DRACONiDigital

I've just recently had this problem. We installed 5 servers with 7.05 I think, GV-800 16 channel cards sometime in December. They ran fine for months. Then the other day the guys at this place saw that Norton Antivirus was expired, so they installed their centrally-managed version of Norton. Shortly thereafter, I've had the problem on TWO of these servers. After the nightly reboot, the webcam would die. Reboot it again (or manually turn it on), and it'd be fine. So far, 2 of the 5 have done this. Never had it any other time. Have XP auto-update on, wonder if it's got something to do with a recent update? Anyway, my 2 cents.

As long as the ISP supports ASP, couldn't you could just code it up totally separate? Then just link to it from the phpBB pages (header, etc...).

This thread is so funny. When we first installed B&W infrared cameras at one of my clients locations, I got a call from the lady that ran the place one day. She sounded like she had just seen a ghost. I asked her what was going on. She said.. "Joe, can you please come over here... now?". She swore to me over the phone that she was watching a ghost on her monitor (analog system). Thankfully this place was only a mile away. I jumped in the car! I walked in, and she was pale man. I thought she was going to faint. She was scared to death to walk upstairs and frantically warned me to not go. The ghost would WALK UP the steps, go down the hallway, walk back, and go back down the steps. It was crazy. I wish I still had the tape, but it was a long time ago. So I went up there. Found nothing. Then I looked closer at the camera. There was a dangling spiderweb. It was gently, very slowly, waving back and forth. What happened was that it was also moving closer to the camera. So that's how it was walking up and down the hallway (visual effect). But the greatest thing was how it looked like it was walking up and down the stairs. For some reason (probably low res being to blame), it just blended into the wall. So because the stairs were darker, it showed up there, but on top it would disappear. WOW! In retrospect I should have done something like run away from the camera screaming, or fall down dead or something. She wouldn't have been pleased, and probably would have called 911

Who maintains this site? I do PHP, but not sure when I'd have time to code up something (maybe something already exists, just like phpBB. Would they be open to it?

It's interesting the poll came up, even with only a few votes, that nearly half of you have at least one client that needs high-quality stuff. I was starting to think my clients were alone in the universe

It'd be nice to have it integrated here, or at least lots of links from here. That way this forum can also grow by it.

I have to say, this is one of the greatest threads I've read in any forum in a long while. I went from conspiracy (just kidding) to Girl Scout Cookies to Poppy**** and just kept going. I love it. I have a little bit to add here. I have a background in non-profit agencies. I've worked for them for almost 11 years. Then I got into the for-profit side of things. Man did my head spin. I thought to myself, MY GOD, this is crazy! Markup and all that. But then I learned that we all spend a LOT of time trying to learn this stuff. But the customer expects that you know everything about a product. There are so many DVR cards out there, unless you have some serious R&D funding, it's hard to get cards just so you can "play" with them. So in this respect, I really have to applaud the posts about KMART and EBAY here. When I was in the non-profit, I could never go through a local dealer, because my boss would say "but I can get it at Sam's club for $2 less". Now, of course he didn't factor in how much it would cost for me to hop in my car, drive across town, pick it up, then drive back (my wage + mileage). The last time I checked, I made more than $2/hour. I forget what the translation is from peanuts to $ (stupid boss won't tell me anymore), but I am sure it's more than $2/hour. At least I hope it is. Do you guys keep track of this? What is inflation again? That's when my wage goes DOWN but I make MORE money, right? Anyway, to get back to it. Even getting it online still has problems with time & shipping costs. Then, you have to throw in how much extra time it's going to take to learn about the stuff (if you're doing it yourself). Now I have experience from both sides of the looking glass. I see how both sides are just trying to do the same thing... make more from less. I have non-profit clients who are just absolutely demanding. I mean, they want casino-level tech for the Sam's club price. I've seen some amazing things, where big manufacturers (Pelco for one) were willing to deal, but then the non-profits just kept asking for more and more and more. Coming from the for-profit side, it can just eat you up. But again, I've been on both sides of the fence. Now, the DIY consumer is something of both. Some of them love you (dealers) because you have experience and can recommend a solution. But them some of them (consumers) want to get the stuff with a 10% off coupon from Best Buy. It's harsh sometimes. Especially when you yearn for Girl Scout cookies. These peanuts are getting STALE man. They grow more valuable with age, right??? Enjoy.

