PeteCress

I'd be interested in seeing some samples of that....

I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to call bullsh*t on myself.

http://tinyurl.com/jw9psnk

http://tinyurl.com/kmkuyvx

If anything, the 1080 image is marginally better (look at the trailing "L" on the red-marked topsoil bags).

Before you put me up to checking, I would have bet the mortage money on my original statement.

The only thing I can cite in hopes of saving face is that there have been at least a half-dozen changes between BI and the camera itself since my original so-called observation.

I found that the 3MP Hik image had some artifacts that make me think it's the scaled image and the 1080p is the direct sampled image. They weren't major, but they were noticeable when

zoomed in.

I tried it both ways with alert snapshots where a bag of topsoil was in the pic - with lettering on the bag.

Zooming both pics to the same apparent bag size showed significantly better resolution in the higher-rez image. More than just a bit of the fuzzies: lettering was readable on the higher-rez image that was illegible on the other.

Just fired up a HikVision DS-2CE2032-I - tb used with Blue Iris.

Turns out that my preferred video player cannot handle 2048x1536 clips, so I downsized the cam's rez to 1920x1080.

What are the tradeoffs?

I get a few more fps with the lower rez (22 vs 15).

Aspect ratio changes so that I get more vertical and less horizontal coverage with the higher rez.

I'm seeing significantly better detail when I zoom a snapshot with the higher rez.

Is there anything else?

I've been using "IP Cam Viewer"

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rcreations.WebCamViewerPaid&hl=en

 

to view multiple older analog cams (through a DVR) as well as a few odd ip cams and it works great, but I can't seem to get the image from my Hikvision 3mp bullets (the cheap, common ones that many around here use) to display. I've tried port 8000, which seems to be the one they are set to by default, but if anyone uses this app and these cams, I'd love to know how you set it up. I've forwarded the ports properly through the router - that's not it - I'm just not somehow getting to the image of the cam.

Don't feel like The Lone Ranger.

Been trying to get my IP Cam Viewer to recognize my just-unboxed DS-2CD2032-I for a couple of hours now.

I do not see my model number in the "Model" dropdown on the setup page.

Tried all three that are there (DS-2D815F-E, DS-7216HFI-SH/A, and DS-81xxDVR), but to no avail.

I wonder if it's just a missing driver issue?

Foscam even has a real outdoor PTZ camera but it's VGA resolution and costs $400-500.

I guess this qualifies as a Thread Bump... but I thought I would recount what went down on this.

I bought a TrendNet TV-IP672P. 1280x800 - as in http://tinyurl.com/nx45xzq

It works, but guess what?

Right: we wound up making the Pan functionality unavailable to users.

Two problems:

• The 44k DSL connection is so pitifully slow that the time between
  a user telling the cam to pan and the camera actually panning is
  just too long - as in 25-35 seconds.
  .
  
• Different users have different browsers and a significant number of
  them either cannot access the pan presets or do not understand
  what they are. Bottom line, user A pans the camera to location
  X and user B complains and wants to know why he cannot see
  the location Y that they are used to seeing.

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley"

Having recently discovered the wonders of Point-To-Point wireless, I'm going down there sometime next week and try to install a couple of Ubiquiti NanoStationM5 Locos.

We have line-of-sight over water/beach/blacktop and it's only about .7 miles between the DSL-connected cam and the server's Comcast-Cable-connected site; so I am hoping that I can get that cam talking to the server over a PTP link instead of 4k DSL.

viz: http://tinyurl.com/lzvly5b

If that happens, and the bandwidth is sufficient, maybe we'll just add another camera: fixed for the masses and the PTZ for whose who want it.

A couple of thousand??? Why such a large budget? Batteries x 2 ($300), solar panel (120w $300), inverter for the Ubiquiti ($100), camera ($350) (wired direct to the 12v battery) and the M5 themselves ($300).

 

$1350 all up - sounds about right.

A couple thousand was my blue-sky-unaffordable estimate.

I was looking for somebody who had done it for a few hundred.

My two M5 Locos came to about $140 delivered and a $150 camera would do the job.

But I just have no clue about the rest: solar panels, something to get the right voltage to the right device....

This application would be daytime-only and near or on salt water.... so that complicates things right there IMHO.... not to mention high winds.

I've been dabbling in a Point-to-Point connection via a couple of Ubiquiti NanoStationM5 Locos (http://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/nanostationm/nsm_ds_web.pdf) for one of the surfcams I have looking over a New Jersey bay.

ExtremeSurfcam.DynDNS.org:8080.

It's starting to dawn on my that, with the right combination of solar panel, NanoStation, and IP camera on a mast I could locate a camera somewhere advantageous but where there is no building.

Has anybody done this on a budget? I'm sure it's possible with a couple thousand dollars... but how about a few hundred?

El-cheapo Dahua outdoor cam.

Seems to be leaking where two halves of the body join on an o-ring.

Does not seem to be coming in via the ethernet cable because the worst of it by far is down around the lens (downhill from the o-ring) and the area around the cable entrance at the "top" of the cam is relatively dry.

Actually, I'm kind of impressed with how much water can be in one of these things without killing it.

