WirelessEye

You might be able to get everything, including housing wholesale for under 20k. You can't beat the performance of that setup for the price. If you only need 200', you could save a ton of money by using a 20x-30x lens and then you could get a smaller housing, thus reducing your cost even more.

I would suggest a Toshiba IK-1000 and a Fujinon 60x Lens. Detection range would be around 2.75 miles at night. Identification would be around 2 miles. Cost would be around $20k, plus housing.

eeek 1.2Ghz? That sounds like videocomm garbage.

If it's the city, they shouldn't need a license for 4.9Ghz. As a city they should have access to that band.

150ft. is nothing for wireless. You could use almost anything...

The guy I talked to said with the Lens I ordered, I'd be good up to 100ft. no problem. I've also noticed that if the plate is either old or dirty, it is completely unreadable as well.

Metal buildings can cause problems, but if your cameras are DC powered, you can install a DC Noise blockers (the $10 deals usually used for car stereos) and that will fix all your problems with ground loop interference, as least it has for us. I don't know if they have anything like that for AC however.

I have had a REG camera up for about 6 months now. At first I was impressed, but the more I look at the video from it, the more I notice it misses a lot of plates. Could need to be moved closer to the road, but the whole reason I got it was because it was supposed to be able to read plates from the distance I mounted it at (90ft.) I'd say it's hit or miss.

We don't have to sandwich non-metallic objects on any of the pole installations we do.... but then again, we earth ground the poles and install noise filters. I suppose both get the same result...

Our sister company builds mobile towers for them. I've met of few of their guys, they are good people. ICX is geared more towards military applications however, pricing them out of almost all privatized budgets.

Altronix, I believe is the creme' de la creme' of CCTV power supplies.

This is slightly off topic woodyads, but I was wondering: Would describe your tower systems to be a "Unmanned, vandal-resistant, self-contained, tower-based, wireless, solar-powered surveillance unit and system"?

You might try here: http://www.unitedvisionsolutions.com/ go to products page. They are EXPENSIVE though. Figure on $10k+

Their literature on their website states they use 4 channels, at least for 300Mbps. The problem with NLOS and high frequencies is molecular vibrations of the objects you are passing microwave through. The higher the frequency, the higher "molecular excitement". Not even 900Mhz is truely NLOS if you read the "fine print". Even if you talk to AvaLan who does 900Mhz, they'll tell you 1 or 2 buildings and half your signal is toast. I do know a rep from Motorolla (who was trying to sell me Canopy garbage a while back). I'll get in touch with him this week and see what he has to say about this issue. As far as security goes, there is only so much you can do with Wireless. Especially with video transmission. The more packets you transmit, the easier it is to crack any kind of WEP. Mac's can be spoofed easily and unless you have other measures in place outside of these methods, your data is free for the taking. Even proprietary encryption can be broken.

I believe 5.4 is legal in the U.S., but it can be bumped by radar frequencies (if present) by law. In my experience, power is needed in rare occasions. Like I said before, we've got 30+ mile links with only 200mw of power at the radio. I see very little reason for a radio that has 10X the power, as you aren't going to go 10X as far-- Most of your signal lies in the antenna. For example, a group of kids recently broke the world record for Wifi with a 300mw radio. The distance? 125 Miles! Of course, they were using (2) 10'+ satellite dishes to do it, but it just goes to show you; 300mw is nothing; antenna, antenna, antenna. Also, cisco stuff until the last few years was garbage. They were so hell-bent on developing their own Wifi chipset, they didn't realize that Atheros was killing them on price/performance/everything. A few years ago, they abandoned their chipset and now use atheros, finally. Of course, this just puts them "on par" with everyone else now. The only difference now between them and everyone else is GUI, Atheros Driver Optimization, and of course with Cisco-- how can forget... Price. Power does to a point, increase reliability, but only in rare cases. The main time it becomes a factor is if your radio is "seeing" another radio in the area and you have to overpower their signal to get your link-- which of course puts the other guy up a creek. My main question is: what kind of distance are you looking at that will require 2watts of radio power? My guess is curvature of the earth issues would kick in way before you could even utilize 3/4 of the power rating. How can Orthogon be true NLOS? There is no such thing in 5Ghz, at least that I know of. Not because of the hardware you are using, but becuase it is a frequency limitation. Even using Multi-Polarized and Circular-Polarized antennae are not going to get you true NLOS, the frequency is just too high. Perhaps it somehow uses the 4 bonded channels to pickup in diversity? I just don't know about Motorolla these days. Next they will claim it runs off of "perpetual motion".

