koolmer

Ok, I will try this. Thanks for your help rory! Best, koolmer

But mine works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. Any idea why that would be? How does it look like inside? I guess the actual filter is a thin foil or piece of plasic or glass. It probably has some kind of frame around it and it must be switching to the side. How is that achieved? With an electric magnet? Edit: It seems to be falling out of place sometimes. I switch to color, the camera goes into color mode and a few seconds later the picture gets monochrome and blury. When I switch back to real monochrome the picture is very clear, but of course monochrome. Why is that? Why is the picture blury when the filter "falls" out of place, but clear when I switch to mono manually? Does the camera adjust the focus differently when in mono mode?

Quite a few online retailers sell their cameras, cards and standalones. I imagine the warranty with a retailer wont be much though .. should still have the manufacturer warranty though. Do you know someone in EU? CNB gave me some German website that has exactly 1 (!) CNB Dome on it. This was supposed to be their German distributor - ridiculous.

I don't have the card, but I have a question for you rory. Where do I buy CNB products? I don't find any real distributor of their products. Do they sell them directly to end-users?

I doubt that you will find any Software that runs with both cards. I have some Hicap-100 and you cannot have two of those in 1 computer. I think it's the same for your card. You should consider buying 2 identical cards with Software that supports 32 Channels and build a proper 32 Channel DVR with these. I did this and used these: http://www.netvisiondvr.com/ProductInfo.asp?id=66 Works very well! I have the cheapest core 2 quad as CPU and CPU usage is around 19% with 32 channels connected and recording. koolmer Edit: you might be able to run both Software on 1 computer - you can at least try. Unless your computer is realy powerful, I think it will make it (if it works) VERY slow. The Hicap has Software compression - not sure about the other card that you have.

Hi everybody, Alright, I have a gate, which is currently watched by a high res color camera in an (very old) outside housing. The picture in the night is acceptable, but noisy. Actually there is lots of outside light from street lights, but faces are hard to recognize. Also when the sun shines, faces are very hard to recognize (sun comes from the side). The brand is Vista (UK OEM - don't know who actually manufactured it) and it has 470 TVL. So I proposed a D/N WDR camera. Budget is 330 Euro incl. VAT & shipping. It should be a dome. I think a good WDR camera without D/N would also do it. There is quite some light. koolmer

That looks like no-name cameras with Sony CCDs that are then sold as "SONY". I hate this misleading type of marketing. 330 Euro is also not exactly cheap. I want something good for the amount of money that I have...

Hmm - I never heard of Sunkwang... Has anybody tried them? The Specs look good, but the camera itself looks a bit too "modern".

The one that rory shows in the link looks great! I wrote to CNB already a few days ago to receive a pricelist. They have no Distributor for Denmark! Now I have to fill out this huge form to be able to buy from them directly... hope this is going to work. Does anybody know the Distributor for Germany? Maybe I could just buy from there. Any other suggestion besides CNB?

Hikvision cards from China have an iphone client. I have never used it, but the cards are awesome. The Software IVMS (from Hikvision) is free. You can also get the card bundled with 3rd party Software. I have tried Skyvision (Bad!) and Netvision (good). koolmer

Has the camera ever worked reliably? If not, something is really wrong. I have looked at the camera and looking at all the IR + PTZ feature I am sure it consumes vast amounts of power and you will need a real strong powersupply for them. What power supply do you use now? Can you get a (much) stronger one and try it on one of the cameras? See how the reliability is with the new power supply. koolmer

Looks good! You're covering almost the whole area with a single camera. The distortion is obvious though. I would like to see this in full resolution and also at night. I heard only good things about the Sanyo IP cameras. The only downside is that they are not supported by many NVRs yet.

I have a building with a CCTV installation that is about 15 years old. Some RG59 is outdoors for 20 - 30 meters and I don't think it's outdoor rated. Anyways I had to cut some of it and the copper is very corroded. However the cable was not really causing any problems. When I scratched the copper I could get it clean again and I could put some F-connectors on it. The cameras are still working perfecly.

Most cameras will need a NVR for recording. Only few cameras are able to write directly onto a NAS, flash drive or SD card. Raw HD-resolution cannot be send over an IP network and there is no camera that does this. All IP cameras use a codec. You should check the differences between H.264, MPEG4, MJPEG, etc. On Megapixel you should consider MJPEG. It does consume more space and bandwidth, but also has better image quality than the others. I have no practical experiance here, but if you are concerned about low light, you should buy an IP camera with two chips and two lenses. One multi MP CMOS is for the day and one 1 MP CMOS for the night. Mobotix has good cameras like that. Normally cameras have no optical zoom (some exceptions) There is a standard, but it doesn't always apply to IP cameras. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cs_mount CS mount is the standard on analogue and many IP cameras today. Mobotix has it's own standard AFAIK. I never tried PIRs to trigger camera recording. A decent camera has enough motion setup options for me. You can specify where the motion must be in order to trigger recording or an alarm. I do believe it's trickey when you are outside and have lots of trees, plants, etc. Then it might be worth to try a PIR. Good cameras are not blinded that easily. I think MP CMOS chips can cope pretty well with bright light and still give a good image. I have seen a comparison between a CMOS and a CCD IP MP camera and the CMOS gave a perfect picture, while the CCD had some problems with sunlight reflecting from cars.

