Sawbones

That last scenario (interior camera on lower floor) is what I was asking. I'm comfortable pulling cable through an attic and down walls without any problem. The problem is when they need to be on the lower level on the interior. What a nightmare. Yes, I hate insulated walls too. Even worse than insulated walls, though, is a nice fireblock to drill through. It's one thing when you're pulling a single cable, but I did a job just last week that was a 16 camera system and there was a fireblock halfway up the wall at the endpoint where I was connecting to my DVR. That's a big bundle of cable at that point!!! Is there crown molding in any of those rooms? You can hide quite a large bundle of cable behind crown molding.

CCTV is its own discipline... and a regular "alarm" company may or may not have the necessary expertise to set it up... particularly IP cameras. You might pay a bit more to go with a dedicated CCTV company... but that expertise is worth something.

That is full of win.

It's good to see a fellow h4x0r.

Axis makes solid, reliable hardware. You can find better brands out there for certain specific applications, and some up-and-comers who are a little cheaper, but for a middle-of-the-road IP camera that almost always works (and doesn't always require Internet Explorer) it's hard to beat Axis.

...waiting for the sales pitch and link to some cheap junk from some fleaBay store... It would be neat if they could actually do it... but I've never seen wifi scale that well. I've been wrong before... will be again.

50 Wifi IP cameras? Even if you segment your wifi network, space out your channels, and use multiple APs, that's an awful lot of cameras for standard wifi. I'm not sure I'd be doing that. Wifi doesn't always scale particularly well. My understanding of most wireless systems is that you can only have 4 channels within a wireless range. Otherwise they interfere with each other and you don't get any video. Right... 1, 5-6, 10-11, and 14 are common choices... and you're going to run out of room with 12-13 cameras on each of those channels. You only have so much bandwidth, and the AP has to manage the datastreams of all those wireless clients, as well as the additional wireless overhead... and without dropping frames, or dropping the client entirely. Also, wifi cameras are prone to interference, and can be hacked... You could also walk into that store with a PDA, running a packet-injection deAUTH attack, and knock the entire camera network offline. I don't use Wifi for anything where wired is an viable option.

50 Wifi IP cameras? Even if you segment your wifi network, space out your channels, and use multiple APs, that's an awful lot of cameras for standard wifi. I'm not sure I'd be doing that. Wifi doesn't always scale particularly well.

Must be a redhead. Voice of experience?

That does sound like a lot of cameras... is this some kind of warehouse-sized mega-store?

I'd go with Soundy's pinout. Yellow is often video by convention (look at the RCA jacks on the back of your TV), and red/black is common pairing for 12VDC, with the red as (+) and the black as (-). Your ex sounds like a piece of work.

Mine's working fine.

Thanks. Hm, I know damned well that hospitals and apartments aren't paying more than $100 each for most of their cams. I absolutely guarantee they're not getting high-end brand-name IP megapixel cams for $100 each. Even dealer wholesale is waaaay above that.

Because the Sanyo's can run 720P, 1080P or 4MP. 4:3 or 16:9 Dlink is a joke for a camera and Sanyo has a better image then Panasonic. Avoid the D-Link. Panos are good cameras.

Is this sold?

My tests with the 1231 apply only to the ACM series... not the TCM.

That's better than the Acti 1231... the 1231 tends to blur significantly on motion shots.

Thanks.

I almost always find that MJPEG is better than any of the others... and contrary to the old days when hard drive space was at a premium, storage these days is incredibly cheap. Given the choice, always go for quality... that's why you bought the system, remember? If you get months and months worth of recording time, but you can't ID anything in those tiny little CIF H.264 videos, you've wasted your money.

Is that Arecont a D/N version, or Day-only?

Oh snap!

I'm using Tiny Cam Monitor... it's free for four cameras. I haven't tried any PTZ stuff through it... not sure if it's even capable of that.

Yep... that one has electrocution written all over it.

That new arecont looks interesting. I've been very happy with the video quality from my 3130

That one's a year old or so... so maybe it's the older ones that had separate wiring to that LED assembly. Last one I used was seperate... I remember now. That was about 6 months ago... That ir would be no where near powerful enough for lighting up a driveway. Probably throws a 10-15 degree beam maybe 15-20' outdoors. It's a little wider than that... but you've got the distance about right. You just can't push enough power over PoE to generate decent wide-area IR coverage.