Soundy

Hmmm, it wants me to download and install an app? That's not very convenient. Personally, I like running my own web/ftp server at home... copy files directly to it from my workstation or laptop at home, upload via ftp or VPN when away from home... then I can just provide people a web link when I need them to download something. Great for hosting my own images for embedding in forums, too. Considering just about any old PC will do the trick (mine is a PIII/1GHz), I'm surprised more professionals here don't do it that way.

Yes. We usually use four-conductor "station wire" for power alongside RG59, which is probably pretty similar to what you're looking at. You can also use 18/2, 16/2, Cat3, Cat5, or anything else with at least two conductors of thick enough gauge to handle the current needs. Heck, you could even use a separate coax run for power... just be careful not to mix them up with the video runs!

NO! Simple good quality 3M electrical tape does it all. If you have to do any splicing, especially in hostile environments you can use a quality heat shrink tubing that has hot melt adhesive on the inside. You can safely go under water or direct burial with this stuff. But for 99% of the jobs good quality tape does it all. Agreed! I'll often pack a little dielectric grease (the type sold in autoparts stores for battery terminals) into the connection itself, to prevent corrosion, then just wrap it tight with some *quality* PVC tape, like Scotch 700 - pull it tight as you're wrapping, so it stretches a bit and form-fits the connection. The ONLY time this practice has failed me was on a rooftop installation where the gulls got the end of the tape wrap and proceeded to slowly unwrap it...

Vigil will output IP cameras to multiple monitors in multiple resolutions with their "HD Viewer" application, but it is view-only and not something you'd normally be switching view on regularly. We use it in fuel services to provide paypoint monitors showing the pump and store cameras, and one for the customer-awareness monitor to display the ID camera.

Didn't figure it was. Looks like the innards of a half-dozen mid-grade PTZs I've opened up. No, attachments have been broken for a long time. You need to host the image somewhere (tinypic, imageshack, photobucket, etc.) and link to that. Good info, though!

There's always your friendly neighborhood Radio Shack...

^Yeah, good point, that input is likely line-level; the only mic that would drive it directly would be an old-style carbon or crystal mic (along with terrible sound quality).

Any *dynamic* mic should work without an amp, although you may find an amp is required depending on the sound level you're trying to record. Avoid condenser mics, as they need to be powered, which most often means using a battery - last thing you need is to be replacing a mic battery every few months.

Yes, that one allows you to remove the blades and has multiple slots to reinsert them at different spacings. Most better tools will do this.

Can you provide pictures of this cam? Edit: okay, the info I found on it says it's made by Hitachi and is used as the "guts" for several different manufacturers' PTZ cameras. It's POSSIBLE that the 9-pin ribbon to it can be hooked up directly to power, video and serial control, but there's also a chance that it needs an outboard voltage regulator/power supply, video processing, and/or buffer interface for the RS-232. Best bet might be to contact Hitachi directly for the technical info.

buellwinkle, have you looked at IQEye's cameras? I don't know how the cost compares, but they do have 5MP models that should fit your requirements, and I'm told their SDK is quite well-done. The web interface is also quite extensive and does have full motion-detect, ftp, mail, and other support.

There was a thread on this a little while ago. General consensus, I think, was that it's doable, but not really recommended - it would be preferable to use a spare pair of wire in the runner (possibly on the emergency phone run) with balus to get a signal out.

Wow... and here I was starting to think I was alone in my dislike of Arecont's lousy engineering/design. Don't even get me started (there's already a thread for that: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17784).

General consensus, I think, is that a dedicated network is the ideal situation most of the time. Using existing infrastructure is usually possible, and can sometimes be much more efficient if the capability is there, especially in instances suggested in hardwired's post, but keeping your camera traffic as isolated as possible from your regular network traffic (whether via physically separate wiring, or via VLAN) is your main goal.

IP cameras don't use your capture card - they just send the data via TCP/IP network (hence the name). You could probably run your IP cameras side-by-side with your existing analog cameras for comparison. Almost all of them can be viewed via a web interface, so you don't even need your current software to support them simply for comparing images.

A DVR is something you really want to have a dedicated machine for - they tend to be very processor- and I/O-intensive, much moreso than RAM-intensive. I'd be worried about other processes affecting DVR operations, moreso than the DVR processing slowing down other processes. In most cases, I think the hardware drivers (for the capture card) supporting the 64-bit OS would be more of a problem than simply running the software on a 64-bit OS.

All true, too. It's really too vague a question with too many variables - size of the project, scope of existing network, etc.

Depends on how they use the RAM I suppose. I'm mostly just familiar with the Vigil systems, and I know the main requirement for them is that they have enough RAM to fully load their MSSQL database. The settings for the database allow you to allocate a portion of the RAM to database use, and requirements are generally that you have at least 256MB unallocated. So with 1GB RAM, you leave 256MB free, and allocate the the remaining 768MB to database use. That then allows up to a 768MB database to be loaded without slowdown. Probably the "busiest" system I have in use is a 32-channel system with 23 analog (D1) cameras and five 1.3MP IP cameras, all averaging about 4fps, with 9.5TB of total storage for around 90 days' retention. In that case, the database is currently a little under 640MB. Framerate and resolution don't have a direct effect - the database tracks video files, so the more files you have, the larger the database. One trick we've used when the database outgrows the free RAM, if upgrading the RAM isn't an immediate option, is to increase the framerate and/or resolution on a couple cameras, so that the video takes more space, thus reducing the number of video clips, and thereby reducing the database size. Since MSSQL is limited to 2GB for a single database, anything more than 2GB RAM available to the database would be pointless on these systems, so 3GB RAM on these systems is more than enough. Now all that said, again, the need for more RAM is really dependent on how the particular system uses the RAM. In normal PCs, large amounts of RAM are mostly good for loading large files, like super-large photos in Photoshop, or large video clips (or giant maps and textures in games, if that's your thing). If your DVR limits the individual file sizes, that shouldn't be an issue. I tend to take "system requirements" with a grain of salt.... most cases, they're somewhat exaggerated because people would complain about the performance they'd get from "bare minimum requirements".

Not a lot of "network design" required, really, if you put your system on its own switch. Just run all your cables to one place and plug them into an appropriate switch, along with the DVR, and configure the IPs appropriately.

Embedding pictures is easy - put the to close the tag.

I like to create a separate network whenever possible. One new site, they'd already created a VLAN for the cameras in their switch, so we used that. On sites where they want remote access, I've found it usually suffices to plug my switch into their network, and create an "alternate" IP on the DVR that corresponds to their network (so the adapter has both 192.168.2.* address for the cameras, and a 10.* address for their LAN/WAN). One or two sites, I've added a second NIC for the company LAN, but I haven't had any problems doing it the other way. The whole point of a switch, rather than a hub, is that the traffic for one network shouldn't affect the traffic for the other, since the switch routes the data direct to its destination, rather than blasting it out to everyone who's connected.

Any particular reason you're run it on Windows Server rather than 2000 or XP?

Image uploads are broken, have been for a long time. Imageshack, Tinypic, Flikr, Photobucket, are all good...

Oh yes, I think we all carry a good supply of those... plus RCA->BNC, BNC->F, F->BNC, BNC T-adapters of various types... just about anything imaginable, you'll probably find a use for at least once in your career

It's not the BEST option, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. A pendant mount is preferable to help keep rain off the bubble, but it's not the end of the world if you have to mount the dome directly to the wall. Giving it a good application of Rain-X before it goes into service, will help a lot (I do this all the time with cameras inside car washes, helps IMMENSELY).