I tried applying o-ring grease and reassembling, but no luck.

Before I slop on a bunch of silicone sealer and hope for the best, does anybody have any suggestions?

http://tinyurl.com/leulb8b

Yeah but how much does a POE switch/router cost?

About $20 for the single-camera injector I have, more like sixty bucks for the 4-port switches that I use.

Much less per port for something called an "Injector Block" - which I never even knew existed until about 45 seconds ago: http://wifiqos.com/?adsource=injector

Next time I get the urge for a POE switch for where there is a router or switch nearby, I'll try an injector block. Certainly the single-device injector that I've been using for several years has been totally trouble-free - just kind of expensive when you start buying multiples of them.

IR Cut filter is stuck in.

 

That's what I was hoping to hear.

 

Thanks.

 

Now to get the thing apart and figure out how to un-stick it....

Removed housing's main cover exposing the circuit board and, I *think* the housing for the cut filter - although it was out of reach with just the cover off.

Didn't have the heart to try to dig deeper, but when I forced night mode, I heard "Click".... back to day mode, "Click".... put it back together, waited for night time... and it seems to be working a-ok.

I'm thinking the several iterations of zooming/unzooming that I put it through while the cover was off somehow freed it up.

"Clean and Adjust" ?

"Field Boot Maintainence" ?

IR Cut filter is stuck in.

That's what I was hoping to hear.

Thanks.

Now to get the thing apart and figure out how to un-stick it....

My SNC-CH260 seems to have stopped sensing IR.

The IR illuminators have gotten goofy too - going mostly off and then on for short periods.

I base the IR blindness, however, on the fact that there is a supplemental IR source illuminating the target and the Sony just isn't seeing the IR. It's seeing the residual light from other sources, but not the IR.

Last nite everything was a-ok. Tonite we have a problem

Today I was running some new Cat6 to the cam, but the problem persists even when I switch back to the old cable. Also tried swapping out the POE switch with another to no effect.

Could something mechanical be stuck? I understand there's something called an IR Cut Filter and I'm hoping maybe if it's stuck in the daylight position that could cause the IR blindness.

I don't even want to think about the intermittent IR illuminators yet.... -)

I got one of these http://tinyurl.com/l6tngvq back in November 2012.

Quality, of course, isn't much.... One might even use the word "Junk".... but it does what I want done and I am going to buy a few more - although this particular one is no longer available.

There seems tb two strategies for executing something like this: a few more powerful LEDs as in the one I have or many less-powerful LEDs as in http://tinyurl.com/m5dpnbl.

Are there tradeoffs worth considering between the two approaches? Fault tolerance? Obviousness to passers-by? Other considerations?

Just need to figure out how to hardwire it to the car now to get rid of the ridiculously long cig charger cable.

For my front-facing camera, I pried up the bezel around the stereo, pulled out the stereo head unit, and put a vampire tap on the switched 12v used by it. Now the cam comes on when I turn the ignition key on and turns off when the ignition goes off.

For the rear cam, on my 2005 F-150, I found a switched 12v b/w wire that supplied the Body Security Module behind the rear seat. Biggest hassle there was getting access by removing the back of the rear seat. I ran that and a ground wire up so that they exited behind a headrest and attached a couple of Anderson connectors rather than a cigarette lighter socket.

Looks like there's a wide array of dash cameras out there?

I found quite a few DVR units, but they were all CCTV, so the rez just was not there.

What I wound up with for my front-facing cam was one of these: http://tinyurl.com/mepj2ly

It's a Lukas 7300.

It's claims to fame:

• Decent, albeit not the very best, 1080 video
  .
  
• Separate modules for processor and camera. This makes swapping SD cards much, much more convenient and marking a noteworthy event is as simple as reaching out and tipping the processor unit enough to trigger it's gForce sensor - much easier than pushing a button, especially a button on a window-mounted camera.
  .
  
• Small camera size. Seems to me like a reasonably-stealthy installation.

Of course the manual sucks canal water - as, seemingly, all dashcam manuals do.... but the thing works and I really like the separate processor.

For the rear cam, I spent the better part of a hundred bucks on one of the classics: an F500LHD from SpyTech

This one is making me crazy.

Got a couple of EdiMax 3030's.

One ran at this site for two years, no problems.

Now, I connect it, fire it up, it seems to work... but within an hour it becomes unreachable. Still shows up on a network scan, still exposing the ports needed, responds to Ping... but it's web page cannot be opened.

OK, swap it out for one from home. Same make/model... and the same chain of events.

Took the problem camera home, plugged it in, and it worked a-ok without my having touched a thing.

The problem site is on a Verizon DSL modem functioning as the switch/router. The DSL modem is a new one - replacing the one that drowned in Sandy. Home is on a "real" router.

I have gone through three iterations of the "Cam bad, swap it out, works at home" scenario.

If it didn't work from the get-go, I'd understand.... but working for something less than an hour and then not working but being pingable.... and then working immediately when hooked up at another site???

Seems like something with the DSL modem is possible.... but what could change over that less-than-an-hour time period and seemingly heal itself when the alternate camera (which had become unreachable, say, 2 weeks ago) was swapped back in - only to recur again with that camera?

