cctv_down_under

1/ I disagree...there are many things IP can do that analogue can not, the ability to adjust the streaming point and directional flow of the cameras data for one, several codecs in one camera for another, multiple streams, and video content analysis at the camera end, Higher resolutions and firmware upgrades, downloading of settings and alarm state to any IP address, and yes I realise a DVR can do a lot of this, but not all of it. IP servers can have protocols built in as well, menaing you do not need to run control cables for things such as access control and PTZ protocols, it is easier to interface a protocol to a camera than having to send it all the way back to the control room first. 2/POE is in most network devices I use already, I agree that if you are going to talk about the ability of a network cam to plug into an existing network, then it is unlikelty and messy if you have to add on...that said, imagine doing a shopping centre with 200 cameras, all individually run back to the DVR, that is a lot of labour hours, personally I would rather run one fibre and add switches near the camera locations, much less labour, I admit on a small job it is not worth it but on big ones the benefits are better 3/ I agree with point number three

I agree with AV, much nicer sine wave for 24VAC and much less chances of problems, I have seen similar things with AC being used on 12Vdc cameras and even incorrect manufactorers specs on what power the cameras support. i doubt it was a surge as you have so many cameras dmaged, my thoughts would be either an overvoltage or fualty camera batch, do not always assume that your customer is wrong, yes they will try to lie to get away with damage, but most times it is legit. I would contact your wholesaler and ask them to contact the Manufactorer by email with photographs of the damage, the manufactorer may admit to a fault if it exists, ask to have your customer CC'd in on the email and they will not be left out. I STRONGLY advise against the "replace them now and we will see what happens" approach, your customer will not beleive you. Offer them to buy new ones and take the risk if you need to but I would advise a quick report from the manufactorer and investigate the power supply, there are also CCTV line conditioners that can be purchased if indeed a surge was the issue. http://www.poweronaustralia.com.au/products.php?cat_id=12

Yeh ...I agree Thomas, I even asked (very strongly) how they could fit that onto th chip itself, but the guy that was demonstrating it (and he seemed very knowledgable) said it was actually on the chip! look I know the limitations, this is the main reason that Standalones are so lacking in features...windows is about 5 gig to install and that just does not fit onto an chip, so the OS has to be very small and therefore very limited. But when I quized him he said it would have a similar chip to the IP camera itself and that this device already does content analysis within the camera, I too can not see how, i have seen it working (even depth perception) but it still looks to me that a CPU is needed to do this and therefore it is really done on the remote PC, but he assured me! I will wait till I see him next and ask again!

It has nothing (well not entirely but almost) to do with lens speed, the interlacing problem you speak of is derived because (I bet I am going to be wrong coops!) PAL has 576 Pixels in a Frame and NTSC has 480, the anaolgue cameras generate Interlaced video made up of two fields 50 Fields a second and 30 Fields per second the interlaced combined fields consist of fields displaced in time 1/50s PAL and 1/30s NTSC when you digitize the video the interlacing can be visable in frame mode and is a result of interlaced scanning, the faster the object is the more pronounced the effect will be. Some DVrs have De Interlacing and in fact you can even find these functions in high end graphic programs like Adobe Photoshop. When you record in Frame mode you can double your vertical resolution, therefore exported images will look smoother and have more resolution, but when played in sequence you can see the effect of playing alternatating fields the next field in sequence moves up and down by one line. Coops let me know if this is correct? I beleive Geovision ahs De Interlace rendering if your Video Card Supports it and one of thier video resolutions is labelled 640x480sw which I assume is 640x480 Software Interlaced, this creates load on the CPU but will give less jagged edges.

