3RDIGLBL

There is one cable to each location.

Got a customer with a GV 1240 (8 Channel) who is maxed out with analog cameras. He's talking about putting an IP Camera on there and I told him he's maxed out.......he had a valid question and I'm asking here cause I'm really not possitive of the answer.......The IP camera is not a physically connected analog camera so really it's a function of the software at that point as to whether it will allow adding a 9th camera being the IP camera. Am I right with the card being maxed or can I actually add additional cameras over the 8 already there via IP?

Thanks.... So this guard station most likely need more than one monitor for the 8 PTZ's. So if they only have to contend with 8 PTZ's then 4 PTZ's on one monitor and the other 4 on another monitor. Would this entail a two spot monitor DVR? Assuming that each spot monitor can be assigned each 4 cameras. So remotely he would have a PTZ controller, and two monitors. Am I missing something in the guard room that I should be thinking about besides these elements? Customer states that he doesn't really have a budget for this but does have a wish list of features. Still contemplating which path to go, analog or ip cameras. I'm thinking this whole process may be better served over IP. Remote over UVNC is what I typically use but I don't get video to come through the remote connection. I assume if the guard has to search through video on the DVR that he would have to leave his station and go to the DVR location?

Thanks for all the links and info. I contacted Versitron the other day and they had some questions I had to get answers for. They asked if the fiber was multi-mode or single-mode fiber and I wasn't sure. The rep I spoke to said it is different equipment for each type and prices are different as well. I am waiting for an answer from the customer. There is another question the customer was asking. He asked if there was a way to place the PC based DVR in one building and control it from another. He is basically wondering if we can hook up a keyboard, mouse and the PTZ controller in a different location than the DVR. The separate location is connected via fiber to where the DVR is located. They will have a security guard posted there watching the cameras.

Seriously?? Oh man. I already sent an email to the customer telling him the good news. Didn't we used to have a Geovision contact on here? I forget his name, maybe he can provide us with an update on this.

Is that 1500 U.S. dollars? Does that $1500 include the DVR because if so you've already gone over budget without even looking at cameras. Even if you just add 10 cameras and no DVR by the time you figure cost of cable, connectors, power supplies, time etc.....I wouldn't expect much from the way of quality with a budget in that range. I guess what I am saying is look around for no name import budget package deals. Your bound to find something in the $2k - $2500 range but $1500 good luck. Sorry I could not be of more help, I don't even think you could get that system from one of those Swann brands box store package deals. You need to re-evaluate what it is you really want to get out of this system and re-adjust your budget. If you're stuck with the budget then go with a smaller upgrade and position your cameras just in those very important spots. Cheers

Ya no idea who put the idea in this guys head that he should wire the place with fiber. He states the longest run would be about 1000' but he definitely wants 8 PTZ cameras. So if I go IP, I do agree that it may be more common to see this standard pushed through fiber than trying to get analog over that. I figure if this guy can afford the fiber than we might as well get him some good PTZ cameras. What are some good IP PTZ cameras? Then the other question is finding the equipment to get control and video over fiber. I doubt he will want to re-wire the place but I could entertain that idea with him. Before I get to that level I need some king of idea of what is needed to get it done over fiber and the costs associated with that. Before I tell him I'll make sure we have an ambulance on standby Thanks for the reply and hopefully I can keep the thread going with ideas because I'm really not sure about this one. The ideas will definitely help me to figure this one out.

Back on this topic. Was below zero here last night and that reminded me of this thread I need a budget bullet camera that will work in the extreme cold listed here. I just tried a Messoa camera out with a 540TVL and I was not impressed at all. The saturation was so over driven and and image quality was not great at all. Nice little cam and the IR worked well but that was it. I'm back to trying to find an extreme type camera on a budget. What I'm thinking my only choice is that is rated for this type of extreme stuff is the WZ line like the WZ14-N4-0 which appears to be inexpensive. My only concern is the 380TVL which is lower than what I like to be at. I've used the WZ18 with great success and I thought the picture quality was great so I was thinking the WZ14 but looking at the specs it is not in the same caliber at all. I'm so nervous when it comes to choosing a bullet cam for outside around here. I always use heated enclosures so using bullet cams is a whole new thing and no spec I find says it operates into the negatives digits and especially on a budget other than the WZ14. I realize people have had good luck with them until a power loss when it drops to -40. Are there any budget bullets in the $100 range that people have tried? Looks like this WZ14 is in the price range so right now that is my only choice.

Sweet! Thanks JD I'll look into the supported cameras.

