jeromephone

I would consider running all cat 6 and go to an IP camera system . I would run 2 cat 6 cables to each location. Someday you will want to run something additonal on your network and having another cable means you can split the network. You might run a phone system or TV system and it may be advantages to have the cameras physically seperated there may be some new application that uses and entirely new kind of network electronics that has to be run on its own network. at any rate I would forget coax if you can go IP.. As far as the electrical problem you are correct get a compentent electrician and he will be able to figure out what is the best course of action.

lookup KVM extender using cat5/6 cable you would run one cable and then you can have monitor keyboard and mouse up to hundreds of feet away.

you could do this with IP also look at Geovision they have a backup server solution I am sure other mfgs have the same. Look into running the analog cameras to a coverter from analog to IP it may be cheaper in the long run to have a completely IP system.

You may have to travel for the bigger jobs and you will spend a lot of time preparing bids that go nowwhere but getting a job and doing it well will establish your company. We never went after too many jobs that were more than 50 miles away and I think that hurt us over the years as things got slow in our immediate area we should have had contacts in the other towns. You could also look at becoming a dealer for certain products. A lot of times you will get service work and leads because you are the only one who can service/sell a certain product. You may have to get training or make an investment but it will help bring in additonal business. Even though we did a fair amount of small camera jobs I never really liked the bottom end of the food chain.

What if some other part of the camera if fried then you just spent money and time and still have no coverage. I would replace the cameras as the toss said. Check around you can get some real good deals on analog cameras and they will have a warranty, depending on where purchased.

almost all DVRs and or cameras can be set for motion triggering of recording. An IP camera with an onboard chip might be the best it could store a fair amount of video and you could download it is needed to another device/location.

If you have had as much experience as you say why not go for the bigger bids schools, govt, etc. Those bids usually have a set of specks and plans and you are somewhat on a level playing field. You might need bonding but if the job is small enough it may not be required. If the job is under 100,000 you can usually get a bond pretty easy. I would at any rate get your insurance, licenses if required and bonding in place then you can start going after these types of jobs. The other posters pretty much summed up the state of the smaller market stuff.

If the condo is worth monitoring why not get the most reliable system you can afford ? New 4 camera nvrs or DVRs are pretty cheap and you can get remote viewing etc all in one package. I am guessing someone on this forum can get you some links to lower cost equipment.

Google a police car video system and or a bus video system some of those have a wireless connection that automatically downloads the car or bus video to a server as soon as they pull into the parking lot at the end of the shift.

If you can go all IP for a new system I would go that route. If the distance between buildings is 300 feet or so I would go with one NVR and put a POE awitch in the second buiding also if running cat 6 between buildings run a spare if their is room in the conduit direct bury /outdoor rated cable if conduit runs underground. Do you already have network in the second buidling?

Could you use axis software and synology or similiar

Yep code violation plus a chance for a whole lot of problems. check out the price of the conduit and you would be foolish to try and save money on that. your cost are in opening and closing the ditch. Just did a quick internet search and plastic in ten ft sections 1 and 1/4 conduit is about a 1.00 per ft could probably look around and get it cheaper locally.

dual voltage cameras are usually 12 V DC or 24V AC. I would go with a high quality 24vac isolated power supply from Altronix

It may depend on how you want to view the cameras is someone going to monitor all of the cameras and do you want a matrix that allows you to view selected cameras from each building or will each building stand alone so to speak do you have a common network between the buildings?

I am almost 100 % sure it would be illegal however how is the poor guy with the drone in little pieces going to prove it was jammed get a court order to search your property? Find the jammer and then prove it was what caused the "accident" anyway I would not do anything to anyone's toy drone. I think there will be some needed changes in the laws governing where these units can be deployed and what rights property owners have. With all the hype about hacking networks and such it seems not that much has been discussed about jamming wifi networks. Not knowing much about it one would think that a highpowered jammer could wipe all the channels on the common wifi networks and really cause some problems.

Do not know but am waiting for the signal jammers to come out. If it happens to fall in your yard I guess it is no longer in controlled airspace anymore. Should have looked first found 555,000 hits on google for drone jammers guess I am not the first to think of it

IR on camera is not always the best place for the light place the IR in a location that lights up the area you want to watch. As the other poster said use a remote IR if you check you will find some really cheap ones to try I got a test unit with a photocell for under 20.00

yes to cat 6 by now it should be cheap enough and you never know what additional devices you may use in the future. Plus it usually is a little bigger 23 ga so you may get some additonal current carrying ability Direct bury outdoor rated yes you do not need shielded I assume you are going to run the cables in a seperate conduit next to the power not in the same conduit. The cost of plastic conduit is not very much in relation to the whole cost of the project so I would use it. On the head end patch panel and patch cords on the camera end you will have to look at what type of mounting you are planning we like to put a jack on the cable an use a patch cord where we can as opposed to putting plugs on the cables. You can use one cable to feed the data back but you will need full poe for each individual camera

how much would it have cost to just run rg59/w 2 18 ga for power and then you could even run wall warts for power if you wanted to save money

get the best rg-59 with 2 18ga power wires you can afford get some spare crimp on connectors and if you have cable left over try and sell it. you will be fighting a losing battle with cheap cable so this may be a case of having to spend a little more to get something that works.

are you running a seperate cat 5 for each camera and are you running power through a pair on that cable.

why not go to a later version I think there is a file that geo creates on your hd that you can erase I think it is a file with pwd as an extension look through some of these old posts on how to reset. Sorry about being so vague.

geovision can handle audio for every camera channel you can only listen live to one at a time but you can record the other channels. I know that this is a bit off topic but that could be a solution if you really need audio recording on multiple channels as posted before sometimes the best audio feed does not match exactly with the camera location.

make sure you run direct bury rated cable for your conduit run run a spare if you can the cable will probably be in water or ice due to condensation

There are many different card systems out there. I would look at Axis which has a two door system with software. The better solution might be to deny access rather than have someone having to watch a monitor If the dues are not paid you could have the bartender or someone let them in and have them get a "replacement card" from managment