Shplad

Hi everyone: I am more of a beginner at CCTV, but have a little basic knowledge, and a lot of computer experience. I used to be an IT technician. I have a friend who is a realtor. Someone (a competitor maybe) is damaging/vandalizing his signs that he puts on properties for sale. He is on a tight budget, probably only a couple hundred dollars. Is there any kind of solution for cameras maybe with built-in memory cards which might capture both sides of a realtor's sign? The sign is made up of a vertical 4"x4" post approximately 6 feet high. The crossbeam mounted to it is also a 4"x4" piece of wood. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Boogieman: That seems interesting. Will take a look. badmop: That won't work for us, as the realtor lives about 50km away from the houses for sale.

Unfortunately, there is no power source near the sign. Ideally, we'd want the camera(s) to be on the sign. We don't know where else we could put them, frankly.

SunnyKim; Thanks for that. I stand corrected. I did not know that processing occurred in more than one chip. That's what makes the Web great.

But the new owner of the chip was mentioned above. Why not try them? Or use Linux and be done with it. From what I recall, those Techwell chips are pretty good. I certainly would not want to waste good equipment.

I was really just sort of doing a "drive-by posting." Don't really keep up with the CCTV scene. So I didn't even know that 1080p cameras existed. You didn't mention the resolution in your first post, and I didn't look up that camera model. So, that being said, do you really need full 1080p resolution? Isn't it probably overkill? Not trying to sound snide, just genuinely asking. If you do, are there some settings that might need fiddling with? I'm glad your setup experience with Xeoma was pleasant. Okay. In 1.5 seconds after launch, xeoma found all my IP cameras, set motion record, and then proceeded to almost melt my G630 CPU. For setup up, it beat everything I've tried. The UI look good but performance >MP really isn't good (it brought an i7-3770 down too). 1 1080p camera is 50% Blue Iris: 1 1080p@25fps 40-45% Megapixel or less resolution/cam + lower frame rate, and xeoma might not be that bad. ______ I would just find cameras that handle motion/ftp/nas/etc and just run a cheap linux box. Use a tablet/smartphone for access to live feeds from camera or stored video from linux box.

As I mentioned in another post, I used Xeoma on Ubuntu 11.1 and it seemed to work very nicely indeed. Two different DVR cards, about 6 different cameras. Xeoma was fairly easy to set up, and has an intuitive interface, and the publishers are always pushing some really cheap deal to expand whatever version you are using to get more features/power/scalability. An i3-2100 should be way more than enough processing power for Xeoma. Of course, I wouldn't choose Ubuntu again, but that's entirely another story. Shplad

Don't know if we can help, but...how about starting by telling us for which OS? Windows? Linux? Mac OS X? If it's Linux you want to use, I believe it's already integrated into some versions of the kernel. I don't know if there is a Windows version, but since it's often the case that there are at least one or two rebranded names using each chip...you might want to Google that. I see that Intersil picked up that chip line a while back, and they still list that chip on their website. Maybe call and ask them? Intersil page on TW2804 chip http://www.intersil.com/en/products/audiovideo/security-surveillance/video-decoders/TW2804.html Shplad

I didn't run it for any extended length of time, but I found Xeoma to be very intuitive and easy to set up and run on Linux. I was using Ubuntu 11.1 if I remember correctly. I never tried it in Windows. It's definitely more graphical and intuitive than ZoneMinder (which I found way too technical for a novice). Xeoma's publisher always is pushing some kind of promotion to upgrade you to two more cameras, it seems. So I think the free version was 2 or 3 cams, but you could do an upgrade to 4 for $20.00 or some really low price. Yeah, I know, not technically free, but it was close, so I thought I'd put the idea out there. shplad

Hi there: I haven't come by here in quite a while. But the place is so friendly and helpful...I thought that this would be a good place to come to for my question. I got a used Panasonic WJ-HD316 DVR a month or two ago. It needs a bit of work, but I used to be an IT technician, so that doesn't scare me. I am hoping to use this in my house. The one thing I didn't expect when I bought it is.....the fans are SO DARN LOUD. I took the cover off the unit, and cleaned everything out. I noticed no difference. Are the fans on these units typically this noisy, because I couldn't imagine using this at home unless I could quiet the fans at least somewhat. I see they're small fans (what, 40 or 60mm?), which are typically more noisy that larger ones, but these are probably the loudest fans I've ever heard. I thought about swapping them out with quieter ones, but then I noticed they have proprietary connectors on them with tons of pins. I would imagine it would be pretty hard to find replacements with the same connector, no? Can anyone suggest anything to quiet this monster? It would be shame to have to let it go when it's working fine, just because of the noise Thanks

Old Car Guy: Thanks for that. The guy at Panasonic said as far as he was concerned, they were very quiet. I guess it was either corporate propaganda, or different experience. I'll think again about ordering the fans. Shipping is so cheap from Digikey, I thought I'd order two and see if they are quieter. Then, if they are, I'll order the remaining two.

Kawboy12r: That's good sarcasm, I like that. But seriously, I thought there actually WAS something in the menus I saw that allowed you to disable that feature, no? Were you being entirely sarcastic or ?? I know what you mean, though. That thing does have a SH*(tload of menus, doesn't it.

After speaking with Panasonic support, I believe the fans are slowly beginning to wear out. I got the recorder working fine, but the fans are getting extremely noisy-I think the bearings are going. So I decided to try to replace them. Panasonic (what a surprise) wants upwards of $60.00 each for at least two of the fans, so I Googled and found almost identical fans drastically cheaper. The new fans are made by the same mfgr. and have exact same specs, except they don't support the DVR's alert feature for when the fan stops (Am I right in calling this the locked rotor feature, or is it the RPM sensor)? Can anyone guess if these fans will work in the DVR, or is it more likely that the DVR will just not operate because of that missing sensor/wire. I know the alarm feature may not work because the sensor is not there-I don't care. I just want the fans to spin and the unit to operate.

