CCTV_Suppliers

Here are few questions that I think are important: 1. How many cameras will be part of this facility? 2. Will all the cameras be needed to be viewed by parents or selected few? 3. Do you want local recording in the facility as well as availability of remote view for these parents? 4. Or do you want to keep the local recording for "security" reasons and look at web stream of the video? The up speed of your DSL may be a problem, but it also depends to some of the answer that you can give us for the above questions..

No D1 recording here except advertising...

Here is another question.. Do you care if your DVR is PC based or embedded system?

I am tinkering with this box... http://www.hammer-storage.com/images/products/myshare/2bay-155.jpg It is a NAS box that takes up to 2TB internal storage... based or RISK technology... We have a basic DVR system working perfectly with IP cameras and with external video encoders, no limit how many cameras we can bring to it... using proprietary software from one of our manufacturers.. hopefully when we are done with the R&D, we can start selling... Mainly to be used for Banking industry (ATMs) and from small mom & pop operators... The hammer storage have other boxes that could work for other apps... here is their url: http://www.hammer-storage.com/default.asp The box itself could be used as external storage module for most DVRs connected via Ethernet or USB.. Fairly cost effective, 1TB system costs around $400 or less...

Like NAS box?

Actually we have been using VU for quite a long time.. and we can stretch the CAT5 to 1,500' and it does work... They have (3) models and all of the come with built in surge protector... You are right "like cameras, they are not all made alike"

Ok fine, be that way.. "do not have time or money for hardware R&D... May be someone else wants to discuss about this...

What frame rate and resolution are you using with this DVR? Unless you are pushing full FPS on all channels without motion and resolutions at highest, it does not make sense getting only 3 days of recording with 1TB storage...

How do you know that you basic system requirement gets covered by 350-400W PSU? Or better yet, how do you know that 4 hard drive based system actually will require 500W? Is your decision based on experience or facts on these values? Will be possible that you basic system could require less than 350W, if you knew that for a fact or what if you need more than 500W or your rack mountable DVRs? What make and models do you use and why? Do you care for power supplies efficiency factor or better yet, accuracy of power rating? Only few questions that is all...

If you use a recessed vandal dome you can steal heat from the other side of the wall. Why didn't I think of that :

How about if it was defective right out of box? not that it does not happen.. Any passive balun that we use must come with surge protectors built in.. which does help tremendously not only if we run into a very high static discharge environment, but also surge of voltage that does exist when such cables are near a power transformers, large utilities, etc... NVT charges more for such baluns, but our supplier includes them without any additional cost... We use the passive baluns from this manufacturer: http://videobaluns.com/.. it works great and we are able extend CAT5E cables up to 1,500' without any degradation of the video signal. Very cost effective, yet a good performer.

You did not mention which manufacturer balun are you using? Dependent whose it is, some already come with surge protectors built in and some do not...

Your best bet is shy away from bullet cameras. Before you select your camera and lens combination, first you need outdoor housing with heater and blower that will sustain functionality at the temperature that you mention... Then focus on getting decent day/night camera and lens combo... Dependent who you purchase the housing, it can set you back over $100, decent and true day/night camera and lens can set you back around $250, so you are too far off... Weather proof Minidomes could work, but most will not comply with your temperature requirement...

Just was wandering which type of hard drives anyone uses when building or upgrading DVRs?? According to had drive manufacturers, average use of the Commercial version of hard drives should not be more than 8-10 hours per day... Whereas, the surveillance version hard drives gives you 24/7 use without any issues... Just interested to find out your comments about this newer technology (it has been out for at least a year now, even though most DVR manufacturers refuse to use them)... Lets keep urls about this technology out, rather opinions on uses, any pros or cons in general.