Larry, I am new to this board and didn't know it's history, this is good info. I, for one, certainly appreciate you using your resources to make this board happen. THANK YOU, and I thank everyone who posts here!

Lately I've been suffering from link overload! Finally got a decent system in place using Firefox bookmarks and good well-thought out categories. Anyway, does CCTVForum have a links page? It might be beneficial here. Have lots of categories we can dump them in. But have a good description field as to what that link is really about so browsing and finding stuff is easier.

Cool!!!

One more thing on 64-bit, it's going to stop the world from ending in 2038. I think the next "Y2K" is in 2038 I believe because the current Unix clock is an unsigned 32-bit number or something? I may have the details screwed up a bit, but I think 2038 is the year when the counter "fills" up, and we have the next Y2k . Or at least, until the year 10,000. 64-bit will give you more numbers to count and the world will be saved again. And since we have a bit of time, 64-bit should be in place everywhere before 2038

As for 64-bit, the real benefits are basically MORE MORE MORE. More memory, more throughput, etc... makes it easier to address all that stuff, whereas stuff right now has to play games. For instance, recently a customer wanted to slap a brand new 300GB drive in their old Win98SE machine. It's not that straightforward sometimes . This isn't a jibe against Windows. I've had problems shoving 30GB drives into old 400Mhz Linux systems too . It's universal. 64-bit just helps all around because it brings these large numbers back into the fold.

You can still download it I believe. I would be 50/50 to say new pc dvr would work on 95. You will need to do some extra code looping, when microsoft lets some information on its source code. I think that they are releasing the info sometime this fall. I know that Geo doesn't support Win98SE anymore. My first experiences with them were on 98SE. At the time they weren't entirely pusing to use Win2k or XP, so I went with 98SE. I still have 5-6 machines running that for clients that don't use it for that much. But they are stuck with Geo 5.401 I think. In order to get 6 or above you need at least Win2k. The crazy thing with Linux is that if you get nearly any Brooktree-based bt848/bt878 card, it just loves it and you can take the video all day. For some simple apps where audio isn't needed and only a few cameras were required, a setup like this would be cake. Obviously Geovision could do it way better, but more and more I'm seeing people wanting really advanced remote capabilities. And while XP sure has a nice remote desktop (requires XP Pro), it sure does want bandwidth. Linux you can just setup SSH. It's encrypted, and you can do tunneling and a ton of remote stuff. I actually have a funny story. I use Linux (via rdesktop) to remote desktop into WinXP systems!!! rdesktop only gives you 256 colors unless you have serious bandwidth, so it works great. The video is bad, but at least you can do ADMIN stuff. Anyway, FYI.

Just a side note here. Today I had to service a couple of older DVRs at one clients location. These were nearly 2.5 years old, running Geovision 5.4, and Win98SE . They were chugging along happily... until the hard drive died. Even when they were first loaded, I could have put Win2k orWinXP onto them. But at that point, I didn't trust XP yet (SP1 hadn't been released yet), and I wasn't really into Win2k. Sorry Rory, but WinME just killed me . After only dealing with a few machines with WinME it instantly was taken off my list. Then again, I had Win98SE at the top of my list at that point, so draw your own conclusions! Anyway, just FYI for future reference.

OK, I agree this would work on a LAN, not on a WAN. However, in this particular clients scenario, he wanted both LAN & WAN access of multiple video servers. Plus, there were many staff involved, who didn't know an IP address from a piece of toast, so they wouldn't be able to go into their Geovision client and plug in IP addresses and different port numbers and whatnot. The point of my article was that there are ways to "add value" to existing products, even if they are very proprietary. This can often help show the client that while there are other companies in your area that can do these DVRs, your company is the one who can really make the sale worthwhile.