Jim Barrett

I can't believe this. I just had a client ask me yesterday about putting a camera in a meat locker. I was doing something else at the time & said "sure, let me finish what I'm doing now & I'll see what's involved". I thought I had a faint memory of a thread here & here you guys are doing my research for me. How wonderful. I thought most of the tube cameras had inert gas in them. Don't know where I got that idea but I thought they flooded them in nitrogen. So, Soundy, is it your experience that a sealed tube camera should work just fine? I've got tube cams hung on buildings here in Wisconsin that have worked just fine for years. I was initially concerned because they were only rated for -14 deg F. & that's not at all unheard of around here. How much worse than that is a meat locker? Couple of years ago a client had an ice dam problem & a camera got frozen solid in a huge hunk of ice. I was afraid the weight of the ice would rip the mount out but it didn't happen & when the ice melted the camera was still working.

Yeah, real neat except it won't do it anymore. Hooked it up on the bench, pointed it out the window & a week later it's still working like a champ. Camera I put in its place is still working just fine. Go figure.

Short, 30' or less, 18/2, RG 59. Haven't benched it yet (this evening for sure) so haven't been able to reproduce the problem yet. I suspect I'll find that lighting change causes it to hang up somehow. Notice there's no black or white in the image? Somebody tell us how these things work nowadays. Do I misremember my camera theory that tells me that (in the olden days at least, maybe vidicon tubes) the chroma & lum signals were processed separately?

Nope, nice altronix power supply w/ other cams on it. 12v DC nice & solid I guess sometimes busted is just busted. Three other cams just like it, sequential (or almost) serial numbers. No problems w/ others.

Yeah, this is a pain. The stupid thing did this once before (only in black & white. No kidding, it was the same kind of picture but with shades of gray only). I unplugged it and it went back to normal. Today I went out, isolated it to be sure it was the camera & not what it was connected to, unplugged it for 30 sec & plugged it back in- back to normal. The client had an extra one so I put it in & brought the suspect one back. I'll set it up & see if I can cause it to fail (it was mounted inside a store so temp extreme shouldn't have been that extreme). Actually, I suspect it's busted. But, still under warranty so I'll just send it back. Weird though, eh?

Perhaps somebody can give me some advice..I'm an E.T. not an electrician but I know this is wrong. Had a location where an older DIY camera/DVR system went belly up. It was failing for quite a while & since it was a cheap POS I declined to service it. After it died an unexplained and unlamented death I was asked to replace the system. Within about a week I got a call that the DVR was locked up and unresponsive. I was kind of busy so I went out, turned it off and when it came back up everything was working. I shrugged my shoulders & told 'em to let me know if it happened again. About a week and a half later, same problem. Just to cover my bases I stuck a meter on the AC power line and to my consternation the AC voltage wavered between 104 volts and about 108 volts, across hot and neutral. This was a three prong grounded outlet so I checked and found the 104-108 volts from hot to ground, but about 5-8 volts between ground and neutral. Not right, I said to myself. I looked around the area and found three different kinds of outlets in the same room. The original (1920-30's?) outlets were non-polarized, two prong outlets, one to a plate, nice solid 115V. The second kind were new surface mount, conduit on the wall, three prong grounded outlets (computers plugged into these), nice, steady 115V w/ no surprises between neutral and ground. The others were like the one I was using, existing retrofit, in the wall, as if someone took the old outlets off & slapped on a 3-prong grounded outlet & attached it to the existing box. I called in the guy responsible for the building maintenance, explained my problem to him & told him he needed to get an electrician out to take care of this neutral - ground problem & that I was concerned for the long term life of the new equipment to say nothing of the rest of the electrical system. I then stuck a relatively robust surge protector on the line , plugged my equipment in & left. I documented my concerns in writing to both the users & the maint. guy. Well, two months have gone by with no word so I stopped by to check up on them. No more problems with my equipment but nobody did anything about the AC either. How concerned would you guys be? This strikes me as a situation that's not right and could be potentially dangerous but since I've documented my concerns to the appropriate people I kinda feel I've done my part. Any thoughts about this &/or if I need to deal with it further? I told them that damage to the DVR might not be covered by warranty if the MFG thinks it was surge damage or something like that. My quotes & proposals always state that AC power is the customer's responsibility but I'm uncomfortable with this.

Sure, see my previous post but instead of across the floor I'd run it up and around a door frame & secure it w/ duct tape. That way it's unlikely that anyone would trip on it but every time they walk through the doorway they have to look at it. Best if it's the entry to the boss's office. I often use the annoyance factor to get people to comply with the technology I install.

