survtech

We're running into similar issues with our Vitek VTD-A2812's. They won't advance replace either DOAs or units that fail in-warranty. While that's not totally atypical, they also threaten to charge for repairs until they inspect the returned item. The odd thing is that although they keep saying they will repair returned units, rather than replace them, they have wound up replacing each of our warranty returns. They also like to generate an invoice to our supplier, then credit it later. This caused some concern with the supplier until Vitek told them that the invoices didn't have to be paid and were only for their bookkeeping purposes. I'm waiting for inMotion to release their mini-dome that we beta tested a few weeks ago. The beta version had the joystick for menu settings in the cable, which made it difficult for us to change settings after installation. The release version will supposedly have the joystick mounted inside the dome - a much better arrangement. We've deployed a number of inMotion 11S3N2D box cameras and are very happy with the price and results. I expect the mini-dome to be comparable.

If they had trouble handling RAID5, they would've barfed on RAID6. I typically like to allow at least 50% data rate overhead on a system. That helps ensure the capability to operate normally during rebuilds.

The heater should be hooked up through a thermostat (aka thermal switch), although the blower may not be. The blower also helps cool the camera in hot weather so it should be left in. The heater is another matter. In New York, the temperatures can get down below "0"; which is not good for many electronic parts, especially electrolytic capacitors. If the electrolyte freezes, say goodbye to the camera. Your enclosure should have one in the heater circuit. Here's a picture of one:

Many RAIDs do that. I can confirm that Arena Maxtronic, Infortrend, Huawei, Nexsan and many others have that capability embedded. I would never recommend RAID5 for critical, or even most, security applications. It's just too common to lose more than one drive at a time. The thing is, constant video recording doesn't leave the drives any time to do their internal self-tests. Couple that with systems' inability to verify-after-write and you're pretty much guaranteed to lose data at one time or another with RAID5. I've encountered a number of instances where drives had problems reading the data they thought they were writing. In many applications, the normal verify process would catch that and trigger the RAID to kick out the drive. Without verify, the RAID chugs merrily along thinking all is well until another a recognized valid drive failure occurs. During rebuild, the RAID tries to read parity data from the first drive and voila! Two failed drives = Data loss. RAID6 avoids that by allowing two drives to fail without data loss. Can RAID6 systems lose data? Of course! But the likelihood of three "simultaneous" drive failures is far lower than two.

Sorry, not of the Surveillance Department. That would require Gaming Commission approval, which is strictly limited. I believe you'll find that is standard policy among casinos.

Actually, our staff has been pretty stable for a number of years. The thing is, everybody thinks all we do is watch cameras (boring) but often enough there are things going on to pique the interest. Humans are the strangest animals!

Great comment, rory. Please don't apply for any casino jobs.

Here ya' go!

I know the guy who used to be their head of sales (now with Dallmeier). He still claims that the Airship systems are among the best low cost, full resolution, full frame rate DVRs on the market. For what it's worth...

I have. No sweat, unless it takes up to 10 years for the damage to appear. I'm not advocating taking no precautions, I just never relished being hooked up like a machine just to solder parts to a PC board. Anti-static mats, grounded and controlled temperature soldering irons and accounting for low humidity is one thing; being handcuffed like a criminal is quite another. Besides, I doubt anyone on this forum is contemplating complex soldering of surface mount ICs or MOSFETs to extremely dense circuit boards. And if they were, a basic soldering iron, even controlled temperature, is not the device of choice. This is CCTV, not circuit manufacturing or rework.

I know many are freaky about ESD damaging solid state circuits but I can tell you from over 40 years of experience that it is less of an issue than is generally believed. All it takes is reasonable care, such as touching a ground before touching a PC board or device. In all of my time as a bench tech, I never bothered wearing a grounding device or strap and I never blew a circuit or device due to static.

6-pair is not totally uncommon. I believe it's normally used for alarm, RS422/485 and other specialized applications. Belden makes a number of 6-pair 24 gauge cables - many labeled for computer apps - like 1429R, 1423A, 1511C, etc.

