. I cant imagine it costs much more than $100US to import one piece including customs and freight.

Not just your country mate!

The system starts with a 16Channel Geovision recorder recording @400Fps and has a live display of 400Fps to a muxed output leading to a 8 in 16 output Video Distribution Amplifier this in turn leads to 8 LCD screens that have a composite input and are mounted on the wall in 8 small offices. The DVR head end is backed by a UPS for both camera and DVR and their is also a seperate UPS for the cameras. The DVR sits in a 19"4U rack case in the server room and has two boosted Keyboard mouse and leads running back to the mangers office as well as a VGA booster for the two monitors on his wall (so he can look at logs and maps on one and live view on the other). A network cable runs to the Vault at the bottom of the Building where a remote HDD storage (Datastore) provides backup of every motion event. A Camera exists in this Vault and video footage is sent via the network if motion is detected in the Vault via I/O closure. All video is monitored off site at a control room and each terminal in the building has password level access allowing each user to see their alloted cameras. Text messaging service has been installed on each terminal and Microphone and speakers added to each PC so that through the web browser each employee can talk to each other through the web browser and view each other as well. The vault also has a GSM dialer linked to the I/O board in case of Network failure and a reapeater ariel sends direct communications and heartbeat pulse to the control room for the alarm system 13 Ganz wide dynamic cameras are connected to the DVR and Two 25x PTZ day night cameras are controlled accross the network, the last input is left for a 16ch looping switcher allowing all cameras to input into it then feeding a switching signal to the 16th Ch input allowing for only one camera needing to be open in webview at any time. A text overlay system feeds onto two of the camera inputs allowing for mapped databse of transactions. Computar 5 -50mm Lenses are fitted to all cameras (not for range) for the good low light F Stop. All security guards have PDA devices and wirelss network adapters with full controll over the perimiter PTZ cameras from their PDA which is taken in turns. Lastly a software linux firewall and hardware 504 router provide protection for the DVR. This job was the biggest we had done on one site in man hours as we had to get specialists to get networking and cooling to the vault as well as airiel connection for the repeater. Concrete slabs had to be drilled through and we went through 12 Bits in the process of running the cables. I would hate to do a nightmare job like this again

Something to consider: If you have equipment costs already, then could you afford to not have it secured? To be honest, security is a lot like buying a car, yes you can buy a system without all the bells and whistles and of lower quality, but will it do the job. Too often good security companies are beaten on quotations by competitors cutting costs, which is great for the consumer untill they actually want to prosecute the person they catch. There are a lot of overpriced solutions and there are always systems that have things that you wont need, however you do tend to get what you pay for. You can buy a cheap standalone Mux/Quad/DVR Hybrid device for around $300 US but cameras, you will not get good ones at that price. Hope this helped

Oh yeh.. I know this one well. its the new version of the Digital Sprite by Dedicted Micros. Overall its a good unit but it is very overpriced indeed, however I have heard that this unit has dropped a fair bit in price (4ch only)there are a few things to note about this unit. The information they give you on how many days worth of recording the unit will do is based on 3fps per camera which is not what the system will do if working to full capacity, the storage figures would be a lot worse than that. Because it is a standalone machine it will be very stable and the only thing that could break would be the HDD, however as with most standalone devices it has some limitations. You will not be able to upgrade to better software when it is released without purchasing a whole new unit or shipping it back to the manufactorer, also you will only be able to connect to the device via Ethernet and not a local telephone call, therefore you will need a DSL or Cable connection at the viewing end and the DVR site location and this will add to the cost. It is a very easy to use unit, the biggest drawback that I had with it was that you have to use a ZIP drive to back up and they may have changed that but it is a major drawback as with a PC based system you can use a CDRW to back up. The system only records at 30FPS which is a bit slow for a four camera system however it is not unbearable. As mentioned before I am not sure if they fixed the CDR back up option I think they were looking into making a SCSI port option however SCSI CDRW's are expensive, One thing to consider is this. If you require to back up and watch on another machine you will need to have their software to view it, therefore you can not just jump on any machine to view back ups and the police will need to have the sofware and know how to use it. Please do not quote me on all these aspects, as the system may have developed from the last time I looked at it and they may now have PSTN support or CDRW but one other thing I noticed was that the live video display resolution is not what is recorded, they crop the image in PAL format and squash it to avoid video tearing and software interlacing, this means that you start with a 720x512 PAL image but they only record 720x256 PAL to avoid the tearing affect. Lastly, I think the system wont record in MPEG4 only JPEG so it will fill your HDD faster than a MPEG4 recorder will. In summary, it has been a long time since I looked at the Dedicated Micros product so my facts may be incorrect but overall it is a very solid unit indeed and very small and light, it wont crash but only records in JPEG and I would prefer it had a PC interface for back up, out of 10 I would give it a 7 and would give it an 8 if it wasnt so expensive, as far as standalones go it is about the second best on the market, it lacks a lot of PC features but you will be hard pressed finding a neater unit. The easy way to add accesories is also a great feature and they make great PTZ controllers, if you can afford it go for it. Hope this helped.

