atropine

Hello, Would you be able to repeat that in more simple english, as I don't know what you're saying. I think you are talking in CCTV/electronics shorthand, but as I don't know much about CCTV I cant' understand you. I have a RS232 to RS485 connector for my computer, It has 4 terminals on it, they are called D+/A, D-/B, GRND, and +5V. Could you tell me which connect to the yellow and green wires of the panasonic, and I think you're saying I have to connect 2 of the terminals together also? but i'm not sure. I don't know what you mean by "I take it you have a rs485 converter -and 5 volts on the TX [not connected to the cam] " Thanks EDIT: I think I know what you mean, are you saying +5V and D+/A terminal need to be bridged with a piece of wire, and D-/B and GRND need to be bridged with a piece of wire?

Hi, Could upload the Pztester software to somewhere like http://rapidshare.com/ or similar I did a search but found it nowhere on the internet.

It seems to take a picture every 1/2 second and compare the 2 images, then if motion difference is beyond the motion trigger it records. It doesn't have any intelligence , so It can't detect a person walking by a group of constantly moving bushes, instead I just have to mask out all bushes and trees. I"M normally quite happy with it, until this fault that I haven't found the cause for yet. Only criticism I have of it is it's very sensitive triggering on shadows from trees or bushes. If the sun is out the shadows themselves may as well be the moving trees. Normal dynamic range and Wide dynamic range cameras trigger the motion activation it's only my Baxall Ultra wide dynamic range camera that can deliver video that Active Webcam doesn't have a problem with as far as moving shadows are concerned. I"ll check out that software you suggested.

Oh good point about high traffic lights. I"M going to do a in car camera system , 1looking out the back, 1 out the front, and traffic lights in shot is something I should consider, though where I live the traffic lights are quite low, 1 light about 7 feet above the ground and another higher up. Don't use those overhead traffic lights they do in some countries.

It's called Active webcam. If anyone's used it, and can comment on what features more advanced professional software/hardware has over this I'd be interested to hear. I'm just a amateur home user, so wwouldn't want to spend too much on software/hardware but would be interested to know what i'm missing out on in comparison to what i'm using.

Thanks for having a look. The trees, the top half of the fence, and the neighbours garage doors are all masked out, and they're the only large areas that don't have motion detected. I"M using shareware software on a computer, I haven't done anything to it lately. I've used another camera and have the same problem, when I had no problems with the setup before. I think that must mean the fault is with the camera's power supply or computer/ capture card. I"ll try as you suggest first though and connect a camera on a short piece of coax and make sure the problem is still there.

You know, I'm actually pretty happy with the final image above. You can see my lane position and the location of other cars, and that's all that really matters. I'm not looking to identify cars by license plate etc. This is only the first time in 2 months with this camera that the sun was bright enough to make the rest of the image dark. For the most part IF the sun is visible then the image is still perfectly clear. . I think the last camera does a good job it's your positioning of the camera that is wrong. You have too much sky, and so your chances of getting the sun and sky glare near the centre of the picture is greater and automatic BLC won't kick in. You could use your cameras's manual BLC settings to mask out the sky, or you could angle the camera down more 'wasting' picture on the car bonnet instead of the sky. The problem is the angle. If you could mount it from near the roof then that would be a much better situation and your automatic BLC would work perfectly. PS the first camera obviously has no infra red filtering and are useless for this situation.

Some people could be lying other's arent. Some image sensors may be better than others. Some cameras may use slow shutter speeds (less than 1/60 standard NTSC) to increase the light soaking ability but introducing noticeable blur on moving objects. Unless you know the model, or know someone that's bought one, you often really have no idea what you're getting until you try it out.

The easiest way to open the aperture fully, is to go to the manual shutter speeds, and keep increasing the speed until you begin to see the noise of AGC start to show it'self. At this point you know you've fully opened the aperture to full, you can then decrease the shutter speed by 1 step so as to ensure you're focusing a crystal clear sharp picture rather than a not so clear AGC UP picture.

