DoorMan

Ooops! You don't need zoom on motion at all. Sorry, my bad..

On the VCC-HD4000.. Zoom on motion alarm works very well in the daytime, not so well at night. There is considerably more noise at night which forces you to decrease the motion sensitivity to a point where subjects can walk right across the view and not trigger the zoom function. A fast paced walk will trigger the unit at reduced sensitivity. Sometimes too fast to capture the shot. However the VCC-HD4000 does allow you to combine the digital inputs and the motion alarm in boolean logic form so as to not be soley based on the imagers' motion detection i.e. PIR Sensor/Imager combo. Switch/Imager combo and the like. The HD4000 zooms very fast and focuses quickly as well. It is a good choice but be forwarned... Having said this the problems only exist if you are trying for facial recognition. Adjusting to long shutter and/or sense-up will stop the spurious zooms because the noise is greatly reduced. But then you only see marshmallow men......

Heh! I thought you may get a kick about the Obama Care comparison. I'm glad you took it as it was intended. No political inference... It's just that to say or plan to start a Health care affiliation (or any type of affiliation) and design it to be a "no cost to you/us" alternative does not make sense in a free market society. Unless of course the goal is to socialize the entire sector and we all (I trust) know the cost of that. That usually fails or is stressed so badly that it becomes inferior to other offerings as evidenced in history. Consumers become enamoured early on and semi-addicted to the immediate financial benefits such as freebies provide. There are always negative impact to those that actually don't mind paying a fair price for a fair product or service. Around 360 and back to the "flavors comparison". It seems to me, if I understand correctly, that you take exception to all or most of the offerings on the market today. You feel there is a better way to do things. You feel it can done more cost effectively (maybe even no cost). You feel it may be able to be offered free to all who would use it. You feel it would be short/long term maintainable in management, growth and self regulation. That would be one H_LL of a "business" (but not really) model C_S. And a major undertaking if I may say so. I admire your, (read all of yours), perserverence if this takes shape. I know I have a hard enough time just trying to scratch out a living and enjoy the family type things. The end user will buy what they can afford and at the very end of the day vote with the wallet. But if this is available for free who in their right mind would buy it? How could it be a good and profitable product to bring forth to a customer in solution form as a line item on an invoice? About PM's. If you go to the top of the mainpage you will see a list of choices. One of them is member list. Go in there and find the member you want to contact to send him/her a PM. Seriously, good luck with this!

I'd like to see something come of what you are describing but I do hold little hope it will ever be. Here like other places we like flavors, the more the better. The more flavors there are the more innovation there is. Don't take this the wrong way because I do respect what you are describing but....I see it as the video surveillance equivalent to "Obama Care". There will be only bad things that come out of a grassroots, eliminate the competition SW package that is offered free to all who would use it. The other SW companies would suffer the wrath if it ever got going and would drop like flies. And then there was one............(crickets) For now we have all different packages from low to high cost, low to high functionality and OEM freebies abound. I think with enough research you will find the happy medium you seek. Check out LuxRiot along the way. I think it is very close if not exactly what you are looking for. www.luxriot.com. Maybe PM a member named "Roman" he helped develop it and is a very helpful to all. Microsoft awarded him this year for being just that...

Only if you buy them for 224 ea. Sorry just couldn't resist... You should be able to do somewhat better on price for those lenses with a little looking around.

Why no love for LuxRiot? ~$1000.00 and unlimited cams? You guys doing ptz tracking and such? Sorry I don't get it...... It works and works well. Better than a couple others I tried out. What gives?

Having some trouble while trying to determine URL resource path in ACTi 5311. Camera not directly supported by LuxRiot (yet) and want to configure Generic camera JPEG compatible. Using Wireshark and am not quite able to determine proper URL path using HTTP packets captured using Wireshark. Any advice for me?

I'm looking closely at 2 manufacturers, Sony and Acti. We all know Sony makes some good stuff but ACTi? Who would you choose if price was no object? I've had good results talking with both recently. Sony doesn't back-up their claims posting vids like ACTi. ACTi uses Sony components too though. Two cameras I'm looking at are: http://www.acti.com/product/detail/Megapixel_IP_Box_Bullet_Camera/TCM-5311 http://ws.sel.sony.com/PIPWebServices/RetrievePublicAsset/StepID/SEL-asset-72511/original/SNC-DS-DM%20series%20brochure%20final%203-08.pdf Much different cameras I know but they are both megapixel CCD's which I feel confident with. Who would you favor, Sony or ACTi?

I'm want to gety some IP66 heated domes. Are there some exceptional choices and vendors for these? I'll have a look at the physical dimensions online.

Yes, for example the development you did on the 8511 isn't directly applicable to the TCM series camera's. It revolves around authentication and how it is presented. How much different it is is well above my level of understanding. I'm sure you could make it work for your package. I was told that any development of interface with the TCM series requires receipt of SDK specific to TCM series. LuxRiot (for instance) would have to procure this so I was informed. I've tried several more ways after giving up on this a week or so ago to no avail. This with the help of some guys "in the know" so to speak. Still have not received solution from ACTI or LuxRiot but I'm sure it's just around the bend. I don't believe I could develop an application using SDK within any reasonable amount of time. The end result would be less than desireable and ultimately utilitarian in nature at best because of my skill set..... Total Control has my attention, you have truely been busy over there. I'm a Windows Mobile device fan. Thanks for your input!