I would post some pictures up here for the Wide Dynamic, but I have no where to post the images publicly and this forum does not take FTP at this stage. If you like I can email some to you.

Not thermal, They are low light cameras, BLC options are available but with the Wide Dynamics they can choose a part of the camera to adust lighting problems in and allow for much better identification under low light especialy if movement occurs in lit background areas where the rest of the environment has low light. However Ganz do a Thermal option but it is very expensive.

Yep thats true. Hay rory, I noticed that a lot of the cameras that Speco sell are from a Korean Manufactorer, we actually sell a lot of their stuff. They never put the latest stuff on teh website but I recognised some of the cameras. http://www.koreacctv.com Check them out and if you want good pricing tell tehm you spoke to me! For example (CVC-627) or better known as SK2124P/SH we buy at roughly at $65 there is also a high resolution version.

They are nice crisp images Rory. Have you tried the Ganz Wide Dynamic yet? 0.012 lux Sony IT sensor? Also be carefull about allowing people to remote view sites especially from websites as there ae privacy issues to take into consideration, some cases happened here wher owners were sued because they showed who was in the club, here there is only the provision to allow the owners to protect their prmeises and they may not advertise with it.

What do you reckon..... Papa got a new pair of shoes

Look forward to hearing what happened. Two things.... as you said it is a bank.. do not skimp, Banks tend to have a budget anyhow so its a good chance you can go in with an expensive quotation. I would recommend using the same DVR for all sites, therefore if anything goes wrong you could keep one in stock (or they could) and you could then swap it out automatically.

Sue, you would need to check to see if the system has DHCP and an ethernet port. If you show me a link to the product I will evaluate it for you.

Ok now I am really confused... was that Pro Video's link or Speco Technologies?

To be honest the only way to truley know what quality a product has is to try a sample, however this is a help forum so I will try my best to do just that. According to the spec sheet: The system does not have MPEG4 compression which is a bit of a let down, however it is a standalone device and therefore should be rock solid. It does have a large recording resolution which is excellent however I doubt that it will record very fast at that resolution. The rated FPS is only 30FPS which is a bit outdated, however it is reasonable over 4 cameras. Being a standalone you will not be able to update it. I doubt very much that it would be able to remotely connect through PSTN (standard telephone call) therefore you would need to have an internet connection to use the remote features. It will not have a burner included therefore you either need another PC to back it up with watermarking or you would have to back it up to VCR and that would not be watermarked. This is a major disadvantage indeed as with a PC based system you could just burn a CD. This looks like a pretty good unit overall but I would not pay more than $400US for it as it is not much in manufacture. Hope that helped BTW Rory if you are reading this I have just noticed on the Pro Video site that they sell some of the same cameras as me, they buy them from Korea and Re-Badge them, you should buy them direct!

Can you send us a link to it please?

Some of the I/P adressable cameras are actually quite good, I guess the problem is that there are a lot of crappy ones out there and there are also a lot of people who don't know how to use them, I dont mind them but the cost as apposed to the cost of a DVR system is a little bit too expensive. many of them will compress data now which is a good feature however most do not have the facility for recording data and the ones that do will only record small amounts, therefore you still need a DVR at the other end anyhow. I think this is the future of it all though, there will be a lot of CAT5 cable run everywhere in the next few years and I can see a strong need for the ability to remotely focus or adjust cameras and settings and this will be very easy to do with I/P cameras.

I think I mentioned that they are less maintenance: I know that your standalonesa re expensive in your kneck of the woods, what Iw as trying to say is that they actually are cheaper to manufacture than a PCI card itself, and as there is no more development of software (because there is none) the price should be cheaper. The sost of th standalone to buy for us is a lot cheaper than the cost of the development of the PCI card.

