scorpion

Welcome to the threads! See you on the forum!

This is a link for the manual, not for a video demo. Sorry!

If you are looking for an ICRealtime Pro 8 then give me a PM.

Thanks! I was starting to jones!!!!!!

Welcome to the threads! See you on the forum!

You have gone from one extreme to another extreme. Buy a device to provide license plate recognition will require a very high end camera, and lots of "design" issues have to be resolved to make it effective. License Plate recognition is pretty much out of range for most DIY except those that have high levels of electronics experience. In my opinion, and only my opinion when it comes to cameras is this. Cameras have many many circuits that make up the whole camera. As they start to make the camera cheaper they start removing circuits as the price goes down. At the bottom end it is not really a camera at all. OK! I take that back. It is a "camera", but when it is missing so many circuits then it is not very useful. I would call all cameras a "Cadillac, or a Lincoln town car". You have all of the bells, and whistles, and all of your luxury items are there. If you buy a cheap car, then we can go from 8 cylinders to 4, we can give up computer controlled ride control, extra cushion in the seats, motorized seat position, cruise control, dual aircondition controls, and premium leather seating. At the bottom of the food chain, what is the worse car that you can think of? This is the category of some "low end cameras". There are two cylinder cars on the market, but I would not want to use that in the driving conditions that I am faced with on a daily basis. I specialize in providing "low end installs". I would really suggest that you look at your decision process a little different. I do realize that you are in a budget. You actually have to have a plan. What will this system do? Based on this plan we can decide where the camera will be located. The one problem that I find with resolving DIY installs is that people automatically place cameras at the four corners of thier house. This is a major malfunction when it comes to cheap cameras. Where the camera is mounted, and the distance to where the viewing area has to be measured. Now double that distance, and use that as your night time IR distance. Most cheap cameras will state that they use 30 foot IR. In my opinion it will only be effective at 15 feet. Think of a flashlight. Yes it shoots out 30 feet, but if you have a friend stand at 30 feet from the flashlight you cannot really make out your friend. If they stand 3 feet away they are then "washed out" because of the bright light. If they stand 15 feet from you then things balance in the proper light. Here is why most cameras fail when the sun goes down. A camera cannot duplicate the sun with IR. The sun is so powerful that it shines down on a subject, and there is light that bounces from the ground up, and the light bounces from the side of objects such as tall buildings, mountains, ect. The better the picture that you need the more you need to think like a stage manager designing a play. Have you seen how many lights they have lighting up a stage?? Think of down lighting, and side lighting. This is what you need to plan on. It the distance from you house to your driveway is 30 feet, then you will want a 60 foot IR camera. If you need a better picture at night then you will want to sidelight the area as well, and to take it to the next level then you will want to down light the area as well. The expensive way to do this is to light up the area like a shopping mall parking lot. Even that is not enough as those kind of lights do not have the full color range to be effective for "photography". _____________________________________________________________ I have looked at the specs for those cameras that you have selected. Nothing appears to stand out that would give you major headaches. You may have chose wisely, or they may be the wrong selection. They may be great cameras, but in the wrong environment they can be out of their design specs. I would say order one camera, and then power it up, and hook it up to a TV, and try it at the various locations around your house. If you are happy with it then you can order more. If for some reason it did not match your expectations then you can order something different. Here is another failure that I find in the DIY market. Most video surveillance in a box "kits" come with wide angle lenses. This eliminates camera settings to make it easy for the DIY. Wide angle cameras (2.8mm, 3mm, or 4mm) have distance distortion. You will not get facial recognition from a wide angle camera unless he/she is standing 5 feet from the camera. With IR at night they will be washed out! Wide angle cameras are designed to pull in extra peripheral vision from the left, and the right. I would try to get you to imagine that you are bowing the video in an outward curve. You pull in the sides, but the front goes deeper. Someone standing in the camera will appear farther away in the video. The farther away they are the smaller the face will be, and the less pixals you will have to provide clarity. For facial shots you need it to look like the news, all head and shoulders. Facial Recognition needs about 25% of the viewing area. This is where lens selection can make, or break Video Surveillance. 6mm is the starting point where you do not have the distance distortion, but you lose peripheral vision. Now we have the "teeter totter" effect in our decision process for a camera. I would suggest a vari focal lens camera. This way as your needs change, or if you have an unexpected need to video "tape" something, then you do not have to go, and buy another camera! All you have to do is change the lens setting, and you are good to go. When you are done with your emergency, then you can set it back the way it was, and point it back in it original direction. This makes your system flexible. You may spend more up front, but you save a lot down the road!! My mail box is 30 feet in front of my house. I need something in the 25mm range to get a good shot of someone at my mailbox. A wide angle camera will not do it. Night time video requires some tricks to make it happen. License plate recognition will require a $2000.00 camera to be effective. During the day you can get away with a none LPR camera, but then you loose a few plates here, and there. What is an exceptable failure percentage?? Based on that I would select cameras to match the exceptable failure rate. Night time LPR will require some serious wide dynamic circuitry that most entry level cameras do not have. Now lets look at your house. If the camera says 30 foot IR, then look at the area that you want to watch. Mount the camera at 15 feet from there. As you can see you cannot put that camera all the way to the end of your house (depending on which side you driveway is on, and which corner we are talking about). I hope this makes your install easier for you to design! Now that we have modified the installation of the camera to fit the IR range, or we upped the IR distance to match the location of the camera, and the viewing area, we can work on lens selection. The cheapest way is to use two cameras. A wide angle will show you the whole yard, but will not give you facial. Get a cheap camera that has a high lens number. Pick a travel path that the crook will walk on, and point the camera there. You will only get a facial shot when the crook walks in front of this camera. Pointing it at a car is a sure bet, as they will probably go there. What do you think?

