Any opinions of Dedicated Micros, digital sprites?

[jmason 0]

You hard drive failure rate can be decreased by the way the way the MFG provides their installation space and cooling for the drives. I don't care what drive brand you use you will have failures over time. They are constantly being written over.

[icrealtime 0]

I use only Hitachi Drives, 8MCach 7200 RPM and have a very low fail rate. We used Maxtor’s in the past and had numerous issues with them. We sell on average of 200-250 hard drive per month are very pleased.

[cctv_down_under 0]

Here are my two cents.

 

I think I can speak with a fair amount of experience with both of these units and many more:

 

the DM units are fairly reliable, the problems you seem to refer to with HDD are indeed true, but I doubt they are indeed the main problem, all HDD's are subject to failure, but most drive manufactorers have HDD Diagnostic tolls that let you check your drive, from my experience with DM the relaistic faiures come from environment and mostly bad power or incorrect preventative measures.

 

After testing many HDD's that were supposedly faulty and the cause of instability i found this not to be the case, in almost 70% of all failures of supposed drives, it had occured from a corrupted and incomplete video file, usually caused by overheating due to bad power or the environment that the DVR was in...little ventalation being the main culprit.

 

using UPS devices reduced failure rate by a large amount however I think that the main issue was the OS not recognising corrupted data on the HDD, a lack of adequate cooling was also relevant.

 

I have seen GE units fail as well and although they do use a RTOS, they are still akin to a PC based unit, they still have a processor and they still have ram etc, the secret in my belief is to ensure that althogh the OS is embedded it should not reside on the HDD at all...sure that makes for a small OS and a less PRETTY interface, but it does allow you to swap any fualty drive without losing any settings.

 

All DVR's will crash and Standalone is less prone to this kind of failure, however, they are still able to lock up and freeze.

 

The failures did cause us to switch to the Bosch Divar units (still not a single failure) and they run very cool, but recently we have moved to March Networks, because they have integrated the UPS into the DVR itself, this has made them very stable also the way the HDD's mount in a seperate caddy beside 2x fans with the option of 4 and the way the spacing is kept between the drives reduces the heat issues, they even ensure that you have to mount them with the electronics side facing each other with an airflow gap, this means also that the drives touch two heat extracting pads that are joined to the actuall casing causing a heat sink type effect, we have been instructed by march to ONLY use a certain grade (I do not know if it is true) yes....a certain grade of seagate drive that they sell to us and we are yet to see any failures from these drives (fingers crossed) the other thing i liked was that the OS and all settings are not kept on the HDD, I recently had to upgrade one from 4x300gb drives to 4x400gb drives and all I had to do was send two drive holders with the drives installed and the electrician put them in and presto, no changes needed to any settings.

 

Another thing I liked about the March product was that it has no buttons or other functions on the DVR itself, yes this means you need a PC to operate it, but so what...at least if there is going to be a problem it is not likely to be on the unit itself and therefore recording will still happen.

 

Although i can not prove my point (Thomas Perhaps) but i think having the box recording and processing your requests just leads to more issues, it should only stream and let the PC do the processing where problems could occur.

 

 

In short I am yet to see a Divar or a March product fail, the Divar is too expensive for us to use as it has a limited POS ability, the DM is without doubt the easiest of all the DVR's to use and they HAVE been in the game for a long time it is also the largest selling DVR in the market world wide, so it would not survive if it had such a high failure rate.

 

The GE..although harder to use and much less pretty is fairly stable and robust and has some really nifty features which can make it easier to sell.

 

I am going to stick with March even though it is much more expensive as we tend to use the POS side of things a lot more and the support is outstanding...having EVERYBODY using your DVR WILL result in support issues NO MATTER WHAT but March only have certified users and run courses on the DVR that must be completed before selling it, this ensures not TIME WASTING idiots causing unwanted and un needed support calls.

 

 

As a passing note i think that if you are in the security game full time you SHOULD keep one 16 ch DVr for swap out purposes, with electronics you have to expect failures at some point and it is not unreasonable to expect that an installer should havea back up unit of his own.

[rory 0]

Yep, all electronics can lock up, even something as simple as a cell phone or burglar alarm .. seen a few of them freeze ... never seen the GE units lock up ..or Kalatel .. but it is ofcourse possible .. only heard of 2 and they originated from GE australia. .

 

Id like to hear how march works out for you. Do you have to travel to Canada or do they have a rep in your area?

 

PS. Phillips use to sell the Kalatel DVRs BTW .. also the RTOS isnt on the HDD with the GE Kalatel units ..

[cctv_down_under 0]

I had a feeling about the OS on the GE unit, but they have strict guidelines...we were not even allowed to open the box...let alone take out or swap a HDD (not that it stopped me opening the box of course).

 

I agree about electronics, my damn O2 PDA phone locks up all the time.

