mike_va

I can try it with some other cameras but will have to wait a day or two.

Quick glance, I'd go with the LFM-20VF due to the split glass

I bought one of these (4 cams which are pretty good, sample shots in another post viewtopic.php?f=5&t=26653) cables and this DVR for $300 (total). I needed a bullet in one spot around the house and figured I would use the DVR as a backup to the main rig. After a week the hard drive started making a scraping sound. Ordered another (Costco allows returns w/ low hassle) and after a few days would stop recording - swapped out the HD (WD green) with another but still had problems. Put the new hard drive in the first one (it also had a WD green) and for the last few hours it has been working we'll see...

I would not use 22#, if they are IR type. They are somewhat sensitive to the voltage at the camera, in terms of how much the IR will draw. 500mA may be the rating of the wall wart, not the camera. In which case you would be fine matching that. The Qsee's I have draw around 100-150mA w.o. IR and maybe another 100mA with IR. The Bosch D/N's I have don't even draw 500mA.

Not as good as analog and not as good as the Arecont 3135 (the best I've tried). Comes with one license, additional licenses are not cheap (see google or ebay). Kinda clunky, personally I prefer running a computer with Vitamin D and Milestone Go. But I have it, so I do it as a backup. Plus I think Milestone limits you to one channel of audio so nice to have another channel of that. Network is not high at 800KB that's 6.4Mb/s which is probably a pretty slow frame rate since I'm doing MJPEG. My analog cams with low compression and high frame rate MJPEG end up around 10-20Mb/s.

Thanks for following up. I have a DS211J recording one camera as a backup. Here is the processor usage with a WV-NP502 3MP panasonic, little blip up about 2/3 in is starting up the surveillance station. Then dropping down is disabling the camera.

I can set my Axis up to send itself a command for day / night for example, or set the shutter speed. Is there some way I could do this with Panasonic cameras like the 502? I'm imagining I would need some scheduling program on the computer - not sure how to go about doing this. Any advice appreciated.

@echo off echo SENDING COMMAND TO CAMERA ... Start /b /wait iexplore "http://root:password@192.168.1.12/cgi-bin/image_adjust?shutter=1_250" PING 1.1.1.1 -n 2 -w 1000 >NUL taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe exit Thanks again for all the help I think you lost me here too, is there an advantage to the second one? Do these extra lines buy some robustness if the camera does not respond or ?

It's in the "CGI Common Ref Panasonic_Network_camera ver1.25" pdf as one of the three files in the zip.

Perfect, this appears to work! Pasted this in notepad iexplore http://root:password@192.168.1.12/cgi-bin/image_adjust?shutter=1_250 then saved with a cmd extension. Double clicking it changed the shutter speed. Should be able to use task scheduler. Thanks to all!

Thanks Rory. For example, if I save as a vbs and double click sURL = "http://root:password@192.168.1.12/cgi-bin/image_adjust?shutter=1_250" sRet = SendCommand(sURL) MsgBox sRet, vbOkOnly Function SendCommand(pURL) Dim objHttp, Status On Error Resume Next Set objHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") objHttp.Open "HEAD", pURL, False If Err = 0 Then objHttp.Send "" Status = objHttp.Status If Status <> 200 Then SendCommand = "RESPONSE ERROR - " & Status Else SendCommand = "Sent Ok" End If Else SendCommand = "Error!" & _ vbCrLf & Err.Description End If Set objHttp = Nothing End Function it returns -500 putting "http://root:password@192.168.1.12/cgi-bin/image_adjust?shutter=1_250" in the browser tells me I'm opening root, then opens part of the shutter speed but does not seem to change it.

I was not able to find it on my own on the Panasonic site or with google but Panasonic support helped me out: http://panasonic.net/pss/security/library/developer.html then download "New CGI Command Supported Models for V1.03 document". http://192.168.0.10/cgi-bin/ and "image_adjust?shutter=1_250" or "image_adjust?shutter=1_30" I have a PC and a mac available.

I had a similar problem with a 4200 in addition to artifacting, returned it.

Camera was a CNB BBM-24F with a wide angle lens (birch tree back by the fence is about 45 ft from the camera). Had to set it to night, as the big Raytec kept trying to bounce it back in to color. The white illuminators in the picture are re-purposed halogen flood lights (~$25 in parts ea). For better or worse, I moved the IR around to try to get an idea of the coverage. Hope this helps someone. The big Raytec was the most impressive, but it retails for a lot of money...

Thanks, that would be great! It may take me a few days - as of tonight my backup computer (ZT systems quad core athlon) died (will not power on). A few days ago my main computer (Dell i7 quad core) also died (bad motherboard). I must have upset the computer gods somehow...

The program is the part I don't know how to do.

Yes, but I'd like it centralized somewhere. Preferably the computer as it is quicker to play around.

Here's how I did it, the least expensive way (~ $100-200) would be something like: Analog cam Bosch LTC0355 ($5 ebay), used Axis server model 2400+ (~$50 ebay) or 241S ($100 ebay), light = fluor flood (or cheap IR), software = Vitamin D (get the $50 version that allows 2 cameras and does not limit resolution. http://vitamindinc.com/ Right click on events that have been saved, possibly edit, upload to youtube

It runs on the camera, here's an example: http://www.axis.com/techsup/faq/index.php/index_axis.php?action=artikel&cat=0&id=115397&artlang=en&search=ir+cut+flter An example might look like http://192.168.1.96/axis-cgi/ param.cgi?action=update &ImageSource.I0.Sensor.MaxExposureTime=166827 http://192.168.1.96/axis-cgi/opticssetup.cgi?autofocus=perform The latter command is not intended to be used continuously. The camera I'm trying to get it to work on is the Panasonic WV-NP502. I'm using it for plate capture during the day at 1/250s but would like be slower at night.

Just a general comment: someone around here had one of those motions that was always tripped by people walking by (in a shared space as opposed to on their property only). Eventually someone "removed" it for them.

I use both Milestone (which I hate and someday hope to replace) and Vitamin D. Vitamin D is analytics, if you don't want to be spending your life looking at footage. Really fantastic software, and fast! Some cameras have a little better built in motion, e.g. Axis has history etc. I really like running the analytics. After the analytics which divides into object or person you set up rules for email notification or FTP'g of clips etc. Try the free demo. Rock solid stable and easy to set up. Handles most cameras that do mjpeg streams. http://www.vitamindinc.com/ I use it with a i7 quad core, which is running at about 25% with 16 cameras. I tried a few other computers but the i7 left them all in the dust. Relatively low power consumption and you can get weeks of events saved with a 500G hard drive.

I have a few HCCM474M (Exview) that are not true day night but super sensitive despite the moderate ratings. Very small camera.

You know, I tried just snapping a shot with a Canon EOS40 at night once set with high ISO etc to get the shutter speed up. I think it was still like a one second exposure. I don't know how he got a pic at a decent shutter speed. Then again I guess he did not say at night.

There is a setup wizard. I managed once to get it to resend a mpeg4 stream as a mjpeg to another location so I imagine you could get it to work (i.e. you're better at this computer/confuser stuff than me it seems)?

Thanks! Short answer is that I design satellite power systems and this is a hobby. Made those as I could not buy what I wanted: something that would not look out of place on the house (and I've spent a lot of time staring at the house trying to figure out where to put that big Raytec where it would not stick out like a sore thumb) AND be high quality (i.e. having an appropriate thermal design and derating for long life (rules out ebay units) AND provide telemetry AND level adjustment AND have a decent coverage angle.