HiddenMountain

drool... http://wiki.switchautomation.com/w/Switch_Automation#The_User_Interface

Yeah, I thought about that going that route, but it looks like it's expensive stuff. I do have a bit of knowledge about circuits etc, I just wanted to stick with low voltage. Our hydro unit produces 12V and our base electrical system is 12V, (for now), before it's inverted to 120V. I figured that since it's already here and wired in, why not use it. Good question! Aside from being cheap, I don't really know! I do have PIR lights around the house and yard, but they are solar powered and completely independent of my system. My ideal set up would have .... All LED lighting, at least 4 channels; spots, floods, background and it would be PIR activated, controllable from my android AND it would have to be controlled via wireless remotes while we're at home... ugh, I just got a headache from pondering how to hook all that up!

Thanks cloudy1, I have a few of those around already. What I'm looking for is to control lights around the house to give it the "lived in look". ...and to show off a bit...haha...

Hi Tom, thanks for the reply. As I can be a bit thick, according to the wife and personal experience, I need a bit more info. To wit, which remote software are you referring to? The DVR or the gDMSS? After checking out the links that Owain gave me, I'm getting a bit more confused. I'm rather tired of letting the blue smoke out of my electronics! It can get expensive to experiment with this stuff! I've searched the web for wiring diagrams but that's just a wild goose chase since no-one has the exact same scheme... This does appear to be within reach though.

Thanks so much for that info Owain! That's right along the line of what I was thinking. My next question naturally is, will this use up a channel on my DVR?

While our OP seems to have moved on, I found this today and am wondering if this is the reason for his wanting live surveillance... http://cryptogon.com/?p=27611 It would seem that the character in question is giving the owners of remote cabins in the area the willies. He needs to be stopped, but my question is, Is he the only one? Living in a very remote area ourselves, I have met a few of these types and have had things stolen by them, thus the reason for my CCTV system. To the OP, did you ever get anything figured out for your cabin?

Southern Utah is absolutely beautiful. I used to take Hwy. 89 from I-15 to Flagstaff on my way to Douglas AZ and back... Yeah, your options are very limited. Unfortunately, you would have to leave your cameras and DVR (assuming that's the route you took) on all of the time. That would be a huge power drain. Then the satellite modem would also have to be on. Assuming two analog cameras, a cheap DVR and your modem alone, you would have to have 10 to 15 Amps continuous power supply. That would have to be some PV array and battery bank! You might think about hooking up a timer so that it only powered it all up at your peak power times, but if you are trying to catch the bad guys, that would be a crap shoot as to timing... Unfortunately, satellite internet has horrible ping rates, so like the boys said, you'd be lucky to get a bunch of still images. It's better than nothing, but you can forget controlling a PTZ cam. I wish I could be of more help to you, maybe the guru's who do this for a living can give you some better advise.

OP, you should talk to our member Hidden Mountain, he's doing this and yeah, found pretty much what dvarapala says: satellite is REALLY SLOW for remote viewing. I wish I could give you all the answers you need but we're still fiddling around with our system. I don't have lots of time to spend on it, so it has taken a back seat for now. You say that satellite is your only option. You must be way out in the boonies then. Like the others said, hugenet is not a very good option. We have two ISP's here, Hughesnet and a line-of-sight one, and between the two we have yet to get a remote view of the place! A cell tower was put up recently so we now have the option of HSPA 3/4G but it's so freakin expensive, we're only using it through our phones. The line-of-sight ISP owner is hesitant to open up all of the ports so we can remotely control/view our cameras. He's worried that it'll use too much bandwidth and make it so the others in the area might suffer slower internet speeds... There are so many variables to consider here. A lot depends on your location. If you're in the southern US, snow isn't a big concern. If your in Iceberg Alaska, then solar probably won't work... I am far from a geek here, so my knowledge of all things electronic is very limited, but my experience is, the less power you need the less power you have to produce. We have an analog CCTV system. 7 cameras; three indoor and 4 outdoor. The outdoor cams have to have heat/cooling, so there's a few amps right there. The DVR has to be on 24/7 so there's a few more. Lighting comes from some motion sensing LED spots. Tell me more about your system, and I'll share what little knowledge I have....

Dang, this has been a long haul.... This was taken last night. The pic in the #1 position is from the remote cam that is mounted on a big ol fir tree, about 120ft from the house. That's my wife waving in the bottom middle frame. This was taken this morning. This screenshot is with the PTZ in the #1 position. After some, ahem, technical difficulties, it now works flawlessly. I want to thank Sean from Nelly's, again, for replacing this cam, twice, at his expense. And Matt, aka Soundy, for coming up last fall and helping with getting our 2 ISP's hooked up to our network. Not to mention this forum for the wealth of knowledge to be found here. Now for the fun part, getting it all to work remotely through my cell phone...

I will gladly trade you! We had our frazzle ice experience last night, the water intake for the turbine froze over so we had to switch to the genset... Nothing like a walk through the forest in the snow to chip away at ice, at 7am! I got it going but we're supposed to get the same conditions again tonight, clear sky and -8c, that causes it... Thanks fa chris. It has been quite the learning curve. I'm not quite ready for the big league yet so you all don't have to worry about competition from here! Now, if my ISP guy would just open port 37777 for me....

