kensplace

Two lamps that both have say 30 leds, same wavelength, same angle of coverage etc may be of completely different quality.

A badly designed one may just take the power coming in, and pass it straight through resistors to the leds. Bought a cheapo led illuminator on ebay a couple of years ago, this is how it operated, other than a simple photocell circuit, the power was unregulated and passed straight into the leds. Soldering quality was low, the unit overheated, and leds blew fast. Leds should last years, not hours.

A well designed (and most probably, more expensive) will have either, much better power regulation, and quality resistors and weather proofiing/heat dissipation at the least, and should ideally pulse the leds, as leds can give a *much* brighter ouptut if pulsed at higher than normal current, but for short periods of time.

(Fruit machines (slot machines for US people) use the same method for the flashing lights on them, they pulse them fast, uses less overall power for a much brighter display)

Design of the IR unit is critical, a badly designed unit, will work, but the leds will not last as long as they should, meaning the unit becomes junk in a short period of time.

The only real way to compare units, is to try them out, you will find manufacturers specifications are usually something that should be taken with a grain of salt. Although things like length of warranty are a reasonable indicator of how long the manufacturer expects the products to last.

Probably worth paying for a static ip, as you dont really get a guarentee that the free service will be operating tommorow... No dns, no monitoring, until you get one sorted out that is, but whilst your doing that, someone could be robbing you blind.

Does not need to be a low light situation, you could use IR lighting with a IR sensitive cam, b&w probably,lots of light for the camera, but invisble to the customers.

Nice to see a manu with good aftercare!

I have a VCS VICO at home, but never been able to use it for its intended purpose as it works on ISDN lines, which I dont have.

Allows h264 ( i think it is) compression and transmission of up to 4 cameras, and alarm signals plus relay outputs for controlling access equipment (locking the criminals in), and bi-directional audio (for listening to what is happening, and challenging/scaring the pants off intruders), along with control telemetry/camera control all via ISDN, with fall back to GSM network (supposed to even work with mobiles/video phones).

Nice bit of kit, but cant comment on quality of pic, as I cant use it without suitable phone lines etc.

Believe there is also the adpro fastcan equipment, keep seeing it on ebay, supposed to be good, but no idea as to how it works, or if it really is good.

Expensive stuff though....

Heck, I cant even get a dial tone, internet works (just 160kbs, on a supposed 8000kbs service) and they have supposedly fixed the fault "to my satisfaction" even though they never asked if it was working.......

Wonder if DM had sent out a reconditioned unit, that had been in for repairs, by mistake. Would explain how you got a 'old' one even though its a new order, and also why its playing up.

IP cameras are still in their infancy, so people using them will be 'early adopters' - and early adopters usually end up with a pile of low quaity crap that is out of date in 6 months. At least, thats my experience of how it went with digital cameras, and computers etc.

I would go for the best solution, regardless of wether its network ready or not, as a analogue camera can be connected to a network via a dvr, or other pc, or other eqiupment.

Look at the cost of both options, and remember, new does not always mean better, often it can mean worse.....

If a IP cam is suitable, and cost effective then fine, but you will probably be hard pressed to find a decent IP cam with decent resolution that can withstand a drop of rain, never mind harsh conditions for anything like the price you could find quite a few normal cams for, which probably have higher specs and better build quality.

Course, not used IP cams, just gut feelings.

If I made a good camera, the first thing I would do is take shots of how it performs alongside the main brand leaders, to prove how good it was...

But for some reason, thats very rare.. Wonder why that is?

If I had not tried long range zoom lenses, I may have been put of by that explanation, saying quality can be lost, but as you say, it usually not the lens that causes the problem.

I use a 7.5 to 75mm zoom (also have a 12 to 120, and even a 25 (or thereabouts, cant be bothered to dig it out from the cupboard) to 350mm lens)

The 7.5 to 75mm is brilliant, wide enough at one end to see a wide overview, and powerful enough to zoom in to distant faces/plates if need be, lovely lens (would hate to buy em new though, pricey!)

The 12 to 120 is good, but a tadge trickier to control, but great results non-the-less, I just prefer the 7.5 to 75 as it has a better wide angle.

The 350mm monster (which is about a foot long, and weighs a LOT) is the one that I rarely use, mainly due to its size (as the cam is indoors) and the fact that its just sooo powerful, its overkill for my needs. If I wanted to monitor a area from a block of flats then it would be great, but catching local kids smashing windows etc does not need such a beast

All the zoom lenses give brilliant results (as far as I know, cant compare them to a modern dome cam, not got one of those to play with yet....) though, even at max zoom, probably because of the size and quality of the optics. As you said, the atmosphere does come into play, but I only notice it a bit on the 350mm, the others dont seem affected, and I can still see fine at night through the other zoom lenses when they are on a decent cam.

Cheers all,

May try to mount a halogen bulb in a old camera case, and put the filter at the front (if it all fits in that is!), theory being the case being metal will act as a heatsink, and the bulb will be far enough back not to melt the filter, but as the case is light tight, it will transfer all the light to the front through the filter.

If it dont work, it dont work

Could be a faulty cam (you have 60 so could always try another or experiment, even if it blew a few cams, would save money in the long run if you did figure it out).

Or the pinout in the manual could be incorrect, I have seen that happen before (a classic was with a IBM server, back in the dark ages, when they cost a fortune more than they do now, and the manual told me to put the co-processor in the wrong way round, which I didnt do, as it would have probably got me fired when it went bang... I just followed my head, and ignored the manual, and it worked fine)

Are the wires colour coded? What colours are the wires on the pins?

Are you reading the pinout backwards (ie wiring up pin 6 as 1, 5 as 2 etc)?

