tesc_cctvpro

Can these cameras upload files to an ftp server?

If someone were to ask why you haven chosen wireless as opposed to fibre, or UTP, what would your response be? Also since a varifocal camera costs 2 times what a fixed focal length would - why have you chosen these 5-60mm lenses? What is the distance between each camera? and what will be the height of the camera? Obviously as always there is much more to such a project than what camera , cable topology will be used? But i was just interested in these with this particular project?

I didn't actually use a calculator. If I record one hour of video footage in my store room, it would take me 1 hour to review the footage ----If I fast forward, or check only motion detection, I will be missing valuable events, Now if I switch over to watch the footage of my cashier, I will need another hour. The example is given, observing footage of 1 camera at a time. Analysing multiple cameras at once, in terms of both the human attention span and the biology of human vision, is no better than spot checking ....... Hope That Helps

imo, not worth the investment. Go to your local electronic store get a wireless PIR beam or two and prestic them around the vehicle. after the first activation move the positions - cost you less than R400 and your car won't be broken into again. Much better solution than having the car broken into, giving poor images to police,of a plate that has a high probability of being fake, and all of this after the fact.

Hi, The first question would be why you are watching these animals. Is it for recreation, entertainment viewing - or does viewing the animals have a bearing on their safety ? The answer to the question could determine one of two totally divergent solutions.

Being South African myself i can tell you that the expense you will incur to capture, reference and compare the plates, will be one lot of wasted expenditure. 90% of vehicles used to committ crime in South Africa are fitted with false plates, and your entire approach is a retro-active one - which is not desirable. We don't want to be sending pictures of number plates to police after an armed home invasion has left a family dead. May I ask, have you profiled you community - do you know what types of incidents are being committed, where the hot spots are, etc. By analysing the major time of incidents for instance you will be able to determine if these incidents are originating from inside or outside the community. Wether they are perpertrated by vehicle or by foot? In any event I do have a very good system for you in terms of License Plate Recognition and processing - but I think your community can do more effective things than what is being planned. Things like educating the community to identify scouts, and giving them a solution to report such incidents - either via sms or other online forum ,with someone plotting and investigating the reports. Identifying scouts - which is the first phase of crime, is a far better early warning system than hoping criminals are driving around with the same plates they last used to committ a crime with. The observation, scoping, scouting activity is usually conducted by people on foot - this is just aspect of what you need to implement, but it is a very important one. CCTV cameras in isolation won't do much for your community.

Sounds like you will be running cable outdoor, and having to bury some of it --- you can't just use a standard category 5/6 cable for that, and the distances might exceed the limits for coaxial, once you factor in the cost of outdoor cable and surge protection, you might end up finding fibre optic more cost effective. Agree that this is not something you should just tackle off the cuff - the questions you are asking suggest that this is being approached from a technical wireman aspect, and leaves me wondering what attention, skills are available to address the actual physical security or other operational objectives of the system. I would suggest you get a security consultant to compile an operational requirement for your system, this would address Physical Security, Safety, and Loss Control issues which I seriously doubt an IT professional would possess. No matter how well the system is cabled or installed, if it wasn't designed to address Security, Safety and Loss Control risks, it will be worthless and wasteful in any event. Once the operational requirements are determined, the consultant and building maintenance personnel can combine to develop the technical specifications of the system, including transmission media, topology, etc. It would be unprofessional to pre-empt IP or even CCTV as a solution just because one is an IT professional , rather allow the technical specification sheet to determine the eventual solution. If, which is likely from the little information you have give, the solution is an IP one, then your job would be to deploy it according to the specifications. Unfortunately 80% of cctv systems are ineffective, because we are led to believe that the camera and cable is more important to our security, safety and loss control efforts than the skills of actual Physical Security, Health and Safety and Loss Control proferssionals. Without wanting to seem antagonistic, for the sake of your facility, it should not be forgotten that the objective of the system is Physical security, or health and safety, or Loss Control - none of which can be regarded as the field of expertise in which IT professionals are schooled.

One problem with the defined objective is this. If you are away for one hour, and you have 4 cameras - you would need to review 4 hours of video footage for every hour you are away. Sure you could spot check, or fast forward - but chances are you would only detect 1 in 10 instances of the behaviour you are looking for. The major problem with that, is for every instance you detect and address, you are publicising to your staff, that the other 9 incidents went undetected. Might they be afraid of a system that has a 10% chance of catching them out.

Since you have already defined the technical specifications of the cameras you will be using, I would be interested to know wether you have defined the operational requirements of the system. How do you plan to deploy the cameras to control vendor theft, order filing deviations, inventory flow control, etc?

First thing is to post the make and model of the dvr you have. Various DVR's can do various things - some have loop out function, some use multiple monitors out, and in some cases specific cameras can be directed to a second spot out monitor but we can't know what your dvr can do without the make and model.

It would be very hard for anybody to respond to this - you would need to provide a site schematic with camera locations and/ or google earth co-ordinates. Along with this you would need to provide an operational requirement analysis. The analysis would need to include where the system would be monitored from, when it would be monitored, who would monitor it, and how they would respond to the specific issues listed in the operational requirements. The operational requirements analysis and schematics would give us the information needed to develop the technical specifications of the system, which would include cable types and topologies, camera format, transmission media, etc, etc. attempting a cctv install without this process is just a waste of time and money, and would result in yet another CCTV system that doesn't do anything for anybody!

