Soundy

Yeah, but he was asking about DIN connectors But this illustrates another problem: it's not always JUST audio and video out (from camera) and power in... some will also have alarm triggers (camera with built-in PIR, for example), and some will have a speaker in the camera for bi-directional audio (so you can talk back to whoever is in front of the camera). All this makes a LOT of different possibilities for use of the six available pins.

LEDs can last years as long as they're not overdriven. Voltage isn't the main killer - current is. You can put any voltage you want across an LED as long as you limit the current with an appropriately-rated resistor (you can also use a constant-current power supply if you want to get REALLY fancy). Allowing the LED to draw more current means it will shine brighter... but for a shorter time. "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long... and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy." This is normal. Take a look at an LED flashlight - turn it on, point it at the wall. IR LEDs are no different except for the spectrum of light they produce. If you look inside a typical LED (not while it's on, obviously), you'll see the light-producing semiconductor junction is inside of a small cup-shaped reflector - this directs most of the produced light straight forward, just like a light bulb inside a standard flash light housing. Thus, they don't blast light out in all directions like a standard light bulb. IR LEDs are really no different, functionally, than having a flashlight attached to your camera, except they use a non-visible wavelength of light, so they're not as noticeable, and they don't illuminate the area for the naked eye. Like a flashlight, they have limitations - they're limited in the distance they'll shine vs. the area they'll cover. If you make a tighter beam, you can get more distance, but cover a smaller area. Or you can use a wider coverage, but get less distance. They're great for NO-light situations, within their range... but if you need to cover a larger area and will have SOME ambient light (streetlights, say), you might find a D/N camera that can properly display with the low light, will work better.

Scorpion's got the right idea. Or you can get a specialized nail-pulling tool - they come in a number of styles, including some low-profile styles for just this type of purpose.

First, there is no "universal" DIN-to-BNC adapter, as there is no standard for the DIN pinouts and different manufacturers will use their own pinout arrangements. You'd need to find out exactly what pinouts your system uses, then either find an adapter that matches *on ALL pins*, or build the adapter yourself. Second, the reason there are 6 pins is because there are three separate cable pairs in the camera wire - one pair each for video, audio, and power. There is no (cheap and easy) way to combine audio and video to run over a single wire. You need your adapter to split out the pairs, and then terminate each of those appropriately. If it's any help, it doesn't matter whether the video or audio pairs use RCA or BNC connectors - BNC is most common for professional video; RCA is most common for audio and also often used for consumer video.

Try using a dielectric grease in all your connections - this is often sold in auto-parts stores for use on battery terminals and in trailer wiring connections for prevent corrosion. Squeeze some inside the male BNC ends before you snap them on. In your case, it might not even hurt to force a bit into the ends of the coax before terminating - it doesn't have to protect the entire length, it just has to prevent the sea air from getting inside the jacket. Might even be an idea to cut off any existing connectors and re-terminate them with the grease inside as well. Oh, and use compression-type weatherproof connectors if at all possible, and gel-filled crimps where necessary. And yes, this is in addition to all the above steps: the boxes and conduit will keep the direct spray off of things; the grease and gel will keep the ambient salt air that's sure to leak through anyway, from working its way into the connections.

The trick to low light is to get as much light to the sensor as possible. The best way to do that is with the largest-aperture lens you can get. If box cameras (C/CS-mount) are an option, this gives you a lot more flexibility. Standard CCTV lenses typically fall within the range of f/1.0 to f/2.0... and f/1.0 allows *FOUR TIMES* the light of f/2.0. f/1.4 falls right in the middle of that range (it's an algorithmic scale). The lower the f-stop you can find, the more light you let in, and the better your camera will work in low light.

The PIR in our living room is actually mounted about 8' up (under a 16' ceiling)... even my friend's huge Rottie doesn't trigger it, but a person can't step into the room without it triggering. It's not a PET-type detector, either. YMMV, but it seems to me careful placement should be able to get around pretty much any animal problem.

That's not the case anymore - pretty much ALL modern PIRs have some form of "pet immunity" feature. Even without it, a properly placed and aimed PIRs has very little susceptibility to being triggered by animals. Not if you have a properly installed alarm system - a good installer will put it somewhere that's not obvious.

THAT sounds pimp, I'd love to see pics of that finish!

Just one client that likes them painted black, the blend into the ceiling of a dimly-lighted restaurant. I've done it IQEye box and dome cameras, with Pelco and CNB domes, and with CP484s and CW484s. For the box cams, I find it usually easier to disassemble them and just paint the shells, rather than trying to mask everything off.

We often use heater housings here in Vancouver, but in reality, even the non-heated ones almost never have a problem as long as they're sealed.

Any particular reason it needs to be converted to WMV? Most computers are capable of playing QuickTime MOV format...

I'd take the one with the larger maximum aperture - it will probably be listed as something like "f/1.4" or "1:1.4". Most of these types of lenses, that number will be anywhere from 1.0 to 1.8 - take the one with the SMALLER number. Smaller number = larger opening = more light.

Just gotta add some analytics in there to email/SMS you if there's a package left behind

You SHOULD only need to connect one, as they're probably connected internally anyway...