No Problem, notice I was laughing. Is that a form of "finder's keepers"? You found this problem & now it's yours! I suspect the best of us are kinda like that...we live for the puzzles and this one's mine You know, I thought about going over there with an extension cord and some duct tape and running the cord over to an outlet w/ a computer plugged into it & taping it down. When they wanted to plug something else in they'd have to unplug the cord & the video system would go down. Probably at that point the situation would be irritating enough to cause them to do something. If the equipment malfunctions again that is exactly what I'm going to do. Bet my problem goes away then! But you've got a point there about my unease. After a while in the business you develop instincts (if you don't you're probably in the wrong business) that should be listened to. My gut says this problem is probably bad for the equipment in the long run but that the building has probably been like this for 25-30 years. But bottom line is there are several volts of potential running around there someplace, with 15-20 amps of possible current & I'm not interested in getting into a conflict with it. Several years ago I was working for the local school system and found (the hard way) a suspended ceiling grid with 70 volts AC on it. You can imagine the process involved in tracing the problem to an emergency alert receiver (portable plug in radio thing) with one side of the AC line on the chassis. The radio was sitting on top of the PA console (which had 70v AC on it). The console was tied to a conduit which ran up into the ceiling, contacting the ceiling grid on the way. Turned out that the school system had several hundred of these radios and about 75% of them had this ground fault. Turned out that the electricians knew that some places were floating hot but were'nt interested enough to find out why. The problem was dumped on me and I eventually threw away all of those receivers & replaced them. If memory serves me correct I traced the problem to some dried out caps in the power supply. Expensive fix but that was probably 20 years ago & the "new" stuff is still working like a champ. Thanks for the input every body!

Come on guys, cut me some slack here. Do you guys track down all the outlets in a building ckt before you plug equipment into it? Once you've gone back to the breaker do you measure the load? How do you do that without opening the breaker panel? If you're not an electrician are you comfortable doing that? I'm a one man shop here in Milwaukee (and yes, there are fewer foundries than there used to be but I used to service radio & video in some of them) and being old and decrepit I keep the jobs I take down to a size I can handle. Most of my customers/clients would balk at the thought of having to pay someone to put in an isolated dedicated ground ckt. If you check other discussion groups you will find an endless number of opinions about dedicated, isolated grounding issues. The buildings I work in are almost always old (I seem to specialize in ugly building installs) and the power systems are almost always various degrees of upgrade. Ordinarily I specify that AC power is the customer's responsibility and don't get involved unless there is a problem. In this specific case the building is probably over 80 years old and as I said earlier there are a variety of outlet styles. The fact that there are surface mounted outlets for their computers indicates that the owners are of aware of the lousy power circumstances. My best solution is to get them to provide this system with the same kind of power they put in for their computers & I'll keep after the maint. guy to do just that, telling him and the users that they are likely shortening the life and or endangering the operation of thier video system unless they do. I was just wondering if you guys thought maybe the building was in danger of burning down? I don't think this is anything new for this building but it's not right & if it were mine I'd see to it that it was right. I love these discussions. Being one guy, it helps to get input from other informed minds. On any given day there's probably a couple thousand years of combined experience here. I'm tempted to say something about the differences between the ideal world and the real world but that would presume my world is your world and I would'nt dare do that!

I agree with Scorpion about the surge protectors. Always use them, practice safe power techniques. The previous system in this instance had a surge protector on it and I just reused it. When the problem surfaced I didn't know where things were going so I stuck in the protector I usually use so I could eliminate that as a concern. However, I'm kinda confused because as I indicated and others have pointed out, I have a lousy ground. When I walked away I told myself that without a decent ground I had my doubts about the effectiveness of the surge protector. But, 6 weeks later the problem has not returned. "The observed phenomena requires no explanation, it simply exists." Over the years I've noticed a lot of Mfgs putting MOVs right in the equipment. When I worked in the Sat TV business several years ago all our stuff had them built in. Until they were gone. I used to teach my techs that if they found an unexplained dark brown smell inside a piece of equipment they should look for the bare leads where the MOV used to be. Used to tell the customers that they had released the magic smoke & now they had to send it in for more. But, at one time or another I've had to deal with just about everything from direct strikes (hardly anything ever survives & I wouldn't trust what does for mission critical use) to repeated inductive surges where the lights in the neighborhood dim when the foundry fires up. You pays your money and takes your chances.

