mike_va

some comparions ...

That KT&C looks like it would be fun to play with. I'm assuming the KPC-N501, does that have adjustable AGC?

Nice job, looks clean. Thanks for posting pics, always nice when someone does that. That model CNB is a good cam, especially for the price.

Perhaps you've already though of this (hereditary free advice section):

Might want to move the driveway cam a bit so that you can get someone looking in the passenger side window (the pic that has your truck sitting to the side more)

Also, we recently converted our lights outside the garage to standard CFL from candelabra. Were able to get the parts to attach and readjust the height of the bulb from the local lighting store, it seems like your light is sitting kind of high in the fixture (they call them nipples of all things). Get more light out that way, with ours anyway. With the larger CFL you can run one of the CNB's in color even at night.

Looking at costco, they don't even seem to carry the cams we got with our little bundle.

They all vary, cheap Qsee (although I would avoid any cheap camera with 1/4 CMOS and no IR cut filter) and cheap whatever. If you're going to try the route of inexpensive cams, just make sure they have a good return policy. MCM electronics (and others too) has a good return policy. Best bet though is increasing your budget a little (I'm assuming you are around 300 now).

Qsee does not make their cameras, many of the others do not either.

And as an example just to show there are always exceptions (captured a few minutes ago), here is 1/4 CMOS P1344 (not cheap) through a crap IR longpass filter (about 1/4 of the pic) about 60 yards out. You can't get that pic with any interlaced camera, cheap or otherwise.

Let me ask you guys something, do any of you have a camera that can view 100 to 150 ft and be able to see a clear image. My daughter parks he car on the street in front of our house. It has been broken into twice and hit once in the past couple of years. The camera's I have now can see a person at her car but ya can't make out their face.

 

Distance is all about lens focal length. A longer lens is what you need.

Mike,

 

Thanks for the sample grabs. It's a newb question, but would you see this washout on the CCDs as well.

 

I guess what I am asking is what are the pros/cons of a 1/3" CMOS vs. 1/4" CCD.

 

Thanks.

With these inexpensive cameras there is not an answer, short of trying them. Then post some pics of what you discover/learn.

Yes you can see washout on cheapo's and even good ones. The question is can you still get a good picture which has a lot to do with dynamic range. Cheap whatever is not going to deal well with backlighting or other extreme lighting examples. Can you make it work? Probably, you will need to play with your setup a bit when you get it as you learn.

FWIW I've seen that CMOS camera outperform quite a few 1/3" CCD. Anyway, it's a decent camera at a bargain price. Is someone going to be installing these at airports? No way.

Random thoughts you might not see advertised (confuses the consumer, as there always seems to be an exception):

Colors are not as good on CMOS generally, although some of my Axis cams are 1/4" CMOS and can actually do better colors than CCD. Contrast is not as good on CMOS though. CCD sometimes blows out more on car headlights, I've seen this comparing my Pan 502 to Axis P1346.

There can be other pros to even 1/4", at night extreme distance it is hard/very expensive to find say a 60mm f1.4 IR corrected lens for a 1/3". So, if one has a 40mm f1.4 and 1/4" CMOS the lens will let in more light than say a f1.8. In the same vein at distance 1/2" cams are even harder to find a good lens for. Problem seems to get even worse with MP lenses and IR corrected, not that many of them out there.

I and am sure others could provide lots of other examples both pro and con.

Can wash out a bit in the afternoon sun. One with the cat is 830 in the morning. If you are getting them from Costco you can always return.

Client has a HUGE home. They've tried every type of video baby monitor, even one that I recommended. Nothing seems to work.

http://www.axis.com/products/cam_292/index.htm

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I'm not sure how much light Rory has in those color pics. You can do well with the CNB day/night 0.05lux rated cams if you have enough light and in color. Here's a pic 23W CFL ea side of garage. The 610 will do about the same, with a better pic. I think I got mine used around $75. With color it really comes down to the sensitivity and amount of light.

You can notice in this pic an RM100-10 IR on my lower leg, that is not being blocked completely by the IR filter in the camera. I actually had to turn down the AGC (TDN bullet CNB) in this case a to keep it from whiting out my face, black driveways are a pain...

That cam costs a bit though. There are other cameras with good sensitivity, I think I used to have a Nuvico that did OK. Cheap cams sometimes leave out the IR filter, which I'd guess helps also but screws up the colors.

Don't have much to offer in advice on cheap cams, although we have a couple of qsee bullets TDN that do OK. CNB will be better by at least 2x though.

compared to what? did you look at the rest of the settings? which mode are you in? The 495 can be beat by a few e.g. BBM-24F etc, but sacrifices will be made in other areas. If you are trying to get color try the 610, pretty amazing.

Above 2x only for detection. Not only interlaced video, but at 4x you are at 1-15s. We have some 495's and 620's that I never set above 2x. If you need more sensitivity try them with an f1.0 lens. I use one with a 13W CFL flood (I think, it's been a while) and it's plenty of light for the yard. If you just got them make sure the AGC has not been turned down also.

