scorpion

Then again, you can hire the expert to do your site surveys, and have your expert educate your customer, and have this expert design a "system" and have your customer sign off on the design and parts list, and then have your expert install, and service your "job". I would not listen to kensplace! Now you can sit back and relax and wonder why all of your experts are underbidding your jobs leaving you with no profit, and why the customers are asking why they cant see their boat, car, or end of the driveway at night, and all of those calls where people want their money back. Now you get to look at all of your bills and find that some distribution company billed you twice for the same PO (purchase order), the product that you ordered that has not been shipped and the company gives you a tracking number and the product comes in between 11am and 1pm on the day you scheduled your install at 8am, and the techs are not showing up on the job leaving you with a mad customer! Going through your payroll you find one of your employees has been "buddy" punching his coworker because he has been coming in late, or going home early, or not showing up at all! Great! A customer just called and the DVR that was installed 6 months ago went belly up and now you have to ship it 4 to 5 days, and wait for the company to bench it, and then get back to you and let you know that the system cannot be fixed. When you finally call them to ask why they have not called about the DVR, they let you know "OH Ya! We need to send out a replacement!" You then ask why did you not just send it out when you benched it? Then they tell you "You need to call sales and ask them to send you another one". Right then and there you want to reach threw the phone and strangle the tech, whoops family forum... I meant to say thank the tech for his time and would he please transfer me to sales before I smash this phone across my.....sorry... I meant before I forget the RMA number! Now you get the call from the client who does not like the fact that they ran siamese all the way around the outside of the house because the site survey tech did not realize that the install techs could not run the wire through the attic as per design! This customer wants this wire taken off the walls now and wants you to pay to repair all of the holes in the wall from the cable mounts! Can you please hold while I go to another line? Hello, Oh no! The video is out on 4 of your 6 cameras? Great! Please hold. I guess those premade cables must have had a bad connection on the ends, Third line ringing.....Hello! What do you mean you quit? You are my best tech! OK! Why didn't you tell me? I will match their offer with a counter offer, and give you an extra week paid vacation per year! Well, could you at least work till the end of the month? Great! You send him to all of the tech schools, you pay for him to go to all of those expos, and you pay his paycheck, and pay for the hotels! So much for loyalty. The newspaper wants how much for the Installer wanted AD????!!!!!! I want a one inch by one inch ad, I do not want to pay for a new printing press!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA! I quit!

Should the need arise, we here in the U.S.of A. will start a boat flotilla to get you all out! Rory, bring everything and we will get you a showroom up and running, and you can restart your business here. LOL!

I was curious, why is she only wanting to record for a couple of days? Does she have a problem with a person on staff, and is she only trying to get video during this "shift"? I would ask her to record everyday to see if she has anyother surprises that she may not be aware of. I assume this is going to be hooked up to the internet for remote viewing, and the DVR is going to be hid above a false ceiling or somewhere. I love kmurrey's idea for the covert clock is dead on, this is great for facial recognition, and the covert smoke detectors are great for looking straight down in to the cash drawer!

I Have A Crimper and I Will Travel!

Take those devices and split the camera signal two ways, one to the monitors, and the second one to the DVR Camera input. Now you have 4 individual monitors, and you have your 4 inputs to the DVR! Now you can take the VCR out of the circuit! You can try the "T"s to see if you can split the signal between the monitors, and the DVR. I doubt that it will work but you can give it a try. Do the monitors have loop out? You can connect the Cameras to the monitors and use the loop out to go to the DVR! Keep me posted!

Welcome to the Forum!

