Soundy

I love pizza-box computers

I use it as often as not on individual camera mounts, so I use plenty of 1/2". I'll usually have at least one coil of that onboard, and one of 1" just in case I have something larger. All the auto-parts stores around here have it, so it's easy enough to pop out and grab some if I need it.

Nah... that kinda job is why they invented split-loom! http://cableorganizer.com/wire-loom/split-wire-loom.html

After a couple days of muddling about on ladders, you won't think the cost is that bad

I think I'd be pretty happy with that, given the harsh lighting.

Hahahaha, that's awesome. We had something similar a few years back, didn't end quite as nicely. Got a call to put a system and some cameras in a gas station. The four cameras were to go at the pumps, but they were to be mounted to sign boards that weren't installed yet. We finished the rest of the job and left the wiring in place for the cameras and told them to call us when the signs were ready. Well, they didn't want to pay for the job, because it "wasn't done". No fault of ours, of course.... the boss had a big argument with them on the phone and they finally agreed to pay everything except the cost of the cameras and that portion of the install, and I took the cameras away (not gonna leave'em there if they're not paid for!). Afterwards I told the boss, I was gonna go back into the store, take a stick of pepperoni, eat 3/4 of it, then put the rest back in the display and tell them I'd come back later to eat the rest, and pay for all of it then. He laughed his head off at that... said he'd come down to the site and we'd BOTH do it! (We never did, of course... but it's been a running gag ever since!) We were back to that site several times for their DVR dying. First time was within about two months, because the kid had decided to use it for his DVD editing/authoring since it was a more powerful PC than the family desktop. That was an expensive lesson for them to learn. "Isn't it under warranty??" Uh... no. Next time was a virus they got from someone surfing on it. Eventually they called up saying the DVR wasn't working... I took it out, brought it home, bench-tested it for a week... ran every conceivable diagnostic... found nothing at all wrong... took it back. They wanted to know what had gone wrong and what I'd fixed - of course, I had to tell them, I couldn't find anything wrong. So they refused to pay, since I "didn't actually have to do anything." We comped them that one, and told them if they needed any more help, to call someone else. Some people just aren't worth the headache.

Rent a boom lift?

ROFL!!! Okay, that just made my day

I found something really handy for when I have to use a laptop or service monitor on a lift: http://www.amazon.com/Automobile-Car-Dashboard-Non-Slip-Mat/dp/B000P910W8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1257618224&sr=8-3 I actually got a 4'x6' package at a liquidation store that I've been cutting pieces from... drape that over a corner of the lift's railing and park your laptop on it, it's not going anywhere easily

There's nothing EXISTING that I'm aware of. You could probably rig something up, maybe using DVI-I connectors and wall plates, but if your DVR has 16 BNC inputs on the back, you're just going to have to break that wall plate back out to 16 coax-with-BNCs again... would be a LOT of work and expense to end up pretty much back where you started. Something like this might help you tidy things up a bit, though: http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=18548&highlight=sliced+bread

^^Focus seems a little soft in that 5135 pic...