I use ACTI acm-1231 and tcm-1231 and both work very well at night up to about 30-40'. To get 50' you may have to increase the max shutter speed but I like to keep mine at 1/30th.

Note, be careful comparing lux specs, it looks like the vivotek is spec'g at 1/6s which is not that useful....

can't remember if I first saw this here or ipvm

http://www.wyff4.com/r/30076862/detail.html

that's great!

On a mac mini, I used to hook up to the TV with an adapter to VGA. Then I bought another connector (adapter to HDMI) because I use the VGA in on the TV for something else.

The CNB TDN cameras, and the 484, both come with IR-corrected lenses. And TDN camera that doesn't shouldn't even be considered. ABF isn't a fix for a non-IR-corrected lens.

What part of nova? I'm in Culpeper.

 

Price seems a little high IMO. I'm looking at several CNB VCM-24VF cams for my upcoming install and they can be had for 165 and they are 600 TVL color.

These definitely have a better picture than the CNB, and have a WDR function for extreme backlighting that works well. Not as sensitive as the CNB but a higher quality camera. i still have a 484 (inside) on my basement door that looks out - into sun in the afternoon but it looks normal. The CNB will not work as well in that situation. Also has an auto back focus so it is perfect day and night (edit - oops guess that was mentioned already). CNB you will need IR corrected lenses to get that good of a picture.

Looks like it does a good job, within the limits of its range. Of course one might hope so given the price...thanks for posting the pics

I've been playing around with this the last few months. Best results was with fast shutter (depends how fast you are trying to capture), 87C filter on the lens from B&H ~$60, and IR. Obviously the more IR you have will give you the faster shutter speed, and helps overcome headlights. The beauty though is the plates are retro reflective which sends the light back to where it came from. I've had just a little IR and I can light up the stop sign, where other things are not that well lit. Also positioning helps so that it is above the headlights (10 ft worked well for me) so the camera is not looking directly into them. IP cams work good, but if you have tight area it's hard to beat the additional contrast of analog (Bosch day-night and CNB both work well). It can also help to back the AGC down sometimes. Hope this helps.

Attached is a shot of a P1344 at 80 yards (with IR), about 1/8th of the FOV behind perspex (which does not block light as well as the filter I mentioned). You should be able to do better than this though.

100Mbps....... What speed hard drives are you using?

I have a 2TB on ACS, don't remember the speed. I think Axis rec'd 12 cams max per HD, which is where it is at. Some day I may split this to 2 drives. Reason being is I think ACS is not as snappy as it could be.

VitaminD running on the local hard drive, but thinking of setting up a RAID on windows, do you think this would improve things or have any suggestions?

I know VitaminD is pretty write intensive, however it plays back the clips instantly. In fact I can just hold down the arrow key and it races through clips playing them back at 3x speed.

Also that was running VNC. I just came down and got on the computer direct and it is at ~11.5%, so we could round and say 100Mbs.

Curious what your total bandwidth is coming into your server is.

of a gigabit. VitaminD does MJPEG. ACS is doing a combination, and some audio streams. 21% processor Dell XPS8300 i7. Usually flatter than this but we were just moving some cameras around.

It took me a while, but it can be done. I can't remember how I did it though. There are numerous screws you'll have to take out.

...with VitaminD. Although I finally did add Axis camera station, I prefer running VitaminD for analytics around the house just to see what is going on and get email notifications of package delivery. And it is just so darn quick and easy to use. Can literally run through the whole day of events if I choose in under a minute. INSTANTLY plays back and jumps between clips.

I have a P1346, and although I could save direct to VitaminD at 1.3MP, I can also set up a limited resolution view window to run analytics on. The reason this is important is that once you get up to a certain number of cameras I start getting limited by the writes to the HD, even though the computer is coasting. This gets tougher as we add more HD cameras. Actually running an I7 and 12 channels ACS and 12 channels VitaminD it is still coasting. I could set up a raid and may do that some day, but this is pretty darn slick. ACS writes to a separate HD.

In this case I set up a view area called "2". Attached find the settings also for VitaminD.

I also want to publicly thank Axis for great support, they even made me a video (without me asking) for how to set up the view area!

No, that was a while ago. Maybe a year. Felt cheap (and it is compared to some other cameras). For that matter even some cameras (e.g. CNB BBM-24F) feel cheap, but have some desirable attribute.

These MP cams need to be right though, as the smaller companies may not fix the problem and instead move to a new model. Not getting a reliable stream is a deal breaker on a camera that had been out over a year at the time. Whatever nit there is on an analog I've never had an issue with getting a reliable signal from a reasonably priced analog cam.

Same reason I'll never buy a Linksys router again, they shipped me a product that did not work until I upgraded the firmware. Hours wasted, life is too short.