 

We have been purchasing from a March CSP, but will now be endevouring to qualify ourselves to buy direct.

[rory 0]

Cool, let me know, i always liked their wall mount DVRs, are perfect for matching up with a Burglar Alarm .. just they wanted me to fill out a bunch of forms sent from a rep, before i could get an idea of pricing, so i basically forgot about it at the time .. I was ready to switch to them from GE a couple years ago .. The GE thing is the HDD issue and that they want you to send everything back to them for service .. while people like us in other countries really need to service them ourselves .. so thats always been my biggest issue with them from the Kalatel Days .. i got 2 DSRs we have to send back as I cant add HDDs myself .. can do it with the DVMRes but not the DSRs .. they dont have any upgrade software for them ..

One is over 5 years old BTW, HDD crashed as it was never on a line conditioner but amazingly lasted this long LOL .. bought 2 new 5400rpm maxtors like the ones it had but no go .. board probably fried too .. anyway ..

 

[cctv_down_under 0]

I hate to sound opinionated but EVERYone should sell buck and boost UPS devices with EVERY DVR, there are many reasons.

 

For PC's the AVI is stored in memory before being dumped to the HDD, killing the power causes widows to dump to the HDD the corrupted (unclosed) AVI file, once this is done the HDD can not recognise the size of this file and may even count it as bad sectors, the thing is the DVR's index still thinks the file is ok..this is why people like Geo ahd that "repair Database" option and "Search and replace corrupted files" having the UPS there makes it shut down correctly and if scripted correctly can use the correct commands to cause a program to shut down, I am not talking about, "shut down windows" because this can cause problems, a good UPS lets you employ a script to shut down the machine, this allows you to use the correct commands to exit the programs and especially...in the order you want.

 

I have been to many sites where there has been a stuffed PC, but when you get it back to the office it works fine....confused I took it back and the problem returned, after investigating with a laser temperature gun, i noticed that the Power supply was almost literally cooking due to undervoltage, there are also safeguards in a lot of motherboards to reset if undervoltage occurs.

 

If you let your machine cook...it will not be stable...if it gets over or under voltage you are in for problems and there are more problems than just that.

 

There are loads of UPS devices, but you have to be sure what you are buying, there are NINE major power problems that can occur and not all UPS devices cover all NINE and the ones that do are more expensive for example there is:

 

Power Failure

Power Surge

Switching Transient

Frequency Variation

Harmonic Distortion

Line Noise

Overvoltage

Undervoltage

Power Sag

 

There is a big differnce between an ON LINE UPS and a LINE INTERACTIVE UPS.

 

IMHO the built in UPS in the March product swayed me to spend double on our DVR's we use two UPS, the built in and an external device and using even one UPS dramatically had reduced our fault rate, so much so that EVERYTHING in my entire house is on UPS and funnily enough when you look at the graphs (ups reporting software) from what you percieved as clean power you would be very surprised indeed.

 

Look at it this way..if every pixel moves on every camera from a power surge and then the BT878's have to work ful on on EVERY 4 inputs and then the CPU has to work at full capacity so does the ram..if not using onboard compression...so does the HDD's to record it all and at a time when the incorrect voltage is going through the device..what do you think will happen!

 

I hate to sound off so loud, however this is the most crucial element you can choose, and it is often not chosen wisely, I have seen cameras damaged due to undervoltage, this is why we used to have to choose cameras that had such a large voltage variance to ensure the longevity of the device.

[rory 0]

Yeah UPS is needed for PC based, but for RTOS not essential .. however, he should have had a Line Condioner / Voltage Regulator, which are very cheap now .. actually he had a UPS but that doesnt protect you against the power problems we have in this country Regular Surge Protectors dont help us down here ..

 

Ive seen UPS's fried to the ground before .. ive also seen where the brownouts or spikes went right through the UPS left it alone and fried everything else .. (3rd world power down here remember). Ive never used a UPS myself for any of my own computers (couldnt afford them) and never had an issue except for lately with the firefox profile which is software related ... ive used the same triplite 600watts Line Conditioner since 1996 .. that says something for Triplite We are actually now using the Tripplite UPS with Voltage Regulation on every system as of recently, before it was the other brand but a local PC store has great prices on them now.

 

PS. we just got a new 12 million $ Generator so hopefully will be less power spikes and black outs this summer .. though it was off for 2 hours last Saturday Night ..

[cctv_down_under 0]

I am certainly no expert in this area...luckily one of my techs are, but when you speak of a UPS being left alone after a huge surge then you are probably taliking of a LINE INTERACTIVE UPS...Now I know someone will correct me but my understanding is that a LINE INTERACTIVE only kicks in when the voltage changes, this means that otherwise you are still powering direct it will not protect against a fast full burst as it takes certain milliseconds to kick in, an ONLINE UPS provides direct power from the battery at all times therefore problems only occur on one side of the UPS.