No, not really my problem to fix, I don't think. It's pretty obvious there is a problem & it's not of my doing. I'm just wondering if the building is in danger of burning down or something. I'm not an electrician & don't really want to be one.

Is the line on the LCD flipping or drifting? Kinda sounds to me like a ground loop problem if it's drifting. If it's flipping probably some sort of sync interference I should think. Most of these LCDs have a power converter kinda thing (highly technical term, I know) don't they? I guess I'd uncouple the cable shield of the video signal at the LCD and see if the problem clears. If it did I think that would indicate a ground loop. Presuming we're talking a coax connection?

G'day folks, I'm installing a dome camera on an outside wall and I need for it to see closer along the wall then the housing shroud allows. Essentially I need to get a viewing angle that's closer to 90 deg. I've coped with this problem before by shimming the off side screws and then caulking the space made by mounting at an angle but this time I need quite a bit of angle. Anybody got any gadgets or neat solutions?

Probably just for something to do, probably just to show the adults that they weren't completely in charge. It's the nature of human beings to manipulate their environment and that was our environment. Undisciplined curiosity. It was how we learned problem solving and teamwork. Actually, if we had run across such a thing back then (I'm talking kids maybe 12-15 and for me that was a loong time ago) we would have either stolen the camera and used it for our own purposes or removed it from the wall, dis-assembled it into the smallest pieces we were capable of (not break it, just take it apart) and left it someplace where the owner would be sure to find it. I've been a tech for many years and spent a lot of time working in and around schools and offices. I've given up trying to figure out why people (not just kids) do what they do to the equipment I fix. I've seen situations where a camera was vandalized over and over again until we cut a hole in the brick wall to recess the entire camera and put it behind Lexan with steel frames and security screws but the plastic Aiphone intercom station six feet away was never touched. I remember an office where I was doing door controls because the staff was concerned about dangerous/unpleasant visitors. When called back cause there was something wrong with the alert at a back door I found a pile of rocks just outside the door next to a pile of cigarett butts. Even found a few rocks inside the hallway. Staff people had disabled the door alert so the door could be propped open. I guess I don't even bother to ask why anymore, I just use 30 years worth of experience to eliminate the most common possiblities and when someone comes up with something I haven't seen tried before I just rub my hands together & try to figure out how to out wit them. If it was easy anybody could do it.

Nope no eaves, 3 story building. Looks like I can reposition the cables fairly easily but I'll have to keep the machine shop solution in mind for next time. I can probably have 2 or 3 made up for not much more than 1. I actually thought of the PVC solution. It dawned on me that I could use a 4" 22.5 deg elbow or a couple of flat caps on a short piece of pipe cut as described. However, the point is to keep the low profile w/ nothing to grab on to. These kids used to be me & my buddies (same neigborhood, many years ago) & believe me, during a long hot summer we would have expended considerable effort figuring out how to blind that puppy or get it off the wall. Thanks for your help everyone.

Yeah, I suppose a wider lens might let me move the mount over a bit but this one is made w/ a 4-9 vari-focal. The more I deal with it the less it seems worth it. I've never used this particular camera before and while it has some nice points I think this application requires something else. I'll have to look at what's involved in pulling the wires back through the wall and drilling another hole. Probably 20 min worth of work and a nicer install. I'll have to take a look at those Bosch cams. At first blush. just looking at price, etc, they look pretty nice. Do they work well?

Sorry no pictures att. Absolutely the bracket problem kind of defeats my purpose. The kids in this neighborhood chin themselves on a standard shoebox mount until it comes off the wall. I'm replacing trashed cameras and if I do it right about the worst they can do is spray paint the dome & with a good coat of rain-x it usually washes off or at most I replace the dome. Basically a small dome camera on a wall needs to look straight along and down the wall and maybe a bit inwards for the slightly recessed door. I can manipulate the camera itself to see what I want but when I put the dome on it sees the rim of the cover ring. This is a fairly low end camera that I'm trying out to see how it works and it's just lousy design. The XYZ mount doesn't sit high enough in the housing. I've run into this problem before though. Typically where the mounting wall sticks out farther than the wall the door is on. If one owned a band saw one could cut a disc with a hole saw and then slice the disc at an angle and there you go you'd have a disc with one rim thicker than the other, at the angle you need. I don't own a band saw and that process sounds dangerous to me. I was hoping somebody had solved this problem already. Or maybe I'm the only one out here trying to make cameras see around corners.

