Roman

Thank you guys for your feedback on LuxRiot. We appreciate and do pay attention. Missing features are on the way one by one, and I have to admit that web client is both limited in features and requires update. Should anyone have a question or an outstanding issue which is "lost" in support and/or requires escalation, please feel always free to drop me an email at roman@ and/or PM me here.

Demo of what ? Luxriot ? yes It's perhaps easier that could be thought of. This is where you download it: http://www.luxriot.com/tryitnow.asp Unregistrered as is, it is subject to a few constraints http://www.luxriot.com/editions.html You can configure cameras with the software, set up recording, see live picture etc. There are also a couple of demo servers we have on internet, where you can connect to remotely and get video from cameras configured there.

I had impression that applications will be packed into a virtual environment, a sandbox, which contains all necessary information such as registry entries and applications’ DLL files and so on... I understand what you mean (it's of this kind). This will definitely work in case of rich virtualization layer, like provided by http://thinstall.com/ and not sure if a simpler thing like http://portableapps.com/ is sufficient to provide a portability container and resolve the dependencies LuxRiot needs. My point was that there are just a few thins that prevent LuxRiot client to run as "no install" application, when you just copy the files onto USB stick and you are ready to go. I personally would prefer this way. You can download regular install and only have "client" component checked during installation (this is equal to client-only install that we also have). Basically if you install regular package server+client and never start server it is also going to be OK and won't be a burden for the system.

That would look as if we just don't want to do this, but it is not the case 99% of the application has nothing to do with portabilty and is just OK for both regular and portable scenarios. There are still a few moments that rely on integration with operating system, and assume the components are installed and registered with the system (such as for example codecs, which are registered with Windows APIs, used through them for interoperability and also make available footage for third party apps). This is exactly the problem for a portable version. Doable, but needs be done before it starts working great, just like Adobe's 100 MB Flash This is where we need feedback to upvote the feature and understand the priority.

Portable application, such as held on a USB key, is a useful feature, so this undoubtedly makes sense. And we do appreciate feedback of this kind. Technically there are a few things that prevent from making LuxRiot DVR Client portable immediately, so it is up to development schedule to make this possible in future. Before this however the only option is to install client part of the software as a regular application. Thank you again for the feedback.

You are correct, it has to be installed: it has to perform some registration actions, which also require local administrator permissions to be fulfilled, so USB key scenario is currently not possible.

The best you can do to send details about the issue to LuxRiot support is to post a problem report, as described there on the blog http://blog.luxriot.com/271#faq2. It is a really easy step by step thing, that gets the details for you and posts it over Internet. Or you can even email it as ZIP attachment instead, if you don't have Internet connectivity on the site. "Operation aborted" looks like configuration LuxRiot problem, "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it." is a message from Windows Sockets subsystem which means that an outoging network connection could not be established because remote party rejected. Why and what exactly what refused, a problem report would definitely reveal.

LuxRiot is currently available as a 32-bit application, both server and client parts. Still it not only runs fine on 64-bit system, but in some cases it makes sense to prefer 64-bit OS, especially for server, as out the box on 64-bit operating system the application gets 4 GB virtual address space available, while on 32-bit OS it is only 2 GB (or 3 GB with /3GB tuning, which LuxRiot is also compatible with). If you have 100+ cameras, or depending on configuration (esp. many megapixel cameras, or software motion detection configurations) you can run out of available 2GB amount.

LuxRiot works fine on Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and 7. We are removing declaration that Windows 2000 is supported because basically it is a discontinued product, but there have been a great deal of deployments on this OS and versions up to latest are compatible. Just make sure you have latest Win2K Service Pack installed.

JPEG snapshots are supported by these cameras but it is a last resort getting any pictures from them. To help LuxRiot work with this camera, if this is possible without specific updates from LuxRiot, you need to go to camera web interface, choose Streaming version 2.0, RTP mode and check port number. For RTSP protocol it is by default 554, but AFAIR ACTi has a different value (7070?). Choose MPEG-4, not H.264 (H.264 bay be also supported, but MPEG-4 has more chances to be compatible with older ACTi models). If the port number is not 554, in LuxRiot you might need to provide it in configuration also (if you decided to setup the camera as Generic RTSP). Also in LuxRiot you have more chances to get these cameras working if you change Generic RTSP camera's properties to use RTP over UDP (as opposed to default RTP over TCP).

I assume you are talking about ACTi TCM-5311. My furst guess would be trying to set it up as CAM 53x1 models, or Generic RTSP Compatible model. Perhaps you can put it online for some time and contact support@luxriot to see if it can be configured to work with LuxRiot.