I am doing my first elevator. I have not gone out to the site for a survey as of yet. It is a 10 story hotel. They want a camera in the elevator. I will be doing a wireless system. I will be avoiding the 2.4Ghz. The elevator shaft is most likely concrete block construction. My intent is to put a camera in the "cab", with a transmitter on the cab, and a receiver at the top of the shaft. The receiver will be hard wired back to the DVR. This is assuming that I can run a wire down the shaft to get to the ground floor to run to the DVR. What have you all done for elevators? What would be the ideal freq? I plan on using 1.2Ghz. I will not be using those entry level camera/transmitter that is rated at 300 line of sight. I am planning to use a seperate camera, transmitter, and receiver design. I will be using a 1 Watt transmitter. My intent is to have 150% of power for what I need so that I have some head room. I do not want to have too much of the signal going off property. I plan on putting a transmitter in the cab sending it up and down, while I chech the reception at various points in the hotel, and outside the hotel. Why do they want a camera in the elevator? I do not know. I do not forsee getting facial shots in this environment. I could put a motion detector (covert) camera at the top, back of the cab. When the door is open and someone is getting on then I might get a facial shot. Other wise I would use a smoke detector camera. I am willing to bet my paycheck this is their way of "saving money" by not putting a camera on every floor of the hotel. I will have to talk them out of this idea if this is their intent. I would rather have a camera at ground floor level so that I can get the facial shot. What would be a good way to protect a child who may be fondled? My supplier is Eclipse, and Sec Cam Dir. Thank you for your input, and advice, Scorpion

This will be a tough nut to crack! Anytime a customer is requesting parts and service on the cheap I usuallly run from these customers. Do not get me wrong I love solving issues for someone who will be appreciative of getting them the right solution at the right price. If the customer understands the limitations of what they are asking for and they are willing to make trade offs in the equation then usually there is a way to get the task done. I do not have a tester for siamese coax or the two conductor. If I have a problem a simple multimeter will let me know if it is shorted. It may be the occasional shield that has come in contact with the center conductor that creates the short. If you have a problem it may be that you can cut and recrimp your line, if the video still does not come up then you can spend time on trouble shooting. A multimeter with the audio selection is great so that you do not have to look at the meter, and you can just listen to the beep. I have a device that sends out a tone and you can use a tool to find/trace a wire. This toner has a continuity checker on it. It is only a light but I use it every now and then. I use it more for alarm wires to see if I have a closed circuit (or a short). If I am ordering coax that I have not used before I am more than likely to check it with an ocilliscope. I do not mind cheap but I do not want sloppy. If you need to split the signal from the cameras to the VCR and a DVR read some of the posts here about this subject. I will give you a link that some else has provided from that topic. http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103065&cp=&pg=2&sr=1&origkw=video+splitter&kw=video+splitter&parentPage=search You will need one for each camera, and then you can split the signal two ways. Keep the receipt. If you can split the signal with a "T" and the picture looks good on the VCR, and the DVR then you are good to go and you can take these back for a refund. Please record to a tape then look at the recorded video and not live video on the monitor, this goes for the same with the DVR, look at the recorded image. If the customer is satisfied then you have solved his problem, and earned the right to be recommended to other future customers. If he is not going to honor you with a recommendation then you are wasting your time if you solve his problem. I am going to bet that you will have some video issues using a T connection so be prepared for it. If you can pad the bill to cover the cost of the splitters even if you do not use them. I will bet down the road real soon he may call you for a service call and you can fix it very quickly. OK you are right just go ahead a put them on in the first place! I find it interesting that he wants both the VCR and the DVR recording the same cameras! I am curious to know why. Did I miss something? I am more used to people who buy a packaged video systems with plug and play connectors, and then later want to use these cameras to connect to a new DVR and stop using a VCR. Would he be better having more cameras attached to the DVR, and expanding his view? I assume the VCR still works. As a suggestion I would try to learn how to clean heads on a VCR. You were the last one to touch his equipment and a month from now it will eat a tape or have some event, and he will want to blame you naturally. As most people know VCR tapes have a residue that is left behind from playing and recording. This will build up over a period of time until the head or wheels become so sticky that they grab the tape and wrap it aroung the wrong parts inside. If someone uses the same tape over, and over, and over it just really magnifies this problem. Then have them purchase new tapes or you will refuse to provide them service. Make sure all of your VCR customers have at least SEVEN TAPES! Mark them Sun, Mon, ...Fri, and Sat. They will put that days tape in for recording. For Fri they put in the Fri tape, if they want to look at past recordings, no problem! They can go back one week! Hey what about 24 hour recording with a VCR? You can buy 8 hour tapes, but the customer has to realize that 3 times a day he/she will have to put in a tape and hit record. This sound like he has "employees" or something that uses the VCR and the DVR will be "hidden" away for him to review. Maybe they forget to put in a tape, and hit record, OR they are shutting off the recording to hide something they should not be doing. Can you make an extra buck on the deal by making a wooden box to LOCK the VCR and or the DVR too? Most of us buy metal lock boxes that come with a key for our DVRS. If you are already familiar with most of what I have posted here, just be advised that I threw this in for others who may be reading this post. Good luck! If you have any questions I will be more than glad to help.

