First Impressions of a Symphony from COP Security.

[Numb-nuts 1]

I originally bough a Xvision speed dome to teach myself about speed dome use.

I have since fitted q good few but I don;t get to sit using them as once installed

only a very basic setup is required.

 

As some of you may know the Xvision was not to my satisfaction and after 5 replacements

I got a refund. Well I still want to learn more about Speed dome use. I looked at all sorts.

I wanted a strong metal housing so the Lilin was out, and the Sanyo was a very poor warranty

and Sanyo Technical support was virtually nil. They even couldn't be bothered to answer my two

pre-sales questions.

 

Eventually I settled for the Cop Symphony 15-CD55WDN-36, It arrived today and after initial setup

I started feeling sick like I did when I was about to test all those Xvision cameras which all failed.

Fortunately, it worked perfectly first time. I preferred a smoked dome so ordered and installed the smoke dome and it comes with a Cast Aluminium sunshade included. I was pleased that a dome retention wire was installed. The housing looks the same as the Xvision but that is where the similarity ends.

The Cop dome comes with a hinged back-box.

The connector lead for the alarms in and out, leaves the dome trough the wall bracket and connects in the back-box which is equipped with two substantial gland fixings.

 

The wall bracket then fixes to the back box with four M6 lock-nuts. I would have preferred bolts here as I like to secure things from unauthorized fingers, but I may buy some tamper-resistant Kinmar security nuts which cannot be removed without the special socket. Did you notice I said Tamper -resistant and not Tamper-proof. The day I say tamper proof someone will get past them.

 

Unfortunately, this back box means I have to redrill the mounting holes, but hey I'm a big boy now!

I will also have to re-model my protection cage as the dome stands about 3 inches further off the wall

than the Xvision, thanks to theback-box. Oh well I knew it would mean some extra work.

 

Opening the housing, the setting dip switches are acessible without removing anything more. It may be time to get your reading glasses out if you are like me short sighted. You need a reasonably long slot end screwdriver. Setting the protocol and baud rate and camera address was simplicity itself, as the protocol settings combine with the various baud rates so you simply set the switches according to your preference

and close the housing with the dome. Job done.

 

Again I notice that the manufacturer has used chord end ferrules for connecting many of the wires

from the dome, (see picture below). I have very recently tried soldering on DC connectors so that I can get a good slim neat connection. Unfortunately, I have found that the solder joints can dry out or degrade quickly,

so I started using ferrule ends and connector block. The Cop Dome uses this method for both AC power and RS485 connection. I feel safe with this and know that many of you do this too. Now I know why, I will do it too. It appears to be better, faster and cheaper too.

 

 

After I have fitted this camera, I intend to do a second part to the review. I already have a controller keyboard so I didn't buy

one of the the Cop keyboards, I am sure they are reliable, but so is the I have and it has a smaller footprint which is why I choose it as i have limited desk space. Perhaps if they like what I say this tim, they will loan me one of their keyboards to review? I will continue the review after I have fitted this dome.

Edited July 7, 2011 by Guest

[Numb-nuts 1]

To fit the Symphony PTZ (and the Insight PTZ) first the fitter needs to decide what kind of fitting to sue. The PTZ comes complete with back-box and wall mount pendant fitting. There are also several other fittings at extra cost including internal and external mount corner-brackets and a pole-side-mount. I have never seen a situation where an internal corner-mount would be useful for a PTZ camera, but I assume there are such situations. Other mounts such as wall-mounting swan-neck, a pole top mounting swan neck, and several sizes in drop poles for mounting overhead like under an eaves, so the range of possible fitting options is really quite good.

 

I mounted my Symphony PTZ to a gable wall at the apex. To mark the holes the fitter can either make a template of the holes out of 1/4" ply or remove the single screw holding the hinge to the back-box and take the back box shell up to the mounting point to mark the holes. Then after re fitting the back-box and after having drilled mounting holes the whole assembly is introduced up to the mounting and the top screws tightened first. After all mountings are secured tight, the wiring can begin. First thing is to open the back-box and leave your Dome camera suspended in mid air by the hinge. This feels frightening at first but the hinge is very secure and after the initial concern the fitter will quickly have confidence in the hinge.

 

Removing one of the two, fitted glands, it is opened and the wiring from the DVR and PSU are passed throug the gland and terminated accordingly. I had already terminated my loom, but by disassembling the gland managed to place the BNC through all the parts, The Glad was then refitted and tightened. The other gland can be used for a Cat 5 cable to wire the alarms in which are taken to the back box so it is not necessary to open the dome again after initial dip switch settings. Convenient eh? I haven't fitted any alarms yet and will using the camera as a fixed camera at night on motion sensing until I decide where I need the presets and tours. (I did buy this dome to learn from.)

 

The only other reasons you might have to remove the dome are to clean the lens of the camera, or to change the dome itself either after damage or with a replacement smoked dome, or to remove condensation which is a rare occurrence I hope, otherwise there would be no need to remove the dome.

 

So far I have been impressed by this dome and the way it is physically configured. My only minor criticism is that the pendant arm is secured to the back box using four no 6 self locking nuts so swapping the nuts for anti tamper nuts (should you wish to do so) is expensive, whereas if it mounted using bolts, anti-tamper bolts are far more common and much cheaper. Another fitter is far more likely to have anti-tamper Torx screwdriver bits to accommodate opening the back box. Not everyone wants to fit anti-tampers but I like to.

 

Having powered up the camera and controller, the camera impressed mewith its speed and responsiveness.