Also most cameras (all colour cameras?) lose their stated resolution(if it was real in the first place) as part of the AGC process in low light conditions. AGC means amplifying the signal creating noise, but there's also the reduction of the effective pixel count due to the creation of virtual larger pixels to increase the effective surface area of each pixel and therefore increase it's light gathering ability. A camera that can produce 720x480 images in good light may only be delivering 360x240 or 180x120 resolutions at lower light levels due to this virtual enlarged pixel process. DSP via interpolation probably increases the effective resolution but on my Panasonics low light AGC conditions deliver terrible resolution.

Hi security camera guys, My panasonic cameras like most have the following auto sens up shutter speeds - AUTO (2x, 4x, 6x, 10x, 16x, 32x) . Does anyone know for certain what actual shutter speeds the values represent. I"M presuming for NTSC 2x=1/30, 4x=1/15, but what are the other speeds? I'm just trying to do some maths based on movement in relation to shutter speed, but I'm not certain of the shutter speeds slower than 4x sens up. I know in practical use 6x is as slow as I'd ever want to go, as 10x blur's most anything moving even at slow speeds.

Hi, I have an ebay infra red illuminator. Think it's about 40 LED's, The problem is that when an intruder walks into my yard, the person is washed out, and white. However if I did not have in illuminator, it would not be light enough to see any distinctive features either, because the the only lighting comes from the road. 2 questions. What can be done so that a person walking into the yard is not too bright to see with the existing setup, and Would a high dynamic range camera fix this problem, or do they only work in day light conditions, not at night. I am using an old day/night camera. Please look at the video on youtube here to see the problem i'm talking about. http://youtube.com/watch?v=r5Y-UpEEUUo Thanks for looking. bye

Well it has no control to turn it down, but I could probably just use a variable resister to get the exact light output I need. If I turn it down though I won't be able to identify cars on the road as readily but really the priority is to identify people entering my yard at night. So good idea i'll just turn down the voltage on it. If anyone knows if High dynamic range cameras work in the black and white night setting I'd be interested to hear, because then I could have the infra red light on full power and hopefully it would be able to see people close to the camera as well as cars with both being illuminated ok.

Hi, I was looking at a reasonably priced 2nd hand 1/2" motor zoom/focus auto iris CS lens because it's priced reasonably even in comparison to a 1/3"CS lens with the same specs. My cameras are 1/3 inch but I thought if I ever get a 1/2" camera I'd at least have a lens for it then. From what I understand 1/2inch lenses do physically fit on 1/3 inch cameras, but the 1/3inch chip doesn't use the full lens only middle bit. Are there any negatives in using a 1/2 lens on a 1/3 camera, is the image quality less due to not using the full diameter of the lens or any problems with auto iris or motor zoom/focus?

Thanks for that reply Suvtech, I'll try making a controller for it. Big problem i'm experiencing is Focus shift with this lens when moving from colour to infra red (using a 1/2inch day/night camera) . Not that i'm very experienced with security cameras, but the focus shift seems HUGE compared to my webcam and compared to a video camera with a 1/4 inch CCD. I think it must be something to do with the larger format CCD. Anyway the shift in focus is so dramatic it makes the camera only useful for day OR night, as the focus is much too soft when the camera moves across to the mode you didn't focus for. The manual says the camera supplies a burst signal when it moves to black&white mode. Are there any DVR's or DVR cards for computers (preferred) that could read that burst signal and when detected it shifts focus of the lens to a preset (that preset being focus for infrared) and when the camera goes back to colour mode (and the burst signal not present) the dvr refocuses the lens for daylight? Are these focus problems with day/night cameras only experienced with the larger formats. So 1inch = extreme problems, down to 1/4inch not much of a focus shif at all, or nothing to do with CCD size?

Ok, so things with lenses are simpler than I thought. All that's happening is i'm connecting a voltage directly to DC motors , no intelligent circuitry at all. So orange and yellow wire are for zoom, and green and blue wire is for focus. And I don't need to make any other connections? What is the purpose of the feedback circuitry, Is it just to let a control box know/ DVR etc know how far the camera is zoomed in and it's focus position? There's 2 control modes COM and IND, which would I use in this situation of just supplying dc voltage to the motors?