Here we go! Drop your tools, sit down on your tool box, or cooler, and pop a drink! This is going to get real interesting now!

I was installing some new mini PTZ cameras from Eclipse in Miami on Saturday trying to beat the storm named Fay before it hit the southern part of the state! If you have never seen the mini PTZ then I highly recommend them! I find out that this little strip plaza has poured concrete walls all the way around above the window lines!! On top of that the outer wall on the walkways where they hang the store signage is poured concrete as well!! This place is like Fort Knox!! I called a concrete company to come out and bore the holes for me, but they would not come out until Monday, so I was stuck doing it myself! I bought a new hammer drill, because I burned out my old dewalt hammer drill on the first set of holes. After buying a new drill I was being rattled to death trying to drill a one inch hole. I switched to a 1/4 in concrete bit, and I noticed that the drill bit was not spinning straight. Just as I realized that the bit was not turning straight the centrificul force grabbed the tip of the drill bit, and bent it 90 degrees!!! I was standing on the top rung of an 8 foot ladder, and I dropped the drill because I did not know if the drill bit was going to detonate, or not, and I did not want to be on the shrapnel end of things! It turned out that the chuck was not closing correctly leaving the drill bits ****eyed in the hole. After boring 4 holes from the inside to the outside I was done for the day!! I then had to go outside and drill two more holes through the poured concrete facia! That is two eight inch walls! As I was mounting the PTZ the Storm named Fay decided to rain on my little party. It is not fun mounting cameras in the rain, but I wanted to get it done before the eye left Key West and headed our way. For those of you who have never drilled through poured concrete then I will give you some tips. You will need a hammer drill that cost more than $500.00. You can use the $99 Dewalt Hammer Drill, or the Milwaukee Hammer Drill that cost about $150.00, but they are not designed to drill one inch holes in solid pour concrete on a daily basis. They are good for a one time use though, just be aware that you get what you pay for! In the paint department of the hardware stores they have cheap plastic "drop cloths". They are about $4 to $5 a roll. Use a knife to cut them up so that you can cover desks, copy machine, and file cabinet, and what have you. Buy a wet / dry vac to vacuum up the dust. Before you start drilling put some cardboard under where you are going to be drilling. This will catch the pile of concrete dust, and make clean up much easier. You can put the cardboard between the "struts" that hold up a drop ceiling. Before you start drilling one inch holes, or holes of any size make sure your concrete drill bits are sharp! They should have an "A" shape to them. If they are not pointed then do not use them. They will shake as they drill, and they will wear your arms out real fast, and you will find that you will have to take alot of breaks before you finally pop through the concrete. If your drill bits are not sharp then what will happen is that the drill bit will wallow out the hole while it is drilling. If it is in real bad shape then it will spend more time wallowing out the hole then drilling the hole deep, and rattling you even more. Before you drill your holes take an awl, or a nail, and smack it where you want to drill, and start the drill bit at a slow rotation so that it will not travel. If you are just boring holes to run your wiring then it does not matter so much if the hole is off, or not. If you are drilling your mounting holes for the camera, or equipment then it will matter! Do not lean on the hammer drill real hard. Let the rotation of the drill bit do all of the work! Before you drill scratch a vertical, and a horizontal line over the hole you are going to drill. If the drill bit travels then you will see it before you get to far off the mark. If you are mounting cameras to concrete then I recommend concrete expansion bolts. http://www.simpsonanchors.com/Catalog/mechanical/sleeve-all/index.html You need to know the personality of the anchors before you use them. Test them on some concrete at home before you use them. On some of them you need to drill the holes smaller then the anchor size, and then wallow out the hole until the anchor slides in to the hole. Be careful once you stick the anchor in to the hole you may not beable to get them back out. I use my wire cutters to grab the anchor, and then I pry them out like trying to pull a nail out of a board. If you bore the hole a little bit to large then it may be ok as the back of the anchor will expand as the nut, or screw is tightened. If the hole is too large then put some silicone sealant in to the hole, and spread some on to the anchor. This will not hold a large amount of weight, but it will hold a little bit. Just make sure your other holes are perfect! The phillip screw head anchors are real difficult to work with. I hold the PTZ up against the wall, and I stick a concrete bolt into the hole, and then I use my wire cutters to hammer in the bolt, and then I use a phillips head screwdriver to tighten it down. If you remove the phillips head then you have a chance that you cannot get it back on to the bolt to pull it out to get the back end of the anchor to expand, and catch in the hole. You will have to put caulk, or silicone in to the hole, and then the screw becomes a decorative piece. How to Info: http://www.doityourself.com/stry/h2anchorconcrete http://www.simpsonanchors.com/Catalog/mechanical/strong-bolt/index.html http://www.ameribestfasteners.com/expansion_bolts.htm