Geez what about LuxRiot? Maybe not the best on the market but nowhere near the cost of what you all are talking about?! The camera support is top notch too... 5K low end? Oh my heart! And if you look really close at the camera support you will find camera's that are truely "LuxRiot Specific".

The non-megapixel Fujinon lenses will only be non-megapixel toward the edges. At the center (and most of the distance from it) they will be at or better than 1.3 MP. This I was assured by Fujinon directly. I have confirmed this with the Fujinon p/n's YV2.1X2.8SR4A-SA2L 3 MP lens and YV2.7X2.9LRD4-SA2 non-MP. The second lens above is the one I use on the ACTi TCM-5311. At F.95 it is very bright and in very low lux who's looking for tatoo's anyways? With the 5311 I'm happy with either of the above. The second lens is less than half the price of the first. But the second lens is in no way shape or form half the performer of the first with a 1 MP camera.

For the last couple weeks I've been using the TCM-5311. It does what it says it does in the spec sheet. I've had a couple issues that needed to be hard booted but feel that it was my repeated erroneous querying of it that causes these freezes. A very good camera it is. Bang for buck however is subject to one's own interpretation. It works well and presently is the flagship camera of the ACTi line. If only I could get it to work outside of IE and ACTi's Enterprise and Pro software I would use it more..... Still waiting on firmware update from ACTi and/or camera support from LuRiot. Will post vids when it is squared away...

To address the HDD "always spinning" power concerns you have check these out. http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&name=Solid-State-Disks They use far less power than HDD's and bring along some great benefits. The Intel controllers are best. These however come at a price.

The problem as I see it is this. With those cheapo's you WILL capture ghosts. But it most likely will be because of the camera quality and not a spirit per se. I mean do ghosts actually reflect light anyways? Are you teaming these up with non-contact IR temperature sensing? FLIR may be a better choice? I have no clue what physical properties to apply to a spirit...... How do you?

On board camera based local recording should help to minimise this vulneranility I would think?

Chances are you will have the full resolution in the center of image then getting progressively worse toward the edges of the lens. Other than that the F1 lens will be loads brighter than the F1.8. I like the Fujinon F.95 non-megapixel lens on my ACTi TCM-5311 so far.

Have you seen these? http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Outdoor-Pan-Tilt-Drive-unit-w-Controller-CCTV-75B_W0QQitemZ220457803813QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item33544f2025&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1262 I just picked one up for giggles. I was pretty happy with it. No zoom of course but now I'm working on a pc interface for it with a cheap DIO card.. Just sayin'

Hey thanks alot guys, I did try to execute what you both told me here but still no go. I left an email with Dave at ACTi and within a very short while he called me back to tell me that it just was not possible without LuxRiot doing their bit first... The firmware for the TCM series is different than any other before it. He mentioned however there is a work-around for this in beta form and he will try to release that to me as a temporary solution until LuxRiot gets their end sorted. Of course to revert back to the latest firmware at that time... At this point I have to say that for customer service they are aces. The camera is very nice as well and is everything I expected it to be using both Fujinon mega-lenses and even the cheaper F .95 non mega-lens as well. I'll post some comparo's once I get this all worked through. Thanks all!

Thanks Roman, I did try the CAM-53x1 models listed. I only was able to get two snapshots (one from each model #) before the camera disconnected (aborted). It appears the packet containing User ID, Password and query are sent only once, and then TCP packets are sent to refresh the image which poses a problem to retrieve video but not nessecarily snapshots. For instance this works well for retrieving stills: http://192.168.1.104/cgi-bin/encoder?USER=Admin&PWD=123456&SNAPSHOT And of course, for generic setup, I don't have URL to cameras resource peth i.e cgi-bin/video.cgi and such. It is interesting, I don't want to mess with ACTi SDK and need a working solution to cover several brands of camera. I'm stuck...until LuxRiot comes through I suppose. Thanks for your help as ny knowledge is very limited in this area.

Well I guess video cannot be done this way. It appears it is TCP based and not HTTP at all...... Snapshots are no problem. Time to wait for the Luxriot guys to make it work.

Here's something that helps to explain some of Sony's technology. No HQ1 though.. http://assets.sonybiz.net/flash/CCTV_surveillance/en/data/output/02_ccd_12.html

Does it in fact provide a way to force color mode at any lux? I know I'm asking for something that is kind of odd but the VCC HD4000 does just as well in color mode in low lux as b/w (minus the IR ability). It's the only upper end camera I have real experience with... BTW built-in meter sounds handy. What is the resolution of it? TA

I can do that what lux level would you like That'd be real helpful. Can you get it around .5 lux? See I kinda want to get away with the day/day model if possible. Might not work out too well, and at 1100 a pop it sure would be an expensive anchor for the canoe. And I'm assuming that by lux level you are speaking of enviromental measured and not one of the many internal controls of the camera? This is great...thanks man!

Hey TWG, Would it be possible to get some color night shots from her? Say in 30 or 60 shutter? Thanks!