 

To give you an idea most UPS either cover 1,3, 5 or all 9 power problems IE, cheaper ones cover

 

1 Only Power failure

3 Power Failure, Power Sag and Sml Power Surge

5 Power Failure, Power Sag, Power Surge, Undervoltage and Overvoltage

9 Power Failure, Power Sag, Power Surge, Undervoltage and Overvoltage, Line Noise, Switching Transient, Frequency Variation and Harmonic distortion.

 

The fact is if you only cover level 3 then you are subject to anything above that.....OHHH and BTW for the size of projects I do, if the UPS dies it is a good day and it means that the DVR is still alive and I do not have to try to explain that the power killed it and that they are not covered

[cctv_down_under 0]

The other thing I forgot to mention is that a Standalone ALSO needs the UPS, the powersupplies in standalones are usually not as tollerant to undervoltage or overvoltage as much as a good PC Power supply is, and this is one of the major reasons for Overheating in a Standalone, once again I am no expert (sure someone is), but my bets are if undervoltage occurs for a lengthy time then the Powersupply (often ****ty in a standalone) will heat up and eventually fail and try to dump the power to the DVr unti itself of cut out all together or blow a fuse, to prove a point once I opened a standalone and kept showing the customer blown fuses, one after another and he still did not believe me, he thought it was not his power, so I plugged in an expensive UPS and showed him the readings, he still did not believe me so I left...apparently he wrapped a fuse in tin foil and caused the transistor??? to blow up and flame to jump out of the DVR (witnessed by one of my techs).

 

Just goes to show, you need the right mix of petrol to run your car and you need the right voltage range to run your DVR, you can mix down your petrol but with adverse affects, the DVr can operate at wrong voltages but with similar advers affects

[rory 0]

I dont know what Line Interactive is but if it has Voltage Regulation it will say AVR or Automatic Voltage Regulation, on the newer UPS. Older UPS never had Voltage Regulation built in.

 

Voltage Regulation (for electronics) also known as Line Conditioning (for PCs) controls the under and over voltage ...

 

The main thing for any electronics is Voltage Regulation or Line Conditioning, Back up batteries are nice to have for security and software issues, but wont save your hardware.

 

Remember a UPS alone is simply battery back up, nothing more. Recently they had added in AVR to them for actual protection.

 

PS. we get long periods of low voltage here, which fry almost anything that is plugged in .. low voltage is a common thing here .. every day .. and when they finally pump the power up ...

[cctv_down_under 0]

The consequence of equipment failure is the single most important factor in deciding on the type of UPS. For small office PC loads where single station or small network data protection is required, a small single-phase UPS is often an adequate solution. Most single-phase UPSs use off-line or line-interactive topologies, resulting in a small (but acceptable for standard PCs) interruption when transferring to and from battery power. Because PCs, workstations and peripherals are often located in a decentralized manner throughout offices, a dedicated off-line UPS often priced under $100 provides an ideal solution.

 

If the equipment to be protected is critical, an online UPS is the best choice. This topology transfers to and from battery and internal bypass without any power interruption to the load, providing a truly seamless transfer to battery power.

 

Another thing to consider is that when a strike or burst occurs, it looks for a place to earth, quite often it happens at night and the ONLY thing on and only place to earth is the security system.

[cctv_down_under 0]

UPS Topology Choices

The power protection technology supporting desktop computers and workstations differs significantly from the advanced power management systems that protect mission-critical equipment. This creates a lot of confusion in trying to understand the three basic types of UPSs:

 

 

Off-line UPS (system or data loss is an inconvenience).

 

Line-interactive UPS (system or data loss is a serious problem).

 

Online UPS (system or data loss is unacceptable).

 

A line-interactive UPS is similar to an off-line UPS because when sensing an undervoltage or overvoltage situation, it also requires a transfer time for the inverter to turn on and to supply power to the load. The main difference between an off-line and a line-interactive UPS is that a line-interactive UPS in the stand-by mode has active voltage regulation.

online UPS offers double-conversion topology: The inverter is connected in series between the ac input and the load. Power for the load flows continuously through the inverter. An online UPS has some of the same components as an off-line UPS with a few differences — most notably, a rectifier.

 

An online UPS has input surge protection, batteries, inverter components and a rectifier. The rectifier takes the input voltage and changes it from ac voltage (alternating current coming from the utility power) to dc voltage to charge the battery and provide dc power to the inverter. In most online UPSs, the rectifier or filtering is used to make sure that the load, as well as the UPS, does not allow unnecessary noise and harmonics to be fed back into a building's power. Because an online UPS is always creating its own power from the rectifier and inverter, it never has transfer interruptions and can provide a much higher level of power quality.

A