Thanks Sean. I'm sucking up my bandwidth allowance by loading the video right now..... stupid Hughesnet...and stupid bandwidth caps! And actually, it's warmed up considerably, it's a balmy 36F right now!

Email sent so lets see what happens....

Looking for a Weather Dome for an Ultrak KD6i Series PTZ. Heater and fan a must. Email me at mountainman63 at live dot ca Thanks eh, Jon

Stealth cows dude....

Yup. But we'll be waiting until all the cows are in the barn before we milk em....

I'll tell you what! Before we had an option with the LOS service, we were literally at hughsnot's mercy. Now, at $70 per month for them AND $35 per month for the LOS guys, we get a grand total of 30 Gigs of bandwidth per month... That's $1260 per year + taxes and other fees.... All that because we wanted to live in the country.. Not sure what were going to do when the cell tower gets turned on. The Turbohub looks like a good deal, until you go over the 10 Gig per month bandwidth, then it's kaching kaching kaching into Telus's pocket... Whatever. We'll still have to pay one way or another...

*sniff* I love happy endings....

Hey Sean, So you did it eh? We still have Hugesnot AND a local line of sight ISP. (Soundy came by a couple of weekends ago and managed to get the whole mess connected together without any conflicts. Thanks again Matt ) The one thing I do like about HN is the fact that the pipe is wide open for 5 hours at night, so all of those youtube videos and big uploads and downloads can be done then. The LOS ISP doesn't want us to use too much bandwidth, ever. So youtube is right out with them, but they do have a static IP and have no problem having us use their service for remote viewing our CCTV.... (If i can ever figure out how ) Might I ask what your new ISP is? We're (im)patiently waiting for our new cell tower to get turned on, and so we'll have a third option, albeit another expensive one...

The other day I came to a stop at a red light at a major intersection. The ubiquitous CCTV cams were on each light post, watching.... Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw one on top of one of the light posts, way up there, doing a PTZ maneuver in plain sight. This one was mounted on some kind of gimble pivot and could spin and tilt very fast.... It didn't look like the usual teardrop style but one of those big ol weather protected ones that are usually on a fixed mount. My question for the gurus here is, what is the actual name of the beast and where can I get one?!

Thanks Sean. I didn't think they'd be cheap... oh well. I had thought about mounting a wifi cam on a tree down by their road but there are just too many problems with that idea, not the least of which would be that when they spotted the thing it would become a new target! I was thinking of building a small cupola to house the PTZ, on the peak of the house, but that isn't going top happen anytime soon with all of the other things to do around here Thanks fa chris, that looks sweet, but I bet the price isn't! Soundy, that looks exactly like the one at #10 & 176th St. in Cloverdale. The guy driving that thing was just a givin er, checking every car and truck that was stopped at the lights. I'm sure he could read the stuff on my dashboard!. And thanks for the info about the tube cams! That has been making me paranoid/mad since I first started seeing them, everywhere. I noticed that the intersections still have the ground sensors even when the tube cams are used this week.....

Ok then, so it doesn't have a name? Well, whatever, I would really like to use one of these puppies on the top of the shack. We have a pretty good view of the canyon from there, about 10 miles across, so we'd want to have something that could zoom and focus that far. Why? There is a lower road the ner-do-wells travel on about 1 mile from here that we get a good view of from the top of the house and I would like to see when they, or their loser friends, are coming and going. I doubt we're looking at cheap, but maybe a certain forum member, who is a great guy BTW, who deals in used CCTV stuff might come across one?

Ok it looks like this..... I was looking all over eBay and couldn't find one, until I posted this thread, of course... I still don't know what the trade name is, or where the better, faster, higher res, cheaper ones out there are. This one looks descent, but it has a few things I'm not too sure about, like the PTZ is 24V but the cam is 12V... It doesn't say if it has a fan and/or heater, I'm assuming it does since it's 24V? Thoughts? Ideas? Free ones you want to send me?

that you, your family and all your stuff will make it through this intact.

That looks decent. Does anyone know exactly how much sun (time) these kind of lights need? And do they need 'direct' sunlight, or just 'daylight'. I'm asking because I live in The Netherlands and it's pretty much always clouded here AFAIK, they need about 6 hours of direct sunlight. I suppose it all depends on how often they turn on and for how long as to how much re-charge they'll need. Our place is on the north side of a 8500ft mountain and we get no sun at all for 2 1/2 months every winter, so this will be a good experiment. We do have a spring fed creek that never dries up, so there's yer upside. Ok, I'm curious now. I have a 12V based system, as mentioned before, so it wouldn't be too hard to convert them to that, but they're 6V units. Knowing that LED's are run of of current rather than voltage, are you thinking of just wiring them for 12?

Sorry hardwired, I forgot to answer your second question... Yes, a water heater is in the works. I have a 12/24V heater element, but the tank I was going to use is no good. Oh well, it was a dump find... or as we say around here "the mall". So here's a link to the motion lights I'm getting. Not to cheap but not over the top either... http://www.outdoorsolarstore.com/watchdog-solar-security-light.aspx?gclid=CPmroaej4qoCFUSK4AodBhmX6g We ordered 3 of them, so let's hope they work as advertised.