True, but if the iris is partially closed, you lose depth of field, or rather, you lose that "edge" to the focus. For many situations, that may be tolerable but in certain applications where focus is super-critical, I've found we can get better results focusing with the iris fully open, then closing the iris until the best overall picture is obtained. Also, in some situations, I find it necessary to close the iris after focusing so that certain details can be seen despite the rest of the picture appearing overly dark. This is true when trying to capture the pay line on slot machines or the cards laid out on a table. While under your average situation, it might be preferable to have an overall pleasing picture, in those situations it is necessary to trade off having some dark areas for clarity in others. By the way, we also commonly turn off the auto-iris function and manually adjust the iris on auto-iris cameras for the same reason.

Soundy, We occasionally use #5 welder's glass for manual iris lenses too. On many cameras, opening the iris fully will overload the video, making it difficult to focus. The welder's glass allows the same focus functionality with manual iris lenses as it does with auto-iris lenses.

You're welcome, Mike.

Don't count on most of them having the "best of everything". Las Vegas casinos are typically so tight with a dollar that George's hair ends up looking like a crewcut.

Mike, both scenarios are possible. However, a bad fan will likely cause other parts on the PC Board to fry. I believe that was the situation with a number of our Spectra III's. Seriously, call Time Lapse Supply. We've always found their advice sound.

Ignoring cheap crap, there are two distinct designs for video baluns - isoolated and non-isolated. Both use transformers. Isolated - no direct connection between input and output Non-isolated - autotransformer type. Isolated video baluns are rare but have certain advantages, especially immunity from ground loops. Very hard to find...

DC fans don't spin freely. When not powered up, they have spots where there is resistance all around the 360-degree range. Again - replace the power supply. An easy job. Trust me - I work with hundreds of Spectra II, III and IV dome drives daily. I know whereof I speak. The DD53KIT is your friend...

Yes, the fuse is on the back box PC board but the it is likely blowing due to a power supply problem in the dome drive. The proof of that would be to replace the fuse but not reinstall the dome drive. If the fuse doesn't blow with power applied, the problem is in the dome drive. There is very little circuitry on the back box PC board.

We looked at backing up our evidence clips to tape a few years ago. We also had a vendor trying to convince us to buy a hybrid storage system that would store on RAID for a short period, then on tape for the remainder of our required retention time (7-60 days, depending on the camera). We concluded it wasn't worth the cost and hassle of tape drives and libraries. In my mind, tape is a step backwards for both live storage and clip archiving. The cost to record live to tape is high and ready availability of recordings is low so we looked at other options and decided to keep the live data on RAID but switched from RAID5 to RAID6 for safety. Since then we have not lost any live data. For evidence storage, we bought some WD MyBook RAID Edition external USB drives and back up the clips to them on a regular schedule. Cheap, fast and still capable of being stored off-site.

It's probably a failed Power Supply board. You can order the DD53KIT here: Time Lapse Supply

Parts are available through Pelco or from Time Lapse Supply. The reconfiguring issue might be slip rings. If so, it should also happen when spinning the dome drive in "turbo" mode. TLS can also be helpful for troubleshooting assistance. Be aware - Spectra II parts are being discontinued. III and IV parts are readily available.

Yes. If you punch the camera cables down to a patch panel and use stranded patch cables like these, you will avoid those issues. 10ft USA-Made Cat5E 350 MHz Stranded Snagless Patch Cable - Gray You can also buy stranded CAT5e cable in bulk and run it from a 110 or even a 66 punchdown block to the baluns. Stranded CAT5e cable is not much more expensive than solid CAT5e, typically around a 10% premium. For that matter, since analog over UTP is quite forgiving about twist integrity, you can even use wire "beans" to splice stranded cable to solid without detrimentally affecting the video, thus avoiding the need for punchdown blocks, though their use is recommended.