Kiwi

I had the same situation and instead moved the DVR to a closet and re-routed the cables from the ceiling. Later I installed a large electrical enclosure on the rear wall of the closet to hold all my interconnected surveillance, internet, and home automation hardware which are powered off a single UPS.

Assuming the equipment at both ends has grounded shields, run one ground through the secondary of a small low voltage transformer, say 6VAC from Radio Shack or similar. Then apply about 24VAC using a standard camera power supply to the 110 V primary of that transformer and you will be able to modulate the ground with a volt or two of "hum," simulating a typical ground loop.

Video Server E works fine for me under Windows 7. What you are probably missing is that when you install it you need to right-click first and "Run as administrator." I would suggest a reboot afterwards. Next, the VideoPlayer app doesn't get installed correctly. You need to execute the installer (in the Video Server E folder) and install it (in the same folder) to get it working. If you put it in the default folder it won't work. Again, "run as admin" for the installation.

The problem with passive video baluns is that they don't isolate the two ends so you have to provide that yourself or accept the consequences. The immunity to common mode interference should be equally as good as balanced audio however, as the same principle applies. Same with all other data communications that use a balanced pair - it's certainly becoming a major player these days in computing, SATA, etc. No doubt the video application is further complicated by the fact that an RS-170C (video) signal technically has a DC component, unlike most other signals.

Perhaps there's a "luck" component too I have 2 cameras at home at the front door, both cheap board cams with a common (-) and video shield, both on the same 12V power supply (over the Cat5E) and both running passive baluns. The 30 yards of Cat5E runs directly alongside the 240VAC (flat cable) mains feed to my apartment for about 3 yards. Despite breaking all the rules we have discussed, no problems at all, although they are monochrome so no high-freq color component.

Have you tried it? I didn't yet. No, but to be honest it's just common sense from an electrical engineering point of view. Twisted pair will only work properly if the currents on each side are equal. Any leakage path will upset that and that leakage is extremely unlikely to be corrected by applying a DC offset of the PS (-) to the tune of 0.7 V.

Thought it might be for your lunch! You might want to paint the plastic box with latex paint to slow down UV deterioration. Also that might need a sun shield too. Any opaque material that shades it and sits off the surface about 1/2" should work fine.

Shifting the ground plane with a diode is not going to help the situation. You need to provide fully-isolated power to each of those affected cameras, such as a separate AC adapter.

Did you install all software using the "run as administrator" right-click option?

I see it as more of a camera problem and would suggest it's best to avoid those where it occurs. Any decent modern camera should have isolated power and video to get the best balun performance in any case. Having to use an isolated supply because it's tied to the balanced twisted pair seems a bit of a kludge.

I built a system like that Mobile Watchman many years ago for my Xterra. Four monochrome cameras with 3.6mm lenses covered about 170 degrees front and back, but fed into a quad with a mobile VCR. With continuous sound recording I was able to read off license plates if needed. If I had to do it again I would use day/night cameras and perhaps one telephoto view out the front and one capturing the speedometer. Of course my driving improved considerably after that and so did my language.

Seems to have "Avtech" written all over it. Looks like a great deal on paper. Found it, AVC791: http://www.avtech.com.tw/english/cctv_spec.aspx?ID=AVC791

Perhaps I wasn't clear - you don't an "IR" light source either separate or built-in to a camera. The halogens produce significant IR themselves in addition to visible light.

Since you have plenty of room use a true day/night box camera with an IR corrected lens, perhaps a 10-50 vari-focal. The focal length needed depends what you are looking to catch. I've use a pair of 3.6mm lens/cameras to catch a 150 degree panorama but I couldn't read a license plate. Having audio is handy in case you need to read off plates or record a conversation. Oh, and having a small monitor is essential for setup and playing back video.

Yep, halogen/incandescent lighting produces a lot of IR and you will get a clearer image of faces from any camera with an IR-comped lens, in particular a day/night in night mode since none of that IR is filtered out.

