scottj

Tune the "Recording quality" slider to 3 (or 2, as it mackes very little quality difference) and you should get an additional 7-8 days. scottj

Use bridal rings when you run the wires, especially when pulling cable across a drop ceiling with all those sharp edges in the ceiling grid. Have you checked the power supply at the location?

Build your own and cut 50% or greater off the price. Charge your time back to your company and you come out a winner. 1 yr warranty is plenty on any technology, as it generally becomes obsolete before it fails and you wind up upgrading to something newer if it does. scottj

too expensive. I could have that made in China for one sixteenth the price. Although it may not power on.... scottj

i have answers to all of the above questions (most of them are good one too..haha). 4.4TB goes quickly, especially if you are looking to store for any length of time. centerV2 does come with Geo for free (up to 5 Servers/locations), you have to purchase the full version to gainn capacity up to 800 cameras, pr 50 subscribers at a time. I can provide you a price in private email later. Ther are many options for equipent in order to do a project of this nature, none of them to be mistakenly considered "cheap" by any means.

It is coming out shortly, another version......(sigh) No dongle, new GUI, and a hardware change is what you can expect. The newest edition to their product line is the "combo" board. (4) models to choose from: GV1480 (480FPS/DSP/16 Ch. Audio combined) Will replace GV-1000 GV1240-8 Channel (240FPS/DSP/8 Ch. Audio combined) GV1240-16 Channel (240FPS/DSP/16 Ch. Audio combined) Will replace GV-900 GV1120 16 Channel (120FPS/DSP/16 Ch. Audio combined) Will only work with version 7.2 (FYI) Just letting those of you who live and die by Geo know before you purchase a bunch of boards for future projects, you may wish to wait a few weeks if you can. scottj

haha..crazy method they use isn't it. scottj P.S. Version 8.6 has been released since this last post.

Do you need 7.0? I can send you a link tomorrow and you can download it from me. scottj

unless it is a very large client (Boeing, Government, Savvis, etc..) they most likely will not want to pay for offsite video storage, especially when storing data longterm. There is a company in the northeast US that offers storage. Remote Vault or something like that. Many companies have attempted to store longterm video and have failed due to high costs and low demand for the service. Well, the demand is there, but the willingness to pay for it is not. In your particular situation, you could use CenterV2 and have your company store the video in your facility on the CenterV2 Server, however, the liability factor for storing a customers video data may not be worth the headache for the fees that you could justify for offering the service. CenterV2 works fairly well, especially if you have customers who have multiple sites and wish to use it as a means to eliminate multiple guard tours of facilities. We have a few customers who use it and they were able to justify the expense for a very nice high end security room with video servers since the CenterV2 allowed them to eliminate 4 employees salaries. scottj[/url]

I will have the release date in the next few days. From what I have been told, v 7.2 will work with all V3 boards that have the S1 chip, or the later model boards that shipped with a dongle. scottj

Wildcard, Making this chart is difficult, because each type and brand of camera may utilize a different KB/s rate in which to achieve a "clear" picture. It also is going to depend primarily on how much movement is within the camera viewing region, thus the more movement, the more KB/s required for that camera channel to process clean video. One thing to note with the Geo software, is that they do not dynamically manage bandwidth (throttle) for each camera channel when broadcasting remotely over TCP/IP. One thing we used to notice with using the WebCam feature is that it would "freeze/lockup" when trying to stream 16 channels over WAN (DSL) with the bandwidth control functions disabled. Without creating a setting of maximum bandwidth you wish to use, the system is going to just try and send all video at 25-30 FPS, even if the bandwidth is 256K up speed. This resulted in the "freezing" issue. Once we made setting changes the problem was eliminated. scottj

I have pricing, and I have the new boards available 6/16/05. Contact me in PM if interested.

If you installed the jumper correctly, it should work. There is not a special setting to enable for the hardware watchdog feature. The 6.11 upgrade to 7.0 will require a dongle for you. The new versions of the boards themselves do not require the dongle as they will support version 7.0 right out of the box. If you need assistance getting a dongle, contact me offline via a PM and we can discuss your options. scottj.

yes that is exactly what happens. now regarding the hardware watchdog..... the jumper wire is to be attached from the watchdog pins on the Geo board, to the reset pins on the system board. What happens is when the geo software is not running (off completely), the geo board has a time generator circuit that sends a "reboot" signal to the mainbaord, thus causing a hard reset of the system overall. I actually do not remember if the reset signal is a NO or NC type circuit, i would have to verify. scottj

The software watchdog cannot be disabled without using C++ 6.0, it is not designed in the geo software to be altered by the end user. the hardware watchdog is used when a user shuts down the main system geo software. If you shut off the recording and close the software down, you would have approx. 4-5 minutes at the windows desktop before the system would restart with the hardware watchdog active. The reason why your system tries to restart the software multiple times currently, is because it is trying to rectify the video lost signal upon restart. Typically the geo system will attempt 4 restarts before it times out again and goes through the waiting period before software restart via watchdog. scottj

the system is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. There are two forms of "watchdog", one being hardware (the jumper to the reset pins on the mainboard) and software, which is monitoring for events such as system malfunction, hangs, and video signal lost. I am not sure why you have to keep changing BNC connections? It sounds like fixing that issue is the priority rather than disabling the watchdog. scottj

We have at least 100 customers who use Charter Cable and have never encountered the issue you are having regarding a "blocked port". I rarely believe ISP services technical support people, as they are taught to just read from a script and most have no clue who the current President of the US is. The slow rate could be related to the POS system sending data over WAN from the location (depending on how nice of a POS it is). Charter is know for "dog" service in our area, we recommend ADSL through SBC is at all posible due to upload speed issues with Charter. scottj

Easily done for under 2k. You have many options to choose from here. I am curious as to why it has to be a dome camera though? Is that a preference, or a requirement? Depending where you are located, there are many installation companies in here that can help you. You should have no problem getting a decent stable system for 2k. scottj

I would be surprised if the ISP blocked port 80. I would however not be surprised if the POS company (network admins) failed to forward the port numbers correctly. It is to no benefit to them for your equipment to work correctly, so at times they will just suffice you with saying they "are here to help". What type of router setup does your customer have onsite that the DVR is sharing with the POS terminals? scottj

You could download VideoCAD (software that calculates for you) They have a free 30 day trial, it is pretty nice to give you a numeric reference plan. scottj http://cctvcad.com/

Are you logging into the Webcam feature and leaving it run for 4 days continuous when it "times out"? If so, you may need to spec out your ADSL upload bandwidth. Then when you start the webcam service on the DVR you have the ability to perform bandwidth control. By default, the bandwidth control is not used which will allow your ADSL to utilize the maximum amount of bandwidth available, thus at times causing the ADSL to seize. Let me know how many cameras you have as well. scottj

same here. I like the nVidia chipsets for HTPC applications where actual DVD quality and 3D animation is needed, but the ATI has been the best performer for the dollar in my experience with DVR applications. scottj

Yes, not bad for the money. Supports DDNS Management, etc. The GUI is not my favorite, but then again most Asian designed GUI's look like childrens story books. scottj

How many POS terminals will be used, and what type of Access Control system do you need to be interfaced with? Budget would help as well. scottj

Are you using a Router with your configuration or just the ISP provided broadband modem? Either way, there should be a setting that states something like "stay connected" or "always stay connected" in the router or the modem. One other thing that can help is to uninstall any software beter known as "tools" that your ISP provides you. That software is designed for people who have no knowledge of a computer and zero technical skills. Less is more in this case, create the connection maually. If you have it online and can grant me access to your router (if you have one), I can take a look at the settings for you. scottj