Here is an odd problem that I have contacted Geovision about for the past two years - and still they haven't offered a solution.

First, I'll give you the setup:
2.0GHZ pc
1GB ram
40GB HD
80GB HD
DVD Burner
Windows XP SP2
ATI AGP Video card
Geovision 650 - 8
USB SIC device
Software - 7.0

This system is a test/demo system in our office and we've had it around for a few years now.

We have a few wired cameras, a DVD player and a wireless camera hooked up to it.

The wireless camera is just a cheap one like you get spammed with - the size of a quarter. The receiver is a small box with an antenna on it and a channel tuning knob. It has a short length of coax and plugs into the geovision port.

Everything works fine on the system, but here is the thing - If the wireless camera (12 feet away from receiver) gets a large amount of interference, or loses power, it locks up multiple camera ports on the geovision card.

Example -
Camera 1 - DVD input
Camera 2 - Wired Dome camera
Camera 3 - Wired outdoor camera
Camera 4 - Wireless camera
Camera 5 - Wired indoor camera
Camera 6 - Wired covert camera

If I unplug the power to the wireless camera, I lose all other EVEN numbered cameras. When I say "lose" I mean for the first 10 to 20 seconds the video on all even numbered cameras freezes..then turns to the blue Video Lost screen.
The same thing happens if I turn the Tuning knob on the wireless receiver too far and it goes out of the camera's frequency range.

I am not a big fan of wireless cameras; however there are installations where it is the only practical option. But with this freezing problem (I have re-created the problem on other systems), I hesitate to offer any kind of wireless as a solution - and thus lose some sales.

Does anyone understand why this happens? How to fix it?

I suspect that the geovision card does some sort of high speed cycling and when it gets to the port with the wireless receiver connected, it must get 'confused' that there is a signal of some kind but nothing it can properly display.
But I really don’t understand the details of how the card operates.

what are you using to connect a wireless camera to the geovision?

Bottom Line Up Front: With intermittent RF signal loss comming from then the RX connected to the DVR is the problem. GEO and other PC cards assume there is a SIGNAL LOSS, which emulates a PORT (CHANNEL ) conflict, cause the system to malfunction as you describe.

I've been able to fix the problem using a high output 2.4 GHz TX and RX system from FWV with a supplied singal amplifier in between the RX and the DVR.

Yah, what he said! How did you connect a wireless camera to the geovision setup?

Yep, what was said above.

You plug in the wireless receiver into the GEO by using a RCA to BNC adapter.

I have tried the wireless on the GEO, but like he said if there is a signal break for too long you will get a still image or a video lost message I believe.

We have had problems with wireless cameras on the Geo that causes it to freeze.

We have never really cured the problem & some systems are working but not in critical situations.

We tried the most powerful wireless systems allowed in the U.K. with no luck.

We now will only connect hard wired cameras to a Geo system.

I got a VideoComm 5.8Ghz System (4 of them) to work fine with a Geo System Recently. Its a 1 mile system, cameras are approx 100-150' away though and TX and RX's are mounted up high on poles with direct line of site.

Rory

As follow-up to my earlier post, FWV = http://www.firstwitnessvideo.com/ they are known for the TX's. From 10 mw to 2 watt TX's with adjustible gain on the RX .

No matter what brand of TX/RX you use, the key is a strong TX and a RX that gets the signal to line lock.

Low end TX/RX will cause your problem 100% of the time on the GEO.

I had the same problem today, I had temporarily hooked up a ‘gadget’ wireless camera to channel 2 and channels 2, 1, 4, 8, 12 all got the lost video display. Why do unrelated channels (1,4,8,12) get a lost video?

I had one customer tell me last week that 5 cameras all went out at once (Lost Video Display), they all came back in the middle of the night. There are no wireless cameras, but I do believe one camera has a bad connection that is lost from time to time. Could one bad connection on one camera cause 5 "video lost" to be displayed?

Any input is much appreciated…Thanks!

What's the framerate on the card? If it's a 60 fps, then it sounds like bad signal causing issues on the chip itself.

It is a GV-800, it's about 3 years old and I updated to 8.2.
By the "chip itself", is the GV PCI card? or the motherboard?
Tanks for your reply!

Had a similar problem with my 1480 card, if a balun is wired up the wrong way round (it was on a active balun hub) then obviously the camera concerned gives a junk output on screen, but so it also corrupts several other channels (not continuous, but a lot of bad corruption).

If I recall I also had a problem with a wireless setup I tested, but not got the wireless handy, the problem was either when the camera was disconnected from the wireless tx (cant recall which of hand it was a while ago, and the kit is somewhere buried under piles of stuff!) or the power was disconnected from the wireless rx, other channels were corrupted badly.

There is definately some problem where one channel going bad in someway can affect others... Which is not ideal..