Cant figure out this set up..

[jisaac 0]

I have got a job right now where we are going in to a system installed by a company nobody knows the name of. And this system is wacky. See if you can figure it out. WARNING THIS IS GOING TO BE LENGTHY!

Ok there is 9 Pelco Esprit ptz's out on this location. The connection between the cameras and the control site is all fiber. Ok so here is where it gets confusing. We went in this building and they had one of the cameras working up on a plasma monitor in the main room. In the same room they had a kbd400 pelco controller. They said they have not been able to see the other cameras nor control them (obviously). So after moving the controller to see if it would react, nothing happeaned. So I decided to try to plug in another identical controller to see if that one would work. When i unplugged the cat 5 cable it lost video on the monitor. So plugged the 1st controller back in and could never get the camera picture back up.

Ok so after that i decided to go look for the genex mulitplexer server. After a bit of searching I found the Genex Mx4000SVR. After looking on the back of it, I found that there was nothing going into the camera inputs on the back of the Genex?!?!?! Only 2 coax cables one going in to the main and one into the spot monitor . Also an input going into the local keyboard port and also a cable going to the remote keybord inputs. ok now under this was a genex series multiplexer 16 channel. And there was 11 camera inputs and only 4 of them ended up working. But none of them was the camera that was originally on the plasma! now somewhere down the a building that was about 1/2 a mile away could control that camera that was on the plasma. It was a slave to to the controller in the originally room with the controller. Now my job is to try to get all these cameras working and able to switch between all these cameras and pan tilt and zoom from both locations. Any ideas?

isaac

[rory 0]

oh lawd i feel your stress

 

Ok sure the first monitor was not somehow connected to that keyboard directly?

 

Have you trried just powering down and up again?

Not all muxes auto find the video, the more basic versions require a restart.

 

Rory

[jisaac 0]

that controller on has one input and that is the RJ-45 jack for the communication. That is also the power for the controller. There is no input output. So when I took that plug out it powered it off. I did that about 3 times.

And how the heck did the other building get a slave cable to that camera for ability to control it? I am going to pull my hair out on this one before its over.

[jisaac 0]

by the way rory did you get that video that i sent you?

[rory 0]

yes thnks, you didnt get my reply?

 

thanks

Rory

[jisaac 0]

oh ya i sure did. When i finally got my dsl moved to my new house I check my mail in outlook and had 102 new messages! but ya now that i check i did get it. Ya those girls had very sticky fingers

[SeanMort 0]

Lengthy answer (Sorry my Ritalin is to blame!!)

 

Assuming all the gear is OK and hasn't been modded I wouldn't bother spending precious time trying to unravel somebody elses mess (from your description it sounds nasstyy!). Sketch out exactly how it should be wired to work and spend time making it work like that. Work on the video first then the data. Start at where the fibre tcvr's are at the control end and check each video channel (note any faults and leave the repairs until the cabling goes in the right places). Get the video routing right to each input. Then tackle the keyboards data. Make sure that the data cabling goes to the right places. You didn't say what make fibre gear it is but sometimes there will be a unit that just does the video and another that just does the data per camera, or a unit (tcvr) that does both on a single or dual fibre. The video side of things is normally straight forward but the data side can be tricky. Most of the Fibre Options/IFS gear for instance has a data LED on it that shows if data is coming through (NB doesn't tell if it's valid data though). The most common problem on control data (RS-485/422) wiring during installation is incorrect connections (+ and - swopped). From your description it sounds like the fiber data cables may be routed in a star config. This means that at the control end you really should have a data distributor (splitter) device to the PTZ's from the Keyboards, but I've seen jobs where the data has simply been parallel connected which sometimes works but sometimes not (off-sets/reflections etc). Use one PTZ data channel that you know works, and then hook up the first keyboard and get this working, then the second keyboard, then the rest of the PTZ data one at a time. Did the system at any time work as it was intended ? Perhaps it did not because the previous Co couldn't get it working. I've had my fair share of similar tasks ... condolences and good luck!!

[jisaac 0]

good news got it all working. will post explenation of how i did when i am not so wore out from a long long stressfull day

[cctv_down_under 0]

OHHH come on!!!

 

My guess... your keyboard was choosing which camera was displayed on the plasma, hence why it disappeared after disconnection, it sounds like you have a second satelite keyboard connected to either the Mux or the Matrix of the system.

 

The main output of your DVr/Mux/Matrix was fed into the device supplying video to the plasma, so monitor out wars fed inot the plasma, therefore they shoud have been able to change cameras if they knew how to use it properly, the second one worked because it never got powered down and was set for the PTZ.??

[jisaac 0]

Here is the way it went

 

 

That camera was fed directly into a seperate mulitplexer and was the only camera fed into it. So I unplugged it from that mulitiplexer and routed that one back to the other main muliplxr and then routed the main and spot back to the genex mxplr server. That gave me control and ability to pull up and control all the cameras from all the different locations via/output 1-4.

(compressed explenation)

[jisaac 0]

oh ya and the controllers were f'd up the A. Replaced with new ones. Helped alot.