marzsit

if this system is for personal use you might consider searching for a good, used geovision or other quality card off ebay. i'm talking a used genuine card, not a cheap knock-off.. of course there will be no warranty, which is why this route isn't recommended if it's for a commercial job but if it's for a home system and the risk is reasonable, why not? it's better than getting stuck with a system that doesn't do what you expect..

i've never assembled a dvr pc, but over the years i have assembled many pc's for may other things and i've yet to have any issues with asus motherboards. always well worth the additional cash, which isn't typically that much more anyway..

we use the same butt splice connectors made by 3m, but we prefer putting all connections inside gasketed j-boxes. the seal tape looks like an easy solution but in practice it doesn't last and usually turns into a gooey, sticky mess.. With “RJ45 8-PIN MODULAR INLINE COUPLER STRAIGHT-THRUâ€

does anybody have any good or bad experiences dealing with i3 dvr systems? the company i work for is considering changing over everything we have to this stuff.... that i'll have to troubleshoot eventually. is it good stuff or should i file an early complaint?

one thing that troubles me about their systems is that they pretty much don't allow the end user to have any control of the system.. no documentation or software is provided, you are supposed to rely on their tech support people all of the time. it seems to be a very proprietary system...

Power is the problem. I wanted to obtain a fire alarm siren/strobe box like they have on the walls around here and install a Swann Microcam in it - about the size of a 9v battery - then put one up on the wall outside my cube. Pretty good angle, but no power source available, and I can't go around cutting up the walls. Heck, I got yelled at for putting up a whiteboard that 'Facilities' forgot to put up. "Quit taking our job" "Start doing your job! It's been sat on the floor here for 3 months!" How about a pair or 12v sealed lead acid batteries? from an old UPS. Should hold a charge long enough run a 200ma camera for a few days, right? Sprinker heads won't work inmy case because the sprinkler system is recessed into the ceiling, and I can't cut the tiles... Errr... If I can find a tile with the corner broken off then I can switch that tile to above my cube and have the camera poking through the hole. But then I'd have to climb up to a 10' ciling to install, the change batteries. i'm probably more of a gearhead.. i'd take the power from whatever constant voltage source i could find above the ceiling. this assumes that you have access to the facility when nobody else is around.... 10' is nothing when you have a ladder

we use the same butt splice connectors made by 3m, but we prefer putting all connections inside gasketed j-boxes. the seal tape looks like an easy solution but in practice it doesn't last and usually turns into a gooey, sticky mess..

if it were me, i would build a system above the dropped-ceiling tile over my desk using a sprinkler head camera or a pinhole unit, depending on the field of view desired.. velcro can be used to hold the laptop computer in place on the top surface of the tile, all you would have to run to make it work would be the power, which is usually easily concealed in any office ceiling. if you wanted to get really tricky you could also install a wireless network interface so that you wouldn't have to disturb the tile to check the video log

at home depot in the underground sprinker department, orbit makes a kit designed for doing just this procedure for about $6. it's a pair of pvc fittings, a female garden hose connector and a special high-pressure waterjet fitting that you solvent-weld to any length of 1" pvc pipe. the idea is to use it once to get the pipe under the concrete then cut the fittings off when installing sprinklers, but it's easy to withdraw the "drilling rig" and re-insert whatever conduit you wish to use, saving the unit for another job. the jet fitting does a very good job of drilling without wasting too much water, and it's reasonably fast too. i've installed many sprinkler systems using them and they do work well.

i took a close look at our rg6 coax tonight.. the stuff close to the ground that i could get to easily and what we have on the bulk reels.. happily, it is all copper-braid belden rg6u not aluminum foil shielded cable. it was bought thru north coast electric, an industrial supplier. i never really looked at it too closely before because it's only used on the exterior camera runs which we never have to modify.. but we were told that it was used there at that time because it's the lowest loss cable for long runs. we only move things around inside the buildings where we use rg59 on short (less than 100') runs. i was worried that i was going to be replacing about 4k feet of difficult-to-reach coax sometime in the near future...