Even with DD-WRT you're still limited to the capabilities of the hardware and the 802.11g protocol. You might be able to tweak a little more performance out of the radio with some better handling of heavy traffic, but that's probably beyond the scope of this forum (www.dd-wrt.com would be a better place to ask about that). As you say, try plugging one or two cameras directly into the router and see if that helps the wireless framerates. And again, try locking all the cameras to lower framerates, and see if that improves the overall stability for all them.

That SHOULD be the case. Most cheap 12VDC-powered cameras of this type have a common ground between power and video, so the black wire would be ground for both.

You can always use a hole saw to make (if memory serves) a 3.5" hole behind it, and do away with the back-box. The mounting plate is designed to attach to a dual-gang box. In alpine's case, he probably would have needed to core out his two plywood shims, but not the eaves behind. Use some 2.5-3" deck screws through the mounting plate, through both shims and right into the eaves.

Whichever way you go, the same rule always applies: you get what you pay for. We've put in a number of cheap (and I do mean CHEAP) standalone DVRs because the client wanted to spend very little money, and had hideous failure rates. We've also put in good units like Digital Watchdog that run flawlessly for years... but cost as much as a low-end DIY PC system. If it's something you're experimenting with or is being used in a non-critical environment, you can go standalone OR PC and cheap out and probably be fine... if security is important, spend the money for something good. Don't let cost be your determining factor; there are lots of other criteria to base a buying decision on: ease of use, space available for installation, features, expandability, upgradeability, etc.

I don't think RAM is your problem, at least not directly. Overall data throughput is probably a bigger issue if you're recording all these cameras - the bottleneck could be the amount of RAM, the motherboard's bus chipsets, the drive I/O, or any combination thereof. At those relatively small bandwidth streams, I think disk I/O speed is going to be more of a problem than the amount of RAM; your machine is probably bogging down trying to do that along with all its other processes. Also, don't expect a "G" router to give you a SUSTAINED 54Mbps with multiple streams like that. That speed, as I recall, is half-duplex, so you'll get "interruptions" as the recorder communications back with the cameras. The more constant load you place on the wireless connection, the more it will suffer. It's not the router choking, it's just a limitation of WiFi spec. In this case, I fully expect that the camera dropouts are caused by network bottlenecks, not by the computer. Try shutting down the CCTV software and browse all three cameras on their web viewers at the same time, preferably on a more powerful machine (if you have one)... if the dropouts continue, and you're only viewing the cameras (not recording them), then the problem is likely the network. One thing you can do, try throttling back your cameras to 10-15fps. At 15fps, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference from 30fps unless you have something moving fast through the scene. Even 10fps will produce fairly smooth motion in most cases.

Most domes you find will be just a board camera inside the dome enclosure, and almost all of them, especially at the lower-cost end, will use the same lenses as other board cameras. The shorter lens should be fairly easy to find, even if, as rory notes, you don't find a camera that comes with it.

You don't need varifocal - all that means is you can adjust the focal length of the lens and thus the field of view. You already know the FOV you need, and you'll need a 2.8mm or 2.6mm lens to get your full 90 degrees (note the specs on that varifocal lens - 3.5 to 8mm and the widest it sees is 70 degrees). Auto-iris allows the camera to adjust better to widely-varying lighting conditions, but watching doors in a hallway, unless there's a lot of outside light coming in, you probably don't need that either. Don't get too hung up over TVL either; in a lot of cases, especially with cheaper cameras, those numbers are "fudged" anyway, and with an FOV that wide, you're not going to catch small facial details anyway unless you go to megapixel. A simple dome with basic 2.6 or 2.8mm lens and a *true* TVL rating of 420-480 should suffice nicely.

"Wired remote" in this case is usually a serial port (most of the ones I've seen are standard DB9M, RS-232); the same codes that are normally sent to the remote's IR receiver are sent to that port instead. As noted, they're commonly used in installations where you want to power a TV on or off and change its settings in conjunction with other A/V components, in things like boardroom or conference room situations. An "IR blaster" or "IR mouse" is just a little IR LED that's placed in front of the TV's remote receiver, and the remote codes are sent to that. Unfortunately, with a range of different brands and models of TVs, even IF they all support IR remote, most will have different codes for changing inputs or channels, which would make it very complex and tedious to set up.

Hmm. My next question then might by, what type of TVs are these? A lot of newer TVs have wired-remote capability for just this sort of control capability (although it's more commonly used for things like video-conferencing - switching inputs in sync with other A/V components, lighting etc.) If they're all the same brand/model, you might be able to run an IR mouse to each TV as well. Either way, when you want to run the "forced" video, you send the code to the TVs to change the channel or input as needed. In fact, if you did that, and had A/V lines running to the TVs, you could probably get away without ANY modulators - just "broadcast" the serial/IR code to switch to the A/V input, and fire up your content. Better still, most newer TVs have discrete codes for POWER ON and POWER OFF, rather than a simple POWER TOGGLE command, so you can ensure all the TVs are turned on regardless of their initial state.

If you're in IT, how about a network-based solution? Push the video out to everyone's desktops/laptops. Or put it on an intranet page, email everyone a link, and embed some code that produces a popup they have to click when the video is done - then you can track who's watched it and who hasn't.