survtech

Not the easiest thing to do. Converting CCTV lens from video auto iris to DC auto iris

Spectra II's have the fan inside the back box, not inside the dome drive. Just flip down the door and the fan is right there. By the way, the fan doesn't run when the dome drive is removed from the back box so to test it, you'll have to apply a DC voltage directly to the fan. It is rated at 12VDC.

Vitek Support If they are not helpful, their Factory Rep is Premiere SGI in Valencia, CA. Contact them and they can probably get you in touch with factory support. http://www.premiersystemsgroup.com

Gardeneer By Dalen Natural Enemy Scarecrow SOL-R Action Owl Realistic head movements powered by solar energy or wind No batteries needed - ever! Life-like, hand-painted owl repels pesky birds and varmints while adding charm to any garden

What, you've never heard of the stationary Chinese clouds?

An all green screen usually means that only one color is being transported. VGA-to-CATx adapters just send each individual color (Red, Green and Blue plus Sync) down one pair. See diagram below: If the adapters and cable are wired correctly and you still have the problem, you are probably exceeding the maximum distance of a passive VGA-to-UTP adapter. In that case, you can use a better passive adapter or an active VGA-to-UTP adapter for extended transport. An example is the Muxlab VGA Balun Kit but there are many others. The Muxlab device specifies up to 350 feet (106m) via Cat 5 twisted pair @ 800x600 resolution. Distance will be reduced at higher resolutions.

If you daisy chain the PTZs, you don't need a code distributor. Daisy chaining means one run of wire loops from camera-to-camera. In that case, you can run one long CATx cable and either have the run loop in and back out from each PTZ or have up to 2 meter "stubs" off the main line to each PTZ. In that case, best practice is to turn off the termination at every PTZ except the last one in the chain. I have left termination "On" on each PTZ in a 3-PTZ daisy chain and control still works but that depends on the circuitry at the transmitter end. Impedance will be low in that case. Impedance is easy to calculate when running terminations in parallel: just divide the number of devices by the resistance of each termination. PTZ termination is 100 ohms, so the impedance is the invert of n/100 where n=the number of devices in a chain. Two devices daisy chained is 2/100 or 1/50 = 50 ohms. Three devices is 3/100 or 1/33 = 33 ohms. Etc. 100 ohms is optimum but RS422/485 is not that critical of end termination impedance with most equipment. For that matter, cable type isn't that critical for PTZ control either. I've used 22/2 shielded, CAT5, even zip cord. CATx can transport RS422/485 signals up to 4000 feet. Other cable types may have reduced transport distance but not that reduced.

No, because just tying multiple runs together introduces an impedance mismatch at the DVR. Data pulses can travel back down the cable and reflect around it, causing weird effects like the PTZs not obeying commands, executing the wrong commands or multiple PTZs moving simultaneously. Yeah, sometimes you can get away with it but the first time a system acts up, you'll probably spend hours trying to troubleshoot the problems.

CAT5e or CAT6 will transport control signals up to 4,000 feet using RS422/485. You also have the advantage that if you later want to replace the analog cameras with IP, you will already have the cabling in place. I would make sure to pull some extra slack so that you have enough to put an RJ45 on each end when replacing the cameras with IP. When you wire the PTZs control lines, transmit (Tx) on the DVR side connects to receive (RX) on the PTZ side. + to + and - to -. By the way, if your DVR only has one RS422/485 output it is not recommended to "T" off multiple lines. There are products that "split" the signals. GE Security makes a KTD-83 "Data Signal Distributor" which will connect up to 5 devices to one port. Their KTD83-16 splits data to up to 16 devices. Pricing is in the $130-140 range for the KTD-83 and around $220 for the KTD83-16.

Not cheap, but this can transport two analog cameras on one length of coax: Transmitter Video-Plexer (Two Channel Video Di-Plexer)

I think that's pretty common in the U.S., too. Besides, at least some entities lock out the USB ports on workstations to prevent users from stealing sensitive information and walking out with it. We used to have a similar problem with the data DVDs we furnished. Many computers only came with CD drives and IT departments were reluctant to install DVD drives - probably because of the misguided notion that workers would waste company time watching movies... Because of that, we were forced to convert the clips to Video DVDs that could be played in standalone DVD players. That was a royal pain because we had to buy special computer cards to convert the evidence clips to baseband video and analog audio, feed the output to a standalone DVD Recorder and dub the clips in real time...

