Soundy

You have a few options... You could use a composite-to-VGA adapter if your monitor has an extra VGA input. You could use a simple USB capture adapter to feed your DVR's output video into your computer. Ideally, if your DVR is networkable, you just plug it into your network and access it from a browser or client on your computer.

That's one thing I miss about my little s**tbox Mazda - same concept: "You car is worth $40,000, my car is worth $400... *I* have the right of way!"

It does look like a standard 6-pin mini-DIN format, but finding something that will properly fit that threaded connector may be another challenge....

I don't see anything stating that AJA box is HDcctv compliant - HDcctv is a specific subset of SDI and the box may simply not recognize the camera's output. Why not just use a camera with HDMI out? There are a number of IP cams that fit the bill, or just use a consumer HD camcorder.

As long as the host doesn't default...

Nice! These are normally sold as oscilloscope leads (since most of them use BNC connectors for inputs) but I never thought of using one this way.

It's dual-voltage. Actually, it's multi-voltage. IIRC, that camera will accept any input voltage from about 10V to 30V, AC or DC. The internal power board rectifies and regulates it as needed.

My guess would be that the window has a UV-blocking coating that's causing this effect. It's probably acting similar to a "haze filter" for a still camera.

Sure you can. All a static IP does is ensure you always have the same internet address to connect to.

What video format are you exporting as? If it's something other than the DVR's native format, the DVR has to re-encode the video as it goes, which will slow things down substantially. Vigil, for example, is much faster exporting to native MJPEG that to AVI... Capture systems are MUCH MUCH faster exporting as a "minibank" file than converting to AVI. What hard drive are you using in it? If the drive is slow, fast-forward playback will be slow. You get what you pay for. Cheap machines just don't have the features, performance or capabilities of a higher-quality, higher-priced system. That could definitely be part of the problem as well. Be careful with this - as we've seen here many times with these cheaper DVRs, there's a chance once you remove a drive, that it won't be recognizes properly when you plug it back in.

Not all DVRs overlay the timestamp on the image. Vigil embeds the timestamp info in the file metadata, along with authentication info, so it displays in a the player app but not on top of the video itself.

They're also handy if you need to relocate a system head-end, and the existing wiring won't reach that far. For example, a few years ago we had to move the DVR on one site from the old office, where all the wires terminated, to a new office 40' away. At the time, that meant a bundle of 15 runs of coax from the ceiling of the old office, into the new office - major pain, major cost: if you figure a buck a foot for RG59 (just for the sake of easy calculation), and add 10' to allow for snaking around and dropping down from the ceiling, that's $50x15, or $750 just for cabling, nevermind the labor to put BNCs on both ends of the extensions and the barrel connectors to join them all. Baluns were super-spendy at the time and there wasn't a lot of selection; today, the whole thing could have been done with four Cat5e runs, four of these, and four of these, with very little additional labor costs and the baluns would simply plug right in at both ends.

Any sort of broadband router will do. Doesn't have to be Netgear - D-Link, Linksys, Belkin, TP-Link and Trendnet are all common names. Doesn't necessarily have to be a wireless (WiFi) model, either, if all your network devices will be wired.

Welcome aboard, from the other side of Canada

I have this nagging pain in my lower back... And what can you tell me about mutual funds?

Yeah, I kinda got that the OP just wants to be alerted when a cable is being cut... nearly every DVR on the market will throw up a "video loss" display or something similar, almost all of them will (or can) start beeping when this happens, and many can send an email and/or SMS the instant there's a loss of signal.

That'll be your 24VAC power input - the common/ground isn't needed. Just hook them up to a 24V transformer of appropriate capacity (at least 40VA, I would expect... 75VA or higher if it has a heater/blower). You only need the RX pins for the RS-485 control lines. Those will connect to the serial or PTZ outputs on the DVR (possibly labelled with "TX" - you're connecting the TX (transmit) pins on the DVR to the RX (receive) pins on the camera). Those should be all the connections you need (along with the video, of course).

We did exactly this for a site that required a massive re-wire: they had 12 cameras running between two buildings, over 12 separate coax (plus two more coax for monitor returns). Many runs were having issues, one or two appeared to be damaged, all existing conduit (two 2" and two 1" pipes) was packed tight... and they wanted to add two analog cameras, AND a couple IP cameras to the mix. So, we yanked out 14 coax runs, and replaced them with seven Cat5e runs: four for the cameras (with two spare pairs), one for the monitors (with a couple spare pairs), one for the new network feed (the two cameras feed a five-port switch in the main building's electrical room, where the runs terminate, so there's only one uplink run needed to the office in the other building), and one just to have a spare for future use. And they all fit within one 2" conduit between the buildings, with room to spare. The cameras all had coax already running into the electrical room, which had previously all run through the conduits to the office - four of these made installation particularly easy: http://muxlab.com/products/vec_quad_video_balun.htm#

An interesting statement, given that in the professional audio world, balanced signal lines are by far the preferred method of interconnect, specifically for their noise rejection capabilities. About the only place you find unbalanced coax in audio is in guitar cables, some speaker lines (where the signal level is high enough to overcome almost any noise floor), and in cheap consumer equipment. There's no logical reasons the same concepts of a balanced signal line shouldn't apply to video.

1. Put the camera outside. 2. Remove the glass (or open the window). 3. Put a cover over the camera to seal it up against the glass, or some other way to block the light.

This is typical for these sort of cheap cameras. There's usually a small rubber gasket around the end of the lens that presses up tight against the dome to block the reflected light, but if that's loose or missing, you'll get what you're seeing.

I take it this is a standalone DVR? If so, it probably doesn't provide access to the filesystem, so access to an individual configuration fill will be impossible. The path you see in the setup application is probably intended for local export.

Something being "the standard" does not automatically make it "the best", and certainly doesn't mean it will ALWAYS be "the best".

16 cameras, in a building that size, you'll need to add a zero to that price. I realize this is for a charity and there's not a lot of money to go around, but the hard facts are, you're not going to get any sort of quality system of that size, for that price range. So the first thing you need to do is get your camera count down: narrow down the areas you NEED to cover, vs. the desire to simply see everything. As for the wiring, whether you can re-use existing network cabling will depend on how it runs, where it runs to, and the types of cameras you use. If every location you want a camera has a run that goes straight back to a central location, you could re-purpose some network runs for analog video... if it's a structured network layout, however, where runs in a given area go to a local point and then uplink via a switch and another run, you'll have to use IP cameras (at additional cost)... or plan to run new wiring. Tom is correct about wireless, though: cheap wireless cameras are barely usable in a small home system; they'll never do in a site this size. You can get wireless options that will work in this situation, but you'll pay a LOT more for them.

The biggest con, in my experience, is that using baluns with cheap 12VDC cameras and multi-channel power supplies, is the increased likelihood of ground-loop issues. Using separate 12V "wall wart" power adapters, or 24VAC or dual-voltage cameras, generally avoids the issue. Cameras with high-power built-in IR may have problems with voltage loss on longer runs as well... although in many cases I think you'll find things are just fine. Pros, well... Cat5 and RG59 tend to cost about the same, but with the Cat5 route, you don't need the separate power wire, which saves some money, as well as making the pulling easier (a bundle of like-sized cable will always be smoother than a mix of cable types. And, if you ever want to upgrade a camera to an IP/megapixel camera, you just have to re-terminate and plug in the new camera.