Soundy

Hahahaahah, of course they can. There are some pretty unscrupulous sellers on teh internetz. In any case, there's nothing wrong with PoE - we use it regularly and it works great. Some companies' entire infrastructures use it - PoE isn't just for cameras, it's used regularly for IP phone sets, wireless access points, and plenty of other things. For my money, PoE is THE first choice for IP cameras - I just recently discovered the joy of being able to remote-power-cycle a PoE camera from the switch's admin interface PoE really isn't that complicated: in its simplest form, it just uses the two pairs in a Cat5 cable that are normally unused by 10/100 ethernet, but the spec also allows the data pairs to be used. It really is a well-established standard, not just some hack-job idea that just appeared on the scene.

I know the Axis servers are popular hereabouts (241Q, et al.)... what else is out there that folks are familiar with and can recommend? I'm looking at a job soon that may use upward of 16-20 SD cameras that will need to be transmitted over the network (in addition to a few MP cams), so larger multi-input units would be good. I'll also be looking at VGA-res IP cams, but we've be spec'ing the CNB Mona Lisa cams for this customer and they're quite happy with them, and unfortunately, none of CNB's network cams use the Mona Lisa chip.

Keep in mind that removing the IR cut filter will make for really weird results in color mode, if the camera isn't designed to compensate electronically (if it were, it probably wouldn't have the filter in the first place). Here's one of Rory's examples from another thread:

Our Vigil machines have built-in health monitoring. One of our clients makes extensive use of their VCM (Vigil Central Management) application to monitor his 14 machines - the server sends him an email if a DVR goes offline (within minutes of it happening), if a camera goes offline, if a disk goes offline, if the DVR isn't holding at least the specified days of footage... and many other health aspects of each system. As far as something to work with varying different systems that don't have their own health-monitoring functions... it probably wouldn't be hard to write a script or batch file that would either ping the system, or attempt to connect with it and then report back if it can't. EXACTLY how to do it would depend on just what services the systems support... like if they're all web-accessible, you could have something attempt to connect on the web port and then throw an error code if it can't... of course, that wouldn't tell you whether it was the system or just the connection that was down, but it would at least let you know something was wrong. You could add some simple logic that would maybe ping the connection to see whether it's up, and make an assumption as to the state of the DVR by process of elimination...

I don't think it's "local" power, so much as separated power, that addresses the ground loops. A transformer provides physical isolation between the line voltage and the stepped-down voltage, which also isolates the camera's power ground from the other cameras's power and video grounds... whereas in a power can, all cameras share a common power ground. The first time I ran into bad ground-loop issues with Cat5 and baluns, simply disconnecting each camera from the power can and putting it on its own transformer cleared things up perfectly. The transformers were all "central", right beside the DVR, plugged into the same power bar.

The other problem with local power for the cameras is that it spreads out your system management, instead of keeping all critical components in one central, easy-to-access location. You probably don't want the transformers visible, so that usually means finding somewhere to hide them... which often means somewhere with limited accessibility. Not fun if you need to troubleshoot power issues later. It's one thing, too, if this is your home setup... but for a customer, show a little consideration for the next guy who comes along to service the system, and will have to spend hours trying to figure out where the #*^%#* you powered the%&^(@!! cameras from, you stupid #%#*^&$@(!!!!! Central power greatly simplifies troubleshooting: check the camera end for voltage... if it's not there, check the power can... if it IS there, you know the problem is somewhere in the wire.

@Rory: the analog is an older Mace B&W dome... it's intentionally a bit dark so the TVS overlay text shows up better on the left side. The only reason it's still there was because a solution for TVS overlay on the IP camera would have been too expensive

The problem (at least in the example I gave above) isn't the distance per se, but the level of detail - when the cameras as 30' up a building in order to cover a large area, objects in that area are going to be very small, and the further away they are, the smaller they get. Case in point: these two images are from two cameras mounted side-by-side; one is an analog dome recording at 4CIF resolution, the other is a 1.3MP IP cam adjusted to give approximately the same field and angle of view (BTW, the site resizes the pictures for display - click on each image to see it full-size). Now imagine this is in a car lot... a person midfield in the frame will probably be about the size of the sunglasses on the bar.

There are very few PCI graphics cards still made these days... any of them you find NEW should support widescreen resolutions. However, you may need to install the .INF file for the monitor (usually distributed as a "driver download", even though there is technically no driver), which tells the system what resolutions it suppports.

If you're starting with a skin file, it should be easy to just PS a still capture into that...

There's no reason the camera shouldn't be able to focus a <10'... just that by default, these cameras are generally pre-focused during assembly to a farther focal point in an attempt to maximize overall DOF. To get into the 0-10' range, you'll need to re-focus it manually. However, you likely won't get that FULL range into focus, even with a shorter lens (although the shorter the lens, the more DOF you do get). The biggest limitation of the 6mm, really, is the narrower field of view.

This would be about my only concern, really. More to the point, you would want the dome out of the spread of the light altogether, since light hitting the bubble could still reflect and/or refract and cause glare in the picture. Other than that, you probably want to keep them as close as possible... the thinking (at least to me) being that a bright light snapping on is likely to get two responses from a prowler: the second thing he'll likely do is run off; the first thing, though, is he'll instinctively look toward the source of the light... and that's your chance to get a nice clear facial shot.

802.11af spec designates that a device should show a particular load to a port to indicate that it's PoE-capable, at which point the switch turns on the power to that port. This section describes how a switch (assuming it conforms to spec) detects a PoE device and applies power accordingly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet#Powering_devices Specifically: "If the PSE detects a resistance that is too high or too low (including a short circuit), no power is applied." In other words, a short in the line should simply cause that one port to shut off power... not a big deal because a short in the line would probably cause that camera to drop off anyway. And MindTwist, sorry if I seem a little snippy, but your suggestions basically amount to saying "www.justfuckinggoogleit.com" - I've already googled it, and every single hit so far has either been for routers that are powered from PoE, or instructions to hack a router to be powered from PoE. There may be ONE useful answer several pages along, but as with the DD-WRT.com link, I don't have several days to waste checking them all out.

