scorpion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_makers_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_coating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_focal_plane#Focal_points_and_planes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrication_and_testing_of_optical_components http://www.mrpinhole.com/calcpinh.php FISHEYE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheye_lens ZOOM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_lens VARI FOCAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varifocal_len TELEPHOTO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephoto_lens What is inside of a zoom lens http://www.adaptall-2.com/articles/InsideZoomLens/InsideZoomLens.html The lower the mm number the wider the viewing angle. The higher the mm number the more zoom factor you have. 6mm is your starting point. The 4mm is a wide angle lens. 4mm and 3.8 are easy to make, and are most common on off the shelf cameras such as bullet cameras, and "DVR kits in a box". 2.8 is a Fisheye lens. Camera Variables that effect picture quality regardless of lens: chipsets used for the camera "eye" WDR Matching the camera to the DVR (native camera size verses native DVR size) Lens selection that effect picture quality: Plastic verses glass lens. Quality of glass grinding to achieve lens shape Lens Coating to achieve extra quality such as reduced glare ect. http://scorpiontheater.com/camlab.aspx

http://eclipsecctv.com/PTZ_dome_controllerECL-CN430.html http://eclipsecctv.com/NUBIX16DX_security_DVR.html You are now good to go!

It sounds like a power problem. I am going to go with the assumtion that the power supply is being over drawn. You may have to get another power supply to power the unconnected cameras, or you will have to upgrade the present power supply. For the DIY that is reading this post here are some troubleshooting tips. Reading your data sheet for your power supply may show that you have enough of a rating on paper, but this may not be the case in the real world, or your cameras may state in the data sheet how much they use, and they may use more then the data sheet shows, or you could have both scenerios. It may be that one (or more) cameras may have a problem. The camera is working, but it may be on an apogee where it will soon "burn out". I would add some cameras back to the system until you have a problem. Take the last camera connected that starts the problem, and remove it, and go on to the next camera. If it works ok as you are adding cameras then one would have to assume the power supply is ok, and that this one camera is bad. You may get to a point where the last camera connect causes chaos, and every camera that is swapped at this point continues the chaos, then it would be assumed that the power supply is the culprit. If every thing is working fine, and you only had to remove one camera then do not be fooled if everything is working great! AT night when it gets dark the IR LED will come on, and draw more power sending everything back in to chaos again, so make sure you are on sight at dark (or remote in to check video) to verify that everything is working correctly. Also power supplys may work when first applying power, and as it "warms up" then the problem may reappear, so do not be fooled by a "everything is working when I plugged the power supply back in" routine. Trust, but verify as Pres Reagan says! What do you think?

You can use http://www.dyndns.com/ to keep track of your changing IP address. There is a tutorial at the end of any manual on how to set up an account.

RickA! You are not in your 70s!! If you are then WOW you look good for your age!! What do you eat yogurt, and tofu?

I am not an expert, and I would have to defer to others who are experts on the DM's. I wish I could be of more help.

Most of us have quite providing firmware on our websites due to the many different version of motherboards, and the different versions of firmware, and this leaves the DIY out in the cold, but then we do not have to worry about someone loading the wrong firmware. You will need to go back to where you bought the DVR, and have them provide you the tech support that you need.

I saw this for the first time myself, and I have never seen this either. I thought it strange that I can get to the DVR, and I can click on the java download, or the server exe download, yet I cannot get in to see the video. I finally had to use the IP address and come in on Server E rather than direct IP. I do not know if there was a Micro Soft Update that has created this situation or what.

How about 4 solar cell panels? LOL!

When I get the chance I will put your coordinates to the inside of a bottle!

After I land I will pull a giant potted cactus over the landing spot for you to land in!