I have not used the Pelco, but have used both Vidos and Bibos and both work very well. The Dibos is a PC Based Hybrid machine with built in IP Decoding, so this means they can speak to almost any JPEG encoder and to their own VCS (now called BOSCH IP) encoding units, the beauty of that is that any analogue cameras that are onsite can be turned into IP traffic. The other good part is it also accepts analogue streams and can do up to 30 Analogue streams and 32 IP streams. It is embedded XP and I have had a few issues but nothing major! As for Vidos, although I have used it before there really is no need for it anymore excepting very large jobs... the Dibos really put bosch in a tricky situation, the thing is that the Dibos IS a basically a VIDOS NVR and NVV with analogue recording. What I am trying to say is that if you wanted to use VCS and Vidos you need to purchase a Vidos PC to do the NVV (Network Video Viewing) and a PC for recording (NVR) you need to purchase the two applications (well you used to when it was VCS and although it is more powerfull, you can do the same thing with the Dibos and at close to the same price (they had to keep the price up on the Dibos so they could still have sales of the VCS gear), so the Dibos becomes your NVR and NVV and also takes analogue, you just buy the more expensive viewing platform (almost the same as the Vidos software) and it can speak to the Dibos. The instant playback is rather good, you can set it to display on the main screen and choose the time frame you want for instant playback (say 30 seconds) and you can leave it on so that if you miss something or catch it out of the corner of your eye you get to see it again in 30 seconds. The other thing you may like is that you can control spectra domes on it and even control them over IP if used with the encoding unit. It is still too pricey to be main stream and there are a few bugs, but they did design their own compression ships and they say...they can add features to this compression chip later like ..... Video Content Analysis.

There are several ways you could achieve this. 1/ Use a Bosch IP camera, this has both analogue and IP output, you can take the analogue output and put it into the RF Modulator, that takes care of the Analogue option, then use the IP software to record on NVR. 2/ Use an anologue camera and a distribution amplifier and a decoder and encoder, you would take the Analogue signal and plug it into a 1 In 2 Out Distribution amp and then you have two signals, signal #1 can go into your RF Modulator and signal two into an IP encoder, you could then use either a NVR or a Hybrid machine to record the IP traffic. 3/ Use a Hybrid dvr with analogue out, you could use either Bosch IP cameras or any anolugue camera that is fed to an encoder and then recieve that IP stram on a hybrid machine like the Bosch Dibos, this would then allow you to record all IP traffic on the DVR, the Dibos then has two programable analogue outputs that you could feed into your RF modulator.

i have not used geo for ages, so this advice may not only seem stupid but may be old, but ..if you do not tick the webserver to start on startup System Configure ----> Settings....on the left side of the page then the webserver will close on reboot, any items you want to start on geo start up have to be enabled at this section. I know you probably did this already and that I am probably stating the obvious but just in case!

I would have to agree with both of you on this one...the fac is that although it might seem like small annoyances and being picky, however the annoyances that the installer is suggesting are usualy areas that customers have complained about before, so they know what they are looking for. You are correct that without testing all brands it is hard to ascertain the differences and you do not know what you are missing, an end user has much less chance of knowing..what is missing and what should be improved. As for live being better than playback.........you should expect that because it is not compressed??? That said there are always newer products and good ones and the HYPE is sometimes warranted...mind you...more often it is not warranted and I am convinced people have even made second users in this forum to repeat their like of a product and build a hype. It does sound like a good product and i have tested many...i would love to test it for you but I am not about to buy one because I have heard very little about it. As for the SDIII...awesome choice of camera!

Would have to agree with that comment. I think the most important thing is that you are realistic in telling the customer, i often find myself asking if they want overview or identification cameras, and when they say "what is the difference?" I HONESTLY tell them it will be at least 3x the amount of cameras, they then want to understand and I talk them into throttle points. To give you an idea, an open petrol station that wanted licence plate recognition, i zzomed in my digital cam and took a shot of a car driving in, i made sure to get a bit either side of it, we then went and measured it, it was about one 16th of the actual possible driveway entry so i told him you would need 16 cameras, he said tha would be expensive but i told him to cement off a border, so they had to come in through a channel (narrow driveway) this allowed one camera only and allowed me to be particular about light smear etc, the cost of the concreting was cheaper than the cameras. The same applied to the bowser area, but I used a PTZ on presets to get id shots of people using pumps and a general overview camera as well. the same goes for pubs, have one camera as id on the entry and then the others can be overview. As for your car park, remember dark areas of solid objects (asphalt etc) have little light reflectance so although light may be at a certain level at a scene it needs to bounce back to the camera and if the reflectance is low then the light gatehred back is small, this is common for car parks, if it were me I would go for a Bosch Day Night cam with IR cut filter and a Computar low FSTOP IR corrected lens, If needed afterwoods I would then add IR illuminators.... Seriously just take a digi cam and a LUX meter (available at any camera shop) and show him the light level and the different scene views...they then understand

Do you know who is the original manufactorer?

