Sawbones

That's moronic. I'll record whatever I want in my own home, thankyouverymuch.

Good one, Soundy!

+1 Best, Christopher +2 Separate illuminators are virtually always superior to integrated IR. Not only do you have a MUCH wider selection of strengths, angles, types... but you completely avoid the bug problem.

PoE > other options. How long a cable run are we talking?

We are putting it out there If anyone cant get in touch with mobotix give us a shout and we can see if we can help. We are by no means be all experts but can try and give free email or chat support. A side note, Mobotix is having some serious customer service issues worldwide right now. Its a great product but distribution and channel sales departments dont seems to care about a customer unless they are doing large installation projects not realizing 80 customers buying 2-4 cameras beats one 100 camera deal. This may look good on marketing materials but you cant have a sustainable business model with that attitude. We are also getting a lot of complaints about us online retailers and selling below the prices they have fixed per country. If you havent noticed, buying even at msrp is over a $100us cheaper in the USA then anywhere else in the world. The complaint we have heard is that we sell worldwide and offer lower then msrp prices. I am sure a lot of dealers here may have opinions on this and would love to sell at msrp but in order to compete with the over 20 online shops that are box pushers, ebay, and even amazon.com now, we need to be competitive. In terms of selling worldwide, I have clients in Australia that buy from us and pay $$$ in shipping fees just because we have stock on hand , answer our phones and email, and give support. This is the same in the states where we have had several customers whose local integrators installed the cameras, didn't set them up correctly, and won't/can't support them. We love the products and recommend people buying them, but if Mobotix keeps growing and wanting to compete against arecont and axis, they really need to work on their support and channel sales. Yes... yes they are. I'm going on a week and their support dept. can't so much as provide an RMA number for a simple password reset, despite multiple emails... and forget getting anybody on the phone up there. That's unfortunate, because they have a fantastic product. Building a "better mousetrap" isn't enough... you have to be able to market it, and take care of the customer/end-user. They may be counting on their Partners to manage that part of it... but that distributed Partner network bottle-necks when it comes to services that ONLY the factory provides, like password resets. Would you rather have a middle-of-the-road product with great customer support, or a great product that can be easily "bricked," and when it is, you're on your own? Anybody who has ever dealt with Motorola's public-service radios knows that feeling. Voipmodo: if this keeps up, I may end up having to take you up on that offer of assistance.

Bingo

That's just great.... what a shame Mobotix chooses to do business that way. It leaves the end-user out in the cold. As you pointed out, that pretty much sucks for an end-user dealing with a reseller who may or may not be interested in supporting a residential end-user... or small-volume installer... or support on a third-party sale. I appreciate the offer of assistance... but let me see if Mobotix will work with me before I take any more of anybody else's time. EDIT: I forgot about the ISC show. We'll see what they can do this coming week.

Just doing what they told me to do... and getting nowhere. It would be nice to speak to a real live person... but apparently that's not how they do business.

Can't say I'm impressed with their customer service so far... Anyone care to share a name/number/email of a contact person at Mobotix? You don't have to post it here... PM is fine. I've emailed them the information twice, and have yet to receive an RMA number. Interestingly, it's impossible to get somebody on the phone up in NY. Calling tech support is pointless... the number rings about five times, then advises that all operators are busy, and to email them about the problem... then it cuts you off. There isn't even an option to hold for the next available tech support person. Sheesh. Even the DMV gives you an option of taking a number and waiting.

I have several of those, purchased from Ebay. They are very narrow-beam, and fine for distance, but hot-spot mercilessly at close range. The power supplies they send with them are also VERY low-quality. Both of mine crapped out the very first night I used them. I'd advise wiring them to a better PSU, or even a proper alarm/camera PSU. 12VDC is 12VDC... unless you have so much line loss that it drops your voltage. You have three options. Use more voltage at the head-end (feed it 13VDC at the head-end to compensate for line loss), use a thicker-gauge power cable (less resistance = less power loss), or use a local PSU to power the camera.

