Soundy

Yeah, love them... they officially called it quits a few years ago and released this DVD of their "Farewell" tour. Includes a fantastic acoustic set with a guest appearance by Greg X. Volz. You can find clips on YouTube.

I've come into possession of what appears to be a network video encoder box... the MAC address (00:0D:D5:00:58:E5) IDs as belonging to "O'RITE TECHNOLOGY CO." (can't find anything in the way of an actual company website); unit model number is IP-200. One end has BNC Video IN and Video OUT jacks and an RCA Audio IN jack, other end has 5VDC power jack and network jack. One side has a slide switch labeled "MIC SWITCH" with positions, INT/OFF/EXT; other side has a small hole that appears to be a mic. My DHCP server isn't receiving any requests from it, so it's probably got a hardcoded IP already... hoping for either a hard-reset button, or a "finder" utility.

And what is the cost of having to return to site to replace a camera that isn't performing as hoped/expected? Not just in labor, but in the reduced resale value of the removed camera, as well as the potential reduced trust from the client (ie. "This guy doesn't know what he's doing")? Even if the customer specs his own cameras... if I KNOW (from my own testing) that a camera won't be sufficient for a given situation, and I can inform the client of this in advance (and hopefully change his mind BEFORE the initial install), then I look like the hero. With most customers, that's golden. Or... you do the tests for your own benefit, and share the results with your community, for the benefit of your community... like many of us do here on a daily basis. Nevermind just selling ad clicks; if you run your own company, you're also driving potential clients to your site. Again, if you've already done the tests for your own use anyway, then any extra business you gain from bringing people to your site is just gravy.

The costs of what, the cameras? Only a problem if you plan to keep them on a shelf forever - not a worry if you're going to sell and install them after testing. The benefit to doing this sort of project is that it then gives you a better idea of each camera's *real* capabilities, particularly with the opportunity to test them in conditions similar to what YOUR customers need, which then allows you to make better recommendations - little or no concern about having to go back and replace a camera that didn't perform as expected. (And yes, I speak from experience).

Welcome!

Neat!!

Better, actually, because the camera will require half the current at 24VAC as it would at 12VDC, and the voltage drop will be less. That said, for a short run and smaller PTZs you're probably fine, but with larger PTZs that have higher power requirements, two pairs of 24ga. may not be large enough. Best check the power rating of the camera to determine if a larger power run will be needed, but Cat5e is fine for video and control together.

SUP YO! Welcome aboard

Tries to reach www.orite.com.tw, which just resolves to a domain-parking service. Doesn't have a path or filename, either, just the root domain, so it doesn't even give me a name to google for.

I wouldn't bother with fleaBay if you have any computer stores nearby - it shouldn't cost any more at retail, and you won't have to worry about getting some piece of junk in the mail

Alrighty... here are a few snaps of the interface, and a couple stills from the DVD source...

Nice, FISH STICKS! That one pike seems to be kind camera shy around the 2:00 mark, hanging out WAY in the background The one minnow doesn't seem too thrilled with his situation, either.

http://www.cnbusa.com

Oddly enough, I've mostly seen the "red-tint-slowly-over-time" phenomenon on Panasonic cameras (older WV-CP2xx models, mainly). Most of them have been in service and working fine, sometimes for upwards of a decade. In this case, replacing them with other Pannies isn't a concern.

Oddly enough, I've mostly seen the "red-tint-slowly-over-time" phenomenon on Panasonic cameras (older WV-CP2xx models, mainly). Most of them have been in service and working fine, sometimes for upwards of a decade. In this case, replacing them with other Pannies isn't a concern.

I'll grab some screenshots a bit later. Feeding it off my portable DVD player at the moment, keeps up nicely with the full-speed movement. Next step is to see if Vigil will support it (maybe with generic H.264 RTSP stream).

Any computer store should be able to provide a crossover cable... of you can connect the two via any handy network switch, hub or router.

Turns out the hole on the side IS a reset button... and it requires no login by default. This thing actually ain't bad... up to 640x480, H.264, supports PPPoE dialup, motion-detect email and FTP... Thanks, guys!

Nice, found the software... it actually sees the box and lets me configure it! Now I just have to figure out the login...

Nice - your geek-fu surpasses even my own! I suspect this unit already has an IP configured and DHCP disabled, as my DHCP server sees no requests from it. I thought about the pinhole perhaps being a reset, but the switch on the other side indicates it has an internal mic, which I suspect is the actual purpose of that hole... and I don't want to damage that by jamming something sharp in it. Guess I need to find the "IP Edit" software that's supposed to be bundled with it.

No. The DB9 port on that unit is for alarm input/output; it's not an RS-232 serial port.

Yeah, my second link points to GEM's version of this.

Exactly. It's not just the traffic that each port must handle... the "backplane" of the switch (the stuff that actually handles the traffic BETWEEN the ports) must be able to handle, not just the traffic of one port, but the combined traffic of ALL the ports. For example, I had one site with five 3MP cameras feeding into one gigabit switch, then uplinked into another (customer-provided) cheap five-port gigabit switch, along with two other 3MP cameras... and they regularly had random cameras drop out, especially with greater activity on them. I replaced the cheap switch with a higher-quality five-port gigabit switch, and the dropouts stopped. Despite the ports on the cheap switch all being gigabit speeds, the backplane couldn't handle the total amount of traffic. Yes, unless you have existing network drops nearby. Correct. The NVR (well actually, a PC-based Vigil hybrid DVR in this case, with a number of analog cameras in addition to the IP cameras) handles all the recording, playback, remote access, etc.; the NAS is a RAID5 array connected via iSCSI as "external" storage device.

Note that the Panasonic SuperDynamic cameras are NOT cheap, and while they are excellent, you may not need the SD or even WDR. Its main purpose is when there's a very wide range of lighting within one scene - for example, a person in a doorway with bright sunlight outside, or other such severe backlighting situations. If the people on the stage are front-lit, then WDR probably isn't what you need (nothing wrong with it, just don't want to see you toss money at a function that's not required)... if the issue is mainly that the camera can't handle the variations between lit and unlit scenes, or that there's just too much light, this is where auto-iris comes in. It would be really helpful if you could post a couple of stills of the scene, both with and without the stage lights.