Most Megapixel cameras use CMOS chips which up until now are much less light sensative, agreed the resolution might help but Thomas is right and this is a common mistake indeed, the head and body must take up a large percentage of the screen..light will not be your major issue if you are propared to spend good money on cameras and lighting but distance most certainly will be...here is a tip I use to try to explain what thomas said! Take a digital camera to site with a zoom lens, take a shot zoomed in and one zoomed out, make him hold something in his hand and place something a few feet in front of him...show the person that with the camera zoomed out you can see he has something in his hand and you can see more of the scene, but with it zoomed in you can identify but not cover a very large area, so you will need lots more cameras if he wants facial ID. You can use binoculars to get the same effect, tell him that if you were at a horse race you could zoom in on te jockey and see his face, but then you would have no idea what was going on around him...or you can see the entire race and not identify the jockey!

I second that!!!

I am also interested to find out info on both the DVR's and cameras, please keep the info coming!

UPS Topology Choices The power protection technology supporting desktop computers and workstations differs significantly from the advanced power management systems that protect mission-critical equipment. This creates a lot of confusion in trying to understand the three basic types of UPSs: Off-line UPS (system or data loss is an inconvenience). Line-interactive UPS (system or data loss is a serious problem). Online UPS (system or data loss is unacceptable). A line-interactive UPS is similar to an off-line UPS because when sensing an undervoltage or overvoltage situation, it also requires a transfer time for the inverter to turn on and to supply power to the load. The main difference between an off-line and a line-interactive UPS is that a line-interactive UPS in the stand-by mode has active voltage regulation. online UPS offers double-conversion topology: The inverter is connected in series between the ac input and the load. Power for the load flows continuously through the inverter. An online UPS has some of the same components as an off-line UPS with a few differences — most notably, a rectifier. An online UPS has input surge protection, batteries, inverter components and a rectifier. The rectifier takes the input voltage and changes it from ac voltage (alternating current coming from the utility power) to dc voltage to charge the battery and provide dc power to the inverter. In most online UPSs, the rectifier or filtering is used to make sure that the load, as well as the UPS, does not allow unnecessary noise and harmonics to be fed back into a building's power. Because an online UPS is always creating its own power from the rectifier and inverter, it never has transfer interruptions and can provide a much higher level of power quality. A

The consequence of equipment failure is the single most important factor in deciding on the type of UPS. For small office PC loads where single station or small network data protection is required, a small single-phase UPS is often an adequate solution. Most single-phase UPSs use off-line or line-interactive topologies, resulting in a small (but acceptable for standard PCs) interruption when transferring to and from battery power. Because PCs, workstations and peripherals are often located in a decentralized manner throughout offices, a dedicated off-line UPS often priced under $100 provides an ideal solution. If the equipment to be protected is critical, an online UPS is the best choice. This topology transfers to and from battery and internal bypass without any power interruption to the load, providing a truly seamless transfer to battery power. Another thing to consider is that when a strike or burst occurs, it looks for a place to earth, quite often it happens at night and the ONLY thing on and only place to earth is the security system.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but remember to change the port numbers on the DVR! There is no point just forwarding them if the DVR is not broadcasting those ports in the first place

The other thing I forgot to mention is that a Standalone ALSO needs the UPS, the powersupplies in standalones are usually not as tollerant to undervoltage or overvoltage as much as a good PC Power supply is, and this is one of the major reasons for Overheating in a Standalone, once again I am no expert (sure someone is), but my bets are if undervoltage occurs for a lengthy time then the Powersupply (often ****ty in a standalone) will heat up and eventually fail and try to dump the power to the DVr unti itself of cut out all together or blow a fuse, to prove a point once I opened a standalone and kept showing the customer blown fuses, one after another and he still did not believe me, he thought it was not his power, so I plugged in an expensive UPS and showed him the readings, he still did not believe me so I left...apparently he wrapped a fuse in tin foil and caused the transistor??? to blow up and flame to jump out of the DVR (witnessed by one of my techs). Just goes to show, you need the right mix of petrol to run your car and you need the right voltage range to run your DVR, you can mix down your petrol but with adverse affects, the DVr can operate at wrong voltages but with similar advers affects