I would start with formulating your objective a little better: (1) What is the target you will be observing. (What are you protecting the cars from? - is a person?) (2) What is it that you would stop the target from achieving ( Tampering, breaking windows, stealing?) You need to define this before you can start working out a solution. So it's a standard request that you have license plate capture at the entrance - i don't think you are considering license plate recognition, as that's a totally different form of intelligence. But whenever faced with this technically challenging request (especially night time capture) we always ask WHY? Why do you want to capture the plates? How will this information protect the cars?

Ordinarily, advice would be to avoid mounting steel camera bracket direct to steel structural component. You could be ok, but could also develop a lot of problems. Rather mount a nonconducting base to the steel and mount the camera to that.

One could recommend so many different NVR's. Ultimately you need to define what you expect from the NVR first, and then you will already have narrowed down the potential candidates. For instance, you will deploy a camera to observe a specific behaviour, event or condition - who will be responsible for observing, how many people will need to observe simultaneously? How will those people know that they need to observe the specific camera at a specific time, will they be observing 24/7, will they be alerted to the condition, how will they be alerted? What will the observer need to do once becoming aware of the event/behaviour/condition? Is the target being observed stationary, or moving at speed? What factors will determine a successful response to the observation ....etc. It is only by compiling a detailed operational requirement, with specialized skills - that you will be in a position to define the technical specification/functions/features required by the NVR. Without this - you run the risk of buying an nvr that someone feels is best for you based on resolution, or other function that impresses them - but you have no guarantee that it will solve your actual problem.

What is the analog source? Is it one device or more than one? If multiple source devices are they of the same brand?

Good News, I have had similar which caused us to really scratch our heads - after everything we tried, everything pointed to the cable.

No, it seems the DVR has not been set to your requirements. Read the manual and learn how to disable tour/cycle/ which is likely set, causing your cameras to scroll through all 16 one at a time. Also just disable the channels that have nothing attached.

Problem with these economy kits is that you are locked into the lense focal length and illumination distance. You have bought Recognition at no more than a few meters, Identification at no more than 1-2m. Basically anything beyond that your system is only good for detection of any person entering your space and then monitoring what they do. The only useful benefit of that is when you or someone else is inside the house and watching the monitor 24/7.

Treat the budget as the end point rather than the start. (1) Hire a professional well reputed security consultant to compile an operational requirement and technical specifications for your store. His mandate should be not to pre-empt the solutions and hardware. (You can afford to mix and integrate cctv and other security devices in this install - perhaps even including business intelligence analytics such as people counting, etc -- it's nice to have the budget) (2) Allow the Technical Specifications document to determine the type and specifciations of the equipment and solutions required. (3) At purchase time - look to providers like Axis and Honeywell, with milestone. (4) my preference would be just PC - you will have more power available for video, any analytics and integration.

One should keep in mind that most consumer grade dvr"s and cameras today are not regulated. This is why the manufacturers insist you use their power supplies. The input tolerance of a 12V device is usually +- 5%.which means that 12.6V is the absolute upper voltage your DVR or camera can tolerate. What happens in the common situation when installers turn the power supply up to maximum to get 12V to a distant camera is that the DVR and many cameras close to the power supply are suddenly subjected to a voltage way over the design tolerance. Expect a shorter life span from your hardware if not outright failure. You need to use multiple power supplies and different gauge power cable to ensure that each camera is powered within it's upper and lower tolerances.

You need to establish where the cable is earthing (if it is an earth and not other induced interference). placing at the dvr or at the camera is a hit and miss affair - find and eliminate the source of the 2nd earth. Test your cable to see what voltage if any is running in the coax shield. If the outside structure is metal, have you mounted the cameras directly to the metal structure? Ground loop isolators won"t help with severe ground loops> Metal camera brackets mounted directly to a grounded metal structure, BNC making contact with some other grounded structure, perhaps a join in the cable making contact with a grounded component, perhaps cable damage in the conduit. Up to 500ft coaxial will give you twice the signal level at the dvr than passive UTP. Mostly the viewer doesn't even know that he's missing 40% of the image content. Since the distortion occurrs without the three cameras powered, there has to be voltage in the shield of one or more cameras connected to your DVR.

Is it 75 or 50 ohm termination? I have used the same cable over more than 100m on a 32 camera system, in combination with fibre optic run of 4km. Never a moments trouble.

Check power supply? is it supplying enough power, is it stable , clean power?

Not quite understanding the terminology - Base. You have one camera on the cable that doesn't work...have you connected another complete camera to the same cable? I assume so and it doesn't work either. I assume you are getting 24V at the cable end without the camera connected. Connect the camera to the cable and test the voltage -- likely less than 1V. Replace the cable.

These little devices can cause unending problems _ especially if installed in awkward to reach or high locations. We stopped using them ages ago - opting rather for the 4 or 8 channel type, strategically located in camera blocks, and running coaxial drop cables from the 4 channel distribution unit to the camera. We also are not fond of power over twisted pair. For your short runs though, it's probably the only solution. I Have used every sort of balun, $1 and $2 oem devices from china and rarely had a problem with any of them, not sure if i would put that much thought into selecting the brand as a result.