4 wall warts are a pain in the neck, but 3 feet lower! First have fun finding a power strip that has plugs that sit side saddle, and then on top of that, the plugs have to be spread apart enough to mount the transformers side by side. Great! You just spent $50.00 on surge protected side saddle, transformer fitted power strip when you could have spent the $50.00 on a power box! Hmm?? First save yourself the money on pigtails. You can cut the end of the transformer power supply and attach it to the far end of the siamese at the camera end. The cut wire then can be attached to the siamese at the power end. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you buy inline fuses! This will save you a house fire down the road. Yes the transformers have built in protection, but then I like air bags to back up my seatbelts, but then again drive safely, and you should never have to depend on them right? Until you get hit by the other driver who does not drive safe. I highly recommend a boxed power supply. It is much easier to care for when you have to trouble shoot. If you can afford it go for the one that has a 12 volt battery in it so that if the power goes out you still have the cameras powered until the battery dies, and then have a UPS on the DVR, and you can still record for a duration during power outages. Don't crooks like to cut power, and phone lines? I have a question. Why did you have two professional installers set up your other systems, but now you do not want it professionally installed? Did they fail to do a proper install? Did they make you mad somehow? What did they fail to do on the other systems. Are you just a tinkerer, and you want to do this yourself so that you can tinker? If you have watched the first two systems installed then this gives you enough info to do it yourself, and using this forum as an information tool should help you through the process. The biggest failure of any DIY system is always the lense selection. This will make or break your system faster then you can say costco! Always make your system do more than what it was designed to do. For example: Spend more on varifocal cameras then fixed lens cameras. When an unexpected event comes up you will not have to buy a new camera to take care of a new threat. Just reorient the camera, and change the vari focal to meet the new threat, and when it goes away reorient it back to the original position, and set the vari focal back to where it was. You spend more upfront, but save 4 times that down the road! Select IR cameras that fit the distance perfectly. Do not forget that cheap IR cameras are rated 30 feet (US distance) and that this is only effective at 15 feet. Measure the distance from where the camera is mounted to the area that you are watching. Double this distance for your night time IR distance. It is not a perfect science, but it will save you from buying 30 feet IR cameras, and starring in to black video during the winter when it gets dark real early! Spend the most money on the outside! You can use cheap crappy cameras on the indoors. EXCEPT for business that point a camera at the front door, the back door, ATMs, and anyplace where there is a cash register, or where cash is counted. Bars, and nightclubs can use one inch by one inch cameras to watch pool tables, dart board areas, and unimportant table, and seating areas. Spend the money on the outdoor cameras, and the front door camera. What do you think?

There are to many variables that can cause you to have distortion. First the two systems have to merge at the same level. In other words you need to have some kind of variable amp from the cable source, and you need a modulator that has a variable signal level. Balancing both of these is real tricky! It sounds like you have digital cable where the modulated signal may interfere with your cable signal. Can you run new cables to each TV and connect them to a composite input instead of using the cable feed?

I love the Nubix 4ST. It is a nice machine with the upgrades.

That is interesting that you are not getting 7.5 per channel!

Thanks Lolo Wolf! I have never thought about it from that perspective! Very interesting! With his name I found that the Rand Corp has books for sale in regards to blindness and CCTV. I noticed the date on one was from 1965. http://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/g/genensky_samuel_m.html

Thank you all very much! Wow! I need to read my own website more often! It was the percent that was missing creating the broken link. Hey Lolo Wolf! That was the link that actually started the research for that page! This is a very interesting PDF article about the beginings of CCTV and how its use developed more needs for the technology. North American Society for Trenchless Technology (NASTT) (The beginings of CCTV usage). English Great minds think alike! I increased the font size to make it stand out more. Thanks!

WHAT???? Am I the only old timer here??? Yeesh! I not ready for Geritol just yet! (I will let you younger ones figure out that product)! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geritol The name is derived from the root "geri-", meaning old (as in "geriatrics") with the "i" for iron.

Eclipse has them also! http://eclipsecctv.com/ECL-601_outdoor_housing.html ECL 601S (short)

Here an electrician to install lamp posts. or you could buy more long throw IR illuminators, or you could shoot off flares every 15 minutes! OK! It was a joke! Sorry!

I will send you a PM for a quick work around. or you can do a Hardware reset http://scorpiontheater.com/reset.aspx

As soon as I saw that the DSS1000 then I defered from posting as PC based DVRs are not my forte. Trendnet TV-IP100W is a an internet camera, and I defer to those who know those systems better. The DSS 4 Camera System looks like something that you should be able to set up with no problem except that you requested wireless. _____________________________________________________________ As soon as you requested wireless then this is where everybody ran for the hills! One of the most difficult thing to accomplish is analog wireless. You said that you are penetrating three walls. This would be the limit of most 2.4Ghz analog cameras. I assume you are talking about a barn to some degree, and you may get better distance as you do not have a lot of interference with 2.4 Ghz telephones, and 802.11 signals. The IP camera is the best bet as it is a digital signal rather than a analog signal, and it can carry better. Why is it that you cannot run wires? ___________________________________________________________ These products are not what you would find in an installers "tool box" so we are kind of out of the loop with those. You will have to wait for the home "do it yourselfer" who has the experience with those products. The problem here is that most DIY people get their answers, and then we do not hear from them until the next "crisis" so you may have a long wait for someone who has used those exact components! ____________________________________________________________ http://scorpiontheater.com/wireless.aspx http://scorpiontheater.com/wifi.aspx

Do you have some kind of small monitor / tv that you can hook up right there at the camera? If you get video then the power side is ok, and you have a video transmission problem. If you do not get video then you have to check the power to see if is getting to the camera. If you have power then the camera is bad. Since you have more than one camera out then I would suspect a power issue. What do you think?

