Soundy

The receiver does have a Form C relay (if you look really closely at the diagram near the top of the page, it's there in the small print ) You can also use up to 9 transmitters with one receiver (although all of them would just trigger the same relay).

We've used these in a number of outdoor installations, they have great range and very flexible options for detection angles and ranges.

The widest lens you'll COMMONLY find will be about a 2.6mm or 2.8mm, which will give you about an 80-to-90-degree horizontal field of view on a 1/4" or 1/3" sensor. Beyond that you need either specialty lenses, or multi-sensor cameras.

"AWG" stands for "American Wire Gauge" - it's a common designation for the size of the conductor here in North America. "0.75 mm²" similarly, is a designation of the conductor size; "2 x 0.75 mm²" simply means there are two conductors. The North American equivalent would be written as "14/2". Something like "22/4" would indicate 4 conductors of 22 AWG. None of these specify the type of cable, the type or thickness of jacketing, the color, or anything else, other than the size of the conductor itself. The larger the conductor, the lower its resistance and the more current it can carry. If the wire is too small, then it has higher resistance, will restrict the current more, and cause a greater voltage drop over a given distance than a larger wire. As bpzle notes, that symbol denotes only that it's DC. The symbol alone gives no indication whether the supply is regulated or not.

^What they said. Normal color cameras have filters to block infrared light, because it can throw off the color balance and cause other issues under standard lighting. Cheap IR cameras have no filter and tend to be either strictly B&W, or try to compensate electronically for the color balance. Good day/night cameras will mechanically flip the filter out of the way and switch to B&W when the go to "night" mode.

Hmm, that's a little under 18 AWG, which is fine for the signal line, but really too small for the power. You want to use minimum 16 AWG (1.3mm²) there, preferably 14 AWG (2.1mm²). Also, if it's a regulated supply, you'll be getting a solid 12VDC at the supply end, but under that at the camera - an unregulated supply would run around 16VDC at the supply, and still be well over 12VDC at the cameras, even with the smaller wire. If these cameras support 24VAC, that plus larger wire would be the be the best solution, although you could probably get away with the existing wire at that voltage.

Today I just finished a 13 cam new job, just for test I plug 4 cameras (singe dome, non IR) on one 1A wall wart. All perfect, no problems at all. The same cable brand, the same baluns, just the cameras are different, but are cheap 12v Chinese common ground too.' I have seen instances where it hasn't caused problems, this is true... but most often, it does, at least from my experience. Yes I've read about Altronix a lot in this forum, but unfortunately nobody sells this brand here. No to mention that here the dollar exchange is in control by the government , so is a real PITA to get US$ for imports. If anyone here can sympathize with you on that, it'll be Rory!

Export from each machine to a flash drive, external HDD, or network location... then just burn them all at once.

Unless your onboard graphics chipset is REALLY REALLY lame, it should be just fine. There's nothing heavy-duty about the DVR display; you don't need extreme 3D gaming-type power or anything.

Personally, I install Vigil DVRs pretty much exclusively (many now replacing GeoVision systems), and they work just fine with the higher resolutions: I just set the Windows display resolution to match the monitor, and Vigil displays as normal - I just get a bit of blank space to the right of the camera grid. Their HD Viewer software that we use to show cameras on external displays allows me to custom-crop each camera to fit, as well, or just pillarboxes the display - as long as I can set the Windows screen resolution properly, everything displays perfectly normal.

Do these need domes to be mounted underneath some kind of cover,, ie like under an overhang/canopy? Or, can they be mounted to the side of a wall where they'll be hit with direct sunlight quite a bit... not with the lense looking into the sun, but with the dome bodies getting hit by direct sunlight. I've got several of them directly exposed to all kinds of weather, no problems yet. I've had more expensive cameras die in the same conditions.

A great idea too, perfect for the 4in1 balun You'd pretty much have to use short "jumper" cables for that, yeah. Yes, that is true, but you know, chances are than someone comes and see the cables hanging and criticize, making the customer think if there are other ways of doing it. Heh, that will happen no matter what you do. Make the cleanest, most perfect, tight, smooth, seamless install possible, and someone will still come along and say, "Yeah, it looks great, BUT I woulda done it like this..." There are only two ways to deal with that: listen to them and get more ideas for next time, or just ignore them. It's like the old joke, "How many lead guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb? Seven - one to do it, the other six to sit around saying how they could've done it with more FEELING." Sounds like a classic case of ground loops through the baluns. It's not a factor of the power supplies or the distances involved, but of the design of the cameras: when the cameras have a shared power and video ground, you have one ground on the camera following two separate paths. With only one camera on one power adapter it's not a problem as the power ground doesn't reference to anything at the adapter end. When you connect two or more cameras to the same power ground, though (whether spliced together on a wall wart, or tied together on a common ground rail on a central power can), each camera's ground then has two paths to the DVR's ground. The baluns introduce a transformer winding into the video ground at each end, which adds dozens or hundreds of feet of length, as well as some resistance. The way to avoid it, short of individual wall warts for each camera, is to use 24VAC cameras, or dual-power cameras that have internal regulators, which effectively isolate the video ground from the power ground.

