peterj

Well, finally got things going here - decided to not bother with an auto zoom lens just yet. I was able to convert the Ultra Day/Night camera to wireless sucessfully. I used the transmitter from a cheap 'spy' camera and soldered it to the video out etc. on the box camera and voila! A decent camera with wireless abilities. It is SO much better than the spy camera. If anyone has thought about doing this, it's pretty cool. I have set up a squirrel feeder in the back yard and have the camera on it and recording onto the PC hd via the Hauppage capture card. It's about 5 gigs of space per 8 hr's at 320x240. Haven't got any squirrels yet (must be camera shy), but the kids are excited! I would like to get the video feed so that it's accessible via the web. I have installed Apache (successfully, I believe, since I can get the index page up), but gotten no further than that. If anyone can point to a good tutorial on how to get my video on the web, I would really appreciate it. I've ben googling, but can't seem to find the exact info. Once again, getting out of my depth, but getting there! Cheers. Pete

I went to their web site, where they have sample videos of the is camera, but despite the specs being 'good', this camera is pretty bad! Anybody agrre/disagree? Pete

Thanks a bunch for the info coolie11. I will read the pdf (just printing it out). PeterJ

Still figuring out a few things as I design a home system. If I buy a camera with a zoom lens attached, I notice they have a cable going to back of camera for the auto iris control. So this will give the correct exposure depending on the zoom position right? How is the zoom controlled? Are they typically done manually, or do some lenses have another cable to connect to a control system? Thanks!

Does anyone think this ebay item (160248314729) can be used for controlling the zoom lens? Pretty cheap solution maybe?

Thanks for your reply. I will have to look at the camera & lens to figure out how to hook it up. If the lens is 12v, then it should be a matter of connecting 12v + & - to the right connections to get it to work. I will have to try & find more info myself - I will be googling like crazy over the next few days! As far as the 150 card, I've used it for a few years now and have used it to create compliant mpeg2 files from an older camcorder and vcr, then created svcd's and dvd's sucessfully. If you play around with bitrates, you can get about 2hrs. of vhs quality onto a dvd. The nice thing about the card, is that it creates mgegs on the fly. The quality is as good as the source (which is not great to start with). I had also hooked up a cheap IR board cam to the card and, in conjunction with windows' Task Scheduler' was able to record 8 hours of security video at 320x240 (a 'runtime' command line option for the pvr150). That way the video files were reasonably small. After recording, I ran them in Videoredo (a GREAT mgeg editor). By using hotkeys, I could scan the whole recording in a few minutes to 'watch' for when the motion detector light would come on, thereby observing intruders entering the 'zone'. Typically the paperboy or a racoon). Now I want a better camera!

Hi - sorry if I am stupid, but I am waiting delivery of a box camera and I want to be able to access the auto zoom lens from my Winxp pc (if possible). This is the type of camera I am getting: 15-CB25NV I have a Hauppage 150 pvr card that will take the video out. Is there some software that I install and some h/w (serial input??) that I can use? Or am I going to need to buy a stand alone camera controller that is designed for a PTZ setup? If the latter is the case, could I buy something like this? (ebay # 250255065214) Puhleease help me someone! Pete