I am certainly no expert in this area...luckily one of my techs are, but when you speak of a UPS being left alone after a huge surge then you are probably taliking of a LINE INTERACTIVE UPS...Now I know someone will correct me but my understanding is that a LINE INTERACTIVE only kicks in when the voltage changes, this means that otherwise you are still powering direct it will not protect against a fast full burst as it takes certain milliseconds to kick in, an ONLINE UPS provides direct power from the battery at all times therefore problems only occur on one side of the UPS. To give you an idea most UPS either cover 1,3, 5 or all 9 power problems IE, cheaper ones cover 1 Only Power failure 3 Power Failure, Power Sag and Sml Power Surge 5 Power Failure, Power Sag, Power Surge, Undervoltage and Overvoltage 9 Power Failure, Power Sag, Power Surge, Undervoltage and Overvoltage, Line Noise, Switching Transient, Frequency Variation and Harmonic distortion. The fact is if you only cover level 3 then you are subject to anything above that.....OHHH and BTW for the size of projects I do, if the UPS dies it is a good day and it means that the DVR is still alive and I do not have to try to explain that the power killed it and that they are not covered

My two cents: Casino's . I would have to disagree with this statement, the reason that most casino's use single channel Sanyo devices is for several reasons, firstly they are MPEG2, quite obviously this is high quality recording, the second is that a Casino can not afford to have a bank of cameras fail at one time, they need the ability to swap out a single box at any time and that way if a HDD fails then they can simply swap the box and only one camera goes down. I have never seen the Sany box be grainy on display and the third reason it is used is that the Sany box actually has been written with the correct ASCI codes to allow for matrix integration, the true fact is that the operator needs a Matrix based system as the front end and then the DVR component afterwoods, you can program the Sany's to work with the analogue matrix gear so that the operation is seamless, IE a single keyboard or satelite keyboards can control the Sany functions while still doing the standard Matrix operations. Keep in mind that most Casino's do not close, and staff turnover can be an issue, retraining staff and considering downtime for training is of a major concern with Casino owners, therefore keeping any old anologue system as a front end and integrating DVR recording behind it is a key element, yes this means that time has to be taken to program the commands needed to access the DVR componentry is an investment that is heavy but fully worth while. Using a network client is not really an option for live viewing and can only be used as the back end of the system. If you were designing from scratch then you would be better to go IP for several reasons: You do not need to run as many cables for one... you can also then use webservers to encode the data and decode it at the other end so that it retains analogue, also webservers can do very large resolutions and can stream in both MPEG4 for recording and MPEG2 for live viewing, casino's chose the Sany becasue it was MPEG2 and 25FPS this is why pc's are not used, try fitting 32 cams on MPEG2 at full resolution and having integration and redundancy. The other reason for servers is that you can link them with an input so that the card operator can press a button and can go back 30 seconds, so imagine. A operator has an argumant about a card deal, they use a two way to tell security operator, the operator tells them to press button, the camera playback is macro'd to play back last 30-60 seconds, it is also (on button push) directed to the large central screen for high definition (this is done by IP Mapping on closed circuit relay...sending to a different encoder) then the operator can look at detail and even direct it to a monitor ot the gaming floor operators office if need be. the matrix commands can speak to the webserving device so that if more detail is needed (digital zoom, longer data, ffwd rewind etc) Having the matrix speak the same language as the operating devices is critical and is why as was quoted "manufactorers are in bed with casino's" not quite what everyone thinks...the true fact is they have to be to program such a complex solution, therefore there is a need to sustain the existing infrastructure and therefore a need to keep constant contact with the manufactorer. It would all be simple if you were to start from scratch but you can not do this nine times out of ten. The biggest problem is that Casino's really want 25fps in Mpeg2 and very few standalones will have this feature certainly not the Bosch Divar, they can not afford to block them together in case they loose 16 cameras at once (perimeter is fine but not at card tables) so they are stuck with single ch units, the only way to control them is through a front end matrix and it has to be as easy to use as what they had before or in most cases...exactly the same. The only option for change is to have a fully networked system with either IP cams or servers and this lets them keep a lot of their existing infrastructure and save on costs and space, so a NVR for recording and a NVV forviewing and a Matrix for front end control.