I thought this stuff is already existing for a while. I have seen it months ago on www.comartsystems.com Anyways - it seems that the stuff is available. See www.comarthd.com They don't tell the prices, but they make it look like it can be bought. I don't think this is going to have any success. IP has taken over and has many benefits over HDCCTV. HDCCTV is not compatible with anything that people have right now. Sometimes not even the coax cable. It is also WAAAAY too expensive. A 23" screen cost 2300 $. For this amount of money I can build a real good hybrid DVR + 24" screen!

If this is an IP camera, there is no PAL or NTSC. PAL & NTSC is only for analogue cameras. If these cameras do both, analogue and IP, then it doesn't matter as long as you use the IP network to view the cameras. Edit: If the cameras are NTSC and you only have PAL screens, try to connect it anyways. The PAL screen will give you a B/W image - even on NTSC

I tried a few. Not recommended from me: GE Security (hardware of standalone DVRs is too slow) Vista (Brand in UK) (quality is ok, but nothing special) Comart-Systems (buggy Software, quality of recording is ok) Recommended: Hikvision DVR cards. I tried two different ones and they worked very well. Watch out what Software you get with it. Netvision is good software - ivms-2000 is okay.

Ok - if we talk about NO compression whatsoever than we should assume that the pictures are bitmaps. A bitmap has no compression and the content of a bitmap has no effect on its size. A bitmanp of the size 704 x 576 has 1216566 Bytes. Lets assume we have 6 fps and now we can calculate: 1216566 x 6 x 60 x 60 = 26277825600 Bytes (calculation for 1 hour recording) 26277825600 : 1024 = 25661939 kB 25661939 : 1024 = 25060.5 MB 25060.5 : 1024 = 24.5 GB So we would need 24.5 GB recording for 1 hour. @ rory You record at 720x480. Your Jeep as a bitmap has 1036854 Bytes. Now you recorded 646 frames, so let's see how bad the compression was! 646 x 1036854 = 669807684 Bytes To make it short - these are 638.78 MB! rory you got 639 MB! So the program REALLY didn't compress! It's a simple calculation. Ok - you used a codec, but I guess the program didn't leave you the choice to select bitmaps as outputs. Otherwise no program that I know could play that. I am actually astounded how close my calculation result and your result are! " title="Applause" /> koolmer

Strange! This camera has been sold by another company under another name in 2007 already. Maybe even earlier. It was called the Vista Eclipse. See here: http://www.norbain.com/news/ref:N4289A64EDB2EE/ The retail price in 2008 was 1195 GBP for the camera and 995 GBP for the DVR with 400 GB storage. The camera is now discontinued. I wonder why. Maybe just not enough interest by the customers. Edit: This was the 3MP version with the analogue outputs

Hi guys, I have a job on a reception. The front consists of a big glass door in the middle of two huge glass windows. Here some pictures: http://img203.imageshack.us/f/img0857v.jpg/ http://img821.imageshack.us/f/img0856k.jpg/ I would like to cover the entire front with a single IP Megapixel camera. However the camera would have to give good details on the people outside and on anyone coming in. I need especially the face very clearly, so it can be used to show troublemakers to the receptionist etc. I don't know if there is any IP camera that could handle the strong backlight in the scene. Another camera would go behind the reception desk, but this one would not have to handle strong backlight. It should be a good color IP camera (1.3 MP?) and it has to work also when the light is dimmed at night. I am going to use a Netvision Hybrid server to record the cameras and the existing analogue cameras. koolmer Edit: Both cameras should be Dome cameras - for design reasons.

Don't forget the new TCM-7411 - adds H.264 compression and WDR to the ACM-7411. NVR support is a question. Have not seen the TCM- series yet but the ACM-7411 is indeed a nice camera. NJD The camera looks very ok. I have checked prices for this camera in Europe and the only thing I found was for over 600 Euro. For 800 Euro I can get the Mobotix with 360 degree view and 3MP.

That's a really good point! Netvision supports the following IP cameras: NV Series IP/EMDVR DG 42XX/50XX EMDVR DG 80XX/90XX EMDVR DG Series IPC Dahua Series IP Sony SNC110/160 ACTi Series IP Huviron Series IP Mobotix M12 Series IP ArecontVision IP Camtron Series IPC Axis Series IPC However it will run on a quad core and if the IP camera has it's own software, it shouldn't be a problem to have that running in the background. But I am not willing to pay for another license of Milestone, Luxriot etc.

Actually I would love to use Mobotix. I have heard only good about it. I didn't know they had cameras in VGA. I thought they only do Megapixel. Somebody mentioned before that Megapixel is overkill for the application. It might be true, but I think standard 540 TVL will also not do it if I want to get details on the faces. I would like to go IP based and I would like to have better quality than what I am used to when recoding 4CIF. 4CIF will not be enough to get good shots of the faces unless I use a mini PTZ. This however is not an option, because nobody will be watching the cameras 24/7. Maybe 1024x768 is enough for my application or 1280x720. The main problem is the strong backlight and of course the price has to reasonable. Does anyone else have a suggestion?

@bones ok I believe you. Just have to find a seller with the right version.

@ bones That's what it says on the Panasonic Website...