Is there a faulty wire or connection? Check them all.

What are you trying to view the image on?

Does mounting the cameras inside the property also get around it? After all, they are not on the outside, so dont need planning permission I would imagine..... Just clean windows.

I guess the rules are in place to keep the highly paid idiots busy, if they didnt have rules to make up, what use would they be to society

Still cant believe the rules over part p and electrical stuff, which can even stop me (maybe) from diy installing certain cctv stuff, its all madness, but it is designed to make money for the authorities at the end of the day......

ps, still got all my fingers

Your welcome, thanks for the thanks btw, always nice to get a reply

Not used them myself, but will do at some point, as they have a good catalogue, just dont want to waste their time until I have a 'trade' sized order to make, which probably wont be long the way I test stuff out.

And dont forget things like multiplexers, quads, humbugs, cable, connectors, baluns etc.

I can look at a pic through one multiplexer, and it shows the picture more to 'the left' than just vieiwing it direct would, also plexers that store frames internally can have low res too. Course manu's dont always tell you things like this......

As far as that instance goes about the man with the doves on his shoes, I dont really think the problem was the playback device, I think it was recorded wrong in the first place, if they wanted to id someone they should have a close up camera on the entry/exits, and another for following people around, at the least (ideally with p/t/z).

A bad camera/lens setup is not going to be improved much by using a better recorder, even a cheap vhs recorder will be able to record a well captured image, if the system is designed correctly to start with..... But a better recorder is always better in the long run, why throw away most of what is captured by using a cheap (or in many cases not cheap) dvr.

Even geovision cards, although I have not used one, seem to record at a lower resolution that what a decent camera can produce, which means some of that nice image detail is being lost - and thats with a industry standard card...

Do the infra red lamps (the proper lamps, not the LED type) used for CCTV use a normal type of bulb (ie a halogen or something, with normal visible light) and then just block out the visible light with some sort of plastic IR filter at the front, or do they use a special Infra Red lamp, along with the front filter?

Just wondering, as if they use standard lamps, I may get some IR filter material and try knocking one up, see how it goes...

Not tried it, but there is a manual available http://www.smarthome.com/manuals/7754s.pdf which gives the pin out details for the cameras.

The camera appears to use standard composite (VBS) video, which should be compatible with most multiplexers that take standard cctv cameras, just need to chop of the plug and wire up the video / gnd and 12vdc and 0v.

You will need some connectors, and a power supply for the cameras and you should be fine.

Have not tried this on this type of camera, so you do so at your own risk, but I have done the same on similar type cameras which came with non standard plugs, just got the pinout, chopped of the plug and rewired as needed.

System Q Ltd do rg59+2 composite cable (rg59 cable + 2 power cores) looks like two cables stuck together, rather than one thicker cable though. They also do PTZ combo cable (rg59+2 power+2 data+sheilds)

Internet access of any kind would be great at the moment, my broadband connection is up and down like a yo-yo. No signal at all on the normal phone, not even a dial tone, but the dsl still works (at 160kbs, so only just...).

But when it goes down, boy does it go down, for ages - then it suddenly springs back into life again for no apparent reason. Guessing faulty wiring or dodgy equipment at the exchange.

City wide wifi must be a nightmare to keep secure, and I wonder what the speed will be like if it proves popular.

What is a "HD 0670" and when you say "with the option to change protocols'

what protocols can you change it to?

The 10 meters apart thing is explained more at

http://www.doktorjon.co.uk/news%20archive/newsstories6.html

seems a silly rule to me, I can understand it if it applied only to huge pan tilt/lamp/housing setups, but it just says cameras...

The watermark issue is not whether its easy or hard to falsify stuff, if it can be done, then all a water mark does is make it harder, but not impossible to do, so evidence should be acceptable with or without a watermark.

Chain of command of evidence again does not matter much, if you supply false evidence in the first place, it can go through any chain of command, with all documentation, and still be false evidence...... Course its all down to trust, you either trust the evidence or you dont, and to me a watermark only means its less likely something was tampered with, but its not less likely the evidence was not faked in the first place.

2 to 3 images per second, you could get a digital camera and shoot at that rate...... Most decent digital SLR cams should exceed 2 to 3 fps, just need to interface it to get the data of it fast, and onto a pc. Thats the tricky bit.....

Ages ago, when I used to install pc's/networks etc I once went to a business that had suffered from a break in, they had their pc's stolen... To stop it from happening again, they had a local metal worker make some very thick steel bars that fitted over the pc's and bolted down onto the (very heavy) desks.

If the pc is locked down securely enough, and there is no way anyone can get into the case (even with a sledgehammer), then the data should be safe (unless they ... wont say in case any criminals are reading this, dont want to give em ideas.....)

Cant wait until high definition cctv arrives mainstream, digital cams are now very cheap for even multi mega pixel cameras, bout time cctv caught up.

How many frames per second is the camera you were using? Can it do 25 or 30 fps at that resolution? Or is it sloooooowwwwwww?

Couple that with the problem of how on earth anyone could store the image without a new set of equipment, as I cant grasp how current multiplexers, dvrs, etc would cope, they are designed for much lower resolutions, at least as far as I know they are anyways.

Guess that would not apply though, if you got a new system designed from scratch for a mega-pixel cctv camera, although the recording aspect would still be harder to cope with, due to the much larger size of the frames.

I cant see why cctv cams cant be mega pixel at a reasonable price, if normal digital cameras can do it, Im sure cctv manu's could if they wanted to - even if they just operated at a few frames per second.

Weird no laws against drunk driving, but use a voip service and they throw the book at you!