Well we (a casino) provide DVDs. Since we go through around 30-40 DVDs a month, the cost of USB drives becomes an issue. Besides, most VMS's are set up to save to DVD. They can save to USB but that requires an extra step or two.

For your own use, no. But see my other post above. For that matter, if you can network into the DVR, you wouldn't even have to snail video to your computer. Many DVRs allow remote control, including remote clip generation, via network.

Everfocus Paragon960-16X4 - Built-in DVD burner (Optional) Ganz Digimaster DR16HD - 480 ips w/DVD Writer Samsung Techwin SRD-1676D - DVD-RW Plenty of other examples. Let me put it this way: if you need to provide evidence clips to outside entities often, which would you rather supply - 50-cent DVDs or $5.00 USB drives?

DVD drives are typically where incident clips are saved for evidence, although newer DVRs can also utilize USB drives. The DVD can usually be played on a remote computer for law enforcement, insurance, etc. purposes. It would be a pain to have to bring the DVR to court to show evidence.

We've used Enterprise drives from WD, Seagate, Hitachi (now owned by WD) and Toshiba. All manufacturers produce occasional bad batches of drives. For that reason, in a RAID environment, best practice is to mix batches in any given storage device so that the drives from a bad batch are at least somewhat counterbalanced by good drives. We ran into that with an older system. It stored ~300TB on 32 24-bay RAIDs populated with 500GB WD RAID Edition drives. WD sent an engineer who tested each drive, replaced the bad ones, updated the firmware on the rest and provided us with 80 free spares. Once the initial bad drives were weeded out, the rest of the drives ran fine. When the system was replaced in 2013, about 50% of the original drives were still working fine after approximately 7 years of continuous 24/7 video recording operation. And, of course, never use RAID5 for large-scale critical storage. We switched to RAID6 in 2006. From 2003 to 2006, we lost data on four RAID5 chassis due to rebuild failures (URE's). From 2006 to 2013, we didn't lose any data.

Contact the DVR manufacturer. It's very possible that the video is encrypted and linked only to the original DVR.

Drive size has no bearing on drive longevity. Drive construction and operating environment do. There are reasons why some drives are warranted for 5 years while others are only warranted for 3 years. One big difference is type of use: some drives are made for continuous 7/24 operation while others are designed for intermittent use. Drives for Video Surveillance are designed for continuous writing of video streams while general purpose drives are designed to write occasionally while reading more frequently. Key factors that shorten the life of hard drives are heat and vibration. If you want drives to last longer, pick drives designed specifically for your application and make certain the equipment they are mounted in is solidly built with sufficient cooling to keep the drive temperature well below its rating limits.

We used Moore's for a number of years until one of my techs volunteered to learn how to fix them himself. They did OK.

Vigitron is a bit cheaper than NVT for analog-over-UTP. 200-250M can be run passive-passive but longer runs will require an active receiver coupled with passive baluns. You can trunk the system using 25-pair cables to punchdown blocks at central locations, then punchdown 4-pair to the camera locations.

Equipment can be placed in a hot attic but it'll cost you. Outdoor/Indoor NEMA 4 Air-Conditioned Enclosures New DVR Enclosure with Prepackaged Thermoelectric Cooler

yes, but i wanted to switch to 960h dvr and it looks like it's not real 960h because it's the same corners, same photo, just stretched. http://ipvm.com/report/hd_analog_shootout Welcome to the wonderful world of pseudo-HD. Do yourself a favor - switch to real HD such as IP, HDCVI, HD-TVI or HD-SDI.

TLS Electronics Pelco Spectra III Parts Common problem with Spectra III's. Look for "DD53KIT".

Not sure I understand you. Are you saying that Samsung is/was not professional grade? And what brand(s) of equipment would you recommend?

I would regulate (not just a resistor) the voltage before using it to power a camera. While some cameras (typically the ones that allow hookup of either 12VDC or 24VAC to the same terminals) can handle a pretty wide range of voltages, any camera that is 12VDC only will not be able to handle excess voltages. I've seen 12VDC cameras that spec'd 12 volts +/- 5% and others +/- 10%. Rarely do cameras allow more leeway than that.