I have a similar setup and also need it to work the moment the halogens switch on. I've been having a bit of trouble as the lenses are long focal lengths and we don't have any high quality off the shelf hardware to experiment with in this dire corner of the earth. My true day/night camera takes only a half a second to handle the burst of light but 30 seconds to switch to daytime mode. I have enough light in either mode once the halogens are on BUT in night mode there is considerable IR focus shift unless I use an IR-compensated lens. That causes faces to be badly blurred. In day mode the IR filter in the camera narrows the spectrum which lessens the focus shift with a standard lens. The optimum setup in OP's case (since the FOV's are wide) is likely to use high-quality IR-comped lenses (e.g. Tamron) with a wide dynamic range color camera. A day/night may not be needed. I have some images but they won't upload for some reason. Oh, another comment on OP's setup. You need to do two things to get police attention: ID the intruder and then record his actions. The first requires a tight shot of the person with the best possible lighting, preferably at a "choke" point in the scene where the person would be most likely to pass through as they approach. The second is normally a wide shot of the building face to record the persons actions, tied to the ID video with the timestamp. Your wide angle lenses facing outwards are not going to do either.

Video Server E runs fine as-is in Ubuntu using the Wine Windows emulator.

I find that rather hard to believe. How does the device know that a loss of power is "brutal" or not? What is "sudden" power removal as opposed to normal power removal? Should we just drop the voltage a bit at first to drop a hint or do I need to send an email first? Properly-design industrial products should have no problem with the method implied of power removal obtained with a relay off an alarm system. If certain cameras are prone to failure from power loss that should be a strong hint to buy another brand!

From my knowledge of my AVC782 I don't think there is a clean way to do this. The alarm reset has perplexed me also as to it's purpose but I thinking it might reset the alarm LED and/or the icon in the remote viewer. I don't see a problem simply dropping power to the cameras if that will functionally do what you want. Even the entire DVR could probably handle a power cycle once a day, as brutal as it sounds.

I've recently capped the monochrome (night) side of my 3130 used as an outdoor webcam because I don't need the nightime capability, and set the parameter to keep it on the color side at night. (set?daynight=day) What happened is interesting - the color side now switches to a monochrome "night" mode anyway and gives a fairly credible image. Certainly there is still a hefty IR-block filter in place but I'm guessing it's good down to about .5 lux. Oh, also, on the color side I get the same noise artefacts (vertical and horizontal shards) in the 5 MP image you posted. On the monochrome side I get exactly what you have in the 1.3 image - a fabric, linen-like texture.

Nothing digital at all seen there by the looks of it. A combination of fax technology and microfiche readers. The husband had to pay all the bills but he had more computers than the wife. I can just hear it now "honey, why do you need so many computers?" But overall, the functionality demonstrated is exactly what I'm doing at my desk right now.

Since you have to live with them next door clearly it pays to tread very carefully. Having said that, them showing their friends your unfortunate accident is a highly obnoxious act. Have you asked them yourself to see that video footage? Maybe that would offer a bit of embarrassment. Perhaps you could post a picture of the camera(s) from your backyard so we can offer a more precise opinion. Of interest is if their camera is at a height that a person would not normally be viewing from. I would not suggest any other aggressive tactics otherwise it could blow it all out of proportion. They will eventually get tired of looking at a screen all day.

The silica gel desiccant pack is essential unless you are able to re-assemble the camera in a totally dry atmosphere. You can dry them in an oven if needed to re-use. I make my own weather proof housings since nothing much else is available here in the third-world and despite great attention to sealing they rarely stay dry for more than two years at a time. At least with cameras you get real-time feedback as to the condition, and the image will fog long before any internal corrosion takes place.

Yes, the JVC TK-C925U has a 1/3" sensor and is a true day/night camera.

This is unlikely to work accurately with the voice-coil style actuator found in a DC iris. You would be much better off buying a lens with a motorized iris. Some Computar electric zooms are configured like this, older ones in particular.