I have a pre-installed Crow alarm panel that I require connected to AVTECH 761 DVR so as the DVR will record when the alarm panel is triggered.

Instructions in the DVR manual are vague...can any one please assist with advice?

DVR manual reads as follows:

To connect the wire from ALARM INPUT ( PIN 3 --6 ) to GND ( PIN 9 )
connector, DVR will start recording and the buzzer will be on.
When “MENU -> CAMERA -> ALARMâ€

We would suggest that you contact someone local to you who is familiar with your alarm box, and is familiar with basic electronics, and better yet one who is qualified to work on this equipment.

low = 0 volts

high = equals the voltage output of your panel.

It is assumed that your panel outputs 12 volts DC.

The question is: How does your panel work. If it triggers an event will it create a short, or will it output 12 volts? Based on this answer is how you would set up the DVR to respond to your alarm panel.


If you were to have the alarm trigger a "siren", and / or a strobe then you will be using a 12 volt output from the alarm panel. When there is no alarm then there is no voltage going to the strobe, and the siren. You could tie this in to the DVR, and set the DVR to the HIGH setting.

Do you want to trigger just one camera, or several?

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http://scorpiontheater.com/io.aspx

Note error pin 3 - 5 should read pin 3 - 6

Thanks for that. The alarm output is 12V on activation. I am assuming (an and not happy having to make the assumption) That I can trigger all cameras by connection to the DSUB block provided with the DVR.
However, it does not quite read true to me...

To connect the wire from ALARM INPUT ( PIN 3 --6 ) to GND ( PIN 9 )
connector, DVR will start recording and the buzzer will be on.
When “MENU -> CAMERA -> ALARMâ€

Yes that is correct. On the connector you can pin 3, and 4 and 5 and 6 if you want a four camera recording.

I would actually prefer to see an "isolation board" between the DVR, and the alarm panel. If you are not an electronics tinkerer then do not worry about it, but is something to think about.

Set the DVR settings to high.



------------[3--[4--[5--[6
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Does this figure make sense?

Be careful here. I tried to wire my alarm panel into my 761, and 12V from the panel blew out the main board.

I have come to understand that High means open circuit and Low means closed circuit. It would be best to have your alarm panel activate a relay (you can get them from Radio Shack) and run the contacts to the DVR between the alarm input and ground. I prefer to use a normally closed contact that will open when the alarm activates. This way your DVR will be in alarm if a wire comes loose. I also helps prevent noise on an open pair from tripping the DVR.

It could be that my DVR was bad to begin with, but I wasn't going to take a chance with the replacement. My heart sank when the the screen went blank, smoke came out of the DVR, and the beeper went on solid. One of the little chips on the motherboard had a hole blown in it. Scorpion is a dealer and probably has easier access to replacement parts. I would be real interested to see what happens if he puts 12V battery into the input.

Now you hear from the "pro", and you hear it from hands on experience!

My first oops was at my father's game room in 1981. He had just bought 10 brand new games one of them being Donkey Kong.

The crowds were so huge that a group of people would gather around a game making it difficult for everyone to watch, and the player would feel "crowded".

I came up with the idea of my own to take a spare monitor, and put it in to a box, and mount it on top of the new game.

It was on a friday afternoon when I finished. I plugged it in, and Kaboom!

Lesson number

1. Becareful with what you do.
2. Learn what you are trying to do.
3 Test before a deadline
4 Learn how to deflect "evil stares" from your clientle.
5 Learn how to smooth talk a freaked out business owner with a big 2nd mortgage on his house, and really needing a product to produce income.
6 Explain to your dad who trusts you whole heartedly that it will not happen again.
7 Learn how to regain the trust of a business owner when it comes to "electronics tinkering.
8 Learn how to regain the trust of your dad when you are supposed to be "the" electronics genius, and you just made a miniture atomic bomb smoke come out of a electronic device.
9 Learn that there is a device called an isolation transformer.
10 Learn that you cannot have two monitors 120 volt input lines connected in parallel.
11 Learn that you are not the "sh*t" that you think you are.
12 How to take the ribbing from friends, and family members in regards to blowing up a video game.
13 Learn not to feel bad about making mistakes, and using it as a "tool" to learn from.


I do miss those "good old days". I was working on (at the time) cutting edge technology. High speed computer controlled light displays on pinballs, and voice/speech boards such as the one from Gor Gar, or the Black Knight Pinball machine. I was working on a cutting edge product called a Z80 processor, and the 8080 processor.

I used to do "scientific studies" on the equipment. I would take a resistor, and a wire, and I would connect one end to the VCC of the board, and tap around on the various ICs, and parts to see what happened.

I made megastroid, and microstroid. If I grounded a spot on Asteroids then the rocks visually became really huge!!! It would freak people out to have the game turn on then the rocks would come out, and there would be no way to avoid the rocks!! The rocks were still the same size electronically, but it was just a visual change on the monitor. Micro stroid is the ship being so small that it was just a small dot on the screen.

I do not miss the good old days where I would have to take my dad's business cards, and then shove them in to the relay contacts on the old mechanical pinball machines to keep them operational.

Here is another event that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I was working on a pinball machine that had the glass taken off, and the play field was raised in the up position so that you could see the underside of the playfield where all of the solenoids, and wires are. I was pressing the left flipper button, and I was spraying WD-40 to loosen a "sticky" flipper.

Can you guess what happened? The electronics techs do, and they are laughing there butts off about it right now. I will tell you what happened. The WD-40 caught fire from the spark from the relay contacts on solenoid to the flipper, and I jumped out of my shoes because I was not expecting shooting flames!

LOL!

I have broken things in my day, and I have solved some really tricky technical issues.

I wish you guys could have seen my electronics work bench when I was a very young teenager!! What a mess it was!

Your story reminds me of my 8th grade electronics shop. We built a 1 tube AM radio with a handful of parts. The guy next to me wired the 3" tall metal electrolitic capacitor up backwards. When he plugged it in, it exploded sending the can up through the ceiling tiles to rattle around, and coating him in a sticky smelly paper mess. Great times!

I got caught by my dad blowing capacitors like fire crackers!

I used to get them out of the garbage at the local TV shop down the road.

I took an extension cord, and I would put one end way out in the yard, and put a capacitor in the plug, and then I would go back to the house, and then my friends, and I would watch as we plugged in the cord, and then
KAPOW!

My dad was mad because I had debris all over the yard, and I was destroying the grass!

We used to charge them, and then walk up to people, and touch the wires on their arms, and give them a jolt!

From there we took the coil from a broken strobe light, and I put it inside of a calculator (they were bigger in the late 70s) and I had two small screws on the front side. I could then shock people unexpectedly.

I learned the hard way not to mess with the biggest kid in school. He did not take it as a joke, and I learned 180 different ways to get home from school without taking the same path each day!