Well, I'm just the tech, I don't deal with the financials or anything, but from what I've seen, 50%-75% markup is not uncommon on most gear. I have seen 100% markup, or more, on some items, usually specialty stuff. Keep in mind that this markup takes into account various other things, like the cost of return visits if the unit should fail under warranty (yes, it will get replaced for me for free, but I still have to cover the service call)... the shipping for me to get it in, or if I pick it up from a local supplier, the cost to go get it... I also have to recover what I can, where I can, to look after the overhead of running my business... a lot of things can't really be built into the labor costs. There's the time I spend on the phone with you, helping you decide what you want/need... the time I spend writing up a quote... I need to cover the rent and power and heat for my office... pay for the computers in it. Sometimes I have to cover the cost of gear that I've paid to bring in, that the client then doesn't want... so I either have to sit on that cost until I can re-sell the gear, or I have to pay to send it back, and then some suppliers want a re-stocking fee... All reasons why you'll see equipment marked up. That said, 150% is a little much... but keep in mind, the guy you're getting it from is probably NOT buying from an online store, but from a local wholesaler, who have to add their own markup to cover THEIR overhead costs... so HE'S not getting it as cheaply as you can online. But what he's paying extra for there, is the backing the warehouse will give him. If the camera is bad, or fails within the warranty, he doesn't have to ship it back (probably at his cost) and sit and wait for a replacement - he can take it to the warehouse, swap it for a replacement, and reinstall the same day. He can also be sure of what he's getting. Buying online, you don't always know the condition of what you're buying... the legitimacy of the seller... the backing they'll provide. There are horror stories all over the 'net of people buying from online stores and having damaged, broken, or just plain incorrect equipment shipped to them... then having long, drawn-out, usually losing battles with the seller (who's often on the other side of the country, if not in a different country altogether). Go to Google Groups, go into rec.photo.digital, and search the subjects for "beware of", and just look at the number of shady online dealers that have come and gone over the years.

^^Wow... I think someone is REALLY in the wrong place!

I have a couple side-by-side samples of IQEye cameras with neighboring analog cams... I think everyone here feels your pain on that one! Doing that depends mainly on the angle of view. Even a 5MP camera won't give you enough detail to pull a plate number at 200', if you're running a 2.8mm lens with a 90-degree FOV. Zooming in on an area 50' wide at 200' away, however, should give plenty clear facial or plate shots. Everything is a balancing act. What sort of "heavy traffic" are you talking about? If you're running a lot of torrents or something, then yeah, you're likely to see a hit from the camera streams. If your PC's network cards and your home switch all support QoS, you can shape your available bandwidth to control that...

Now you know why professionals charge so much

Well, there's that too, but his main confusion seemed to be over the DVR showing different image quality on WAN vs. LAN, while the Panasonic camera looked the same either way.

sounds like you answered your own question So the described connection speed alone could make a significant difference? In that case I could move the little Panasonic "R2D2" wannabe to the site that has only a 800 Kbs connection and see what the difference is. btw - Since my original post on this thread I replaced the clunker LTC camera at that site with an SIR-4160. While the Samsung's video is noticeably better than the LTC, it is still not comparable to the very nice picture produced by the little Panasonic pet monitor. After laying out several hundred $ for the SIR-4160 that finding has me scratching my head for sure. Thanks for your comments. It's unlikely that the slower uplink speed is DIRECTLY causing the lower quality. If anything, it would cause stutters and pauses in the video stream as the bitrate exceeded the available bandwidth. Unless the software on one side or the other had a way to measure the upstream speed, or had it configured by a user, it would have no way of knowing that there's only 800kbit available. What's more likely is, as I've already stated, that the CLIENT software recognizes that you're connecting over a WAN (because you're NOT using a 192.168.* or 10.* or other reserved private IP range), and thus tells the server to use a lower-bitrate video feed. It's not likely to know what the server's upstream bandwidth is either, so it would just knock it down to something significantly lower, to strike a balance between quality and data rate. You could have 10Mbit upstream available to the server, and it wouldn't make a difference in this case. Changing the camera itself would have nothing to do with it.

Can't you do the same thing with analog cams by using a UTP transciever? Camera all plug into one transceiver,RJ45 from one transceiver to the other,than coax from that transceiver into dvr. For up to four cameras, sure. What you're talking about is basically just four baluns in one box, using all four pairs of a single UTP. Beyond that though, you'd need another UTP drop to the DVR. And you're still technically home-running all your signals.

Three or four cheap cameras with common video/power grounds, UTP, baluns, and a central 12VDC power supply. The shorter the runs, the more differential the baluns will introduce.

You can add a DVR card and software to pretty much any existing PC, as long as it's powerful enough for what you're trying to do with it. Some cards are also fussy about the motherboard, chipset, or processor type you try to run them with. As long as your "spare" PC meets the spec for the card you get, you should be fine.

