Javik

Is there such a thing as external motion tracking software for IP cameras? IP video is different from traditional analog video servers, in that the recorder is not involved with motion sensing and instead it is all handled directly by the IP camera. I have a bunch of 12MP fisheye cameras, and I have discovered that when these are used to cover a very large area, the camera's built-in motion detection is basically useless because the motion cells are smaller than the built-in detection grid of the camera, and so it almost never detects anything. I have to run these cameras on a continuous 24x7 schedule which eats disk storage space. Is there such a thing as external motion tracking software? This would essentially be a server-based software that watches a livestream of the camera, does its own motion sensing, and sends out an alarm signal that the recording server uses to activate recording for that camera. An external server-based motion tracker could have a much finer motion detection grid and have far more image processing power than an IP camera, which is limited in CPU power both by POE power draw limits and thermal dissipation of the fanless camera enclosure.

These are Tyco Illustra 12MP fisheye cameras, used with a Tyco Exacq capture server.

I am currently looking at buying some outdoor fisheye camers from a company that oddly does not have a corner mount bracket, even though the camera is outdoor IP66 rated. Is there such a thing as a universal corner mount bracket to hang out from the corner of a building, for a "ceiling mount" camera to hang from? It could have a bowl shaped rain cap, over the camera junction box. I suppose something could be welded together from steel rods and plates, or even just use pressure-treated wood posts, but I'm not very handy.

This is the camera that I am researching, that has no building corner mount from the manufacturer. But it does have a panomorph fisheye lens, is listed as Immervision compatible, and is the lowest cost, highest resolution Immervision compatible fisheye that I can find so far. I don't know how this forum feels about posting (gasp) actual product pricing.. CNB MPC1070PN 5 Megapixel Outdoor Panoramic Network Vandal Dome https://www.surveillance-video.com/camera-mpc1070pn.html/ , CNB company Tech Support says: WDB101 metal wall bracket will not work with MPC1070PN. We currently do not have the bracket for this product.

Have you tried either disabling or covering the built-in IR illuminators with black tape, so they don't light up the wall and blind the camera?

I have absolutely no idea what is going on here. I am looking for a certain new Dahua NVR, and I find this website, which has it, except they call it a "Cantek" NVR. If I search their catalog for Dahua, no results for Dahua come up, but instead I get the entire Dahua product line, renamed as "Cantek". https://www.surveillance-video.com/nsearch/?cat=0&q=dahua#/?keywords=dahua&search_return=all I'm looking for the "DH-NVR608-32-4K". They've got it except they're calling it a "Cantek CW-NVR608-32-4K": https://www.surveillance-video.com/network-cw-nvr608-32-4k.html/ And I click on the specifications PDF, well what do you know, but it is Dahua's specifications page: https://www.surveillance-video.com/media/lanot/attachments/customimport/CW-NVR608-32-4K.pdf Screenshot: What. The. Heck. ???

The ACTi E96 isn't any better. It too proclaims "The ACTi E96 5-Megapixel Vandal-Resistant Indoor Mini Dome Camera (NTSC) features a 1.19mm hemispheric fisheye fixed lens. The E96 delivers images at a resolution of 2592 x 1944." And yet this is what I can find about the actual capabilities of the E96: As a fisheye only the center circle is usable so it's actually 1944 (sensor height) divided by 2 (circle radius), squared, times pi... 1944 / 2 = 972 ^ 2 = 944784 * pi = 2,968,126 basically the same as the previous "5MP" fisheye.

It's really hard to compare different fisheye camera products when companies outright lie about their product specifications. Vivotek FE8182 Advertising: "VIVOTEK’s FE8182 is a Recessed-Mount fisheye network camera, featuring a detailed 5-Megapixel resolution sensor with superb image quality" Reality: 15 fps @ 1920 x 1920 1920 * 1920 = 3,686,400 pixels How do you get 5 MP out of that? Oh, it's because they're using a rectangular sensor and 1.3 MP of the sensor is looking at solid black all the time outside the edges of the fisheye lens view and is useless. But hey, it's a 5 MP sensor! And actually it's not even 3.68 MP, because the fisheye is a circle, and their stated resolution is for a square sensor area. The corners of the square are also permanently looking at black, and the actual resolution is the area of a circle.. pixel radius squared times pi. 960 ^ 2 * 3.1415... = 2,895,291 So this "5MP fisheye" is actually about 2.9 megapixel usable.

