Soundy

Looks like it's time to look into some sort of load-balancing router with scheduling

I'm on the side of the housing company - not only does the install degrade the appearance of the property, it's just plain common courtesy to ask the permission OF THE PROPERTY OWNER before putting up ANYTHING on the outside of the building, especially if there may be any question of its legality, since the property owner could be held liable. Likewise, there may be a question of safety with a job like that - not just the wiring, but who knows how solidly it's mounted? If that thing falls off and bonks someone on the head... again, the building owner can be held liable.

Hmm, who was it here that was building eight-camera Exacq servers on Atom processors? If all you're doing is receiving the stream and writing it to disk, you really don't need a lot of processor or RAM. BTW, for anything over about 3.5GB RAM, you need to use a 64-bit OS... make sure the software you're using supports it.

I've added a 1A or 3A 12V regulator board inside a 24VAC power can before, if I find the need for one or two channels of 12V power (whether for a camera, or something else, like a buzzer or door strike)... just feed one of the 24V channels into its input and I'm good to go!

Those are their St. John Ambulance Therapy Dogs scarves - their uniforms! They're working dogs too

And people are scared of pitbulls! I met a guy at our dog park a while back that had two giant schnauzers... gorgeous animals! These are my guys Not much of a threat, but they might smother you with kisses.

At 6W, voltage drop will be almost negligible, either way. Going by this calculator, 24V at 0.25A draw, using only two pairs, and figuring a maximum 100' run (fair guess for a home install), will see only 0.2V loss... with 12VDC at 0.5A, it's a whopping 0.6V drop. I've used far more 24VAC power supplies than 12VDC units, and never had an issue with "over voltage" regardless of loading. Keep in mind that transformers don't tend to be high-tolerance devices, meaning your output voltage could vary +/-5% anyway... nevermind fluctuations in the line voltage supplying it. Consider too that 99.99999% of 24VAC cameras will be stepping down and rectifying (and possibly regulating) that power internally anyway, so a couple volts either way REALLY doesn't matter. Well, 12VDC cameras tend to be the most common... cheap ones that use a common power and video ground also tend to have ground-loop problems with baluns. 24VAC and 12VDC/24VAC dual-voltage cameras tend to be more common among "professional" models. Really, the only concern should be what type of cameras you'll be using. Your 12V project would be a lot more work to put together, of course, and you'll see more power lost to heat dissipation. Some will... again, really depends on the units you get. If you're building your own, you can design them to use whatever source voltage you want.

BTW, there are some good ready-made regulator boards out there... we use these two regularly (sorry for the sales link, this is the only listing I could find for them): http://www.electronicproductonline.com/catalog/default.php?manufacturers_id=85 Supports up to 32V AC or DC input, has jumpers for fixed outputs at 6, 12 and 24VDC, as well as an adjustable output of 2 to 24VDC. This is the 1A version: And the 3A model:

Got it. Yeah, aside from maybe adding a polarizing filter to the lens (which would cause all kinds of other issues, even IF you could find one that fits it), there's not much you can do about reflections off cars. Of course, as the height of the sun changes through the seasons, the angle of car glass that causes a reflection will change too. Only other thing would be to put a huge three-story-tall wall up behind the building to block the sun... Hard to say, without being able to determine exactly what's causing it (remember, I'm just guessing so far). If you use your digital camera from the same angle in the same conditions, does the LCD appear black to that as well? Can you move that camera around to look at the pump from different angles? Again, hard to say without a picture of the issue... could be the water on the pump glass causing a problem.

Ach, now the first two pics are loading... okay, when you say the sun goes left to right of the pic... do you mean second pic, or third pic? From the first pic, it looks like the problem is just the sun reflecting on the glass on the front of the pump... unfortunately there's not a lot you can do about that. Dome vs. other type of camera has nothing to do with that. Moving the camera higher or lower to get a different angle would be the best bet.

Those first two pics aren't loading: My first guess would be it's due to the angle of ambient lighting on the design of the specific LCD. One of the coolest displays I've seen was on a number of car stereo units, years ago when I used to install them: normally, the screen would be black and the numbers would appear in color (orange, on most of them), but if the ambient light was bright enough (ie. if the sun struck it directly), the whole display would go orange with black numbers. I never dug into the design to see if this was a switch triggered by a light sensor, or just a factor of the particular design of the LCD, although it appeared to be the latter, and I wonder if something similar is happening in your case -it may be something intended to improve visibility for users in varying light conditions. I've used VGA baluns for this type of purpose (these, specifically), and find they tend to work well if set up properly, but they do sometimes get finicky at certain resolutions and refresh rates, and don't always handle widescreen resolutions well. Also, how are you splitting the VGA output? You can't use something like a Y-cable; you need either an extender with separate remote/local outputs, or an active VGA splitter. You do have to make sure to use proper ethernet wiring (I've noticed that T-568A tends to work better in most cases than T-568B). Ok, thank you every one so far.

Pretty cool... We could use a few around here for all the a$$holes who either can't park properly, or just don't think the rules apply to them..

