Soundy

You could try a "faster" (ie. wider aperture) lens on it. That camera comes with an f/1.8 lens... if you can get one that's f/1.2, that allows twice the light through (and they should be readily available down to f/0.85 or so).

What you're talking about is "field of view", also sometimes referred to (incorrectly) as "zoom factor". It's a direct function of the focal length of the lens used: the longer the focal length (usually expressed in millimeters), the tighter the field of view will be, and the closer the objects will appear. For a complex, technical explanation, check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_length There's a simpler guide here, including some examples: http://www.ezcctv.com/cctv-lens-guide.htm Since you're probably using 1/4" CCD cameras, you'll find the most common lens lengths are 2.8mm, 3.6mm and 8mm. You should be able to obtain different lenses and swap them out in most cameras, but you'll have to focus them yourself, and some cameras will be easier than others to access the lens. Be particularly careful with outdoor cameras that may be weather-sealed - you don't want to damage the seals.

BTW, on the issue of customer expectations vs. cost, keep in mind this extends to the cameras themselves, too. When he was just starting out with his own company, my boss made a pitch to the local port authority: they listed all their specs for the types of views they wanted, and those were pretty extreme. He demoed a camera for them that did everything they wanted, including reading the text off the side of a building several kilometers away. They were blown away. Then he told them what it would cost - I think the one camera alone was about $3k (and it wasn't even a PTZ). They were expecting the whole system - cameras, recorder, installation, everything - would be about a third of that. In the end, he had them pretty much convinced, but then management changed (ah, bureaucracy) and the new guard decided they didn't need that kind of sophistication. What can ya do? Point is, extreme tastes come with extreme costs; that's just the way it is, and your first three points demonstrate this nicely. Large amounts of storage, however, don't have to be "extreme" if you can settle for more reasonable "needs". Once your needs (or wants) move from the "reasonable" to the "extreme", expect the costs to inflate accordingly. That applies to everything in life and business.

Well, in that case more storage is going to be an issue regardless of how much you need. That's something the customer has to weigh from the start (or something his salesman should bring up): if you're going to need a lot of space for your requirements, is it cheaper to get a $1500 dedicated system, where adding space is going to cost you $500/TB... or to just go with a $3000 PC-based system where you can drop in multiple TB at $100 a pop? Oh, for sure... but there you're running back into your first three points regarding resolution, compression, frame rates, motion detection, and other such considerations. It goes back to unrealistic customer expectations, and it's been an issue since long before megapixel cameras and terabyte drives. Heck, these same issues of balancing cost with customer expectations existed even with time-lapse VCRs: do you want to pay more for a 16-channel MUX to add more cameras when four will really do, for example? And no, you don't have to pay $600 for a time-lapse VCR... you could pay $80 for an off-the-shelf home VHS machine, and get smoother motion, but you won't get multi-camera ability and you'll have to change tapes every few hours. And sure, now you've shelled out for time-lapse... now you have to decide whether you want smoother motion and higher quality but only get two hours on a tape, or very jerky motion and very degraded quality but you only have to change tapes once every four days... And so on.

I largely agree with your points, particularly the first three. What I don't fully agree with is this: IMHO this over-simplifies... or over-complicates, depending on how you look at it. Specifically, the way you inflate 1TB of storage from $100 to $750+ is... well, 'alarmist' describes the attitude of it, I guess. Adding 1TB to most machines is easy: open it up, plug in the drive, configure the OS/software to use it. In fact, with most decent motherboards these days including multiple SATA channels and onboard RAID controllers, putting 4 or 5 extra TB into a system need not necessarily cost more than the price of the drives themselves (unless you're using really cheap motherboards, which isn't advisable for a DVR in the first place). Even external USB, Firewire or e-SATA drives can be had for $50 or less over the cost of an internal. Really, you don't usually get into the NEED for expensive NAS solutions until you're talking a half-dozen drives or more... at that point, you're probably talking about a pretty expensive system to begin with, for pretty high-end customers, where the additional money for the NAS system is not as big a concern. The only other reason for such a system is redundancy and data security - RAID5 and RAID6, for example. If the data is that critical, the cost of the hardware to make it happen probably isn't a major concern - that will apply whether you need 10TB or 100GB. At that point, the cost of the space itself is almost negligible: once you pay, say, $4000 for a RAID5 NAS enclosure, whether you're paying $50 each for 80GB drives or $100 each for 1TB drives becomes pretty much irrelevant; it's a mere fraction of the total cost. In fact, it's far cheaper to go with the bigger drives in this situation - three 1TB drives at $100 will give you 2TB with RAID5 redundancy at the same cost as six 80GB drives for only 400GB/RAID5. The point of all this, is that I think you greatly overstate the cost of storage. By the time it really becomes a factor, you're getting into fairly high-end and expensive installations anyway, at which point it's a relatively small percentage of the overall cost.