Welcome!

Welcome! "Wishmaster" is a great Nightwish song

There are a number of options depending on the types of baluns you're using. Some allow you to terminate the cable in an RG45 plug and then provide BNC and power out on a pair of tails. Some are screw or punch terminals with a 2-3" BNC tail; others have the BNC right on the body. I've used the "tailed" type terminating in a metal box on the wall immediately behind the DVR, with the tails hanging out the bottom and connecting there with the breakout cables (Vigil DVR, but they're essentially the same cables as the Geo). You could buy or make a number of short (2-3') BNC cables to extend the runs so you can terminate inside a box. I've sometimes dropped all the runs right at the DVR and just left the baluns hanging there, then split off the power pairs and slipped some split-loom around the power pairs to lead them off to the power supply. I've done vise-versa as well. All depends on what the specific installation calls for.

Why not use some sort of visible-light illuminators, so the people can see better as well?

Not sure what you're asking. Having both networks connected to a single machine won't slow down either network at all. Obviously running business apps on a DVR will slow both operations down, but that still won't affect either network.

The lighting we have is along our walls,,, so while it does fill the parking lot to some extent, it's been my experience that it isn't enough... having the IR's helps a lot in our situation,, would there be another model with IR's that you'd recommend? Oh,, and the 24vf you said to look at... is it an outdoor cam? The ones I found had great prices but they were listed as indoor cams... We use the VCM-24VF, it's an outdoor-rated dome that can be flush-mounted, or surface-mounted with the included back-box. The back-box also provides space to hide the connectors if they can't go inside a wall or other object. I'd say try them, and if you still find you need IR, use some external illuminators (others can recommend some). Cameras with built-in IR are know to have issues, not the least of which are bugs setting off motion detection, and spiders building webs over the front of the cameras.

No. Traffic for the 192.* network will be routed in the DVR to the appropriate NIC; all other traffic will default to the 10.* network. Unless the NICs are bridged, the two won't networks won't even be able to directly communicate with each other. Technically running both over the same wires shouldn't have a significant "cross-effect" as long as the switches can handle the traffic, but if the infrastructure is already in place for the cameras to have their own physically separated network, that's certainly preferable, for both reliability and for security.

If the cameras are all on a physically separate network, I'd keep it that way, without linking the two at the switches... then just plug one of the server's NICs into each network - the 192.* addressed NIC into the camera network, and the 10.* NIC into their corporate network. Leave the "Default Gateway" blank on the 192.* NIC, too, ANY traffic that's NOT destined for the 192.* network will automatically be routed to the 10.* network. That should be all it takes!

Just search this site for "CNB 24VF" - they're a fantastic day/night dome with low-light performance that rivals cameras costing twice as much. If you already have street lighting, IR is not needed. The domes will also be a lot more robust and less vulnerable to tampering than bullets.

I see you posted this on TrailVoy.com too First, for connecting the cameras to the DVR, rather than "extensions", you'll just want new cables made to the proper lengths. Actually, extensions would be the same cables, you'd just need couplers to connect them together. There are three common ways to cable this... One is to use a run of RG59 coax with BNC connectors, and a run of appropriate power cable like 18/2, 16/2, or station-Z wire. Another is to use Siamese cable, which is RG59 and 18/2 wire joined along its length by web - a little more convenient, usually a little more expensive. The third is to use twisted-pair cable like Cat3, Cat5e or Cat6, running the video over one pair using baluns on each end, and power down the other pairs. Since you're using 12VDC cameras, you probably want to avoid the balun method, as that will probably lead to ground loops and all sorts of signal quality problems. So then it just becomes a question of what cables are available and/or cost-effective to you. For ease of cabling, you'll want to mount the power supply near where you put the DVR, so you can pull power and video cables together to the same location. Make sure you get the polarity right when connecting the power.

Welcome aboard!

^If it's a transformer-type PSU, the line and output grounds will - or SHOULD - be physically separated anyway.

Thickness of the plastic doesn't matter - a plastic grocery bag would suffice. It only has to insulate a few millivolts. But yes, it's important that the mounting screws not make a connection either.