glasssplinter

Had some questions about an older Pelco unit that I picked up and plan on installing for my home system. Currently I have a small 4 channel system that is working okay with a replaced power supply but I wanted to expand and was able to get a Pelco DX8016 with no drives. After some support calls, which by the way Pelco was awesome with, I was able to get the software and reinstall everything. I currently upgraded the memory to 768 mb and installed a different video card since the original was bad. Working on installing a 3TB drive into it for all of the storage, more of that to come though. My big question on this unit though is it worth it anymore? What advantages does this unit being 7+ years old have over the newer compact units? I'm mainly looking at the residential models (all in one units) since I'll never be able to afford a newer Pelco unit. I'm happy enough with the analog quality and don't see going to any IP setup for years. Thanks for the input!

What kind of power ends are they? Bare wire or a plug? For bare ends look at something like called 2.1mm x 5.5mm Male CCTV Camera DC Power Adapter. They just use a set screw to tighten onto the wire.

With conduit it really depends on the height you can get your cable to. If it's easily reachable put it in conduit. If you can't easily reach it just get good UV resistant cable. If someone really wants to cut the line to the camera they're going to regardless of protection. I ran all my cable high enough to not worry and when I brought the cable down, ran it inside of 3/4" PVC conduit. Thinking about spray painting it with Krylon fuzion to match the house color so it blends it more.

Check out Sewell direct. Sewell PureRun Cat5e, Bulk, Pure Copper, 1000 ft STP (Foil) UV Protect (CMX) 24 AWG, Black for 109 for a 1000ft box. If you're covering everything up and will not have exposed they offer a cheaper CM version for 54. Good stuff and it is pure copper.

the toss, thanks for the input on the project. My biggest complaint is that all of these little parts just add up for basically no gain in my case. My labor and time is free so I have no problems with solder connections or compression fits in the case of the BNC connections. As an installer you can quickly make that difference up. Here's what happened during the install. Cameras are mounted on the outside wall and for the garage were easy enough to grab the wires through the wall. However the 6 cameras that are on the house have no easy method other than an 9 ft drill bit to go through the top and bottom plate of the house. Either that or cut holes in the wall to drill through the bottom plate. It's actually a mobile home so no attic access. So each camera mounted to the house has to have a weatherproof box to house each cable and the video balun along with the dc power plug. Add an average $9 for each camera box for the box, faceplate, and a cord clamp. The wires have to run along the side of the house until I can either bring them in through the hot water heater room or the conduit I ran down the side of the house to the crawl space. If I would have used RG-59 I could have left all of the connections exposed and only have to support the wires. So already that would have saved about $54 on unnecessary extras. That takes care of the house side. For the garage since I don't have to factor in labor and since I already had to dig a trench I could have just as easily dropped 2" conduit vs the 1 1/4" I dropped in. Cameras to the garage would not have had any breaks and could easily be expanded via the rope I left in the conduit. Onto the wire and buying two spools. All of the little patch cables and what add up fast. Add into that most of them are much smaller then true RG-59. So the $55 quoted for the cables could have easily gone to a spool of the real stuff that I would actually know the quality of instead of pre made junk cables. Most of those are probably CCA and have very little shielding on them. So literally the $150 to wire just the garage up could have wired the garage and the house with RG-59. An estimate for the totals spent are close to $250 just for cable, baluns, boxes, and a few misc parts. Mind you I bought 1000ft Cat5e CMX SFTP, UV resistant, outdoor, shielded foil and braid. Add in another $75+ for conduit and the misc fittings to install that. So Cat installation total around $325. For siamese RG59 I could have picked that up for $110+ends and maybe 100 for conduit. Total under $250 plus better picture quality and an overall cleaner outside install.

Have one of those questions that luckily I thought of before I buy. I need RG-59 siamese cable to rewire existing and new residential cameras. I have the compression tool, a Klein, and the BNC connectors but have yet to purchase the cable. I've looked into a couple of different brands of cable and surprise, am confused by the options available. My biggest concern is the outer braid on most cables is CCA, the center and 18/2 is all pure copper. Belden sells pure copper RG-59 siamese but it's roughly double that of the ones with CCA outer braid. Any advice from the professionals on it? Thanks! Forgot to add that this is for analog cameras, nothing hi res or anything. All runs should be under a 100 ft.

Guess I could give an update on this project so others hopefully will avoid the issues I've faced. The whole project has turned out just like a government job, over budget, past deadline, and sub par performance. Here's what I would suggest to the average Joe installing their own system. Stick with what the cameras were designed with. Analog cameras - RG59, IP Cat. The "future proofing" is simply not worth it. Most of my cameras have some sort of distortion / interference that I have yet to locate. Yet, the other "cost saving" options of running higher quality multiple signal baluns is hardly cost savings when you have to buy 2 types of cables plus the baluns. The other costs that had to be added were the electrical boxes to protect the fragile connections and the weatherproof connectors has made this job cost more then just doing it right the first time. Other then the conduit the whole project is one giant regret due to a poor cable choice suggested on here. Next time you wander around and check out a store, check what kind of connections they are using on analog cameras, RG cable and crimped BNC connections. Obviously there is a reason, it works.