I hate to sound opinionated but EVERYone should sell buck and boost UPS devices with EVERY DVR, there are many reasons. For PC's the AVI is stored in memory before being dumped to the HDD, killing the power causes widows to dump to the HDD the corrupted (unclosed) AVI file, once this is done the HDD can not recognise the size of this file and may even count it as bad sectors, the thing is the DVR's index still thinks the file is ok..this is why people like Geo ahd that "repair Database" option and "Search and replace corrupted files" having the UPS there makes it shut down correctly and if scripted correctly can use the correct commands to cause a program to shut down, I am not talking about, "shut down windows" because this can cause problems, a good UPS lets you employ a script to shut down the machine, this allows you to use the correct commands to exit the programs and especially...in the order you want. I have been to many sites where there has been a stuffed PC, but when you get it back to the office it works fine....confused I took it back and the problem returned, after investigating with a laser temperature gun, i noticed that the Power supply was almost literally cooking due to undervoltage, there are also safeguards in a lot of motherboards to reset if undervoltage occurs. If you let your machine cook...it will not be stable...if it gets over or under voltage you are in for problems and there are more problems than just that. There are loads of UPS devices, but you have to be sure what you are buying, there are NINE major power problems that can occur and not all UPS devices cover all NINE and the ones that do are more expensive for example there is: Power Failure Power Surge Switching Transient Frequency Variation Harmonic Distortion Line Noise Overvoltage Undervoltage Power Sag There is a big differnce between an ON LINE UPS and a LINE INTERACTIVE UPS. IMHO the built in UPS in the March product swayed me to spend double on our DVR's we use two UPS, the built in and an external device and using even one UPS dramatically had reduced our fault rate, so much so that EVERYTHING in my entire house is on UPS and funnily enough when you look at the graphs (ups reporting software) from what you percieved as clean power you would be very surprised indeed. Look at it this way..if every pixel moves on every camera from a power surge and then the BT878's have to work ful on on EVERY 4 inputs and then the CPU has to work at full capacity so does the ram..if not using onboard compression...so does the HDD's to record it all and at a time when the incorrect voltage is going through the device..what do you think will happen! I hate to sound off so loud, however this is the most crucial element you can choose, and it is often not chosen wisely, I have seen cameras damaged due to undervoltage, this is why we used to have to choose cameras that had such a large voltage variance to ensure the longevity of the device.

IMHO, your customer will not be satisfied using some small remote, it is even hard enough to control a PTZ through a mouse on remote software, te best thing is an extended PTZ keyboard, you can get small ones or to pump the video output of your pc video card into the modulator and use a wireless mouse. If you were to use the GEO Remote option then I would use the I/O board to link to presets so that a button push givces him a predefined view, if he is happy with an option of many differnt shots (Presets) to choose from then he will probably be very happy with this solution, but if he wants to move and pan and zoom, he will be much happier with an extended smal PTZ Keyboard.

I can only assume the laws are different everywhere, my limited understanding of our laws is that the cameras may not view any publicly accessable area unless the camera is protecting your premises. Therefore if you havea camera viewing the front of your premise, it should only view what is deemed necessary to protect your premises and I guess as above the loose translation would be that if the area you are covering causes no risk to your premise and is not part of your premise, then you could be at risk of breach of public privacy.

