danger_e

Ahhh, the classic "LMGTFY" The funniest part about that is this forum thread is the top response when you click that. Based on my experience with some of the newer chips from both companies, the Effio chipset (made by Sony), including the Effio-P, is very high resolution, and the WDR is good. The Pixim Seawolf, however (at least the ones that I've used) is not as high resolution, but the WDR is incredible. I really like the way the Pixim balances an image. Now, I could be wrong, so if anyone has a different impression of either chipset, please let me know.

Many IP cameras on the market right now have a microSD card slot and can record to the card. There are a lot of differences in the cameras though. Do you have any other requirement besides internal record? Are you looking for a megapixel (high definition) camera? Or just a standard definition? Indoor or outdoor? There are a lot of cameras out there to choose from.

No, it's someone holding a camcorder looking at a monitor that's showing the feed from an HDcctv cam. I saw this bit from ASIS (ISC?) 2011. If I recall correctly, someone set up this little train track with a bunch of 2+ MP IP cameras (Axis, Sony, Arecont, etc.) and some HDcctv cameras so that people should judge all the cameras doing the same thing. I don't remember for sure who set it up, but I want to say the HDcctv Alliance.

I don't have any experience with that model camera, sorry. I would recommend you call Honeywell support or check the Honeywell site for a manual: www.honeywellvideo.com

Wow, three requests for an ancient camera manual so far this year. That's actually pretty epic. Here is where I got them: http://files.fusiondvrsupport.com/orbiter_manuals.zip A helpful Honeywell tech posted them for me to download. I had to check and make sure they were even still there. Good luck!

Wooo! I did not even realize that DVR was that old! Dang! That DVR will need at least a couple of TB, and IDE won't cut it. Never-mind what I said, it might be time to get something newer.

Wow, 6-8 months is a long time. However, this is not outside the realm of possibility. Typically, these type of DVRs have only a 1TB or 2TB hard drive. It's always possible that you could open it up replace the drive with something larger. And I think that those older Speco models have enough room to add a drive. How much data retention can you get out of it now? Is it still in warranty (if so you might want to avoid opening so that you don't void the warranty)?

How long ago did you install the camera? What is the camera model? Does the camera still respond to PTZ commands? Can you still drive it around?

Almost all DVRs that have mouse control can work through a KVM, the issue is having a KVM that will work properly. There are a lot of cheap KVMs that won't work properly with standalone recorders because they need a certain amount of power supplied, or don't detect the DVR, it really depends on the KVM. As far as an IP KVM, it could work, as long as the KVM works properly with the DVR.

In theory, having the IR illuminators on the outside should produce a usable image. Keep in mind that the outside of the window needs to always be brighter than the inside. If at any point it is brighter in the room than it is outside all you are going to get is reflection off the windows. Keep in mind that installing inside is a less than optimal solution and you are going to run into some interesting issues with this installation. See if you can borrow or buy a camera to test with (something that you can return) and try it out to see what kind of image you get. I'd also recommend consulting with a local installer, they will have a good idea what you options are.

Sometimes you can get the occasional vibration from a drive when it changes RPMs to write more data. If you hear that kind of sound, try putting some rubber grommets on the HDD screws to "float" the drive so that it's not actually touching any of the metal in the housing. This worked on my home PC, and could help in a standalone DVR if there is room in the mounting bracket. Word of warning, this could also make it louder if there's still some of the housing touching the drive.

Even with a gigabit switch, if your NVR/VMS server does not have a gigabit network port and only 10/100, then the NVR could be what is slowing down the video. If you are using 60% of your network as viewed in the Windows task manager with only a few cameras then I would assume that you have a 10/100 connection. I've never seen a gig network go over 50% with less than 32 2MP MJPEG cameras at one time. Please check to see if you have a gigabit network card or a 10/100 in your Exacq server. Also, check your CPU performance on the Exacq server. H.264 is very resource intensive and if your CPU can't handle decoding all the video, this could be causing the lag.

Unfortunately no. Ebay maybe to find a "pre-owned" one? When we decided to buy a set of test charts we wanted legit, so we dropped the cash on the real deal.

It depends on how you are going to print it. I recommend that you do not print one using a commercially available printer. They simply will not print at a high enough resolution for adequate testing, and probably will not look good if you are going to show them off to customers. I would recommend that you purchase one from a camera supply house, but if that is not practical you can take an extremely high resolution PDF to a local printer (like Kinko's or something) and ask them to print it. This is the test chart that I use: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/res-chart.html Good luck! Let us know what you end up with.

This is called "IR Bleed." You are right about the cause; this happens because of the inside of the dome reflecting the IR light, usually cameras that are affected by this have a "Bleed Filter" or gasket of some kind that's a foam gasket that sits around the lens and presses up against the dome to prevent this. That camera looks like it comes with a bleed filter. Check to make sure that the filter is up against the cover and protecting the lens.

I'm actually going to come down on the side of a laptop because there is so much more that you can do with it. That said, I also have a Toshiba Thrive tablet and I love it. One of my co-workers also has one, and he will not stop raving about it. So that's my recommendation.

Les, I've sent you a PM with a suggestion.

When my company changed providers, it took nearly a week for the DNS to properly propagate across all DNS providers. Google DNS picked it up after a day or two, but some others took quite a while.

And keep in mind that one camera still might not be enough. This will depend quite a lot on the width of the scene and the level of detail that you are expecting and the cameras that you buy. Some camera manufacturers offer a camera/lens calculator with some basic guidelines on how many pixels per foot (PPF) are needed for certain levels of detail. Keep in mind that these are mostly pre-sales tools to get you in the door, but once you've settled on a camera that you want to buy, see if you can demo it to make sure that you will get the level of detail that you want. Although, in my experience, there is nothing that compares to actually installing the camera where you want it to see what you can get out of it.

Is the NIC in your Exacq server 10/100 or gig?

I agree with Hardwired. H.264 video is very resource intensive to decode and can frequently result in lost frames or video lag (depending on the cameras and the VMS software). Check to see what your CPU use is. If it's over 80% then that could be where the bottleneck is.

12.8Gbps forwarding capacity, not as fancy as the Cisco, but still fair. One location has 20 2MP cameras connected (4mbps each) and we aren't running into any issues. Obviously, since you have cameras going up into the 8~10MP range, that's a significant increase in traffic over what my customer is running. I don't know what the average bitrate of the Arecont cameras is, but you could do the math and I'd guess that 12.8Gpbs is more than enough.

As my boss says, "Why you gotta bring up old stuff?" So, I can back up my claim about WD AV drives, WD is actually marketing them as surveillance storage drives: http://products.wdc.com/library/Flyer/ENG/2278-701024.pdf However, the real reason that I want to bump this thread is to ask what you guys are doing about the rise in HDD prices? Is anyone seeing any effects so far? I know that it'll be another six months or so (hopefully less, but I'll be cautious) before prices start to come back down, how's everyone handling it?

Nevermind, I couldn't attached PDFs to a PM either. I sent you an email...

That is definitely an Orbiter. Man, I haven't seen one of those in years... I can't attach a PDF, so I'm going to PM you the Honeywell manual from 2005 for this camera, as well as an Old Configuration PDF that you might find handy. It's not as much information to sift through. Good Luck!