WirelessEye

Got your solution: Please check your PM's.

www.anextek.com or saysecurity.com both have dvr solutions that allow for cellular connectivity.

Ecamsecure is located just south of us and is a competitor of ours.. kinda. We have another competitor that is somewhat like you are describing CamGuard. Both offer different kinds of solutions, but both in my opinion are very prone to tampering. Our solar arrays are relatively small because we calculate down to the tenth of of watt how much power consumption we have. Not only that, but we have other "goodies" that push the systems to abnormally high efficiency numbers. Also, the panels are actually coming down a bit in cost due to newer, non silicone-based cells hitting the market. Solar panels are not fragile by any means, the glass is actually Lexan and very tough. I've seen video of someone shooting an AK-47 and riddling a panel full of holes, and then they plugged it back in and to everyone's surprise-- it still cranked out 60% of it's rated power. But that wouldn't matter anyhow, as the system runs off of battery power, solar mearly a charger. It is true different locales demand different Solar setups, and our location (the valley) is notorious for "Tule Fog". Sometimes we don't see the sun for a week a time during Dec. and Jan. But that's what you have to design your system for, it is "over built" 9 out of the 12 months of the year... If you want, you can PM me with the particulars of your demands, and I can see if we can do anything for you. I might also be able to figure out bandwidth solutions for you too.

Milestone and ONSSI reconnect.

How high would the antenna array have to be to not lose line of sight?

Depending on your location, you might have a WISP. If you have a WISP, they will probably let you roam all around their coverage areas, which sometimes are quite large. Another option is CDMA or GSM broadband connections (cellular), but there are throughput limitations on most of the plans-- just like most satellite plans only allow you XXXX bandwidth per month before you are shut off. If a camera doesn't run off of <=12VDC, don't run it on solar, period. You simply can't have a portable system that runs off of solar if the devices are power hungry--you'd need too many panels. Instead, find nice 12VDC cams that need not voltage conversions, then look at their power draw. But I urge you not to go cheap on the cameras, most wireless cams are cheapy garbage and you might as well not install them.

What you have to remember with wireless, is that it is not some "plug and play" technology (for the most part). It is a technology that has been around since WW1 and has changed quite a bit between then and now. Aiming antennae at each other for the best signal is about the only thing that hasn't changed.... Radios and the hardware they run on change every day, and standards for implementation are lacking. Most DIY wireless gear, probably like what you and your neighbor are using operates on a common frequency... probably in the 400's or 900's. Channel selection in those frequencies are limited and thus are quite insecure and also crowded. Once you go up to technologies like OFDM and implement even common security measures (not broadcasting your SSID, WEP, WPA, Radius, Mac Filtering, etc.), you not only wouldn't have "stumbled" upon his computer screen in your setup, you wouldn't have even know it was there. But you have just found out that wireless is just like everything else in CCTV land: "you get what you pay for". If you are worried about privacy, take the time, do your homework, then reach deep into your pockets. Cool pic from the airplane though, we need you to mount a thermal cam on there so you can get some freaky imagery.

Ouch. Our stuff is capable of 108Mbps Full Duplex. I would check your stuff. Just because it says 54Mbps, in most cases what your dealing with is 27Mbps each way. If you use MPEG-4 or H.264, you could do it with 27Mbps. I would also check to see how large of a processor is in your radios-- your AP's might not be able to handle that much data without going bonkers. I would setup a rooftop AP array with Vertically Polarized 90 Degree sectors (4 of them) to 4 individual radios. You would then have reliable 360 degree coverage.

How is this tricky? It's completely maintenance free... Compared to having to deal with refueling generators and making sure that they don't get stolen themselves... I'd choose solar any day... Much cheaper too, considering fuel costs.

My company has done remote construction site monitoring/recording for 4 years. (It was our bread and butter industry until the housing market crashed). We use both mobile tower trailers and block/tower combos, depending on the requirements. But we run off of solar power and are wireless, so our stuff is quite a bit more vandal resistant than what you are trying to do. What I can tell you is that you have your work cut out for you. We have some competitors whom have DVR's, lights, cameras, etc. on a small pole, but generally the people that rob the sites that these units are "protecting" are also stealing the cctv equipment and dvrs out of them on their way out. Another problem with running a system like what you propose is that you have to run temp power poles with a dedicated circuit to power them. Internet access is always a problem when you're "in the middle of nowhere" but there are always ways of getting bandwidth to a location-- 90% of the time without expensive satellite (which charge full T1 pricing for 1/3 of the bandwidth). If you have 16 cameras, you'd need AT LEAST 4Mbps in H.264 mode (upstream). Good luck with trying to do that on satellite. You're much better off doing a wireless backhaul from a local WISP, and even then, that kind of bandwidth from a WISP is going to be around $1,000/mo. Are you planning on paying someone to monitor this stuff for you? If not, you'll find "after the fact" recordings of theft/vandalism are worthless 80% of the time (if not more).

Well, the bad part is: I have a work crew. Since we service the entire state, some of these installations are hours north. It sucks to have them out so late because they are dragging the next day.