Has anyone used ZoneMinder that apparently is a DVR software operating on Linux environment? This software complies with GPL rules and seems very interesting... Here are some of the features: ZoneMinder is intended for use in single or multi-camera video security applications, including commercial or home CCTV, theft prevention and child or family member or home monitoring and other care scenarios. It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system. ZoneMinder also support web and semi-automatic control of Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras using a variety of protocols. It is suitable for use as a home video security system and for commercial or professional video security and surveillance. It can also be integrated into a home automation system via X.10 or other protocols. ZoneMinder is a set of applications which together provides a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any cctv cameras attached to a Linux based machine. It is designed to run on distributions which support the Video For Linux (V4L) interface and has been tested with video cameras attached to BTTV cards, various USB cameras and IP network cameras. A partial list is given in the Support section, please give feedback in the Forums if it works with yours. It is designed to support as many cameras as you can attach to your computer without too much degradation of performance. ZoneMinder also requires MySQL and PHP, and is enhanced by a webserver such as Apache. ZoneMinder is highly componentised and comprises both the back-end daemons which do the actual image capture and analysis and a user friendly front end enabling you to both monitor the current situation and view and organise historical events that have taken place. The front-end is web based allowing you to check and control your ZoneMinder installation from any other machine which can connect. ZoneMinder does not require X at all, or the web interface for day-to-day functions and so is suitable for 'headless' systems. There is also a rudimentary xHTML interface allowing basic monitoring from suitable phones! Apparently you can change the GUI to your liking... It operates with any Linux based distros (at least that is what they claim) and fairly robust... Looks like it also works with various capture cards, including Geo... I may be taking the challenge to spend some time with its code.. but if you had any reservations and actual test results, please let me know. Thanks...

Nope, we have not... yet What is your take on their drives?

Whatever works my friend... In your case, look who their audience is and if they value their reputation, they had no choice.. and I glad that they were responsive. I never said that WD makes bad drives, except from our experience and because they run hotter than their counterparts from Seagate, it was a safer bet to go with Seagate hard drives... Even though Seagate drives costs more for obvious reasons, it did not change our opinion... Sometimes it pays to spend little more to get more warranty and cooler drives... When we repair and upgrade all variations of DVRs from all the manufacturers, we see a lot of them used Maxtor drives and what a disaster that was for everyone... According to Seagate and when they bought Maxtor, they are using the same components that Seagate uses and they apparently positioning Maxtor brand drives to be their lower end.. That is nice and great, but I will have a serious problem if anyone of our customer ever find out that we either used or still using Maxtor drives, regardless what Seagate claims now... Only time will tell if people may reconsider Maxtor again, even though it is built different now. That also explains the cost of such Maxtor branded drives being lower than most... for same drive configuration...

Hey bud, your observations are very correct and I should have explain the basic test criteria even more detailed... Rules were simple... Every manufacturer was to bring their complete hardware. Restrictions were that it had to be fixed (or sometime I read in this forum "boxed" camera) with its own lens and in the brand new box.. and not something that may have been used as "demo" or twicked in the factory to perform "beyond its capabilities) and to give anyone an excuse why such product did not work to its specs. Each brand was complete with its camera and the lens.. We were not testing playback video quality (that is our next test for DVRs), rather picture quality variance in the defined scenario of extreme condition (that actually was a customer request) and have them go against each other.. Now, GE's latest chipsets are suppose to be better... I will not say the same on their previous chipsets on their cameras (not including their domes, which use different technology cameras)... They knew it and did not say anything about it and the quality was, well, average.. I will not go into details on why it did not pass all the tests, rather it did not matched up with some of their competitors at that time.. I do know that they were talking about a different camera chipset and that was suppose to blow everyone out of the water, but seeing is believing... so I will reserve my opinion until I see otherwise... What was very embarrassing was that everyone had a claim and everyone were geared up to go into a battle But, you should have seen a lot of unsatisfied faces when they saw with their own eyes that some of their claims were, well not that accurate? Heck, we were not there or even now to down play anyone... just wanted to get the best of the best at that time under $500... and I do know that things are changing and chances are very good that what is coming up in these manufacturers lineups actually could surprise all of us... The bottom line... It has to deliver everything as they promise and the price they dictate and if not, we will be all over them.. Our approach is a good thing for end user and dealers and may not be that desirable for manufacturers... Oh well, who cares... Sometimes it is necessary to "double check" what they claim anyway.. Our next roundup will be Minidomes and we are accumulating DVRs too... Some of them are providing such hardware for limited use basis and some that either we already have or will purchase... This way when we are preparing a quote and we have a very focused customer who wants to goods to be exactly what is on the claim, then we can easily make the recommendation based on facts and not on what is on white paper... Lets wait and see what happens next... Actually I am holding by breath knowing what is coming up from Sanyo, GE, AD and even from Bosch... it will be fun to have a newer leader don't you think?

Feel your pain bud... We still use WD drives no questions about it and it is dependent on the application that will install on them... If the application is hard driven intensive, we already know what will happen if we stay with WD, unless we push them to their 10K Enterprise version and then again, why waste the money? One of the most attractive reasons (and I mean only one) is the 5 years warranty that comes with Seagate drives vs. WD drives that come only with 3 years warranty.. Heck, we even tried the Hitachi drives and I will not go there any further than they were substandard... compared to even WD... Now I can see that an argument will be that you are paying for it anyway or the price already have it built in... Of course it does... and for few dollars more, why not get additional 2 years warranty! Both models fail, but not as much as you mention (in our case it is less than 2% regardless what manufacturer claims)... and you are right... if you buy the OEM vesion, the packaging is crap and it is fine with their retail box... My preference though are the drives from Seagate... and their repair or replacement policy does shine better than WD...