They provide to AV dealers who deal with hometheater companies, and such. If you contact a local dealer they can call ICRealtime, and set up an account with no problem!

I am really glad to hear that everything worked out!! Let me know if the panel is still working wierd as it was before. Take care!

A swimming pool, and a large case of toilet paper from the Sams Club!! Let the "decorating" begin!!

You are better buying local to you where you can get tech support when you need it rather then buying online. What do you think?

Dedicated Micros with two terabytes of storage!

I hope you do not have to install an electrical outlet, or I hope you have a relative who is an electrician!! You should be fine. You can always have your other relative drop an AC duct in to the closet if there is an attic space above the closet. The only advice that I have to others is to not install DVRs in a Master Bedroom. The noisy fan will keep you awake at night when everything else is quiet.

Do you have enough information to try a hack??

Where in Fl is he located??

S & G??? Soup and Goulash??? Phhhhtttttt, giggle, giggle! Someday there will be a severe earthquake along the San Andreas fault causing the United States to slide into the Pacific leaving only Florida to survive!!! Or was that the United States sliding into the Atlantic leaving only California???

New elevator camera. Anyone use this yet? http://www.videotransmitters.com/index.php?SCREEN=view_catalogue_level4&model_ID=612

Hey BurstElement!!! Where have you been??? Nice to hear from you again!! Thanks for the info!!! Do you know of any way of recovering these boards besides replacing them?? To me it seemed better to buy a new DVR then for me to buy the main board as the costs were about the same!!

Rory, Where have you been hiding?

Yes! It really is weird how all of the houses on my block have had brake fluid fall over with a loose cap, and land in the box of HTH chlorine! People should be more careful! Hey RickA! Do you have a swimming pool??

Is 315 MHz used in Canada?

Dumb Question number one... Is this daytime, or night time? I will assume night time as the IR LEDs are on. _____________________________________________________________ Can you ask what garage door opener he has? From a block away? That means he lives at the end of a street (cul de sac), or he lives at the top of a T intersection. IR is line of sight. If it were a radio freq garage door opener then it could not be "blocked" by the IR. _____________________________________________________________ Could it be that the IR cameras are powered at the same point as the receiver to the garage door opener, and that the cameras draw alot of power therefore starving the receiver from getting the power that it needs to function??? Hmmmmm???

http://louisville.edu/cbpa/lmc/research/sr.tribbey.pdf