Yeah, vandal resistant 'cause it's in an exposed position in a pretty rough neighborhood. I thought of one of those brackets, I think I've even got a couple laying around but I really need the low profile of being mounted on the wall. If I get the tilt I need I'll probably be looking at 3/4" or more gap on one side. Two tapered discs 1/2" thick ea that would rotate & ride on each other to create a slanted slab would be perfect. Saw something like that to level flower pots one time but I don't know what that one was made of or where to find it.

The neat thing about ADI is that if you ask 3 people for a price you might get 3 different answers. I have found their counter people to be amazingly unhelpful for the most part. I guess I gotta say that it's one of those places where, if you gotta ask questions you're in the wrong place. On the other hand, they have a pretty good selection and a lot of it's in stock. Order online & it's pretty much a done deal. I'm in the midwest & use SES. They have their good points & bad points but they work pretty hard to make things right.

So, don't most compression formats register & record the initial image & then achive compression by recrding only when that image changes? I thought I understood that that was the way it worked (correct me if I'm wrong). If that is the case it seems the memory involved in recording that blank picture would be pretty small

Your video blanking is probably caused by worn slip rings. The rings that transfer video from the camera to the cable wear out & that is a typical symptom. I've seen good quality cameras develop this problem in a short amount of time if PTZ is constant or nearly constant. Pelco will rebuild them for you (I don't know about other Mfg's) but I'm thinking it ain't cheap.

What does that do to your retention time? When you leave empty ports on a DVR/Multiplexer don't most of them record the blank channel? If you provide four inputs of the same video don't you record the same image 4 times? I had one a while back (16 chan Mux/DVR, 12 cams) that had an EZ record function (essentially DVR for Dummies) that sensed empty ports and recorded only those w/ a signal. If you manually set the device up there appeared to be no way to turn off the unused ports. I no longer ask why they do silly things, I just accept it and try to figure out how to make it work for me. I stopped at the local clearance store & bought a cheap $29.99 300 line camera & I've got a 400 line camera & I'll find a couple of higher resolution cams & make a recording, all the same scene, w/ people in it & everything and then record it to DVD in quad. Then when people ask how come they have to pay more money for a decent camera I can let them see for themselves that they will get what they pay for. I like to do the work but I don't like doing it multiple times. On the other hand...when they pay enough for it I can put up with a certain amount of foolishness.

Good Day, I'm new to the forum so I ask your forebearance. I've reviewed past postings and not seen my question so here goes. For a variety of reasons I sometimes find myself in need of a basic single channel DVR. I've been using an IDView and while the device works OK when I can finally cajole it into working there always seems to be some glitch that I have to fight. More importantly for the most part their tech support is inadequate. Can anyone recommend a moderately priced single channle DVR? Why is this such a difficult item to find? Thanks for your help

Thanks for your input. I understand the reasoning and do agree that the cost of a 4 channel can be the same as a single, however....there are folks out there that have , say, 3 or 4 cameras on a quad w/ the old non-functioning VCR & simply want a drop in replacement. Or, those customers who, when we started, swore up and down they would never need to record and rejected anything that implied a recorder and now need a recorder. And of course there are those who buy &/or have installed cheap all in-one-units and when the built in recorder dies they want to replace that device only. Absolutely, they don't have the time or money to do it right but they do have the time & money to do it over. In my present application/need I have a residence w/ 4 cameras & a quad. The quad is located in the basement w/ monitor output run upstairs to the family TV. Now they want to record & it would be handy to have the recorder upstairs by the TV. The concept of extending those four camera lines upstairs doesn't bear thinking about and the alternative is replacing the basement equipment & installing an IR/remote control link from upstairs to downstairs. Workable but not an elegant solution. And...some folks, if you put one camera on a quad & they somehow get it into some mode other than "chan 1 full screen" they call and complain that the thing is busted or they can't figure out how to get it back the way it was or "this stuff is a piece of s**t, it don't work right". I don't generally plan systems w/ upsells in mind. I explain the options to the customer and if they aren't reasonable about doing it my way(or some reasonable variation thereof I bid them adieu & let them put their cheap, weird stuff in. Then when it's time to unscrew the inscrutable they find themselves rotating in the wind. That's when I come back & sell them what they should have had in the first place. When they comment that it was an expensive lesson I simply agree with them and turn back to my work. At least my assistant (who is also my son), has gotten me out of the practice of telling the customer that they know so little about the process that they aren't qualified to have an opinion. Now I mostly just shake my head and say "hmmmmm". If the customer was always right they wouldn't need us but I guess it's not really polite to tell them that all the opinions in the world won't get the stuff hooked up properly.