What kind of power supply are you using? Can you take some of the cameras off the power to see if it clears up? ____________________________________________________________ Is the coax copper center, and is the braid copper? _____________________________________________________________ Do you have a loop in and loop out situation such as going through a multiplexor, and then going to a DVR, (or vise versa)? ____________________________________________________________ Does it clear up using a tube (CRT) based tv rather than a flat panel screen?

http://scorpiontheater.com/irlab.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared Fiber optic communication systems present a possible or potential hazard to the eyes of engineers and technicians who work with or maintain these systems. To investigate this hypothesis, the retinas of macaque monkeys were exposed to near infrared cw radiation and to GaAs lasers modulated at 22 MHz and 1600 Hz. Trained animals (two) were exposed monocularly under normal physiological conditions to modulated GaAs lasers for several months, on a 5 day/week basis, 1000 sec/day. No loss of visual function or funduscopically visible damage was detected. One of these animals was sacrificed and examined histologically for damage. No differences were detected between the foveae of the exposed and control eyes in this monkey. The radiant exposure in J . cm-2 required to produce minimal lesions was determined on anesthetized animals for cw radiation at three wavelengths (820, 860, 910 nm) and for radiation at 830 nm from a GaAs laser modulated at a digital rate of 44 Mbit/sec. It required from 6 to 8.4 mW of GaAs radiation entering the eye for periods ranging from 400 to 3000 sec to produce a detectable lesion. Since the spot size on the retina was <50 µm in diameter, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine how the human eye could remain focused on such a source for an appreciable time, even if 8 mW were entering the pupil. Extrapolation to man is always dangerous, but these experiments do not suggest that engineers and technicians operating and maintaining fiber optic communication systems are subject to an ocular risk unless they use magnification optics _____________________________________________________________ Appendix H of this Standard refers manufacturers to ANSI RP27.1 and RP27.3 to apply Safety Standards for LED’s. Questions have arisen as to whether laser or incoherent radiation exposure limits ( ELs) should be applied to LED emitters. Based upon current exposure limits from the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), most LEDs - particularly surfaceemitting LEDs — pose no clear hazard to the eye. Current surface-emitting LEDs produce exposure levels at the retina which are less than 1% of the levels that are known to cause retinal injury even when the LEDs are viewed at extremely close distances (e.g., at 10 cm) (Sliney and Wolbarsht 1980). At typical viewing distances of 0.5 to 2 m, the levels are less than 0.1% of retinal injury levels. Even lengthy exposures of the cornea and lens of the eye pose no hazards whatsoever. From a safety standpoint, LEDs have been treated both as lasers (e.g., in IEC standard 60825-1-2001 and in ANSI Z-136.2-1997, and as lamps (CIE 1998; ANSI/IESNA 1996). Because of some confusion relating to the actual risk, ICNIRP organized a panel of experts to review the potential hazards of current diode emitters and they reported their findings in 1999 (ICNIRP, 1999). This tastk group noted that laser diodes are constructed with miniature resonant cavities with gain, produce a very narrow spectral bandwidth, can generally achieve shorter pulse durations, are not limited in radiance, and can emit much higher radiant powers than LEDs. Light-emitting diodes of low to moderate brightness (luminance) are used in many types of visual displays, as indicator lights and many related products. Higher power LEDs and IREDs are used as signal lamps and in a wide variety of domestic and industrial products, and can compete with laser diodes in limited optical communications systems, i.e., in local-area networks (LANs). They are generally not competitive with laser diodes because of their radiance limitations. These differences in output characteristics define both their uses and their potential eye hazards. Most current LEDs--and all surface emitting LEDs--have very limited radiance and do not pose any realistic eye hazard, despite the fact that they have been included in some laser safety standards in the past few years (IEC, 2001). After a careful review of all possible emission characteristics of surface-emitting LEDs and IREDs, the ICNIRP concluded that these would be judged safe by applying the ICNIRP Exposure Limits (ELs) for incoherent radiation. This conclusion applies as well if one follows the recommendations of CIE TC 6-38 (Lamp Safety) for realistic viewing conditions. This conclusion applies to any LED device which does not have optical gain. Only as a result of applying extraordinarily "worst-case" assumptions and simplifications that are built into some current product safety standards, can anyone arrive at the conclusion that an LED or IRED poses a retinal hazard. On the other hand, the use of laser ELs and IEC 60825-1 measurement techniques to evaluate LEDs could result in an understatement of the lenticular risk if the source is very large and the lens becomes overheated. Thus, the ICNIRP recommended that safety evaluations and related measurement procedures for LEDs follow the guidelines for incoherent sources (ICNIRP 1997). This approach provides the most accurate assessment of incoherent sources without problems originating from certain underlying assumptions about lasers that remain incorporated into the limits developed for collimated laser beams. They also conclused that diode lasers and VCSELs be treated in all safety evaluations and safety standards as lasers. _____________________________________________________________ ICNIRP STATEMENT http://www.icnirp.de/documents/led.pdf ICNIRP GUIDLINES http://www.icnirp.de/documents/broadband.pdf