bike_rider

In the advanced motion setup, you have to change the slider to the new value and then draw a box to define the area that should have that level.

Thanks. I would never have figured that part out. Now to find the time to resume working on the project...

I want to connect the CW964 to the Geovision. GV only uses two wire control, while the CW964 offers the option of 2 or 4 wire protocol. My question is, which two wires on the CW964 connect to the terminals labeled + and - on the GV card?

This one's easy. Generally, you get what you pay for. Really cheap cameras are bad and really expensive cameras have cool high end features. Color is nice, but B&W sees better in low light and is higher res. B&W is also much cheaper than a true day and night camera. Box cameras give better image quality than bullets, but require that you put them in an enclosure. Weather proof bullets are common, but they usually don't have a very long zoom. They become very conspicuous at that point. For a bullet, I'm happy with the value of Nuvico bullets. Not the cheapest, not the best. I think you are in the UK, so you need to look at what you can get and then maybe post a few model numbers. Then we can give feedback on specific specs. Remember that wide angle will not let you ID anyone.

Cameras that switch from Color to B&W night mode do so in less than a second. Really is it just a blink. I'd say that for your budget, you are probably best off to put up some wide coverage cameras and then one or two to cover gates/entrances.

D'oh. Sorry about that.

Funny, I just posted this link a few threads down. Enjoy. http://www.ezcctv.com/attributes/cmplx_mnl/filename/GeoVision-V81-Manual.pdf

Here is a link to the 8.1 manual http://www.ezcctv.com/attributes/cmplx_mnl/filename/GeoVision-V81-Manual.pdf

Ah, I found it. page 318 of the manual describes who to send email on alert conditions.

Sorry dude, I never setup V2, so I don't know.

Hi rorrie-M, OK, now we are getting somewhere. Are you looking to monitor activity or are you looking to be able to ID somebody? The less expensive solution maybe to pair cameras in each location (the bow tie would need 2 pairs of course). But then, your 4 camera DVR is overwhlemed. Use one wider angle to cover a general area and then one zoom to cover gate or driveway entrances. The first one shows you what's going on, the second one shows you who - provided they pass through the narrow area covered by the zoomed in camera. If you want to ID people, figure that your camera needs to be focused on an area about 3-4 meters wide. The obvious question I forgot to ask is, you do already have a monitored alarm systtem, right?

Yes, 24VAC will go farther than 12VDC. Hopefully somebody else can elaborate.

PTZ are not always the right solution. You haven't told us more about your need and your complete solution. How big is the area? How's the lighting? Is activity in the area normal? What exactly are you hoping to get on camera? Just activity? License plates - I hope not , faces good enough for identification? How are you recording video? If you've decided that you need video, the value of whatever you are covering must be more than a few thousand dollars, so why is your budget so low? I'm putting in a PTZ in an area to see if I can cover what I estimated I would need 4-6 fixed cameras to do. In my case, there is little concurrent activity (so rarely more than one person or group in the coverage area at one time). I can accept that not everything will be captured, so if the camera misses something because it was looking somewhere else, I can accept that risk. Can you? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for or against anything, I'm just offering up things you need to consider to get a solution that could work for you. Lots of people start with 2 cheap cameras and quickly discover that they are not getting anything useful. Hopefully you can skip that step.

What you are asking for is a Pan-Tilt-Zoom, PTZ, camera. They usually mount to the side (pendant style), not on top of a pole. They can be tied to alarm inputs that trigger motino to a pre-defined spot. Good ones are around $2,000+ Still interested?

To make this work, you need to zoom in quite closely. This means that you need a choke point for the cars, so the license plate will be in a predictable area.

I went to install my GV-NETIO and discovered that I don't have an RS-232 port. (Darn modern equipment.) The obvious solution is to get a USB->RS-232 device. Has anyone done this? Anything weird I should watch out for? Thanks

Yes. You need to configure at least 3 places in GV to make this work. First, you need your email setup configured and confirm that you are getting test messages. Then, you need to alter the schedule to to include email output. Finally you need to config each device to invoke the alert. OK, I'm not too sure about that last one, but I think that it correect.

Let me be so bold as to suggest that you tell everyone what model of camera you bought.

Yup, lots of USB, no RS-232. Not many people use them anymore, so I wasn't completely surprised that this MB didn't have any. I'm low on PCI slots, so I'll go with the adapter. Newegg has some cheap. Thanks

The short answer is "no". You will not find an acceptable 8 channel card under $300. If you buy a card off eBay, who will you turn to for support? There are 2 major DVR card makers: Avermedia and Geovision. Neither one meets your budget. Raise your budget. Don't forget to consider the total frame rate, not just the number of channels. If you only have $300 for a card, where is your money for cameras? Cables? Power supplies? Lighting? What are you watching that is worth 8 cameras but not worth $400-$600 for a decent card?

Oh one more idea. Watch for areas that are having a crime wave. Yes, it is cynical, but if you find a middle class, to upper middle class neighborhood that is having problems with vandalism, or a rash of break-ins, you've found a market. Get access to the local police blotter and read it. Then, go door to door. Maybe partner with somebody who does alarms, but not video.

Man, this is a timely thread. I'm going to drift off topic a bit to rant about customer service from web vendors. I've placed maybe 6-7 orders from 5 vendors. Every single vendor, except one, has made a customer service mistake: Item not in stock, regardless of the status on the web site. Then no update on expected ship date without my asking about it. Order not placed until I waited a week to see what was up. I got a, "oops, sorry, the computer didn't alert us to your order." response. They at least apologized. One order had a small $10 part not shipped in the order. No response to 2 follow up emails. $10 part isn't worth my time to hassle them much, but they won't get more of my money. One time, I got an email saying an item had shipped, but with a bad UPS number. I called them and found that they had not shipped them, had no idea why I got an email saying it had shipped. The only company I've found that acurately reflects stock status is a company that doesn't even do CCTV as a core business (and rarely has any high end stuff in stock). My point here is that if you have leads, follow up right away. Customer service trumps low cost IF you work with the right kind of customer. Nobody wants to wait, especially if they think something is happening and it isn't.

Brand: End Noise PC. Case: Antec Solo P150 Tower Power Supply: Nexus 400W NX4090 Motherboard: ASUS P5B-E CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E630 1.8 GHz Memory: Kingston PC-5300 2x512M Video Card: XFX 7300LE 128 PCIE (Fanless) Hard Drive: WD 160G 7200 RPM SATA 2 (system and software install) Optical Drive: Samsung lightscribe Cooling: Zalman CNPS 7000-ALCU w/775 adapter Monitor: none Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack: 2 GeoVision Card GV-800 GeoVision Software Version 8.1 Screen Resolution: 1280x1024 Video Size: 720x576 de-interlace Motion/Continuous: Motion FPS: unk Environment: Home, closet, no temp extremes Length of Tested Period: 30 days Notes: PC dedicated to GV.

Thanks for the info guys. I just wish the PTZs weren't so darn expensive. Any chance of getting a look at a sample video?

I was wondering through the manual and found a section that implies that with 2 cameras, a fixed and a PTZ, the GV could be setup to control the PTZ to track somthing moving through the view of the fixed camera. Has anyone used this feature? I can think of some issues, but it is an interesting idea.