Hey Sparks! I sent you a PM

I was really hoping someone would post to you thread! This sounded like a interesting item.

If you are having problems with the video, then I assume you are having video problems at night. When using IR you will want to throw the IR farther then what you are looking at. If the bullet is rated at 30 feet, then you may have a real good picture of someone standing at 10 feet from your house. You may have no video at 30 feet because the IR as tapered off to this distance. I am always trying to get my clients to think as if they are lighting a stage for a play per se. The better you light it the better you will see it. I am surprised that you are getting rid of the domes! If you are in environment where someone can reach your cameras, then they may be able to turn and point the camera away from its intended direction then do what they do not want seen on camera. The domes I believe would prevent this. Do your domes have IR? I would recommend a vandal dome before a bullet unless it was an entry level priced install and the bullet camera fit the criteria and the budget.

What DVRs are you looking at? You can save money by not using the Mpeg or H 264 compression standards. I do alot of entry level priced 4 camera installs. I usually get the calls where people have found out the hard way that the cheap DVR that they bought at the "big warehouse" (where you buy products in bulk) will not do the job. The live video looks good but when you watch play back it looks really pixelated. If you have ever watched an episode of cops where they blur out the detectives face yet there is still enough detail to see the outline of his face, and you can tell if he has a beard or not, well this is what the whole recorded video playback looks like on some equipment. I have also seen where the video play back looks really blocky. There are so many squares in the video it is really hard to see detail in the video. This would be ok to see who is stealing your newspaper or what neighbors dog is pooping in your yard, but I would not want this in my DVR. The biggest problem that I see with very inexpensive DVRs is that they are already working at 90% of their operational capacity, and it does not take much heat for the system to go belly up. I would avoid cutting this wire and putting on the bnc connector. Guys like us who do this for a living can do this in our sleep, but the average joe may freak when they see how small the wire really is! You can get the BNC to RCA adapter at most electronics stores. It may be in the $5.00 each price range. Your camera will work fine! If you are happy with the picture you saw on your T.V. then what you saw is what you will get. If you have any more questions I will be happy to help.

AMAZING! The devil is in the details! A good site survey always saves my behind in the long run. There is nothing worse than a missed detail that grows in to a total disaster! Thank you all for your advice! Question? If the elevator company is to run wire can it be siamese? I do not have a problem with CAT, just asking. I figure the wire has to be plenum rated, and this would dictate CAT over siamese. Thanks, Scorpion

I have some guerrilla marketing stuff I have done in the past if anyone is interested?