Has anyone used fisheye cameras in school hallways before? These may work well in school hallways where you have kids beating each other over the head, taking things from other kids' lockers, whacking the guy in front of them while walking, etc. It's so hard to point a normal box camera in a manner that covers a whole hallway completely. , However, being a fisheye, I expect the side views are going to be a whole lot of nothing of the walls of the hall, wasting pixels on blank walls over the heads of people. The Hikvision DS-2CD2942F may be a partial solution to wasted pixels, as it apparently has more of an oval fisheye, so it can extend lengthwise along a hallway. But their documentation is very unclear about the fisheye shape. Also, so far I have not found if any sort of adjustment of the fisheye lens/zoom is possible for this model. I assume the lens is fixed? I'd rather not have to buy one, to find out how it works.

Well speaking in general server technology concepts, there are two forms of reliability. One is against storage drive failure, and the other is against power failure. Drive hardware failure protection is called RAID. One or more extra hard drives are used which don't store anything but provide protection in case another fails. Basic: RAID-1 or RAID-5 Good: RAID-1 + hotspare or RAID-5 + hotspare Better: RAID-6 Best: RAID-6 + hotspare Power failure protection usually involves a UPS and a communication cable between the UPS and the protected device: - When the UPS detects a power failure, the protected device continues to run on battery power from the UPS. - The device is informed by the UPS of the power failure. The device starts a controlled shutdown process so that data is not corrupted or lost. - The UPS goes into "sleep mode" to conserve battery capacity after the device turns off. - When power is restored, the UPS wakes up and powers up the protected device. This is a standard protection method against power failure for full-blown computers running a Windows operating system. However, I don't know if any of the custom all-in-one standalone DVR boxes that can also do this. It's not easy to find this information, due to the reseller rebranding BS that muddles and confuses the surveillance industry.

Please explain why a company would do this. I do not see the point of being deceptive and confusing your potential customers.

It is mysterious why a camera with POE would also offer Wifi capability. I assume this is because most cameras offer both POE and regular DC-only power capability. Is there a third option, where the POE Ethernet communications span length is too long (such as previously used for power and balun analog video) so the camera is configured to use POE, but use Wifi to connect instead?

I see there are two versions of the Hikvision fisheye. The basic one is the "DS-2CD2942" and there's a youtube video of what it looks like. Apparently there is another model called the "DS-2CD2942-IW" Weirdly, Hikvision's own website doesn't show a -W option, only -I/S: http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10536_i7597.html

Is there a list anywhere of all-in-one DVRs / NVRs with RAID6 or hotspare support? If you're serious about keeping your security camera data around and surviving drive failures then you need RAID redundancy, and you need it to be able to repair itself and/or survive one or two drive failures in rapid succession. Most generic NVRs seem to be single disk or RAID-0 disk spans without any failure protection. If you lose a disk, you will lose part of or everything recorded. With RAID 1/5 there is one redundant drive. Any one drive can fail and you don't lose anything. With RAID-6 there are two redundant drives. Any two drives can fail and you don't lose anything. With RAID 1/5/6 + hotspare there are one or spare drives not used for anything. Any array drive can fail, and the controller will automatically grab the hotspare and use it to repair the array, restoring drive redundancy in a few hours. Maximum data protection comes from RAID6 + hotspares. If one drive fails and the array starts rebuilding, and then a second drive fails before the rebuild onto the hotspare finishes, no data is lost. Because 3 or more drives are used for data protection, the array costs are highest, though it is essentially insurance money paid in advance to protect against failure. For quite a while there have been generic RAID-1 soft-mirroring controllers but the implementations are often cruddy and repair/rebuild is complex and difficult. Just identifying which drive failed with these cheap RAID-1 controllers is often difficult. So looking for all-in-one systems RAID 5/6 and hotspares appears to be the best way to find the more reliable and easier to manage storage systems.