I've bought from supercircuits. They have good service and OK pricing, by far the biggest covert selection of anyone I've seen. When doing a covert job, you must first look at the surroundings it will be installed in. Take lots of pictures then look through the covert cameras and see which ones will work best on a case by case basis. Covert cams are expensive, at least for decent ones. The worst thing you can do is buy something that sticks out like a sore thumb. The exit sign stuff is ok, but generally I only use them for new construction, if you add them years after the building is up, employees know something is up. I would just get the mini-pinhole type and drill a pin hold in something, but that's just me.

I have never worked with these cams, but have heard terrible things about them. I believe if you search under those part numbers in the forum, you should be able to find out what people are saying about those cams. HTH

Did I miss something? What does power have to do with throughput? We have 30+ mile links using completely legal FCC power ratings (we are actually under powered). The power of the radio only has to do with signal strength and reliability, and even that is only to a certain extent. Generally if you are looking for the best signal, your money is best spent on the antenna, running more power to get over noise hurdles only amplifies the existing noise, whereas different antennas can "clean up" the signal making the power of your radio exponentially more efficient. FCC Rules: "If an antenna with a directional gain greater than 6 dBi is used and the system is to be used exclusively for fixed point-to-point operation, there shall be no reduction in the maximum power allowed." You can still use up to 1 watt of power at the radio with no limitation in antenna gain when going PTP.... Not like you need to anyhow, 200mw is generally fine for any task... The Motorolla equipment specified is not only astronomically expensive, the only way that you can get 300Mbps is by getting a nearly unobtainable signal quality in a real world scenario (due to the fact it needs to have FOUR great concurrent signals) and is not suitable for use in 95%+ of cctv installations. I would just say stick with standard "low cost" 802.11a with Turbo OFDM and get yourself a 108Mbps link for 1/11th the cost of the Motorolla gear. $0.02

I don't know if less of a skillset is required, I would probably say just a different kind of skillset, ie: networking as opposed to analog, IMHO. There's generally less equipment involved with IP, unless you are using analog to digital converters, etc-- which in this case you would need all of the skillsets of an analog installer, plus the added knowledge of networking...

Without starting a flame war, the answer is generally because of expandibility. If the NVR's hardware is robust enough, you can run hundreds of IP feeds off of one box, without having to purchase capture cards. Also, you are dealing with IP, which is more expensive than analog.

It's a double edged sword. Copper is through the roof on pricing which makes it expensive as installers. At the same time, I get a lot of jobs because copper is being stolen off of properties-- because it's so expensive. Funny how that works.

That's a girl? I could've sworn I saw an adam's apple...

Now that's funny. Good video. That Granny is definately full of "piss and vinegar".

Rory: The best one is www.redshiftsystems.com which actually uses a simple infrared mouse laser to somehow (I'm sure coupled with other technology) allows a standard CMOS camera to see heat.

Actually, there are some people making CMOS thermal imagers. (At least 2 that I know of). They sell for under $2,000 (Because they are CMOS) and can actually use standard C/CS mount lens options instead of expensive germanium lens's. Want the kicker? They claim to be more sensitive than standard microbolometer based thermal imagers. Hate to say it buy CMOS seems to be handled in the night vision department as well.