TVL is, to over-simplify somewhat, a measurement of the vertical resolution of the sensor. IN GENERAL, the higher the number you can get, the better. Keep in mind though, the numbers you're given may not always tell the whole story. Sometimes, for example, the sensor itself may be a lower resolution, and the image is "upscaled" to a higher resolution by the camera's processing, and the manufacturer/vendor will quote the "upscaled" resolution. Personal preference certainly counts - looks, aesthetics, etc. Domes tend to be easier to "blend in" to existing architecture. Some dome designs, though, don't allow you to adjust the camera's aim fully, which can be a pain later when you need to, say, look flush along a wall or something. Better domes will have a full gimball mount to facilitate more flexibility. Many cheaper domes and bullets also don't provide, or don't have the space for, larger varifocal or auto-iris lenses, which may be a concern depending on your needs; "box" cameras with C/CS lens mounts offer a lot more flexibility in lens selection, but are also larger, typically less aesthetically pleasing, and usually require a separate enclosure if you want to protect them from the elements or minor tampering. In the end, the most important thing is for YOU to decide which style suits YOUR particular needs. There's been a lot of discussion on that already. The general consensus is that IF you need IR, use off-camera illuminators, rather than built-in. My personal opinion is that, in most cases, I'd rather use a camera with good low-light performance rather than trying to "fake" it out of cheap cameras with IR. IR does have its place, but it's over-used as a cheap hack, IMHO. All cameras should list their power requirements - just add up the numbers! If you can get a 10A supply for about the same as a 5A though, go with the 10 - never hurts to have more capacity. Varifocal just gives you the ability to adjust the field of view, rather than being locked into one view. Once the cameras are installed, though, you're probably not going to be adjusting that on a regular basis... so varifocal is really only useful once, during installation, in most cases. If you know the field-of-view you'll need, you can calculate the lens you need and probably just do with that. If you're not sure, or want to fine-tune things for a specific view, then varifocal may be more useful for you. A lot of cameras use the same CCDs and list similar specs, but with widely different resulting outputs. A lot of those specs are so generic, it's like listing a car as having "seats and windows" - nothing special about it, they ALL do. A name and model would give a better idea of whether it's really a worthwhile camera.

Remember, one of the benefits of IP is that you don't have to home-run every camera. If, say, all four cameras are on one side of the third floor of the house, and the DVR is on the opposite side of the basement, you can put a switch on the third floor, connect all the cameras to that, then just drop a single cable to the basement for the DVR. The cameras can plug directly into the router, if it has enough ports available. This should suffice for initial testing. Most cameras have only 10/100 ports on them anyway. Where gigabit comes in handy is between the switch and the DVR, especially with more cameras running higher res or framerates, because that's where you're funneling all the data from the cameras. Gigabit isn't a burning necessity right off the top. Neither is Cat6, for that matter - Cat5e should do just fine at a lot lower cost (unless you already have the Cat6).

I dunno about that. Upper-second class maybe. Just got a call today to one of our legacy GV sites (ie. systems supplied by our predecessor on this account). Four cameras out. Got onsite to discover it was - surprise surprise - one full "column" (viewed at 4x4). Moving the machine just slightly brought all four back. This is something I've found inherent to the GV Conexant-chipped hardware - ONE flaky/noisy camera or connection can affect up to three others that share some common hardware (whether one of the four A/D chips or what, I don't know). If you're lucky, you can see which camera is going squirelly so you know which one to fix... in today's case, there's no indication of which camera it was - a slight shift of the cabling, and all four would drop out. Another wiggle, and they'd all come back. This is something I've never seen on the ComArt-based cards used by Vigil and VideoInsight systems. The whole GV interface is kinda clunky and poorly-designed for my liking as well. Lotta stuff is in weird places where you'd never think to look, or poorly labeled. Try sitting down for the first time in front of a GV and figuring out how to add cameras, I just dare ya. Funny that you should compare them to Microsoft, because like Windows, being the "market leader" doesn't necessarily mean you're the "best"... just the most pervasive.

Another 3155DN on the same building...