Cool... Sometimes we like to call any manufacturers bluff.. it is easier than someone may think... They all are very decent and quality cameras, however, no one camera could be used for any "fix all" application... The Pano's CP-484 does come close, but then again, for every day use and budgets that are shrinking, Sanyo and others started look even better... Besides, all these majors have started dropping pricing... I guess they figured that either they missed the boat or just about to.. You can expect an average of 5 to 10% drop in camera pricing right after ASIS show...

Yep, Vista is a .. cant say the word here. Getting my software to work on it now, having to update so much stuff ... very annoying .. bad MS .. very very Bad MS .. Is that what they called nowadays? MS?? I thought they were call Microshaft, or was it Microswift.. oh no, I think they were called Micro...s..t Well, they are here to stay, so we should respect them... or should we? Linux for anyone? may be latest cut Linux called ubuntu?? or better yet, how about PCBSD?

The tests were based on the best the manufacturers had at that time under $500 and no, the ExtremeCCTV did not cut the mustard... We purposly made the test very difficult for everyone (why the hell not and we were ready to call everyones bluff) and even GE KTC model did not even make it to the second round... for obvious reason that you also found out... We should be running another test in the very near future and lets see who actually will be willing to participate... some already told us that they do not want to involve with such independent tests and want to stay with their own specs and test results... chickens... which is just fine with us.. this way, it will be much easier to find a new winner or may be this time around we may have new comer.. that can blow everyone out of the water... I will let you know these results, if there is an interest...

We used WD drives... not really impressed with the performance as they run hotter than Seagate version.. When we found out about the "surveillance version" of the same size drives, I was very hesitent to consider them.. but we run some very hard drive intensive tests in-house and guess what... the commercial version did fail (thanks god that it fail in-house rather than at customer's site), however the surveillance version were just kept on crunching numbers.. these tests were done in a period of month.. After seeing the actual results, it made sense to go with these "surveillance" versions... What we found out however is that not every distributor for hard drives actually tell the truth... the actual pricing for commercial and surveillance hard drives were the same and in some instances (when buying higher quantities) pricing was lower... It was a very simple decision from our part to go with these newer breed drives and it was not based on manufacturers marketing hype, rather very agressive in-house tests.... If you guys want, I can get you these part numbers and you can use them in your own new builds or upgrades of DVRs... Let me know.

We have done quite of few self storage facilities.. Due to the amount of dust and type of environment where these DVRs had to operate, PC based solutions were out of the question... Also, the pricing had to be very cost effective, yet functional without having NASA behind it for support... Another requirement was that it had to be very simple to install and only few bottons to push... basic remote view, if necessary and that is all.. Here are some models that I can recommend that were used for this type of environment... 1. DR8N-250 - CBC 8 channel embedded with 250G drive (upgradeable to higher storage capacity for later) - Pricing should be under $1,000... and with (3) THREE years warranty. 2. ADEDVR009008 - American Dynamics EDVR series, (9) channel with 80G drive (upgradeable to higher storage capacity for later) - Pricing should be around $1,100... and with (3) THREE years warranty. 3. DSR-3709H160 - Sanyo Cheetah series, (9) channel with 160G drive (upgradeable to higher storage capacity for later) - Pricing should be under $1,700... and with (3) THREE years warranty. 4. DX-TL4509U-250 - Mitsubishi, (9) channel with 250G drive (upgradeable to higher storage capacity for later) - Pricing should be under $2,000... and with (5) FIVE years warranty. (Mitsubishi is the only DVR manufacturer that overs (5) FIVE years warranty). All above models, among others that are not mentioned here, can easly upgrade the hard drive storage.. and nothing else is needed.. Such systems are self programmed and will recognise additional hard drives presence, so you always can increase storage without any worries. There are other models that will fall in between or higher in pricing... All from major manufacturers and tremendous amount of support. If you search, you easily can find them available everywhere... and the pricing could be few dollars higher or lower.. the most important parts are that they are easy to setup, easy to install and requires basically no maintenance on updates or upgrads... PLUS, the waranty from 3 years to 5 years... Good luck and let us know what you decided.

Which model? Do you know if they are commercial or surveillance versions?