Don't listen to that, 99% of RG6 is aluminum and NOT DESIREABLE for CCTV use. RG6 is designed for higher frequency digital signals used by cable companies. didn't know that.. about 80% of the coax running around the plant where i work is rg6...

the really hazardous light that damages human eyes and causes sunburns is ultraviolet, not infrared. however, i'm not an expert at all in ir led theory... i do know that infrared light is most often associated with heat and observing hot objects, such as staring into a campfire and observing the pile of hot coals glowing.... in such as case, i would think that the infrared light from a pile of hot coals (not flames from the fire itself..) at close range would be totally off-the-scale on any ir indicating device, yet i've never met anyone who went blind from staring into a campfire. how much uv light is actually produced by ir led's? could you put a uv filter over an ir light emitter and still have the camera see just the ir light, or are the cameras also uv sensitive? just rambling here....

the only reason i use twist-ons for rg59 is because i inherited a box of about 2,000 that one of my predecessors ordered some time ago, and my manager insists on using them. they're decent quality ones, silver plated (real silver, not cadmium..) with gold center contacts, fwiw.. but when they're installed wrong they're definitely crap... at any rate, when i'm doing the install or modification they only get used for stationary, indoor applications. all of our outdoor stuff is rg6 with crimp connectors. at home, i use the twist-ons quite often for my own stuff because we have this big box of them at work....

for an 80 foot run you could use regular rg59 coax, which is reasonably inexpensive. for the best image quality and lowest loss, rg6 would be better..

twist-ons are fine if they're installed correctly, stripping the insulation properly is critical and you have to twist the connector on the proper amount. it can be difficult holding the cable while screwing the connectors on with a wrench, i made a cable holder out of a block of aluminum for the purpose.

can you hardwire the 80 feet down the length of the stable block and place the wireless receiever down there? if it's the kind of cheap camera setup i'm thinking of, you should be able to power it via rg59 siamese if you don't have power at that end of the building. the downside is that the cable will probably cost more than the camera

just a guess, but it might be an impedance mismatch between the camera and dvr card that isn't occuring when you connect directly to a monitor? perhaps the camera needs a close 75-ohm match to the feedline in order for the day/night switching function to operate properly? how is the line terminated?

i use a portable totevision 4" monitor when i'm up in the air on the scissorlift adjusting cameras solo, it actually has pretty decent resolution for doing final focusing as long as the backround lighting isn't high.. otherwise we do it by cell phone, with me adjusting the camera taking orders from whomever is down by the monitors at the time. from your description of the problem you're having, i'm guessing that you need to reduce the focal length of your lenses so that you can maintain focus at and beyond infinity, so that your focus won't have to be so precise and sensitive. there may be a more technical description for it, but for now it's just my observation

another problem with multiple cameras off one supply... if a thief tries to make off with one of the cameras and cuts the cables, the possibility of losing all 3 camera signals is higher if the power supply gets shorted out in the attempt.. one of the main reasons why i like having each camera on it's own dedicated supply when i can get away with it

to me, that looks more like snow rather than just a few stuck pixels.... when you watch the real-time video, does the pattern of stuck pixels remain fixed or do they tend to move around? it's pretty normal to have a few stuck pixels that always remain in the same color state with older cams, but if the pixels are moving around then you have other problems.....

personally, if i was going to try plywood i'd install it on the inside of the sheetmetal so it wouldn't look so nasty..... but, i probably wouldn't use plywood myself.. i'd use 2 lengths of unistrut horizontally on the inside between the building's framing and thru-bolt the camera mount thru the sheetmetal instead.

an ai lens adds a bit of a safety factor here, as just about every ai lens i've inspected has the ability to completely close it's iris supposedly as a camera self-protection scheme. we did ruin one of our ccd cameras at work that was fitted with a fixed iris... it was accidental, an engineer moved one of the arc welding stations from one side of the plant to the other, we had a camera set up to watch a polishing tumbler for overflowing in that spot. about a week of production welding later, and the camera just quit working...

it could be done for $500 if you're good at scrounging used gear off ebay, and know what to look for. most of the guys here only deal with new equipment...

here's an axis anyone can play with: http://www.stimsonmarina.com/webcam.html

well, it depends.... from your description they sound like fully manual, hardwire-remote-controlled lenses. i don't know of anything that can automate those functions for you, if that's what you're looking for.