Hi: I am still working at configuring the WJ-HD316A I got used a little while back. As I mentioned in other posts, I'm an EX-IT tech, but I don't know a lot about DVRs. I'm trying to format one of the internal drives. I believe I went through the correct menus, and am now looking at the following screen: HDD Disk menu-->Auto Setup-->Result of Format Result of Format: Main-1 - Loading OK It has been sitting on this screen for about half an hour. Does this mean it's finished formatting the drive? Did it ever start formatting the drive? I tried pressing Setup and ESC again, but the DVR just stays in this menu. The HDD1 LED is light constantly right now. Do DVRs do destructive (long) formats or short formats? IS there ever any kind of progress indicator? This set of menus ain't what I'd call intuitive. I checked in the manual, but this part is conveniently skipped over. Also, the HDD 1 LED is now unlit, and the drive was labelled in the HDD menu as "Lost". I don't think it's physically dead. I think I may have shut off the machine when it was in the middle of something. Not good, I know, but....when I can't see any status or progress indicators, it's pretty hard to know what the heck to do some times. Like right now. When I can't even tell if the machine has crashed/hung or if it's formatting a drive or ?? Thanks for any advice.

Thanks again. Man, this unit was cheap for a reason. Looks like I screwed up hoping it wouldn't need much work. Not sure it was worth it, but I'm in this far, so... I'll try to get another drive. The current one, which is still working, has (YIKES!) 37000 hours on it. The one that died had about the same. In another of my posts, I mentioned that this unit is blasting loud. The fans seem to be generating most of the noise. Anyone know where I could get a good price on replacement fans (of same model?) "Contrary to popular belief this process does not actually happen when you format a hard drive." It does if you issue a destructive format command, which is what I always do. Whenever I didn't bother, too many weird and "inexplicable" things happened, at least with Windows.

Okay, it turns out one of the drives was going bad, and I didn't know it. But the machine kept barfing on it and so couldn't do things properly even on the good drive. On top of that, a sharp support rep. explained to me that because of the monitor I was using, I might be selecting cancel instead of OK/Enter because the buttons' were highlighted in terms of shade/colour differently than one might expect. I had to select the button highlighted in white, not black, to do what I wanted. Hm... After some (very helpful) time with Panasonic's support rep., drive #1 is formatted, drive #2 is disconnected, and I'm ready to remove drive #2 from the case. Do I have to remove any screws other than the two that are easily visible to take the second drive out? Do I have to remove that whole caddy/mount somehow, or can I just remove those screws to take out drive 2? Thanks

SectorSecurity: So you're saying not every sector on that drive got written with a zero. LOL Thanks for that advice. Actually, I don't think the dang drive even formatted. It just sat there on the results screen for an hour. So I eventually shut if off. Does that mean it was hung on that screen? Is there some secret way to escape that screen if the thing appears to be hung? With this unit, every time I have to power it off, I don't know whether I'm corrupting the filesystem or not. It's very very frustrating. When it's stuck on that screen, I can't hit the restart button. Moreover, even when I can, the restart button doesn't seem to engage or do anything. Will the machine accept a standard ext formatting as its own, or does Panasonic put some proprietary markers in addition to a regular Linux filesystem or something like that on it. It's been hours and hours since I've been trying to get this going properly. Shplad

Thanks Kawboy. I'll record it and post when I get a minute. Turns out now it doesn't want to format the hard drive either. F*(NG E*R(F Brad

Kawboy: Thanks again. Well, you sound like you know what you're talking about. Can I post, an mp3 here to give you an idea what the unit sounds like? Does that sound reasonable? Right now, I'm trying to figure out if the unit is formatting the disk, crashed, has even started formatting? Not too intuitive this UI for such an expensive unit. Shplad

Yeah, thanks. I thought of that. But I'm reluctant to pull out the Dremel. As you said, ya gotta be really careful about filings, and then if it doesn't help much, you're back where you started. Anything else I can do other than get some quieter fans to swap in. With checking pinouts and everything, that could be quite a lot of work. Do the fans tend to get noisier with age? Shplad

I'm no DVR expert, but you could always try mounting one of the drives in a PC running Linux and do some snooping around. Sometimes, if you can use Telnet to remotely connect to a machine, you can look for commands or files in there that might help identify the mfgr. Does "uname -r" work in most DVRs? I'm assuming they don't include that app, but maybe some do.

For anyone still following, you can format any drive. The machine will do a disk check (cause it's confused about the filesystem if you formatted it with another filesystem/machine), when it boots up. At that point, you can press (menu IIRC) to get into a menu which will allow you to view and format any dirve connected to the system. I'm working on that now.

Hi everyone: I'm fairly new to CCTV, but I have a background as an IT technician for many years. I know someone with a Panasonic WJ-HD316 DVR, which, I'm told, pauses during boot for a disk check. Not sure if it finishes booting, as I can't reach the owner at the moment. I'm assuming Panasonic uses some type of Linux filesystem for the drives in its DVRs? Is there some way for me to tell the DVR to reformat the drive, with whatever encryption/security coding or similar is necessary so that the DVR properly recognizes the drives as its own (with whatever filesystem/security coding etc.that entails)? If not, is there some other way to get the DVR to recognize the drive without issue? Thanks in advance for any help. I'll try to help out from time to time with IT-related questions if I can. Shplad