Soundy

Just what is the layout of this site? Could you do a quick sketch of the roads and buildings? Maybe a Google Earth screencap? As you see, we're more than just CCTV here; we might have other ideas that will work even better Regarding the cell idea, you could look into a monthly or pay-as-you-go plan... couple it with a good IP camera that has built-in analytics support and you're golden.

I'm doing this with an IQEye camera - cron script loaded on the camera snaps a photo of a construction site daily at 1pm and emails it to their insurance underwriter

It usually works out pretty quickly for us, too... this was certainly an exception. Part of the issue here, too, was that we needed access to the top of the car... the customer was concerned (and rightly so) about liability and safety issues. It's no different, to me, that needing to deal with electrical work... I CAN do it... I'm not certified to do it. So at home, I do my own... on a customer site, with WCB regs and corporate safety committees to deal with... I call in the electricians.

Is the cabin BEFORE your house on the driveway, or PAST it? I'd suggest a couple thing here... One, a camera with proper recorder (not a home DVR) could be useful for evidence, especially to prove that they've been coming in repeatedly to scope the place. Let them come around a few times and don't do anything unless they actually try to break in, then you'll have more proof... plus, chasing them off without them actually doing anything illegal could have legal ramifications for YOU. Two, how about just putting an alarm system in the cabin? Alarm goes off.... you release the hounds and grab your trusty blunderbuss Is there power in there? A basic alarm panel with siren and a couple door/window contacts would take very little draw and could probably run a long time on a car battery. A loud siren aimed toward your house would probably carry pretty well...

Just put that sucker in one corner of the room and use it for all the cameras in a line-of-sight

The problem with a camera with motion detection won't just be deer, but birds flying through the field of view, leaves blowing across... anything that a camera may detect as motion. Even at night, a light-colored bird under moonlight might trip it. To reduce issues, you'd need highly-tweakable motion detection (ie. defineable movement zones with varying sensitivity levels, motion masking), or better yet, video analytics. Several IP cameras have these features built-in, but they're not cheap. What would probably be even better would be a beam detector, something that just projects a beam across the driveway and triggers if the beam is broken. Put low enough, it would probably not be disturbed by a deer's thin legs. Something like this: http://www.optexamerica.com/productpage.aspx?l1=2&l2=6&id=63 Of course, wireless range might be more of an issue there... might be worth asking Optex about that.

I think the problem is overstated. It's true, you only get a complete picture for every I-frame, and a P- or B-frame won't render a full picture on its own. However, if a DVR is properly decoding the stream, it should only need to see the relevant I-frame in order to fully reconstruct the P/B-frames. Think of it this way: you have a video of a city street with someone walking through it. The system snaps an I-frame of the entire scene. Then for the next frame, it looks at the picture, determines that only the person and the area immediately around him has changed, and so stores that information and dismisses everything that hasn't changed. Repeat this several times, then take another complete snapshot for reference. As long as the DVR can read at least one I-frame, the entire image can be reconstructed, and advanced frame-by-frame, by displaying the complete picture, and then drawing in the changes. The only real danger lies in an I-frame being dropped, but the likelihood of JUST the I-frames being lost is slim and no greater risk than any other frames being lost. Long story short: don't get too worked up about it My experience with H.264 playback at lower framerates is, it does frame-by-frame just fine. The author is accurate on one point: 30fps is really over-rated. Most people couldn't even tell the difference between 15 and 30, and most wouldn't realize there was anything particularly wrong with even 10fps. See http://www.panasonic.com/business/security/demos/PSS-recording-rates.html

This is really not a good idea, unless you don't like sleep. Without a lot of fine tuning of the motion detection and masking (something that box won't do, it doesn't look like), all sorts of things could trigger an alarm, and you could end up with it going off several times a night. Try looking at Optex' range of wireless IR sensors - they have up to a 2000' transmission range and adjustable detection areas, from close and wide to a narrow, long-range beam. http://www.optexamerica.com/productpage.aspx?l1=2&l2=6&id=38 This also has an output relay that can trigger a VCR to record; a proper time-lapse VCR will have alarm inputs for that, rather than using an IR blaster, like that box above. It's not the cheapest solution, but it will be far more reliable than using motion detection to trigger an alarm.

Price RANGE, and simplicity, mainly. The relative merits have been discussed here numerous times. Note that IP does not necessarily mean megapixel; there are some very cost-effective VGA IP cameras... just as there are some very expensive, but high quality analog cameras. Mainly this gives you the flexibility of network connectivity vs. direct analog connection, and removes the need for capture hardware. If you're planning to go to an IP setup eventually, you probably don't want to blow $150+ on something that's going to work so-so just to experiment with equipment that's effectively obsolete. Or at least... I wouldn't.

Interesting... looks like it should work... although I suspect it would be finicky and clunky in operation. Certainly not worth over $150 - I'm sure Sean could set you up with a used time-lapse unit for far less. For the price of this thing and a standard VCR, you could get a very basic four-channel DVR and record four cameras instead of just one.

So anyway, Bruce.... short answer is, yes. Camera probably uses a BNC output, your VCR would use an RCA input, so you could use something like this with a standard RCA A/V cable:

"CONFIGURE FAILED" suggests that the camera is failing its startup auto-checks. I'd say it probably needs to be serviced by a Pelco dealer.