Your problem is not an uncommon one, the problem is that most full body cameras (now do not flame me) are larger than dome cameras because they have more electronics in them, the only chance you have is to recess the camera in some way...there are commercial recessed mounted dome housings available...these appear only slightly larger than your standard dome camera becuase the camera sits back in the cavity of whatever you mount it in if you have an awning or eave that allows for a cavity you can mount the camera in the cavity of the roof and have only the lens protruding below the eave and the bubble cover is small, if you can imagine a noraml camera and plastic bubble with a box section on the top of it that sits back in the roof, this box section has the CS mount built into it...so for all intents and purposs it looks like a slightly bigger dome but u still get the ability to have a full body camera recessed!

I had a feeling about the OS on the GE unit, but they have strict guidelines...we were not even allowed to open the box...let alone take out or swap a HDD (not that it stopped me opening the box of course). I agree about electronics, my damn O2 PDA phone locks up all the time. We have been purchasing from a March CSP, but will now be endevouring to qualify ourselves to buy direct.

Here are my two cents. I think I can speak with a fair amount of experience with both of these units and many more: the DM units are fairly reliable, the problems you seem to refer to with HDD are indeed true, but I doubt they are indeed the main problem, all HDD's are subject to failure, but most drive manufactorers have HDD Diagnostic tolls that let you check your drive, from my experience with DM the relaistic faiures come from environment and mostly bad power or incorrect preventative measures. After testing many HDD's that were supposedly faulty and the cause of instability i found this not to be the case, in almost 70% of all failures of supposed drives, it had occured from a corrupted and incomplete video file, usually caused by overheating due to bad power or the environment that the DVR was in...little ventalation being the main culprit. using UPS devices reduced failure rate by a large amount however I think that the main issue was the OS not recognising corrupted data on the HDD, a lack of adequate cooling was also relevant. I have seen GE units fail as well and although they do use a RTOS, they are still akin to a PC based unit, they still have a processor and they still have ram etc, the secret in my belief is to ensure that althogh the OS is embedded it should not reside on the HDD at all...sure that makes for a small OS and a less PRETTY interface, but it does allow you to swap any fualty drive without losing any settings. All DVR's will crash and Standalone is less prone to this kind of failure, however, they are still able to lock up and freeze. The failures did cause us to switch to the Bosch Divar units (still not a single failure) and they run very cool, but recently we have moved to March Networks, because they have integrated the UPS into the DVR itself, this has made them very stable also the way the HDD's mount in a seperate caddy beside 2x fans with the option of 4 and the way the spacing is kept between the drives reduces the heat issues, they even ensure that you have to mount them with the electronics side facing each other with an airflow gap, this means also that the drives touch two heat extracting pads that are joined to the actuall casing causing a heat sink type effect, we have been instructed by march to ONLY use a certain grade (I do not know if it is true) yes....a certain grade of seagate drive that they sell to us and we are yet to see any failures from these drives (fingers crossed) the other thing i liked was that the OS and all settings are not kept on the HDD, I recently had to upgrade one from 4x300gb drives to 4x400gb drives and all I had to do was send two drive holders with the drives installed and the electrician put them in and presto, no changes needed to any settings. Another thing I liked about the March product was that it has no buttons or other functions on the DVR itself, yes this means you need a PC to operate it, but so what...at least if there is going to be a problem it is not likely to be on the unit itself and therefore recording will still happen. Although i can not prove my point (Thomas Perhaps) but i think having the box recording and processing your requests just leads to more issues, it should only stream and let the PC do the processing where problems could occur. In short I am yet to see a Divar or a March product fail, the Divar is too expensive for us to use as it has a limited POS ability, the DM is without doubt the easiest of all the DVR's to use and they HAVE been in the game for a long time it is also the largest selling DVR in the market world wide, so it would not survive if it had such a high failure rate. The GE..although harder to use and much less pretty is fairly stable and robust and has some really nifty features which can make it easier to sell. I am going to stick with March even though it is much more expensive as we tend to use the POS side of things a lot more and the support is outstanding...having EVERYBODY using your DVR WILL result in support issues NO MATTER WHAT but March only have certified users and run courses on the DVR that must be completed before selling it, this ensures not TIME WASTING idiots causing unwanted and un needed support calls. As a passing note i think that if you are in the security game full time you SHOULD keep one 16 ch DVr for swap out purposes, with electronics you have to expect failures at some point and it is not unreasonable to expect that an installer should havea back up unit of his own.