So have a DX8016 that is slowly replacing my other DVR so I've been playing with it trying to get everything setup. Problem is now is that I cannot access it remotely. Pelco defaults to using 9002 for the base port. I've forwarded that port on my router and still cannot access it. I've tried mapping it to port 8888 as well which worked for my previous DVR but not luck. The worst part is it's a simple network setup. Router - switch - Pelco. So nothing fancy should be involved. The DVR is perfectly viewable within the LAN and a port scan from the LAN shows those ports open, yet a WAN scan shows nothing. If I reconfigure my router to my old DVR ip and port 8888 it's viewable. Any ideas? Thanks!

If anyone else is having this problem, I finally solved it by disabling IPSec policy on the Pelco. The port is now visible and remote view is working. Not sure if this is the case for all of them but possibly the ISP was blocking it.

I'm in the same boat right now. Since I'm going with CAT I need to have some protection for the baluns so those round metal boxes for outside lights are all I can come up with. At least it matches the house color With crimped connectors you'll definitely want some protection since those are not weatherproof. Compression connections seal on the cable, same things that your cable company uses. Hope they're working for you now!

Hope I can help a little here, new to a lot of this but have a similar cheap system. 1: For weatherproofing you can try and find PVC conduit boxes but sealing the cable can get messy. You might be able to find a cord grip that will fit that cable but those premade cable are really thin stuff. Basically they are a cable clamp that has a rubber cork in it. Push the cable through and then tighten them down. I've seen some that are made for pre made cables or something similar. Think they have a split in the rubber. The other option is something we've used in the radio world for years, Coax-Seal. Basically a rubber tape that you wrap around the connections then mold it into a blob around it. Works great. 2: They seem to be weatherproof enough. I've had mine up for 2 years and haven't had any weather issues with them but I live in New Mexico. Heat and UV is the biggest enemy. 3: If you're not in a rush to get these up I would run better cable. I'm currently rewiring all of my cameras with forum recommended CAT5e. You'd need to put these into a box since you have to run baluns for the video and an adapter for power. But the provided cables do work for the most part. The downside like you said is drilling the large holes to pull the premade connections through. 4: With CAT5e you can run power in the same cable as video. I'm currently experimenting with it and seeing what happens since I've gotten mixed posts about combining split signals. If you look under my profile you can see the post about RG-59 quality issues. You can successfully patch the premade cables together...just takes patience with these. I had one that got a break and I was able to solder it back together. VERY small wires though. That little cable houses 4 wires so you do the math on how small they are. Not the best stuff.

So I've gotta say I'm slightly confused at best. The idea here was everyone was saying CAT is cheaper because you can run four signals over it. As a home installer who has to buy bulk cable with no future jobs, I'll be using the same amount of CAT cable as I would have been using RG cable. Both were sold in 1000' spools and the RG was actually cheaper since I didn't have to buy baluns for every camera. The only advantage with using the CAT is cable management but even that seems minimal since I'll still have to run a separate cable for each camera. The idea with jacks was to combine, securely terminate them and bring up minimal cable through the floor and keep the messes in junction boxes at the cameras, under the house and up in the garage attic.

So for CCTV you can't terminate like you can for normal networking? The plan was to combine 4 video signals from each corner and crimp them all down into a plug. Let's say I want to run 2 cameras off 1 cable that sit on top of the house but they are 25ft apart. How would you split the wires for that or would I have to run a second cable for it?

Cost is the biggest issue. I acquired a used DX8016 for almost nothing since it wasn't working that great but a few parts fixed it up. Eventually I'd like to go IP but I've got other bigger issues with the house that need fixing before I worry about upgrading to that. The good news is I've wired the house with CAT 6 and have gigabit speeds in every room, so the upgrade will be fairly painless...in theory anyway

So I've decided to go with the CAT5e, which is a UV resistant, shielded foil plus braided shielding. It's also pure copper, not CCA or anything. The reason being is the cable management, I hadn't completely thought how big 16 RG59 cables would be. I've gone with keystone jacks and RJ45 termination and will be building these as a plug and play network...so long as you plug in the correct jack. I'll look at the option of running a second power supply but IME, the wall warts are POS and put out unregulated voltage with sporadic spikes that cause problems. I'm currently running a 25 amp MFJ power supply with adjustable voltage to power everything. The voltage drop on 100' was about 2 volts, enough that I'm not happy with it. Plan is to run a 14 ga THHN pair underground to a distribution point in the garage. This will keep the drop at a more acceptable level. The plan now is drop 4 cables through the floor and split them under the house in a junction box. 2 will run to the garage for a possible 8 cameras, 2 for the house for 8 more. Once they exit the safety of the house, they will run into a liquid tight connection into a single gang weathertight box where the camera will mount. Inside will house the balun and power adapter for a few of the cameras, the others are bare end wires. The 2 cables running to the garage will go inside 3/4" conduit and be dug underground. We'll see how the whole project turns out. Thanks for everyone's input on this