I'm trying to do some math. Do these numbers check out with the rest of you? Example unit: Dahua IPC-HDBW4300E Max resolution: 2052x1536 @ 20FPS Max bitrate: H.264 8192kbps Bitrate in bytes: 8192 kbps / 8 = 1 megabyte/sec Max recording time, 24 hrs a day: 60 sec * 60 min * 24 h = 86400 seconds 86.4 gigabytes per day for 1 camera * 16 cameras = 1.38 TB per day * 32 cameras = 2.76 TB per day recording 24 hrs per day Network bandwidth incoming to stream recorder: 8192 kbps * 16 cameras = 131 megabit 8192 kbps * 32 cameras = 232 megabit =================================== We are a school district. Our main building activity from 8am to 4pm with occasional before/after-school activity from sports and maintenace staff. If we do motion detection in the capture server, we can probably reduce daily recording to maybe 8 hrs or 6 hrs per camera. There is minimal activity on Saturday/Sunday, so for us a "week of data" is 5 days. 4 weeks of recording time: 20 days ==================================== 8 hrs per camera per day, 16 cameras: 60 s * 60 m * 8 h = 28800 seconds 28.8 gigabytes per camera * 16 cameras = 460.8 gigabytes per day 4 weeks of recording time: 460.8 * 20 days = 9.2 TB 32 cameras: 18.4 TB ==================================== 6 hrs per camera per day, 16 cameras: 60 s * 60 m * 6 h = 21600 seconds 21.6 gigabytes per camera * 16 cameras = 345.6 gigabytes per day 4 weeks of recording time: 345.6 * 20 days = 6.9 TB 32 cameras: 13.8 TB ==================================== Western Digital RED, 6 TB for $250, 3 yr warranty Western Digital RED PRO, 6 TB for $320, 5 yr warranty RAID 6 = 2 redundant parity drives + spanned data drives + optional hotspare drives 6 TB * 2 data = 12 TB + 2 parity + 1 hotspare = 5 drives Qty 5 WD RED, 6 TB = $1250 Qty 5 WD RED PRO, 6 TB = $1600 6 TB * 3 data = 18 TB + 2 parity + 1 hotspare = 6 drives Qty 6 WD RED, 6 TB = $1500 Qty 6 WD RED PRO, 6 TB = $1920 6 TB * 4 data = 24 TB + 2 parity + 1 hotspare = 7 drives Qty 7 WD RED, 6 TB = $1750 Qty 7 WD RED PRO, 6 TB = $2240 6 TB * 5 data = 30 TB + 2 parity + 1 hotspare = 8 drives Qty 8 WD RED, 6 TB = $2000 Qty 8 WD RED PRO, 6 TB = $2560 * Cost not including the server itself with CPU, memory, OS, capture software, etc

?? weird. And what happens when someone is trying to use networking wifi with that system nearby? the 2.4ghz band is so overused, that seems like a potentially very unreliable wireless video method.

Shut it off, pull out the hard drive, and plug it into a PC with an external USB hard drive enclosure. ($30-50). It will likely come up as a collection of files your computer can read. (Though if it says "do you want to format this disk" this will not work, and don't do anything or you'll erase it.) If you're lucky you'll see something like *.txt *.ini *.cfg *.config files which contain the device password. If you're unlucky the files are all randomly named and encoded in raw hexadecimal in which case recovery will be very difficult. If the DVR has more than one drive, one of them is probably the "main" drive and will contain the config files. You may have to try each drive and see what they contain.

The number of cameras doesn't really matter. What does is the bit-rate of each camera, multiplied by the the total number. NVRs are not magic boxes, they have a certain maximum data bit-rate they can handle. If you exceed the bit-rate then the box is going to start dropping data on the floor and you will have corrupt recording streams with randomly missing short timespans. For large numbers of high megapixel cameras you are probably going to need an "NVR farm" to handle all the streams, and maybe another box to pull data from the NVR farm for data lookup and review.

The answer is "It depends." Which is probably why no one has replied. "2.4ghz" doesn't really mean anything. There are different speeds within that one channel band, depending on if it is b/g/n. You'll only get 11 megabit total I believe if it is using the old b standard. Also if a radio doesn't have a clear line of sight or is far away or has a poor antenna, or or or.... it will slow itself down to try to get a more reliable connection. 54 meg g can drop to 5 meg if the conditions are poor. In theory as long as the radio throughput speed doesn't drop below the camera bandwidth, it should be okay. And finally, wireless performance will degrade as the channel airspace multiplexing fills up with multiple devices all talking at the same time and occasionally colliding and having to retransmit. This part of the thing is so complex and difficult to monitor that you practically need an engineering degree to make sense of it.