The picture is sharp enough for identification purposes upto around 50 x zoom and can still read a number plate cleary at 52 times zoom, Fortunately I spent a little more than I budgeted for on the controller as it had micro-pan and tilt buttons. Which really help when getting used to the speed of this dome. The pan and tilt speeds appear to change proportionately at high zoom or the camera would be very difficult to control at distance. I am happy so far with this camera as I have already seen and recorded some criminality in the area

opposite my house. I was able to call police, not mentioning that I was watching on CCTV and report what I saw and the subsequent arrival of police and an arrest being made. I don't intend spying on the neighborhood, but if I see something elicit or illegal I intend to do what I have always done and report it

to police. Within the space of a couple hours, I have already learned who's dog is crapping on my neighbour's lawn. Before I tell him who it is, I wan't to be sure it wasn't a one off.

 

Fortunately, the camera has four separate masking zones and I will need all of them to blank out neighbour's windows. I don't want to be accused of voyeurism. I would say that really, it should have had eight masking zones and I would imagine this could be incorporated into any future firmware updates. There are 128 presets, four patrols (8 would be better) and 4 alarms in and 1 alarm out. One feature I like and find very useful is that during pan and tilt operations, the horizontal and vertical position is displayed on screen long enough to note it and repeat the position exactly, and also as you would expect so is the zoom factor. This makes setting presets a breeze.

 

Considering the retail price in comparison to some of the better known brands like Samsung, Sanyo or Lilin

which have people tracking too, It's not cheap, but it's a good all-round, super-tough dome camera with a lot of strong and useful features. If person tracking and extra masking zones and extra alarms and other features were software options, the unit would IMHO be up there with the Pelco's and Dedicated Micros of this world. Still shoulda coulda woulda, nothing's perfect, but Cop have truly come close.

[Soundy 1]

There, cleaned up the mess. Play nice, ladies.

 

And thanks for the review - we do appreciate all the time you put into it

[Numb-nuts 1]

A good spring clean is always welcome.

 

Well now back to my review. After an afternoon of zooming in / out, locating hot spots to potentially save as presets, by noting the pan and tilt locations, which is conveniently displayed for up to a second after resting the camera, I then decided on my presets and the camera accepted my instructions without incident.

 

I have to admit, in my naivety, that I had wondered why a fast pan and tilt speed was something one might look for in a 'speed' dome as all it does is make controlling with a joystick an very precarious affair. Well Now I can see that the speed comes into it's own when selecting between presets, rapidly moving from one preset to another in a split second. This speed dome is certainly fast even for my expectations

 

I have on one or two occasions heard operators of speed domes, complain that the iris control and the manual focus are not responsive enough at the keyboard, well neither of those statements would be true with the Symphony. Hit a preset and run into the sun, hit the iris control and you have a great picture again and similarly for the manual focus ( however the operator would need to be fast too).

 

I haven't yet set up any tours as I am ashamed to say I don't yet quite understand how they are set up or how they might be applied in practice but give me time with the operations manual and I will do so.

 

Just a point to raise here about the instruction manual. This manual presupposes the operator is the installer.

It is not much good as a an end user manual, and for a less experienced installer like myself, presents a steep learning curve. However from a commissioning point of view it has al the information and a schematic layout of the menus and sub menus. There are also shortcuts to the submenus listed which is rather handy.

 

Nightime viewing is at the moment very disappointing with a huge amount of noise and not much else.

At this time, I am not sure if this is a setup error on my part or if the performance is just poor, so I will not judge the camera on this at the moment, all I know is I have had Sony cameras ( this unit has a Sony Camera inside) before, and they all without exception, performed significantly better in low light conditions. This camera is quoted as being for day /night viewing so performance at night should be reasonable at least.

I am talking with the engineers at Cop about how to resolve this or if there is an issue with my particular unit.

All I can say is watch this space.

[Soundy 1]

I have to admit, in my naivety, that I had wondered why a fast pan and tilt speed was something one might look for in a 'speed' dome as all it does is make controlling with a joystick an very precarious affair.

 

That depends on the dome and the joystick. Some support "proportional" control, whereby the speed is lowered when zoomed in and under manual control, so things don't zip by so fast. A good joystick should have some sensitivity to how far you push it over, too, and control the camera speed appropriately.

 

I haven't yet set up any tours as I am ashamed to say I don't yet quite understand how they are set up or how they might be applied in practice but give me time with the operations manual and I will do so.

Typically, a Tour is just a series of Presets run through in a defined order. You could, for example, have presets for the driveway, the front door, the petunia garden, the dog's regular potty spot, and the neighbor's bathroom window... then create a tour that goes to each one for, say, five seconds before moving on to the next preset. You could then program the camera to automatically run that tour at startup, or to return to the tour 'x' number of minutes of inactivity (since whenever you take manual control, it will normally stop the tour, you want it to resume the tour after you're done running it manually).

[Numb-nuts 1]

I haveto admit, after a few hours each day fooling with my joystick ( ) I am kind of getting the 'feel of it.

And yes the Symphony does have proportional speed control and I have noticed it, I just didn't have the feel for the joystick yet.

 

I do have micro-pan and micro tilt controls on my keyboard also which are very useful. I haven't yet used the manual zoom as the camera always seems to find the correct zoom, but the position of the camera makes the manual iris control very handy.

 

Thats description of a tour is about what I expected loosely speaking. The problem was I wanted the camera to patrol the areas between the presets slower than it does when I call a preset. Still I will work with what I have.

[Soundy 1]

Pretty sure I've seen some cameras that have an option to set movement speed between presets during a tour... couldn't say which ones, offhand.

 

The other thing it should have is a "Pattern" function, which is essentially a macro recorder for your keyboard controls: you start the pattern recorder, drive the camera around - panning, tilting, zooming, etc. - then save the pattern. When you call the pattern, the camera will then repeat those movements at the same speed and timing you performed them.