Jasper

Thanks Rory. I have learned a lot from you. How come you changed the Pan 474 domes to B/W? Switching them to B/W will only make them more sensitive to light. Nothing using any kind of compression for the video is going to give you the full quality you can see on the monitor. Even if you recorded the video uncompressed your then limited by the maximum recording resolution of the DVR. Are you using the WV-CL924A in the camera shot above? I briefly looked in the manual and nothing jumped out about adjusting the IRIS, but I am sure it is there. Felt like I was reading a book. That camera has a lot of features.

The O.C. is for teenagers. The X=box is for men CollinR, No sports, no learning, you gotta laugh. I don't know what is funny on TV anymore though as I hardly ever watch it. I am a movie fan as I absolutely hate commercials. Except the Budweiser ones. The writers of those are funny. Anyway the IDOL is on tonight for all you fans.

OK I will buy it I know your going to kill me on the shipping though. G22, Just admit it, you don't like Geovision. What is it you like again? UglyBob posted the best link. I like thet UglyBob name. You look fine here.

Here is that same image with the dark areas showing light sources or reflective surfaces.

Yep those Neons, TVs and Mirrors give off a lot of light. The IRIS adjustment is usually a little potentiator screw that allows you to adjust the amount of light coming into the camera. If you haven't seen it already look in your manual and it should show it in there. If you can handle the reflection you might want to leave it alone because the picture will get darker while trying to make the reflections less bright. You have a pretty nice picture now as far as no graininess. You can adust the IRIS and see what you think though.

Well you know this one will get much longer with a title like that. Picking a camera is the most difficult part and the title will interest just about anybody that is thinking about buying a camera.

Yep. Looks better. Thanks for the advance preview.

Yep. I agree. The majority of homeowners will never upgrade components in their panel for that exact reason. Just way too much money for what you get.

Yeah those racks make an OnQ enclosure look like a pack of cigarettes. Of cousre most people don't need to hide a body. Thats the other thing I don't like about OnQ is that many times you are stuck with what they have so it can fit in their panels. Like you mentioned the gigabit switch is not available that I can see either. That is one of the things I wanted to put in mine. They do have a lot of parts available for them though. They are expensive though. I don't know if it because of miniaturization of stuff or what.

This is what was put in my house when I had it prewired: OnQ Ecnlosure for Structured Wiring http://www.onqlegrand.com/jahia/Jahia/pid/1143 My alarm, TV Cables, Phone, Cat5 and all other sorts of things can go in there. They have all different sizes and seem like they could help make you some more money in the long run because of the specialized equipment that goes inside of them. They are hot items being installed in the new homes in California. Definately the future. The alarm company that did all the prewiring installed it.

What is their software policy? Do they charge for upgrades? How often do they come out with updates?

You can't have it both ways with one camera. You either have to have it zoomed in and be able to identify a person, which you still have the other side of the van not covered. Or you can leaved it zoomed out and be able to monitor your property. You could have it both ways by buying a camera that costs as much as what the van is worth, but that kinda defeats the whole purpose. I had that same problem with my truck being parked in front of the house. A city worker started coming by and marking my tires. I would start the truck and move it a few inches. Then I would move my truck to another spot for about a week and then they left me alone. Maybe you should do a combination of the both? If the van is sitting right in front of your house you will have a bigger detterent factor and be able to see it better and your property at the same time. Also what about a car alarm, so if anybody touches the van it alarms?

In your pictures during the day somebody was parked in front of your mail box. Why can you just park there? The mail man can get out of his car can't he? Is there some type of law or something? Then you can have your motion light come on. I had it setup that way. So what if the light comes on everytime somebody walks by the house. At least they know if they come on your property they will be lit up.

I don't think that is an option. Especially since he said it is only worth a couple thousand dollars.

No. That is a truck parked in front of his van. The van is parked right behind it and it is dark. It is even worse than that.

That Dark Van is his I beleive. The one that shows up all white in your photograph indicating no light reflection by what you said. He has no street light near the van either. I use a .05 lux, non Exview camera in front of my place and there is a street light directly across from my house and that camera still pixelizes a little bit, but I can see a pretty good image. What black and white camera with what lux rating do you think would work to see that van? f1.0 with with what type of camera? And the camera would be pretty useless during the day wouldn't it?

Rory, That first shot you show indicates that there is hardly any light at all around the van. And if he zooms towards the van he will have even less light gathering ability because the light will not fall within his field of view, correct? If he uses small mm lens and gathers more light he then will only be able to monitor the area and still cannot identify who a person is or see on the other side of the van. I like how you do that with the images. Pretty neat. Are you using Paint Shop pro for that?

I can barely make out your van in that night shot. It is almost totally blended into the dark. Since it is dark it is not even able to reflect much light back towards a camera. At night you would need the lowest lux camera you can find unless you can get some high powered IR that will reach the van. Then unless you are zoomed intot the scene you are not going to be able to identify the person, only know that someone messed with it. Also you are in the same situation that I was in by only being able to see one side of the van. You are still going to have that blind spot and without the ability to identify the person you will only see a body coming up to the other side of the van, because I would assume they would avoid the street side anyway. Tough application there.

05 lux is a good rating for a camera in dimly lit areas, but not really dark. You would definitely need some type of illumination coming from somewhere in order to see your van. There is a big difference between .1 and .05 lux. I tried to look at your photos again,. But I saw a cute dog instead. I don’t know what you and Thomas discussed, but he definitely can help you in regards to his recommendations to your situation.

We aked where you were located because in your first post you mentioned lowest cost of shipping also. Well the closer you are to the shipper your shipping rate is usually lower. Besides people from all over the world visit this site so we don't even know what country your in. Kind of makes it hard to figure where to start. Not everyone on here is from the US, many are not.

The DVR card will effect the quality of the recording. And depending on what compression you use to record the video will determine how good of quality the playback video will be. Maybe you should wait and see how the first camera performs with your DVR before ordering another one unless you have tested it in the situation you plan on using it in.

Arnold, I don’t think that Panasonic dome camera would work out for you because it can only see down to 0.1 lux, which is not good. Something that is .06 lux or lower is better for viewing in dim light, such as a street light right across the street from your house. If very little light the lower the lux the better. Many places quote like .003 or .0003, which Is more likely foot candles (fc) then lux, so watch out for that. I had a similar situation like yours some years back and the person knew where the camera was. I had a camera watching the front of my house a half of my van parked in my driveway. The person came to my house at night and stayed out of view of the camera. So my recording only showed my van slowly tilting to one side as both the tires on that side got slashed. And then the next morning when I went outside I saw the whole side was also slashed with a knife. So if you are really want to try and catch this person make sure the camera(s) are small and you don’t tell anyone about them. Otherwise they will just avoid being seen on camera. My girlfriend at the time had told her ex-boyfriend where it was located so that is how I lost my element of covertness.

Where are you located? That way someone will know who to maybe recommend.

I wasn’t talking about the project. We will have to see how that pans out. Sounds like a good project to try though. A photo cell would be best for the project. I am saying that for example camera 1 is a color cam and is scheduled to record from 6:30am-5:30pm. Camera 2 is the BW camera. It is scheduled to record from 5:30pm until 6:30am the next morning. You need to use 2 inputs of your DVR, but with the scheduling function it works and gives you the same effect of a Day/Night Camera. Except there is no sensor, so if the light goes low when the color camera is on, well then you just can’t see very well or at all depending on how low the light gets. That is where the Day/Night camera has its advantage because it can sense the lighting situation and switchover if it need too.

Huh? What do you mean?