Ya. I called the supplier where i get them and they stated there is no adjustment. If I could get it up to 1024x768 it would be a great improvement. Heck I've installed about 4 different kinds of standalones and none have had selectable VGA resolutions. Interesting to know that there are some out there. It would make the LCD monitors more tolerable. Was at a customer today and brought along my Acer to hook up to their DVR (they didn't want a monitor) and I had to explain that the quality was crappy due to the monitor. I MEAN IT REALLY LOOKS AWEFUL.

I just got a 4:3 ACER monitor for a DVR I picked up. Plugged in the cameras and picture was horrible....thought I had bad cameras or a crappy DVR....I then took the same DVR and plugged in my desktop CRT monitor and picture was great no fuzzyness or pixelation at all. My whole thing with LCD's is if the output to the LCD is not the native LCD resolution then the picture will be horrible. Works that way on laptops. CRTs can adjust for this so is the reason why the CRT picture was good. The output on my DVR is 640x480 and the native resolution on the Acer I believe is 1280x1024. Would be great if I could change the DVR output to match but since it is a standalone I am stuck with the resolution provided. Since the prices for these LCD's are cheaper than a Color CRT and they consume much less power I just tell my customers that this picture is normal and if they plan to sit there and watch the video regularly that they may want to go with a CRT. No one has taken a CRT yet... Anyone have any successful experience here. From what I been reading this is what I understand the differences to be.

Thanks griffonsystems, I'll check that first if the customers ever gets back to me about trying to address the issue. This was a proactive observation on my end as I happened to log in and see that but I guess if the customer don't care about fixing it then that isn't my problem I tried..........lol

You may remember this install I did this past summer where I used a couple Panasonic CP-484 camera along with a couple indoor ARM Domes... I have one of the CP-484's which seemed to have darkened on me. Not sure what happened and the only change now to when I initially installed then is the snow! I though the picture settings were the same on both cameras but you will see the other outside CP-484 cam looks wonderful. Not sure what could cause the darkened picture. I don't check the cams often and I just happened to check it out this morning because we had a cold night up here and I saw this darkened camera. Now it could be that the heater isn't working in the housing but the customer states it has been like that for a little but they thought nothing of it.................Is it bad, is it the snow, is it a bad setting? It is mounted in a difficult spot so it would be tough to get up in this location with the snow and ice up on the roof. Not a pleasant idea to carry a ladder around on a slopped snowy roof Thoughts on this? Thanks

Heck I'll take a stab and be the first to respond. I would change the front door cam location so you have a better chance of getting a facial shot. Maybe in the corner right near your door. How high will your surrounding cameras be? Because you have no fences, and blind spots as you mention that leaves them as clear targets to be taken down by determined thief that could come from the unwatched side. What are the distances being watched? Your camera watching the front of the house appears to have a lot of ground to cover and you may be unhappy with clarity of recorded video due to the coverage area. You mention it is dark but is it completely dark at night or are there street lights? Maybe install motion sensing flood lights to help your cameras out. Some thoughts without seeing the place. At least you appear familiar with the importance of choke points Some folks just want to capture it all without thinking that they may not have a clear enough image to make out what it is they want to see.

Great to get started guide dcam. Thanks for sharing.

I messed with my customers GV system last night for about an hour trying to find the ideal motion detection settings for his two Extreme WZ series cameras. Since these cameras are in a garage environment and they are in a completely dark spot there is a lot of dust flying around. The GV system picks up this dust activity as motion from time to time so through the night there is a lot of nothing recorded. So I tried reducing the sensitivity down to 5 from 9.5 and I raised the noise tolerance to 2. Doing this caused it to not even pick me up when I walked into the dark room. I disabled the noise tolerance and left the sensitivity at 5 but still had the same issue of it not even picking me up. I ended up putting the sensitvity back to 9.5 where it was and it at least picks me up now as well as all the dust flying around. I figured out that I am bit confused by the whole sensitivity and noise tolerance settings. Has any one had success with using the motion detection reliably? My next step is to just install motion detectors in these two rooms and tie that into the DVR so it will only record when there is activity in the room. Has anyone done this with a GV system. Not sure if the customer will go for this but I'm thinking he might if I sell it the right way to him. Thanks.

When launching the DMMultiview there is a dropdown for the HOST but I can only put one host in there. Is there a way of putting multiple hosts and save the passwords for those hosts? I have many customers who allow me access to their installs but keeping a cheatsheet of the host name, username and password for each customer on me is not very convenient. Even my low cost DVR software allows me to have multiple hosts along with saving the login information for each. Thanks

Thanks dcam. I'll just accept the short coming of this feature and use the work around as you suggested. Thanks for your insight and suggestions.