All UPS are pretty generic now. Most electronic devices do not care about stepped sine, they convert it back to DC inside anyway. Where that really matters is driving actual AC induction motors that need a nice smooth sinewave. A generic DVR likely does not have a UPS serial input or any other way for the UPS to tell the DVR to safely shutdown and turn off. So in this case you can pick pretty much any UPS. If the DVR has serial to the UPS for on-battery / low-battery alerts, then you want a compatible signalling from the UPS to the DVR. Pick your UPS based on how long you'd like to run on battery and still have everything working. The bigger UPS gives you a longer runtime with the power out and the system keeps on recording. If you don't need to see what's happening during an outage, don't plug a monitor into the UPS. You'll squeeze some more battery life out of it. Most lead acid batteries are crap for battery backup purposes. You should replace the battery every 3 years regardless of its exterior condition. For really small UPS, probably 2 years is max life because the small battery dies more quickly. Lead-acid battery capacity slowly and silently declines, even if fully charged all the time in a UPS. Unless you do a runtime test every six months, you won't know this is happening until that critical moment you need it and whoops it doesn't work, dropped the load, crash.

Has anyone had any outdoor winter problems with PTZ cameras without a cover over the moving camera head? I'm in northern Wisconsin where we sometimes get freezing rain and temperatures down to -40 C/F. Do these exposed PTZ moving heads tolerate this or do they literally freeze up and quit moving until the ice melts or temps rise? Random examples of these from Amazon (*I've not tried these): USG IP PTZ Sony+TI 2MP 1080P 30x Optical Zoom 4" Speed Dome Security Camera: 3.5-105mm Motorized Zoom Lens, Auto-Focus, 6 Array + 2 Laser IR LEDs For 165' Feet Night Vision, ONVIF, IP66 Outdoor Rated http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TTDIRYK GW Security 1/2.7" Sony H.264 HD 1080P (1920×1080) IP High Speed Onvif Network Dome PTZ Camera 20X Optical Zoom Waterproof Outdoor 350FT IR Night Vision http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015TND2H0 IPCC-9610 - 10x Optical Zoom, AutoFocus, Hd 1.3 Mega Pixel, Metal, Wired Outdoor, High Speed Dome Camera with Ir Nightvision, Onvif, Synology, QNAP, Blueiris Compatible, White, Wall Mount http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ML6W19Y

The networking stuff has nothing to do with cameras in particular. It's just general Internet Protocol networking used by computers to talk to each other. 255.255.255.0 is called the network mask, or how many devices can work together. Which in this case is 254 devices numbered: 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254 Using 192.168.0.0 and 255.255.255.0 is an arbitrary choice for most simple networks. Gotta pick something so most instructions use that. Each device must have its own address. Do not overlap or it won't work. One of those is the gateway out of the subnet to other networks or the Internet, and which is often but not always address #1 in the range. Do not use the gateway address for other devices.

The discussion about TVL (TV lines) is weird because if we're talking about NTSC/PAL, the signal is analog but with a fixed number of horizontal sweep lines. So how many horizontal dots/lines are there in an analog signal? As many as you want. It is entirely possible to have 5000 TVL with only 525 fixed sweep lines. In analog terms, the actual resolution limit is the dot size of the camera and TV and the broadcast bandwidth. If a wire shadow mask or no mask is used, technically the horizontal display resolution is nearly infinite up to the broadcast bandwidth limit. Though for general digital purposes it's considered to only be approximately 640x480 or 512x384

While making the following post: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=48148 I see this at the top of the page when previewing and posting: [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/antispam/spam_words.php on line 62: preg_match_all(): Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/antispam/spam_words.php on line 62: preg_match_all(): Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash

I have an old Server 2003 / GV-2008 system running 8.2.0 that's been crashing/freezing. I'm rebuilding the system and want to update it to the final release 8.3.1, before Geovision went 64-bit and dropped support for the GV2008. Geovision seems to have horrific FPGA upgrade documentation, as in, none at all. Release 8.3.1 has an FPGA update FW155 for the GV2008. I have no idea what FPGA version is on the cards now, that was used with 8.2, and don't know how to find out. It's the original version from Geovision when we bought the cards. Do I need to install FW155 to use the 8.3.1 main system software with the cards? Or can the 8.3.1 software work with the cards as they are now, without the FPGA update? How exactly do you install the update? Just run "DRVINST.EXE", or do I need to go into the GV2008 folder and run "GVFPGAUp.EXE" ? We have two GV2008 cards. Does it auto-update both cards without intervention? Is there a way to back up the existing FPGA code on the card, in case this update doesn't work out and I want to revert the cards to where they are now? If I upgrade the FPGA for 8.3.1, can I still go back to the old original 8.2 software, or do they cards need to be downgraded to the existing FPGA code again, to work with 8.2? (Sorry for so many questions, but it seems none of this is explained anywhere.)