So did some math and in this case it's not going to pay off. I can save approximately 50 ft of cable per camera by using the CAT. If I run 4 cameras, I have to spend about $60 for the adapters, plus the CAT cable, plus another power supply, plus extra BNC ends, plus to have another UPS is about $50. So I'm looking at close to $150 for everything. If I stick with just the RG-59 siamese, I spend about $68 on cable, have no breaks in the cable and everything runs off of one battery backed up power supply. Now, if I had anything over 125 ft, the savings would be enough to consider but I'm just not seeing how going the route of CAT cable is going to pay off in this case.

Sorry, not getting the reference here...

Numb-nuts, looked into that 4 channel transmitter and I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and buy the Belden RG59. By the time I buy two of those I've got about $60 tied up in that. Not saying they don't work but I think for this short of a run the cost of the equipment would surpass the cable costs. If I ever have the money to upgrade to a networked system I wouldn't mind have some extra RG lying around for the radios. Thanks for the help!

Interesting posts for using CAT cable. I had thought about doing that but didn't feel I was going to save too much on it. I have 4 cameras on the house which are probably under 40' each and I'll be trenching 1 1/2" conduit out to my garage which will house an additional 4 or more cameras (got room for 16). I can see where running one CAT cable under the house to the garage would benefit saving a 100' or so, but then I would have to feed a power cable as well for each camera. I'm actually using a 25A MFJ power supply to power all of the cameras. Highly regulated and allows for voltage adjustment between 9 and 15 volts. Plus both the power supply and camera system is plugged into a UPS so I don't want to spread too far from that. The future proofing of the install is the large conduit which can easily be pulled again, and attic space in the garage. It's interesting that the quality of coax matters but you can switch to CAT cable and it works even though it's thinner wire. Yeah, I've read quite abit about the tricks they play with cable now. They list the braid coverage but not the type of wire or just vague terms so you never know what you're getting...copper is just too darn expensive these days and the PR people are doing their best to hide the fact that it's not copper.

Thanks for the info. I had looked into Belden before and know they make good stuff. The inside wire on most bulk spools are solid copper but it's the braid on them that I'm worried about. The skin effect is a pretty neat deal and the CCTV falls far below the range of the beneficial effects of it. Time for a little more research...

I'm a newb as well but the big things to keep in mind: What do you want the system for or what do you plan to monitor? Budget IP or analog system Cable runs, can you access what you need to get the cable pulled where you plan on putting the cameras and where the DVR is. Expandability

Thanks for the input, at least I know it's not a totally outdated system. I've already got the unit and just need to acquire more cameras, get the cable and conduit setup and we'll be good to go. My main concern was just making sure the unit was still relevant. I've played with the interface and makes enough sense that I'll be able to get by with it and already used the USB for exporting video. Still evaluating if I want to connect to the network or not due to vulnerabilities. Are these units running a modified Windows 2000 or is it just the Pelco software installed over an original distribution of W2K? The plan is to use a wireless keyboard / mouse combo on it and have it in another room, then run a VGA cable under the house to our TV. Storage was my main concern on this unit since it uses the outdated IDE interface but after tonight I believe I'll have that bypassed and a SATA drive installed. Now I have to weigh the power cost of the unit and see if it is justifiable. Already tried replacing the entire motherboard, power supply, CPU, video, and memory to save on power but no go on it. The software wouldn't work with an AMD setup from the original disc. Tried installing drivers but something with the Pelco software didn't like it. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Any luck deviating from the original MB setup? The P4's were little furnaces and it would be awesome to upgrade to a C2D or even an AMD A1 setup with a lower TDP. Thanks!

Not sure if you've tried this place yet: http://www.arcorelectronics.com/shielding/ Have no idea if they'll answer the phone but they have the smaller diameter stuff you're looking for.

Thanks for the input. I guess I'm a little confused by the higher frame rate since I can only get 5 or 7 ips from each channel at 720x480 resolution. If I were to record at CIF I could get 480 ips (30 per channel) but once you bump up the resolution it dramatically drops. My biggest question in terms of analog cameras was if the technology has advanced enough that say a unit like the DX8000 is surpassed by today's cheaper boxes due to drastic technological advancements. Thanks again for the input!