What a horror story! In fairness to the installers, the power molex connectors should normally be included with the cameras (I would expect, anyway). The data connectors, maybe not, but as an installer, that's the sort of thing I'd keep on hand, and things like that are normally built into the cost of the job. But $125?? Either they're marking up the connectors about 1000%, or they're charging you for the time for BOTH installers to go pick them up (which is retarded; one could just as easily stay and keep working while the other goes shopping), or the parts depot is two hours away... Hey, it's easy to make up for, though: hand them a bill for $125 for the repair of your drywall and plaster. At this point, they're probably operating at a loss for all the extra labour time (or if not, they're close to it).

This is no different than an IQEye... and those don't even require a login to simply view the video (unless you set it up that way).

Unless there's a real concern about people trying to take these cameras down, or they're just really heavy, I'd just use the appropriate length of wood, metal, or deck screws, probably about #10 size screws, with washers if necessary.

If this is more than a temporary thing, you may want to consider going through a streaming-media service, like the "Puppy Cam" above does. That way you're only feeding one "client" with your stream.

Nobody here has heard of the recent "Puppy Cam" craze? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27724451/ And the actual feed: http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.49.swf?cid=317016

You still have to enable Remote Desktop on the computer that you want to control or Remote Desktop will not find it. Yeah, you covered that in the first paragraph... The Computer Management console lets you MANAGE the remote machine from your local one, but there's nothing there that gives you the Remote Desktop. It's not necessary to create a Computer Management connection to use the Remote Desktop.

Hmm, that gives you the computer management... where's the Remote Desktop? Just click Start -> Run, type MSTSC, and hit Enter. Or look in Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Remote Desktop Connection. All does the same thing - runs the Terminal Services Client. From there you enter the name or IP of the computer you want to control. Remote Administrator is excellent for this as well... or if you want a freeware solution, there are numerous implementations of VNC (I like UltraVNC, myself - www.uvnc.com)

I've done that over Cat-5e (remote KVM) using devices from NTI - got a KVM switching between two machines, and a KVM extender that then allows selectable local and remote control. Now in this particular case, although it's using Cat-5e, it's NOT a network connection... but there are "networkable" solutions available as well, that you could use over the fiber with the networking you're already planning to install. Or you may be able to find fiber transceivers that include this capability as well as the network, video and serial signals. Check with NTI first; I've found them very helpful. http://www.networktechinc.com/

There's NO benefit if the DVR doesn't support IP cameras. The images would be far better, viewed through the camera's web interface, but you wouldn't be able to actually record them.

That do what, only go to 16 cameras? Lots of them do that.

That's a good point. I've seen 2.4GHz cordless phones and wireless mice/keyboards cause all sorts of problems with WiFi (which is also in the 2.4GHz band). Interference can be a real *** sometimes. A lot of newer phones are now 5.8Ghz. Getting out of both those bands may help a lot.

Okay, here's the point: how do you get the data in and out of the converters? For serial, it has to have serial ports of some sort, that you can connect to the cameras and the DVRs or PTZ controllers. All I'm saying is, when shopping, MAKE SURE THE DEVICE YOU CHOOSE HAS ALL THE REQUIRED CONNECTIONS FOR YOUR PURPOSE.

Yeah, "video server" is the key... ideally one with WiFi built-in. Problem is, most of those readily-available WiFi adapters you're finding are going be USB connected... the video servers have ethernet ports. You'd need something that's designed to plug into an existing ethernet port to make it wireless. In the end, you may well find it cheaper to just go with new cameras. Certainly would be a lot less complex.

BTW, if you should decide to go with IP cameras in any of the locations, this may be of interest: http://www.dotworkz.com/about_dotworkz/company_news.asp?details_n_id=80

That's where it gets tricky... unless you can find an all-in-one unit (I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen one), you'd need a video-to-IP converter, and a wifi adapter to connect to it... and make sure they'll work together.

Still has to support the appropriate serial protocol.

Your other option, if you don't mind the expense, is to go with WiFi network cameras and an 802.11n router... I get good strong signals even on an older 11b adapter three floors and half the house away from my DIR-655 11n router.

That's what I've always ended up doing.... thing is, it's never been a problem with a D-Link, Belkin, or any other brand I've used, nor should it be. Unless the DVR is offline past the lease expiry, the IP should never change; if it is, the router IS NOT WORKING PROPERLY. Almost all D-Links I see also have a 'reserved IP' option as well, which is particularly handy because if I ever have to change out the DVR, I just apply the new machine's MAC address to the reservation for its IP, and I don't have to mess with changing all my port-forwarding destinations.

I hate LinkSys routers for this application... I have yet to run into one where it consistently hands the DVR the same IP, which makes port forwarding a PITA. Nothing like having your customer call complaining he can't access his router from home, then discovering it's because the DVR went from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.101, for no apparent reason... then having him call again the next day because it's gone back to 192.168.1.100.

Depends on the construction of the floor... if you're in a concrete building, the floors are probably going to be all concrete and steel, which are very effective at killing most kinds of radio signal.