Soundy

It's an impedance-matching issue. See if the MUX has either hard switches, or OSD options, to enable/disable termination on the inputs - you'll want this disabled on any channels that are passing through. The options might also be listed as Hi-Z vs 75 ohms - you want the former.

In the vast majority of installs, we find the CNB VCM-24VF to be a good, versatile, all-around camera. It's a nice-looking dome, can be flush- or surface-mounted, vandal-resistant, IP66-rated so it can be placed in direct weather, dual-voltage supply, true day/night, excellent low-light performance with the Monalisa chip, has one of the widest ranges of varifocal (2.8-10.5mm) you'll find in a dome of this design, has good backlight compensation performance... as an installer, it's very easy to work with, and the three-axis yoke lets you align it pretty much any way you want, including looking right back down a wall or ceiling. I'd highly recommend this camera for a wide range of uses. Of course, as I said, no camera is perfect for all uses... despite the good BLC performance, sometimes you need something more extreme: enter the Panasonic SuperDynamic models: CP502 (box) or CW502 for the newer SD5 type, or even the older CP/CW484 SDIII (there are a couple of these for sale in the classifieds section of the site). These are great for extreme backlighting situations, like looking out a glass door from the inside and capturing clear faces.

I've never done it this way, and it's never been a problem - I use blue and blue/white for video, orange and orange/white for DC+ or AC hot, and green with green/white for DC ground or AC neutral.

There are IP-over-coax adapters that don't require power at both ends - don't know a model number offhand, but send a PM to ak357, he should be able to point you in the right direction. Of course, you need power at the camera location for the camera itself, so powering the adapter as well shouldn't be an issue - the power-both-ends models I've used all worked with both 12VDC/24VAC.

And most of the time it turns out that they're either not listening, not paying attention to what they're doing, or don't bother to RTFM. Like in this case, not using baluns - PEBKAC, Code ID-10-T, chiprack interface... aka user error.

Yes you can. In bench-testing various baluns, I ran 24VAC and video through 800' of Cat5e still coiled in the box, not a whit of interference. The twists in the wire are specifically designed to prevent cross-talk between pairs.

If you adjusted and focused it during the day, the iris would have been closed down partially, creating greater depth of field (ie. a wider range in the focus adjustment where the shot would still be in focus). At night when the iris opens up, the DOF becomes a lot shallower and the area that's in focus will shrink. If this is the same as the VCM-24VF, you should be able to go into the onscreen menus and change the exposure setting from DC to ESC - that will switch it to electronic shutter and open the iris all the way. Adjust your focus that way, then switch it back to DC.

A better solution is to stay away from built-in IR; get cameras that have decent low-light response, or use separate motion-activated flood lights.

Would be easy using Scotchloks: Build the device with a magnet connected to it ground, and you can just stick to it any exposed metal and tap in a single wire to power it from any lighting feed, as you suggest. You could also build something with an internal dynamo to keep its battery charged - kind of like those flashlights you shake to power, or watches that stay powered from the movement of your arm through the day.

Did it for you

B&W cameras don't have IR filters because they don't need them, and they're more sensitive without them. Color cameras add them because the IR has unwanted effects on the color balance.

Not enough information. Are these cameras going inside or outside? What's around the building? What are the areas of concern? Doors? Parking lot(s)? Storage areas? Are you worried about internal theft, external theft, car break-ins, building break-ins? Is it all open? Fenced? Gated? Paved? Overgrown? Forested?

Yes, exactly. Which may have different prices on your screen vs my screen. Best, Christopher Hmmm, interesting point... well, here's what I see: No account on NexTag, not logged in... wonder if members see different/more prices?

Can you name something that you recently purchased that is the same price from every retailer? You mean like this? http://www.nextag.com/Arecont-Vision-MegaVideo-AV1315-791454887/prices-html

As I noted elsewhere, that's not how GPS works. The tracker passively receives the satellite signals and calculates its position internally... that information can then either be logged for later retrieval, and/or transmitted real-time or at intervals by GPRS, GSM, WiFi, or any other common wireless technology.

As you've learned, the 100m/330' "limit" for ethernet isn't a "hard" limit... it's the calculated distance at which packet timing attains delay that's deemed to be unacceptable.

If you've done your reading, you should already know that "best specs" are a nebulous thing. There's no industry standard that manufacturers are required to abide by, so testing methods will differ, giving different results, and some (cheaper) manufacturers often seem to simply make up numbers. Published specs only only tell part of the story as well, because there's more to a camera's image quality than simply TVL and LUX numbers. Also, you say you want "the best quality possible", but even that is subjective - the best quality for what purpose? Some cameras are better at low-light, some at handling backlighting, some have esoteric features that make them better for specific circumstances. There is no single "best" camera for every situation. It's like saying you're shopping for a vehicle and want "the best quality possible"...

BTW, it doesn't really work that way - GPS devices don't transmit back to the GPS satellites. GPS works by the geostationary satellites all broadcasting a synchronized clock signal; the receiver simply picks up multiple signals and calculates its position based on the differences in timing. If the satellites are in known fixed positions, and your signal shows you're receiving the signal from satellite A a fraction sooner than satellite B, the receiver can then calculate that you're a known distance closer to A than to B. A tracker or locator requires some other sort of transmitter - most common these days would something that uses a cellular wireless connection (GSM, 3G, HSPA, whatever). Very little data is actually required to be transmitted.

If you could get away with something just logging the GPS data internally without having to constantly send the position, it would last far longer... or even just something that sends position logs once a day or so - it's the wireless radio that really sucks the power. I had an app on my older Windows Mobile phone that was great for this, and they have a live tracking/monitoring service to go with it: http://gpsed.com/monitoring/about - it could log the GPS track and upload at predetermined intervals - not just the current position, of course, but the track to that point. Alas, I'm on an Android phone now and they don't have an Android app. Really liked this one, was so simple to work with.

The Slingbox accepts video from the device, digitizes it, and streams it over the net. The IP KVM accepts video from the device, digitizes it, and streams it over the net. Same concept, so why do you insist that an IP KVM won't do it?? BTW, I asked Startech specifically if their IP KVMs would work with standalone DVRs (emailed tech support, not sales, as I don't trust a salesdroid to give a straight answer to something like this)... they replied that yes, as long as the DVR uses the same type of USB controller as a PC, it should be fully compatible.

*MIGHT* be possible... but even that isn't likely... and it would be far from easy.

Even completely swapping the internals wouldn't give you an IP camera, as that camera doesn't have an IP interface. The ONLY way it would work, would be to swap everything, including the USB cable... so then all you'd have is the same USB camera in a different housing. Swapping the imager itself would be impossible without hacking a lot of the support circuitry, and even IF you could get it to work, your maximum resolution would still be limited by the analog video standard to D1 at best. On top of that, the image sensor in that USB camera is probably a fraction the size of the sensor in the CCTV camera, resulting in poorer overall image performance. So short answer: NO, it won't work.

And what would you be hoping to achieve with this?

It's likely the software won't support audio at all, or would require a different capture card that supports audio itself. Really hard to say, because there's no standard for this sort of thing.

Yes, you can... as I say, whether that will work is dependent on the client allowing you to set different ports.