Hi Keensplace, I didn't' end up getting the 16x lens as I got a cheap 12x lens instead. it's a Fujinon D12x8A-YE2. It's an F2 lens which is kind of crap but ok for daytime use I guess. Anyway I was looking at the wiring thing for it, and cant' really work out what connections I have to make. I'd just like to make my own controller, i'm hoping you might be able to look at the wiring diagram and tell me what I need to get and what connections to make. I see it has connections for pots, which I presume are potentiometers. If I can give the lens it's 12v DC voltage, and then connect 2 pots 2 move the zoom and focus back and forwards, then that would be great. But not sure if it's that simple, and even less sure where to make the connections. This is a specification sheet for the lens which shows a little more info than the jpg attached http://www.fujinon.co.jp/en/products/cctv/pdf/c_11.pdf Hope you can help! Thanks

Anyone in Australia or NZ know where to get KT&C cameras from? I wanted to get a KT&C KPC650BH, saw it on an american website for US$110, so started ordering it online but the postage cost was US$79!!! so didn't get it. Not an i inflated postage cost either. I figure a hong kong retailer would be cheapest postage wise, but cant' find any online.

Hi CCTV guys, I just bought some old b&W 24v only CCD cameras and I was wondering about what can power these. I know with 12V DC cameras you need regulated power supplies, you can't just plug a camera into a 12V DC plugpack, but what about 24V AC cameras? I've got a lot of 24V AC 500MA plug packs. They were power packs for Christmas tree lights. So there's enough wattage there to power a single camera but can I use plugpacks or do I need high quality 24v AC regulated supply just as I need a high quality 12v DC regulated supply to run 12V cameras?

Hi again CCTV guys, I want to buy a 24V Pelco PT270P Pan/Tilt but from looking at the Pelco website I don't know if the Pan/Tilters can be controlled directly via RS-485 signals meaning I could use DVR software to control it directly or weather I need a physical pelco controller. So my question is do I need: DVR PTZ software --> RS485 output --> Pelco Pan/Tilt Scanner. or do I need DVR PTZ software --> RS485 output --> Pelco hardware controller--> Pelco Pan/Tilt Scanner. This is the website link to this product ftp://www.pelco.com/ProductSpecs/Pelco_PT270P_Series_Pan_and_Tilt_spec.pdf Sorry if that is dumb question, I cant see any mention of rs458, but in general discussion on this board it seems like PTZ control is possible directly via RS-485 without a hardware controller interface.

Ok thanks for that. So sounds like I would need a physical controller to use RS-485. I wanted to do auto touring etc using the DVR software.

I was just having a look at actual CCTV 24V power supplies that can run 8 cameras and they're cheap enough s o I won't bother with the plug packs I'll get 1 big power supply.

Thanks about that ebay warning. I was looking at a 10x motorized lens the other week. But figured it was just too cheap to be any good. The lens I was looking at getting is a 16x Computar lens. I don't' have a model number yet , all I know is that it's about 7 years old and zooms from medium wide to telephoto. I"ll have to find out some more.

That's good to hear. The camera I wanted to put it on is a panasonic WV-CP464. I'm just looking at it now and it doesn't appear to have a data port of any kind. What would I have to buy to be able to use the motorized zoom & focus? I just bought a RS-485 adapter for the serial port on my computer, so I figured when I buy a DVR card I can run a PTZ camera using the DVR software but is there anyway of just zooming the motorized camera lens on the CP464, will the lens it'self have a rs-485 port?

HI, Jus wondering if a Pan/tilt mechanism is set to auto roam panning and tilting is the DVR software still able to bet set to motion detect so that if a person walks across the camera's field the DVR will start recording, otherwise it won't? As someone not knowing anything about about security setup's i'd imagine that would not be possible as how can the DVR differentiate between the movement the camera it'self creates via pan/tiling and the movement of a person walking, but thought I'd check anyway. PTZ cameras are getting quite cheap now, so was interested in knowing what you can do with them.