Hey cachecreekcctv, how are you doing? I have a subdivision trying to do a project on the cheap. They have a brick wall that sits in an island between the exit and the entrance to the subdivision. They have a sliding gate for each direction. What they are wanting is to mount cameras on the wall and run them to a dvr mounted on the backside or "inside the subdivision" of the brick wall. I have tried to talk them out of this configuration: 1 Bad camera positions 2 I would rather have the stand alone DVR located in environmentally controlled area. This is on the east coast of Florida. We are 10 miles from the coast but there is still "salt" in the air. I am interested in the Hoffman panel to locate the DVR outdoors. I know you will say the panel is waterproof, but I am curious about venting/cooling issues. Can you PM me the kind of enclosure you have used or would recomend in this environment with a price "range"? The bid process is an entry leverl price range. OK to you and me it is laughable. I want to at least put in a bid. If anything I want them to learn in advance and take these ideas to another installer. I forsee a lot of troubles down the road and I will be pushing my quote above the $5000.00 the board has approved for 4 cameras, DVR, and system items. I will let someone else deal with some other issues I have not described here. I wish that installer good luck. The reason the cameras are mounted on the wall is to save on trenching, wire, conduit, and labor. The DVR is mounted to the wall with internet connection because they do not want to spend the money to do it the right way and send the video wirelessly back to the pool clubhouse I am interested in everyone's point of view or advise as well. Thanks for your input!

Buddy of mine gave me a special bit to drill through the porcelain. A little silicon caulk and I am good to go. Good to go. Ha! Ha! Now I get it.

Why does this keep popping up in my post? PTZ are great! Set it as a fixed camera, and then you can follow the action. ???????????? Remove PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) capabilites."> from the sentence.

I agree with all of the posts above! Fixed cameras everywhere and ptz to follow the action! PTZ are great for someone who will want to check on their parking lot for unauthorized activity by internet. Set it as preset #1 all of the time, but if something catches the eye, such as a party hosted in your parking lot, then you can use your presets to have a look around. Our customer has a picnic bench right next to a canal. The parking lot is walled and the police can not see the parking area as they drive by. Someone decided to launch his small boat in to the center of the canal. This is when he decided to get a camera system for his building. PTZ are great for shops and stores. Set it as a preset camera but when you need it you can follow the action.

I have used the EDVR4a80G. These are great for entry level priced residential installs. I use this style on a majority of installs. It is no longer carried by my distributor, but I like them. I have also used the C520HDCVFIR280DC once. I really did not like having to take this camera apart every time I wanted to make a change. For the Price I liked the view that my customer required. Extreme CCTV it is not, but for the job it was requested to do it has worked very well. I would say look at the prices and compare them to other distributors and see if the pricing is right. I would say if the distribution is real close then forget the price if one/two day shipping is more important.

Is it hard or easy to get to the wire run? What is the distance the wire is ran? If you need to manuever your view and this is the perfect spot, then I would say use it.

Hello Jaf! You have a DVR in an attic, and I wondered how hot it would get up there in Portugal? I would be concerned with the heat. I also wanted to know how close to the ocean are you? I was wondering about the salt in the air. Can I ask what kind of cable you ran? I assume it is a cat5 (cat5e) cable? Did you put your own connectors on it, or did you buy a premade cable? You will need a cross over cable if you are connecting directly from the computer to the DVR. Jaf you seem pretty computer savy, but I put all of this in the post for the guest who read these posts. If you are connecting to the DVR directly just plug in to the LAN connection on the back of the DVR, and plug in to the Lap top. You may have to deactivate the wireless. Load the software that came with the DVR and you should be good to go. Will need to go in to NETWORK in the menu and do your setup there. The other question I have is: Are you wanting to control the DVR with the computer using a wireless connection?

Do you have a budget range? Will you have a video monitoring company "guard" the store?

I have ordered cameras from Nroberts. The company he works for has been good to me! Thanks Nathan!

Hey Rory, I have a dumb question. Is it possible to carry products on boats to the islands? With all of the people who travel to the islands from FL is it possible to do this or is this some major customs violation? If someone were to wrap a bunch of cameras in to a bale with a bunch of coffee beans would they personally direct the boat to what ever dock someone wanted to go to? I figured they would think it was drugs and give it a personal escort!!!!!!!! Ha Ha!

Hey Jaf! How are you doing? Glad to meet you!