I would hardly consider PCI cards a cheaper alternative.. some can be rather expensive indeed, to be honest the architecture of your Kalatel Standalone systtem is the same as a PCI card anyhow the only difference is that it does not utilise a Kernell and its OS is embedded. Standalones lack a lot of features but are generally more stable than some PCI products. To be honest security is exactly like cars, you get what you pay for. Lets face it, I would rather not put in a cheap security system because you arent providing a quality service and unless the system can provide adequate detail then there is no point. PC based systems require a lot more maintenance than Standalones but at least they can be upgraded. I sell both, standalones are ACTUALLY cheaper to manufacture than PCI cards and I sell them as cheaper. Geovision is the best of the PCI cards on the market by a long stretch (for value for money that is). Simple explanation is PCI CARD Stabilty 89% Standalone 99% PCI Card features 100% Standalone 75%. Hope this helps.

Ganz now has one or two of them

Thats a very good point! I have noticed the same!

Sue, Firstly where are you located? Secondly, you could replace your existing PIR with a PIR Camera, most PIR cameras actually still work as a PIR anyhow. If you are looking for pinhole keep this in mind: Most Pinhole Cameras are wide angle, therefore if you want facial detail it may be a bit too wide an angle for you, depending on the size of the room. Do not purchase a CMOS Pinhole camera and try to get something that is manufactored in Korea or Japan. The one I sell has Audio as well with a built in Pre Amp and it is $115 US. http://www.altechvision.com.au/pages/products.asp?CatID=58

Most of the cheap DVR cards are cheap for a reason, when you buy a card you dont pay for the card, what you pay for is the software development. I agree with everyone else that a PCI card inside a PC will not be stable unless it runs on its own, all the good programs for DVR use all of the available CPU cache and Ram therefore, the slightest problem and BANG....your system will crash. In all honesty there are are a few rules you should look out for and they are as follows: 1/ Dont try to insert a card into PC unless you know what your doing and the cheaper the card the more problems you might have, capture cards are not like Video cards and compatability of the motherboard chipset can mean the difference between stabilty. 2/ PCI cards bought from manufactorers will get you little support, however if bought from a distributor, you will pay more but they can tell you what motherboards work and what they use. 3/ If you can afford it, have a system built for you! 4/ Standalone boxs.. are more reliable, by a long way,, however there is a lot of people selling PC Based systems that have no idea how to build them, therefore PC based systems are not as unreliable as people think. 5/ Standalone box's have much less features and in short, if you are going to want Text, Phone Video, remote connection, voice, Two way phone, Paging etc then you should choose a PC Based option. Geovision is the best of these that I have seen. However if you arent fussed on options and dont care that it is harder to upgrade then you can rely on the stabilty of a standalone box and let it do its job, knowing that no one will play with it! 5/ If the seller wont provide you with a remote software demo, then the software is probably garbage. 6/ lastly but most important! Cameras.... simple rule of thumb is: Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, US, Japanese... this is the order of price and very much the order or quality! Security is the one thing you should never skimp on price with but you can only buy what you can afford. If you email me your email addy digitalsecurity@westnet.com.au I will email you back info on some demos that may help you choose the right product.

Instead of the 1Ch DVr why not get a 4ch Standalone with alarm inputs, we sell one that is 100FPS with four camera inputs and 4 alarm inputs as well as 1 alarm output. You can then use a PIR camera in one (wireless or not) and then you have motioned recording and whenever it detects a signal you can have it output to anything you like, any chime device or beeping device or several. It has a built in switcher as well. roughly $500 US with a 80Gb Hdd inside.

Sue, When you purchase the GV250 Unit you will get the software with it. If I can make a suggestion, try a camera that is a pinhole camera, then you can mount it behind a wall or in anything you want, if you have lots of computers then I am sure you will have loads of stuff hanging around that you can mount one in. The Pinhole camera allows for just a pin hole in anything, for example a software box, empty speaker etc etc. Purchasing smoke detector camera and PIR cameras can be a tad obvious, therefore a pinhole camera can be put into anything, be sure to get a CCD chip one and not a CMOS chip. If you plan to remotely view the system or network your DVR I would strongly recommend going for Geo as it has the best features around, however if you arent going to do much with it then the Standalone box might be easier to set up. I have a wealth of experience with Geo, therefore if you get stuck you can ask me anything. P.S. Nice choice with the Pinnacle Card! P.S.S. Installing Geo on any computer less than XP or 2000 will still work, you will just have slower frame rates. If you email me your email addy I will shoot you a live demo instruction sheet so you can see what Geo is like over the internet. digitalsecurity@westnet.com.au