It certainly is possible to do all of that, some parts easier than others. I think the biggest issue you're going to run into is with the "broadcasting", and that just because of the bandwidth requirements - you won't be able to do it directly, you'll need to stream to some kind of re-streaming service like Ustream, and that will limit the ability of people to search recorded video. I can think of a solution that should do all of the above with megapixel cameras and a Vigil recorder and HD Viewer, but it would at least double your budget... and the other problem you'll find with megapixel, if you want to store past games for any significant amount of time, is that the storage and bandwidth requirements would escalate substantially, especially since you're probably gonna want it at a full 30fps. So, you're probably looking at starting with analog video, or VGA IP cameras (might be preferable, in case you want to move up to megapixel later, as storage costs decrease). You might want to look at cameras with remote zoom/focus (pan/tilt isn't needed) for the house cameras, so it's possible to zoom in on the house... don't know how often that would be used, but it could be a useful feature (yes, I do watch curling... I'm Canadian and we learned a bit of curling in PE class in high school ) Instead of rotating the house cameras, consider just having something with a wider field of view - to show you more of the ice - you'll have some "wasted" space to the sides, but it will eliminate the rotation problem. For display, you can't display just two cameras without either stretching or cropping the view... a two-by-two grid of four cameras works better, and this would let you show all four cameras for the sheet.

Sounds like any of a hundred other bargain brands...

Check your local Craigslist for a used portable DVD player. My latest one is a Polaroid 7" model with a flip-around screen (can turn 180-degrees and lay flat), came with wall and car chargers and a really nice case with "headrest" straps (which work great to secure it to the top of a ladder)... all for $30. I just posted an ad that I was looking for one with an A/V input, and this was the best of the replies. Just make sure to test it before handing over the cash Bonus feature: it can be used as a signal source for testing cables and monitors as well

Like I already said, there is none.

The only DVRs I've actually used the audio features on have been Vigils, and the audio syncs just fine with the video regardless of framerate, no extra tinkering required. I've seen it used on a couple old MUX/VCR installations and there was nothing special done to sync that, either. With lower framerates, the picture may "skip" along, but the sound shouldn't, and it shouldn't go "out of sync" with the picture... or if it does, it should be only offset by a fixed amount (it would take upward of 100ms to really be noticeable) that can be easily compensated for on playback. Have you tested this yet with the setup in question, or are you just assuming there will be issues because someone told you there would be? Unless it's a really low-quality DVR, I don't think you'll see any issues - again, if anything, I would expect the sync to be off by a fixed amount, probably no more than a few hundred milliseconds, through the length of the recording, so it should still be easy enough to tell that the audio "matches" the video. I can't think of any reason the offset would "wander" through the timeline. As for checking on the legality, the point is that you could save yourself some time and trouble worrying about the sync issue if you find out that it IS illegal. Plus, if it's illegal, and you just supply your client with the microphone to do it, you could be opening yourself up to a lawsuit, if he were to be caught and charged and then claim that you, as the "CCTV professional", "should have known and warned him of the potential liability."

Not sure I followed that... this WAS the company that installed the elevator, and if I remember correctly, they're the company that has the maintenance contract for the building management. Aside from the fact that the customer requested the elevator contractors be there... I don't like when other people who "think" they know what they're doing, tinker with my systems trying to do something that's related to their systems, and then muck something up that I have to try to figure out... and I generally try to extend the same courtesy to other trades as well, especially when they're trades you know you're going to have to deal with again.

Before you proceed, you might want to look into the legality of audio surveillance in your region... some areas allow you to listen but not record, some allow you to record, some require you post signage to the effect that audio is being used, and in many states, audio surveillance is illegal altogether. Here in BC, audio recording is legal, but is inadmissible for evidence unless you post signs informing people they're being recorded.

Might not be that easy... we did one site where we used an existing traveler to get a camera in the elevator, and while setting it up during construction was nice and efficient because the elevator tech was onsite, when we needed to service it later, we found that the elevator company was based back east, that they had all of two technicians covering the West Coast, and that they were booked two months ahead.

I would recommend against wireless except as a last resort (ie. no possibility of wired connections), especially in what's sure to be an EMI-rich environment... and even then, using equipment designed specifically for this type of installation (ie. Ubiquiti, among others - not off-the-shelf WiFi). Unless you get into more proprietary systems, you'll likely run into bandwidth issues after more than just a few cameras. The beauty of an IP system is that you don't have to home-run every camera; you could, for example, have one switch in a given area for a group of cameras, then give them all a single run back to the NVR, or to another switch. Or, if necessary, connect the network segment itself via a single wireless link, instead of each camera having a separate wireless feed. Existing coax can also be used for IP transmission - I've easily run four 2MP cameras over a single coax by feeding them into a local switch, then using ethernet-over-coax adapters to uplink the switch to the network. Video encoders to "convert" analog cameras to IP are convenient, but from some of the preliminary shopping I've done, they cost almost as much as most VGA IP cameras and even start coming close to the cost of megapixel cameras - it almost becomes more cost-efficient to just replace the camera rather than "network-ize" existing cameras. More than anything though, it sounds like this project needs a LOT of advanced planning of where to start, what the stages will encompass, what needs to be done when... pity I'm 10 hours away, I'd love to have a look at the site.

What make/model camera is it?

Wow, that's a LOT to cover - fact is, there are TONS of different ways to make all that happen... depends largely on your existing system (cameras and displays, existing cabling, how much existing vs. new cabling will be used), the rate you want to migrate things at (all at once or in stages, what the stages are, etc.), and what sort of budget you have for all of this. I gather from your signature, you're in Prince George?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=is+geovision+multithreaded ---- leads to -----> http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/4_2.asp?sfiled1=vid&pno=65

Well, Windows Movie Maker is free and included with XP SP2 or downloadable from Windows Live for Win7 (dunno about Vistsuck). The big problem you're likely to run into is, most DVRs export in proprietary or semi-proprietary formats that can't be directly imported into most editing software.