WirelessEye

I'd say the only con to wireless is the actual cost of the equipment. While relatively inexpensive, wired installations are generally much more cost effective. I'd say the fact that wireless is insecure is a tad misunderstood. Wireless is only unsecure if you don't know how to properly secure it. If you don't run encryption on your wireless, you deserve to be hacked. Wired on the other hand is limited to a much shorter range, and depending on the run length and the cable used, could be more expensive than wireless.

I've largely used 1-piece twist ons and 2-piece crimp ons in the past, but now I'm a big fan 2-piece compression connectors. They are pretty much fool-proof, not to mention pull-proof. They also cost close to the same as a 1-piece twist on.

I don't usually buy fixed cameras, but the situation for a client has presented itself where they are going to need one. I purchased the Panasonic WV-CW374 and my initial impressions are-- aside from it being one of the slickest looking fixed cams I've seen, the image quality is really good, even low lighting. Was this a good buy as far as fixed cams go? Or are there others that are better for the money? The reason I ask is because I'm going to have to do a ton of these fixed cam installs.

Extreme CCTV already has solar powered systems with IR illuminators, however they come with a Camera too. You might be able to do what you're talking about, but the illumination range would be almost nil.

Haha, yep. It doesn't matter anyway, no one really shoots gaurds here... they just throw 'em a 20 and tell them to get lost for 30 minutes...

Wow, the Bahamas must be different, here the security guards are only allowed a radio and a flashlight.

Where I live, they charge $16/hr. and get paid minimum wage ($6.75/hr.)

I've never seen foil in CCTV cable, only in cable TV for houses. kg6mti is correct, always use 95% copper shielded cable (with no foil)

If at all possible, use the latest and greatest when buying hard drives. For example, if buying today, you'd want to get 500GB/7200RPM/16MB Cache/3GB/s Transfer. As for brands, stay away from Maxtor. I've replaced TONS of BAD Maxtor drives. Seagate drives have the best warranty and lowest failure rate, followed by Western Digital.

I believe I posted how they worked earlier in the thread...

Was looking at the Fujinon D60x12.5BE-V41, the 60x optical zoom lens for some higher end projects. Was wondering if anyone has one, or has used one and can give some feedback. (I don't want to spend $8,500 and regret it). Thanks!

Government.

Wow... so exotic.... no one here's even used it?

I saw the autodome at ISC last year. It had the autotrack running and actually worked OK-- until more than one moving object was spotted, then it went haywire.

Bill Gates doesn't need cameras. He can see into our computers.

I got a quote for a cooled thermal with a human detection range > 10 miles. $105,000.00 It can see through fog and dust storms as well. I'd like to be the first guy on my block with one of those.

Scott, we've done government bid projects before and they ALWAYS take the lowest bidder. (Unless it's Halliburton ) Just because he can do it for $3,000 per setup, doesn't mean he has to charge $3,000. If he bids $6,000 per camera, he has a nice profit margin, and will still be well under anyone else bidding.

You could easily do each wireless camera setup for ~ $3,000 ea. Motorolla Canopy, while it would work for this purpose, it is not cost effective for your application. Try something a little more suited to your budget, (you'll get the same results). I believe the 3 names that come up the most are: Microtek Trango Tranzeo

There's no point in doing it unless it's done right. After all, it's only money. You have to spend money to make money. Did I use enough catch phrases?

There's the first conversion of a nay-sayer in wireless, who's next?

ACTi is a very good company. I've dealt with their biggest competitor (Axis) and I must say ACTi's support and responsiveness is 1 billion times better. Some product features are miles ahead of Axis as well, but others are lacking. I have been talking directly to some of their development staff directly, leading them to offer some stuff that will be hitting the market soon. I'd offer their line of products, they are still up and coming, but they're hungry.

sretooh- We experienced problems for months. We kept applying patches, and then more patches, and after that-- you guessed it... more patches. We were told that we were running more "guard tours" than any of their other clients and that was causing a problem, so we built a $4,000 "guard tour server" just for that purpose, but no dice. Every lost video was met with a "uhm, sorry" by them. Shame, it's really good pricing for what it claims to be able to do, and like I said earlier, I don't want to get down on them too hard because I like their friendly staff...but you just can't sell stuff that loses video evidence.

Putting wireless access points up would be the most simplistic solution for a sprawling area like the one pictured. I would suggest a centralized roof with a 5-10' mast and 3-4 access points mounted to it.

Yes, we have used milestone in the past and it was very stable.

Don't want to talk bad about D3 Data as their staff are very friendly and always trying to help.... but we used their Enterprise Software for about 6 months and had some major issues. It was working ok for the first couple of months (aside from various bugs that would pop up every other day), but then we started to lose video. Then there were patches applied to our software, but we still were losing video (sometimes entire days). We then were told to build 1 server for viewing and 1 server for recording. We did. It ran fine for another month, then it lost more video. Finally, after losing video about 50 times and applying what seemed like 3,000 patches, not to mention being left holding the ball when a client called for video--- well, we moved on to something much more robust. What we are using now has been rock solid for 5 months now, and our clients love it. My suggestion, unless you have a smaller installation with <30 cameras D3 Data is just not stable enough, not to mention the video playback utility (if the video hasn't been lost) is horrible. Hope this helps.