We had EXACTLY this issue with one car-dealership client... gave him several price options for his system, with outside cameras ranging from basic analog to better-quality megapixel, and put IN WRITING what the difference in quality and detail would be. Of course, he chose to go with the cheapest option... ...and the called in a tizzy a couple years later after they'd had a ton of cars vandalized and the cameras only showed small dark blobs moving between the cars (cameras mounted about 30' up the outside walls to get the broad coverage they wanted). Of course, he claimed this wasn't what we'd promised for the system... ...and of course, we sent him back a copy of the quote, with the expectations for the different systems, and his signature approving the cheapest option. That shut him up pretty quick

Yeah, don't really have two spare days to sort through all that a column at a time... a Bing search would be about as effective. From a quick glance most of the PoE-capable routers I see are brands I've never even heard of.

*facepalm* It's not really feasible to check through everything on the supported devices list and check the specs on each one to see if it supports PoE, now is it? That's completely backward to what I'm asking... all I want to know is if someone knows of any WiFi routers that can supply PoE power to devices. DD-WRT support would be NICE, but is not a requirement. Since PoE sourcing will be the single hardest feature to find, it should be a small list, and since that is the "requirement" in this case, does it not make more sense to find anything that fits that list FIRST, and THEN worry about which ones fit into the "would be nice" category, instead of sorting through the thousands of "would be nice" results to find the few that match the "requirements"? I'm basically looking for a car that I can attach a rocket engine to, and it would be nice if it came in red... and you're telling me to look at a list of cars that come in red first.

Because right now I have a WiFi router (WRT54G with DD-WRT) set up as a bridge point for three IP cameras (the cameras plug into the router, which links them wireless back to the network), one camera on a PoE injector and the others with their own power supplies... I'm trying to cut down the clutter and equipment count, so adding a PoE switch would sort of be a step sideways, not to mention a waste of all the ports on the router itself. Ideally I'd be looking at something else I can flash with DD-WRT (wanting to get a WDS MESH going eventually), but for the moment I'm just hoping to find one that has PoE supply ports. I'll worry about bridging/WDS/etc. from there.

Okay, I'm a little confused... are you looking to actually stream near-realtime images or video, or looking for high FPS, or is more sporadic updating (even every 10-20s) sufficient? I don't know about the other cameras you're using, but embedding a single JPG into a webpage would be dead simple with an IQ camera: within the page framework, you just include the link to the camera's URL, then have it refresh the page on a regular basis (like using a META command, as Rory suggests, or perhaps with some javascript). With the IQs, there are a number of parameters you can add to alter the image (size, etc.). As long as your web host can handle the traffic, all your camera uplink has to deal with is the timed requests from the web host. I can't imagine it would be that much more difficult with the Axis camera.

Yeah, in my case, I have to get a lift on-site to swap out this second dead cam (unless I can find a 35' step ladder). I'm told the building maintenance people will be bringing in a lift soon for their annual lightbulb-changing exercises, so we'll probably wait until then to do the swap. Fortunately we, too, have a spare or two...

I don't know about a live stream, I'm just talking about single images... as you say, updating "every x seconds". Bandwidth requirements should really be minimal - this 1.3MP still from an IQ camera, for example, is only a bit over 200k, so hosting it off my own server isn't a big hit - remember, it's not a constant stream; once someone views it, that's it for data requirements unless they're sitting there hammering on the refresh button. It sounds like you're trying to do something similar to what the BC MOH does with their highway webcams - in that case, the images displayed update once every 120s. Check out the webcam section at www.drivebc.ca. Granted, those pics are a lot smaller, but I don't know that any of the cameras are megapixel anyway, and they probably see a lot more traffic (pun intended) than your purpose would.

Wow, that's so weird... I've just had two 511s die with an "No imager detected" issue (well actually, one died in December and nobody noticed until a couple weeks ago... I replaced that Monday morning, and another one died Monday night with the same error). Both are over a year out of warranty, but IQ has waived the repair fee for the second one, and hopefully will for the first one as well (and huge props to Colleen at IQ support!!). The boss says he has a couple more with the same problem sitting in the office. Basically, the camera connects, the interface comes up fine, but there's no picture, and trying to change any of the image-related options throws an "No imager detected" error popup...

Single images really aren't that big, I wouldn't think you'd get that hard a server hit just feeding them directly. Up the compression level a titch and don't worry about it. Pretty much all the images I embed in websites, I host on my own little home webserver on my residential cable connection, including those for a site with over 35,000 members... never been a problem. If the "blank" problem is because uploading the images by FTP is too slow, try using a script on the webserver that will "pull" the images from your source, then copy them locally to the embedded location - that should be nearly instantaneous.

I dunno about "hidden", but maybe something like this? http://cam2life.net/products-IC502w.html

This: http://www.aiphone.com/products/alpha-list/detail/jk plus this: http://www.aiphone.com/products/alpha-list/detail/jkwip

I think the advice from everyone here would be pretty much unanimous: you really really REALLY want to use a DEDICATED system for a DVR. Video recording is, above everything else, disk-I/O intensive... probably not something you want to load onto your file server. If your cameras are already network-capable via the Aviosys, take a look at a basic NVR with its own webserver built in... little standalone box that will record the cameras and allow remote viewing; you could just add a link to the website that would redirect browsers to the NVR. Take a look at options from Synology or QNAP, for example. But either way, do yourself and your users a favor and DON'T turn your file server into a DVR.