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That's because most of those "clowns" use decent cameras with good low-light performance in the first place, rather than cheap crap that compensates for poor performance with a bunch of two-cent IR LEDs.

What cameras did you order and what VMS are you planing on using? And just what did you expect "the quality" to be? Were you expecting CSI where you can zoom in on a person's nose hairs from a mile away? As with analog cameras, there is an extremely wide range of camera features, quality, and prices... and as with analog, you do tend to get what you pay for.

Yes, because four siamese runs will need a conduit 10x the size of a single Cat5...

One run of Cat5 will allow up to four video signals... however, you'll need to either run separate wire for the power, or power the cameras locally (ie. power supply in the garage, which is what I'd recommend in this case). Of course there are, you have pictures of them below It's more a matter of what your chosen supplier(s) carry. If they can't order the ones you want, maybe you should shop somewhere else BTW, I use the GEM BLN-MTL2 extensively; they work well, and they're compact enough to fit inside most camera housings and enclosures. This is really a matter of personal preference... Assuming you make stable RJ45 crimps... some people are more skilled at assembling these things than others.

"Multicore"? I dunno, big bundles like that, we've normally referred to by number of pairs, as the wires ARE in pairs internally (25-pair, for example, was common for old-style multiline phone systems). 500 just good to have some spare ahaha. what do 500 core cables get used for then? Telephone trunk lines, generally - you'd see them serving entire neighborhoods. Gradually being replaced by a few fiber runs...

ahh right, well they've sent the cat6 cable now so i may as well use it. it is very useful to know that i can use any kind of wire for baluns though. if i got my hands on some 40 core wire (or two 20 core wires) could i run 20 video signals through it using baluns? could i use baluns with 12 core alarm wire? (4 cores for two video signals, 2 cores for rs-485 (ptz joystick), 2 cores for 12vdc power, 2 cores for alarm output (12v in alarm) and two cores for a tamper loop) bear in mind i will be using the cheap baluns like in the video numb-nuts shared in his balun post. Yes. and yes... although two cores may not be enough for the power requirements for two PTZs.

mabye this dome just ain't gonna work so good at night then...mabye then lens for ip megapixel domes just arn't there yet...i can focus it awesome for night,,but when day comes it looks like crap...and vice versa Does the lens say IR on it anywhere? Or day/night? If not, then it's nothing to do with whether it's a dome, or IP, or a megapixel camera, or a megapixel lens. From your description, it sounds like you're using a non-IR-corrected lens on a TDN camera... and that's purely user error.

You don't need twisted pair to use baluns. I've done it many times with simple 22/4 station-Z wire. I've also used speaker wire in a pinch (where the speaker wire was existing and running new wire between floors wasn't an option). The balanced line created by the baluns rejects noise on its own.

It's not a function of the camera (at least not directly), it's all in the lens. Make sure you're using a lens that is specifically designated for day/night cameras, or that have "IR" or "IR corrected" labeling on them. The other option is a camera with auto-backfocus feature, that will re-adjust the backfocus after any day/night switch.

You wouldn't be if you read the first two posts of the thread. All the female-to-female connector (often called "lesbian adapters") does is allow you to join two male BNC connectors together. It doesn't balance or unbalance the signal as described in Brian's post, and it doesn't give you an easy way to connect twisted pair wires. No - they have entirely different functions. You can do that, but two 24ga. pairs may not be enough to handle the current requirements of a PTZ. You need to look up the PTZ's power or amperage ratings, then plug that and the wire length into a voltage-loss calculator, like this one: http://www.netkrom.com/voltage_loss_over_cat5_calculator.html One other thing to note: Baluns DO NOT require UTP (unshielded twisted pair) cable. Cat5e is used most often, because it's commonly available, relatively low cost, provides flexibility by allowing power, video and control OR multiple video signals on one wire, and provides for future upgrading to network cameras... however, baluns will work just as well over lower-grade UTP (like Cat3 cable), large multicore cables (like old 25-pair telephone cables), or even non-twisted cable like speaker wire, microphone wire, station wire, etc.

IR light focuses differently from visible light, which means when the cut filter moves away, the visible-light portion of the image may still be in focus, but the IR wavelengths' focus will be soft. Normally you'd use IR-corrected lenses, which have optics specifically designed to address this problem. In your case, the extra glass may be designed to compensate for it, although in the TDN cameras I've used, the glass does nothing special - without IR corrected lenses, they also go fuzzy when they switch to night mode. The other issue is that as the aperture opens up, the depth of field decreases (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field for more info). With auto-iris lenses, the aperture tends to be decreased during the day (when cameras are most often set up), which provides greater DOF, and so you have a wider range of adjustment where things are still in focus... but once it gets dark and the iris opens, the DOF gets thinner, and if your point of focus is too close or far, then everything gets fuzzy. This problem is not specific to TDN cameras, BTW.

Well plus, without an IP camera, audio requires extra wiring (ghetto-cheap cameras use the all-in-one cables so they have the wiring available)... and a mic in the camera really doesn't work all that well, because unlike the camera, it can't "zoom in" on sounds - you'll pick up every sound in the room, as well as all the echoes and other room noise.