Forgive the total newbie questions.......

[suemccartin 0]

After stupid neighbor tricks I've decided to setup a cctv system. I got a cheapo dvr off ebay with no drive, installed one no problems with that.

 

I'm having issues getting motion activation to work. It seems to be recording footage but I can't seem to detect a rhyme or reason for why it does so. I've played with menus till my head hurts. The camera display shows a tiny tape in the corner and the dvr manual seems to indicate that there should be a choice for motion activation which will have a different icon in the corner.

 

I was wondering if perhaps in my ignorance the camera I bought doesn't support motion activation or something? Are there any settings in the dvr menu that might have to be turned on for motion activation to work right? I believe this is a generic Lepta dvr unit, their web page appears to be out of commission at the moment, contacting ebay seller but no answer yet.

 

So question is: 1-does the camera have to have a motion sensor for motion activation to work on the dvr?

2-Could there be some settings in the dvr that have to change to support motion activation for the particular camera. Like I said it is recording I just can't detect a rhyme or reason for why or what's activating it, the footage if I watch it is always static, no motion .

[fa chris 0]

The camera doesn't need any motion activated sensors, the software should handle it all. I'm not sure about lepta, but in the software I've dealt with you set up the recording for the camera for motion activated, and you select the specific area of the camera view you want it to record when motion happens in that area.

 

For example, if you have a camera in an office pointing down a cubicle hallway, you'd set the area for motion recording to be anything in that hallway. You don't want it to record whenever people move around inside their own cube so the software ignores movement in those areas.

 

It sounds like your software may have something similar, and the area selected for recording motion is a small part of what the entire camera is seeing, hence recording only odd bits and pieces for no rhyme or reason.

[Birdman Adam 0]

Nope, the DVR handles the detection all the way. It looks at the picture from the camera, and decides whether there is motion.

 

So go into the main menu, and there should be options...somewhere...

 

If its recording for no reason, then maybe the sensitivity is too high. Don't reduce it too much or else you will miss things! Ideally, you can catch everything, and only have a few false captures.

[suemccartin 0]

I messed around last night and I think I found it.... The book is not great (written by someone with english as a second language). The little cd they sent with it had some better info on it and they also sent me some other setup stuff on an email that I forgot about. Even with sensitivity turned all the way down I still seem to be getting a lot of false activations and for some reason I'm getting random recordings for other reasons than motion too (each file is marked with M if it's setoff due to motion, some have other letters).

 

I'm thinking it's bugs flying around in front of the camera that's setting it off, if they're real close to the lens you wouldn't even see them on the recording. Good old Florida in the summer time, insect capitol of the world. I believe some bugs can see in the infrared, probably the IR emitter attracting them. Thanks for confirming what I thought I already knew about the camera. I got a 6mm lens which seems too tight so I just ordered a 3.6; I read up on coverage but you never really know till you try it in my experience.

 

My only remaining question is about setting activation zones. When you first open that screen everything is shaded a color, as you click on the boxes it becomes transparent showing you the camera output....so is it the bare sections that activate recording...OR is it the opposite and the colored sections are the zones that activate recording? I would think it's the colored sections that activate recording and the cleared sections don't because it defaults to the whole screen colored...but who knows I could be stupid so just asking.

 

The ebay seller apparently sends out firmware updates etc. For what I paid for this I think it's quite a nice unit just have to get the motion stuff fine tuned. Right now getting tons of activations for seemingly no reason it's a big hard drive but still, having to fast forward through a ton of files just to see if jerk neighbor was on the lot while I was at work is a pain when I should only have the files where a moving object or person was in the view of the camera. Eventually I'll have at least two more cameras, thought I'd start with one to see if I liked the camera and to fine tune the DVR so the next camera is not such a pain to make work right.

[fa chris 0]

In general it's the shaded area that activates the motion detection recording. If there's a sensitivity setting somewhere, try turning that down. Noisy cameras often set off false alarms too.

 

How does it store your files? If you can see the file size of each incident, you can probably ignore the ones that are all roughly the same size as false alarms and look for the larger ones to be recordings of people on your property.

[suemccartin 0]

Noisy cameras often set off false alarms too.

 

 

How does one know if it's a "noisey" camera? I think of noise as little white dots that crawl over the image, doesn't have that at all. Can the cable quality affect anything? It was not an expensive cable, I have like 75 feet to span between the camera and the front room where I have the dvr next to a wall. I left extra cable in case I wanted to move the camera to the other side of the eve at some point, could that extra cable wrapped around the mount be causing interference?

 

I am a computer geek so I understand about impedences and resistance and poorly insulated conductors and noisey power supplies etc. None of the components were very expensive like I said I'm just a po kid trying to keep the old bag across the street off the property (why is it always the old women who have nothing to do except harass their neighbors). I also put it up to keep the harley(s) in view when they're parked in the driveway.

 

It wasn't an expensive camera, just didn't have hundreds to play with to start. It's not a tremendously clean image but not a bad one either, details of faces are quite recognizable even at night at quite a distance and I can increase frame rate and quality in the DVR settings. Any suggestions for good frame rates and/or quality settings that might mitigate noise if that's indeed the problem?

 

Any recommendations for basic sub 100 dollar or less cameras. I did look for a name brand sensor, this one has a sharp if I'm not mistaken.

[shockwave199 0]

I'm assuming most of your false triggers are at night? I'm sure the picture quality is more noisy at night, correct? My CMOS 400TVL cams are acceptable during the day but noisy at night. It is possible to dial out a lot of night view noise, in my experience. That is, if your dvr has the settings to do so. Those settings could be in your display page, in the dvr. My q-see dvr has four settings for picture quality- chromacity, luminosity, contrast, and saturation. The ones you want to adjust are luminosity and contrast. The default settings usually make a pretty bright picture and can yield a very noisy picture at night. So at nightfall, adjust luminosity and contrast to help reduce picture noise. You can't dial all of it out, but you can clean up the quality quite a bit. Then in daylight, make sure you haven't affected that picture quality too much. It's a balance between the two views. This is assuming you have a noisy picture at night which may be causing false triggers, and you have the settings I mention to help correct it. Having another light souce somewhat away from the camera can also help to redirect bugs to it, instead of your IR camera. Good luck.

 

Dan

[suemccartin 0]

I'm assuming most of your false triggers are at night?......This is assuming you have a noisy picture at night which may be causing false triggers, and you have the settings I mention to help correct it. Having another light souce somewhat away from the camera can also help to redirect bugs to it, instead of your IR camera. Good luck.

Dan

 

Well yesterday, which was the first full day it was operational, I apparently got zero recordings all day long, so as of yesterday your assumption is correct that all the fales alarms were all night long. However, I went outside and jumped up and down in front of the camera when I got home from work and got no recording so something else was wrong yesterday apparently. I formatted the hard drive and rebooted the dvr hopefully I corrected that, I got recordings last night (all false again). I will see today what I get during the day. I will get another bug zapper for the vicinity hopefully that will help, I do have a motion activated flood light around the corner but that isn't on all the time.

 

I was messing around in the dvr menus and came upon a screen displaying data transfer rates for the camera (it supports four). Channel one is the first camera and it was showing a decent transfer rate, the other three are vacant but it was showing some input for some reason? Very damp here I'm thinking maybe that or the fact of a big fan (big motor) close by or somesuch, I'm thinking I should go to radio shack and get some terminators for those currently unused bnc camera ports in case it's causing some issue in the dvr, I played with shutting down recording for the other three unused channels too.