I did not post here an essential information on how to do this, but I sent to skane in response to email to support, so he shares his experience... I need to explain this in more detail. The problem is that we are reluctant to share this widely because this unlocks functionality we are deprecating. The way it worked before (TFTP) it worked almost great, thought rarely was anyway a source of issues of a different kind. As we are deprecating this old method, at this point we left an option to unlock old functionality but there is no promise to support it further. This means that at some point later we might remove it completely and move to HTTP access method. Users will probably need to manually reconfigure the affected cameras. This however is going to happen after Arecont Vision updates their HTTP interface and offer equal performance (fps) on it. Currently we are providing instructions on how to get back the functionality being deprecated on request. rak313, I sent you PM on this. By the way, make sure to check if your camera has latest firmware on it and upgrade if necessary.

Perhaps you will be interest in some technical info on LuxRiot in connection with Arecont Vision cameras. First of all, the latest LuxRiot is here - http://blog.luxriot.com/tag/release If you have version 1.7.1 but the numbers under about box are not 1.7.1.20014, then it's worth upgrading anyway. Arecont Vision camera are capable of sending video over two protocols, HTTP and TFTP. The latter was used since long ago in LuxRiot through Arecont Vision SDK and until the latest LuxRiot update where we switched to HTTP. Previously with these cameras TFTP based communication was faster and resulted in higher FPS rates, however presense of SDK between LuxRiot and the device put us in position where we are not fully in control of things. Recently, especially with introduction of H.264 models, Arecont improved HTTP interface so it's primary in LuxRiot. We no longer have issues related to use of SDK, but we assume HTTP interface of the camera is as fast as its TFTP interface (still a question esp. for 8xxx models!). Those who upgrade from earlier versions of LuxRiot will have their configurations work through legacy TFTP without changes. Newly configured cameras receive HTTP interface. It is also possible to tweak software and allow adding new cameras to use old TFTP interface of a camera. Hope this helps.

ak357, I suggest that you try LuxRiot. LuxRiot uses Arecont Vision SDK and tuned for best performance with Arecont cameras, as well as some Arecont specific features are implemented. It also has optimizations for all high resolution cameras, such as in software motion detection and best frame rates rendering high-res video on the screen.

Khandurian, LuxRiot offers two options to put camera's video onto web page: A web client available as an ActiveX control for Internet Explorer Video frame export feature, which you can use to export into web server directory Web client uses login to LuxRiot DVR Server, so you can hide all cameras except one for guest user and the ActiveX control will only show this single camera while administrator will be able to see all cameras. Web client is a ready to use feature which however requred ActiveX control and Internet Explorer. Video export has worse performance, however less constraints on client side software. With video export you will also have to design web pages to link exported video files, put autorefreshing etc.

In order to achieve maximum fps from LuxRiot showing video from Arecont cameras (basically not only Arecont but any high resolution cameras), it is necessary to enable downsampling of large images in LuxRiot as described here: http://blog.luxriot.com/52 This feature gives dramatic fps increase, you could have 5 fps without it and 16 fps with it. It will be enabled by default with next LuxRiot release so noone will have to worry about it anymore. Additionally motion detection on high resolution cameras is very resourse consuming process resulting in high CPU usage. This issue (among a number of other) is also significantly optimized in coming LuxRiot 1.1.18.

I doubt that this is exactly what you are looking for, but if you need modified PTZ for analog camera, not IP, with LuxRiot you can override the object that handles PTZ and implement your own protocol.

Are they really quieter? I did not make an extensive study, rahter paid attention by incident recently. WD2000JB - 200 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache - EIDE/ATA http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=38 Acoustics [image] Idle Mode 28 dBA (average) [image] Seek Mode 0 33 dBA (average) [image] Seek Mode 3 29 dBA (average) WD2000JD - 200 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache - SATA http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=58 Acoustics [image] Idle Mode 34 dBA (average) [image] Seek Mode 0 36 dBA (average) [image] Seek Mode 3 35 dBA (average) It did upset me so I remembered.

Can't it be connected to notebook and controlled with some PTZ compatible software? I believe there are RS422 to RS232 converters to connect to PC COM port.

FYI, LuxRiot works great with XeCaps.

The reason may be because real video is painted through videocard's overlay surfaces. This is a usual case if software uses DirectShow to paint video. If so, I don't think you will find a solution for this problem, ie. to see through VNC, maybe other that finding an option in your DVR program to use another method to paint video. You can take a screenshot on your DVR machine (using PrintScreen key and then paste into gfx application), if you don't see video shotted be sure this is an issue I mentioned above.

That's correct, however there is also a difference. With two monitors the guard can have 3x3 on the left and 3x3 on the right and turn his head from one monitor to the other. On each one he will see not much feeds to get his focus lost. Having 2x3x3 on one monitor his focus is gone and lost forever (just a guess-work though). I hit the edit rather then the reply button. My bad, I think I have this post restored to what it was prior to me being dumb. If not, let me know and it will be fixed. -Thomas

What about using secondry monitor for layouts with a lot of cameras? Say, 16+16, 9+9, 16+9 etc. These layouts seem to be operator friendly, aren't they?

Are we expected to post ID scans here?