Was wondering if there are any methods that make it possible to aim IR Illuminators during the day. The reason I ask is because we do daytime installations and then sometimes find out that the IR is not aimed exactly where we need it to be... Thanks in advance for anyone's help...

Try aimetis

"Blade servers'?? Yeah, their IDE Hard Drive (wtf? why not at least SATA??) and their capture board for their HD Camera. It's pretty small, but they (Covi) called them "blades" so sorry for the confusion.

I went to a private demo in Covi's suite at the Venetian in Vegas last year. Their stuff is pretty good quality, but they actually don't make the money on their cameras, they make it on their expensive blade servers that are required for each and every camera. Good idea (HD cams), bad implementation IMHO. Too proprietary in design and unfortunately, I believe they will end up losing alltogether to companies like Arecont who are cheaper, higher resolution and much more scaleable. (and appearantly cooler running).

Thanks for all the replies. The reason I was asking was because this setup is about a 4 hour drive (each way) and it is very costly to send a crew out to move 6 illuminators "up an inch" to test. I suppose we'll just install the illuminators at night from now on, from the beginning.

When you say "view" do you mean facial identification, license plate....? If you want to see that far with detail, you would have to use something like an Esprit style pan/tilt platform and couple that with a Fujinon 60x optical lens and sandwich a 2x extender in between the lens and the camera. Being as though the 60x lens is $10,000, the extender is $200, the Esprit Pan/Tilt is $2,000, all that leaves is the camera.... Either way, you're looking at a ton of dough. Even with all that, you're looking at 7,920 feet and I don't even know if a ~$15,000 setup will see that far. Another issue would be what the camera is mounted to. Any vibration AT ALL in the camera would make the FOV shift when at full zoom, at that distance, unless it was mounted to a gyro-- which is what the military does.

Oh ok, I guess that's the Euro spelling... kinda like colour...

I agree electronic jamming is difficult at best. The difficulty only increases as the frequency goes higher. You would need a spectrum analyzer to find the equipment, if you could even "see" it. Then you would have to "just happen to have" a jammer that worked in that frequency range. Then you would have to be in range with the jammer. Then you would have to know how to use it. Too many variables to be concerned.

We don't currently sell our wireless setups, but we are discussing the possibility at our next board meeting. I'll let you know. Cisco wireless equipment until recently was junk-- then didn't even adopt the atheros chipset because they were stuck with "their heads in the sand" trying to use their own proprietary chipset instead of something that was mature, proven and reliable. As far as their stuff right now-- they finally are using atheros, but just as with their other network equipment, you pay for their logo. But their stuff also has 2x the current consumption as what we use so beware if you are power constrained. Cisco does make excellent LAN equipment, their radios however are not mature enough to be considered carrier class.

The system is actually quite easy to employ. We have been doing this exact same thing for 4 years now. We have WLAN repeater towers all over the state and then all backhaul back to our central location, giving us tons of connectivity and bandwidth. Some client links are as far away as 18 miles from any given broadcast tower with great streaming and nearly nil latency. It's worked so well, we've even got a published patent on the setup (when using solar panels).

What is an "analogue" camera?

Another problem with omni-directional antenna setups is that they seen noise in a 360 degree plane which greatly reduces signal strength and reliability. Unfortunately, these DIY setups have to take into account that most end users have no experience with wireless, so they have to make them this way. Booo.

A good IP camera for under $500? I don't think I've heard of one. You really have to spend double that to even get in the ballpark.

At 36-49 images per screen, let's do the math: Let's say 48 images and an 82" screen for the sake of simplicity. Assume a screen size of 82" (72"w x 40.5" h) in 16:9 aspect ratio. You could fit 8w(x)6h 4:3 aspect ratio (standard CCTV) images on the screen. Each image would be 9"w x 6-3/4"h. which is about 11" diagonal. Since the maximum resolution available on any set today is 1920x1080, each image would have a resolution of 240h x 180v. A decent 12" monitor should be able to see at least 640x480 resolution so a projector would have only slightly better than 1/3 the resolution of 12" monitors. And increasing the size of the screen to 150" would only make each image larger, the resolution would not improve. With that resolution, there's absolutely no way you could identify the value of cards on a table, let alone the suit. Also, if you want the absolute best resolution for casino use with analog cameras, a 20" to 21" CRT is still your best bet. LCD displays don't reproduce images quite as well as CRTs (although they have improved tremendously) and even the best LCDs have problems de-interlacing NTSC video. As far as I know, all LCD monitors are progressive scan. Plasmas can be subject to burn-in so I wouldn't use them for monitors that would be looking at quad images or static scenes. They do have near-CRT quality resolution, though. An 82" screen is much smaller than a 150" screen. 36 feeds on a 150" screen would make each feed ~25". More than acceptable for most, and much larger than you are going to get with even a multiplexed LCD setup. While the resolution would be lower than a multi-LCD video wall, you would certainly be able to see player hands. While lower resolution, it is still more than sufficient and you do not have to squint to see like you would on a 12" LCD. We have absolutely no problem seeing license plates from 1/4 mile away under the conditions stated above. Also, the effective number of pixels on target has just as much to do with the setup as the resolution of the viewing setup.