I don't think it's port forwarding because I'm down there and trying to access the cam directly/locally - as in 10.0.0.132:1320.

Has anybody seen anything like this?

Cam's image looks a-ok during daylight: http://tinyurl.com/m6re5zk

But after dark: http://tinyurl.com/k5nweb7

Also occasionally it goes hazy during the day: http://tinyurl.com/l3cwmbb

On this cam, I had replaced the stock lens with something more wide-angle (3mm IIRC); but my recollection is that those halos were not present immediately after the replacement.

Moisture in the camera was my guess and, indeed, found water in the cam when I disassembled it.

Gave the parts a couple days to dry out, reassembled with some silicone in the joint, but no change.

Now I'm thinking either I needed to dry the case/parts more thoroughly or the body is still leaking.

Before I start tearing this thing apart again, can anybody suggest some other cause?

Open a support ticket with ACTi, they should have come with a 3 year warranty.

I did that and ACTi's support was, IMHO, quite good.

Basically they told me to flash the firmware with the latest version; somehow I managed to do it incorrectly; then they logged in to my server and did it correctly for me. Now all seems to be well. I even think the image is better... OTOH, I think my car runs better after a wash and wax.... -)

I give ACTi support five stars: they were prompt to reply, they picked up the ball and ran with it, and their responses during the case were timely and helpful.

This is a 32x zoom cam with auto focus.

Since day 1, when it zoomed to nearly the full 32x there were intermittant instances of it not re-focusing.

Now the instances have gotten more frequent to where it's 100% on a full zoom and almost 100% on the 3 presets that are more than 16x.

e.g: http://tinyurl.com/cza25gw right after the zoom

http://tinyurl.com/cvx98s7 after hitting "Refocus".

My kneejerk reaction is to write a macro for each preset that zooms to the desired level and then issues a ReFocus command or two.

But what's bothering me is that this thing seems tb going downhill. i.e. something has changed since day 1.

Anybody been here? Am I headed for a camera failure?

This is pure idle curiosity.

Here

I am assuming this is because the cam is about a half-mile away and almost fully zoomed.

Certainly the effect is not present when it is zoomed out most of the way:

Also, on the occasional "good" day, the effect is largely absent.

If this is an atmospheric effect, can anybody put a name to it?

You could always take a high res bullet cam with a telephoto lens and mount it on a Pan Tilt mount. If you really want to save money, then you can go the DIY route and build a simple 2 axis platform, use an arduino controller, then have a web interface to control it..

That sounds hopeful.

Back in the beginning of this project, I was looking at a turnkey solution called "TrackerPod" (http://www.trackercam.com/TCamWeb/productdes.htm) but the more I read, the more it sounded like the product was in a state of neglect by the developer.

The DIY route has strong appeal to me since I have discovered that a really cheap camera can deliver the video needed for this application.

But I am probably not up to building something from scratch.

OTOH, now that I'm thinking about it, the basic idea (IP-controlled 2-axis platform) has to be a sort of bread-and-butter DIY project and maybe I will be able to get in touch with people who have been-there-done-that. I'm capable of following directions - just not of designing a solution.

I tried one of those cheap ptz's once and it was such junk it wasn't even worth mounting anywhere. I told the eBay seller it wasn't what I was expecting and wanted to ship it back. He flipped out on me and even told me he would never be able to sell that junk ever again if I return it!

Hence my trolling for a recommendation from somebody who was using one.

I don't get the scope of the purpose. People go in the gazebo and manually work a ptz? ...

The cam lives atop the gazebo. People from afar want to see who is at the beach and what is going on.

Worked pretty well the last 2 seasons with a $80 EdiMax - and it sounds like it is going work for a third season too....

95% of the people on the beach and the people looking at the cam from 20-100 miles away know each other. They just want to see who is there and who is not.

But people were asking for PTZ and I was groping around hoping maybe technological advances might have brought one into the realm of current economic reality.

Sounds to me like "Case Closed"... it ain't agonna happen and they're going to have tb happy with a fixed cam.

Well, that kind of simplifies the matter..... -)

Windsurfing season is about to start, and I want to replace one of my surfcams with a PTZ.

The "Real" surfcam lives almost a mile away from the beach - behind a Comcast cable connection: http://extremesurfcam.dyndns.org:8080/default.htm. It's function is to let people see how well sailors are planing out on the bay.

But the cam in question will live on top of a gazebo on the beach behind a very slow DSL connection. It's function is to let people see who is on the beach and what they're doing.

I have tried 640x480, but 1280x1024 or thereabouts seems to be the minimum rez that works for this situation.

Last year it was an EdiMax IC3030-POE that cost about eighty bucks - inside some DIY weatherproofing

The thing actually survived Sandy, but the users keep asking for PTZ so they can check out activity on the beach better.

Problem is a limited budget. The windsurfing shop owner will not spring for PTZ, so this will be out of whatever user's pockets I can wheedle a few bucks.

Based on experience with the EdiMax, I'm ready to try the same approach with a PTZ.

Can anybody recommend an IP cam under, say, $150 that does more than 640x480?