Thanks. That all works very strange in GV. It's all clear as mud I added the sites under the Add HOSTS option and I created a group called customers. I filled in the information as requested and as long as I have already logged into one system the other systems will be available to choose from. The problem I have is when going into the program for the first time. The initial Login Screen. The first selection is Default:xxxx.dipmap.com and then you have to enter the User Name and Password. I now also see the customers I added in the drop down menu. Now here is what's happening. If I select a customer from the drop down menu it asks for the Username and Password still.....but I had already entered it when I created a new host. Why is it in the drop down if I can't use the new host information from the initial login screen?!? SO anyhow I select the customer and I enter the Username and Password, for giggles, and I get back a wrong User and Password error......so I try it again this time I do not enter any username and password and now DMMultiview is stuck saying CONNECT TO SERVER......no error no nothing as I'm writing this it has been sitting at the same CONNECT TO SERVER for almost 5 minutes. I need to CTRL-ALT-DEL to close it out. Why in gods name did they have to create this like this....I already don't want to build another GV system. They should have had a CREATE NEW HOST on the Login Screen so one could have a selection of which host to connect to at the onset. The more I use this interface the more I become flustered with it. I think I'm going to give NUUO a shot. The heck with this old fashioned cluegy interface which my customers can't seem to figure out either. I'm always getting calls of how to get through it and it's just frustrating. In the words of our new president to be....."IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE"

Wow thanks for the detailed response and I will hang on to this thread. I, however, was not looking for having multiple sites on one screen but to have the option of selecting a site from the HOST drop down on the DMMultiview. Here is an example. I have two customers each with their own xxx.dipmap.com address and each has their own user and password of course. If I want to go into customer A's system I have to remember the site address, the user name and password of the top of my head or look it up in some file someplace and then I go to EDIT enter the HOST info in there and then login with the USER and PASS. Customer B's system would be the same thing. Would be great if the HOST drop down box would have the different site address saved so I would not have to remember each of my customer sites by heart. I have embedded DVR's where I can add a new HOST along with the user and password and save them. If I have 5 customers then I can select any of the 5 without having to remember what the site, user and pass was for each. I've had a couple instances where a customer called me while I was on the road and I has to log in. It was nice because it was one of the embedded systems and all there information was saved within the application. Hopefully I cleared the muddy water a bit. I sometimes have difficulty explaining myself or I over explain Thanks

**bump** I assume there is no way to have multiple hosts in DMMultiview? How does an individual with multiple locations save each location within multiview without using the control center software? Is this an oversight in the software or am I missing something? Thanks

They also have it here. http://www.gsscctv.com/

OK, I thought the 1480 card (ie combo cards) were hybrid cards? I know they have a selection (trying to remember the last one I built) to select an IP camera to use along with analog cameras. I then see GV Hybrid cards on there website? I think I am a little confused about which cards are what. I told a customer with the 1480 card he could have a mix of his analog cameras and add an IP camera later to the DVR if he wished. Did I mis-understand the scalability of the combo cards into the IP space? I think I read that an ip camera could be added later but maybe only the 1.3MP Geovision IP Cameras that they have available??? SO much info but I can't seem to find a clear answer on Geovisions website. Thanks.

**edit** Looks like this is the same thing as the Rapport 337 which I have seen some mention of in here. The difference appears to be that the PDF I found for the Ideal version states NEW Video Level and Sync test and a number of other additional features which makes me think it may be a good replacement for the CM2 because of the additional features it has although the price may break the deal for some. Does this work, for risk of my link being deleted but I would like for others to see what I am speaking of... www (dot) idealindustries (dot) com/media/pdfs/products/brochures/p-2755_securitest_brochure.pdf ------------------------------------------------------ New here but have trolling around for sometime. I am a partner in a small startup CCTV business for about 1.5 yrs now. This is a great forum and I find myself getting lost in the endless amounts of information generated. We have been using a portable 2.5" Test Monitor to focus our cameras but have found, as it states in this forum in many places, that it is not ideal. We always find it needs a bit more when we see the actual view on a larger display. Big waste of time having to go back up that ladder. I've been looking into the Camera Master II but see that has been around for sometime so there has to be something newer out there. I've come across the SecuriTEST CCTV Tester that includes PTZ control, a small display, a DMM and now has IRE Video Level and Sync tests. Sort of a many tools in one solution. I would provide a link to the PDF but I am new here and can't attach links yet. But it is the IDEAL SecuriTEST CCTV/Security Tester. Wondering if anyone has any experience with it and if it is better than the highly acclaimed Camera Master II I keep reading about? This retails for much more around the $700 range +/- a few bucks depending where you find it. Thanks

How well do these work with focusing? I'm trying to justify the expense. Don't really see the need for the PTZ control as I have economy controller that I use. I can easily make PTZ adjustments at the DVR. I really want to use one of these for focus assistance instead of a small 3" LCD display. Maybe the camera master II would be a better test tool?