The intensifier is NOT a good camera for low light. Why? Two reasons: 1. To brighten the image, it increases its gain by slowing down the shutter speed. This is great for a static scene... but anything moving turns into an unidentifiable blur. You'll have zero chance of IDing any moving person in low-light with an Intensifier. 2. No ICR. It's a color-only camera, and doesn't have the ability to switch to B&W... thus adding IR sources will NOT improve your picture. You're stuck with it. What you see is what you get. I've had several, and removed them. One I replaced with a Panasonic 484S dome... MUCH better picture (with an actual ICR... making it IR-sensitive). The other I replaced with an Acti 1231M (again, an actual day/night camera with ICR, and built-in IR). Here are the before/after images comparing the Intensifier and the Acti: Those two images are worth a thousand words.

No inconvenience... it's the height of convenience. I can sit at my desk, and see everything going on around my house at a glance. I can check on my kids, see when the mail arrives, see when my spouse comes home, see if my dogs want to go out... I'll never be without one.

Doubt it. DM likes to keep control of their hardware.

no am not saying that. infact they will look after you very well. the last camera i sent back was a Q24 to have the mic reset this had a cost of £120. but i took it to the uk mobotix office as i am only 11 mile from it. it might be cheaper if you book a trainning day with mobotix and take your camera with you. thay might over look the cost. That's a thought. At least I'm not SOL. I suppose that's intuitive... it wouldn't make economic sense for them to ignore the secondary market. At least it wouldn't make sense to me.

I already have a handful of Mobotix cameras installed, but am not a certified Mobotix installer (I do systems on a small scale for friends/family, and I'm a DIY guy, but I love Mobotix's stuff) So are you saying if I send the non-stolen (but used) camera back that's currently in my possession, they won't give me the time of day? You can't be serious.

I'd agree with the dome. Might not be a bad idea... but I'm actually looking at that mailbox... it practically begs for a covert camera. Put a false bottom in that thing, wire up a B&W pinhole camera... it would catch pretty much anyone walking up to that door. It might even get a nice face-level shot as they ascend those steps.

I bought a trendnet PTZ camera one time on a lark. It came broken... there were literally loose/broken gears rattling around inside of it when it arrived. It seemed cheaply made anyway... and didn't work. That doesn't exactly engender confidence in their cameras. Their other equipment (I have used their PoE switches multiple times) are perfectly fine... haven't had a bad one yet. Can't say the same for their cameras.

That axis unit looks interesting... thanks!

IP66 but you can't expose it to rain? What the hell?

Just to add to my previous post, the only cameras in my installation that I cannot reach by smartphone (Motorola Droid) are the Acti phones. My Mobotix cameras? No problem... everything works natively. My Axis video servers? I have to hit the "stop" button to stop the streaming, and then the pictures come up, but otherwise everything works. You can't get a live stream on the Droid, but you can get a freeze-frame snapshot. Acti? No luck. I cannot access my DVR (Luxriot) via my Droid (I don't even think Luxriot has mobile phone software), but since all my cameras are IP-based, I can access the IP sources individually.

looking for a reason to hit Miami Beach hey? LoL you have no idea!! i was in bahamas last spring.. and man o man i like warm weather.. What kind of cameras are you guys putting on your igloos up there?

I haven't yet delved into the SIP functionality of the Mobotix cams. Can they be reached from a regular cell phone, or does it have to be an IP-softphone?

I agree on the Mobotix solution. I've done the D22SEC camera with the ExtIO unit in my home, and the audio is really quite good. The Mic has different sensitivity settings, and it syncs with the camera with little problem. A Q24 in the ceiling would do the job. Note: The video from the mobotix camera can be viewed on IE, Firefox... even a Motorola Droid phone. However, the audio plug-in is IE only... it won't work on anything else.

There are a few online calculators for line loss based on length of run and gauge of the wire. It can be significant. Here's one such calculator: http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm

I paid retail for mine, since I'm not a commercial CCTV guy. Some of those distributors will only sell B2B