3RDIGLBL

what a shame i was watching some youtube videos of these cameras last night and they looked good...

Day time they work great for the money. Customer is happy but it's at night where they suffer.

I'm sorry but this TCM-7411 camera does not perform to it's .05 lux rating, I mean it can't.

I don't have a lux meter but I will be buying one now let me tell you.

A brightly lit parking lot has got to be over a lux. Why the heck is this camera so darn dark in a brightly lit lot. All the cameras are this way all the way around the building. I have the updated fw and latest profile. I had to do a manual night time profile and set the exposure to 1/30 because the default 1/60 was very dark.

I seriously think that the acm did better.

I have almost thrown this camera down the hallway out of complete frustration.

 

NOOOOOOOO I was going to order two of the TCM-3511 cameras soon for a dark indoor application. I might think twice about these now. I def need IR though. After you read the PDF and figured out the install tricks, do you feel any differently about the cameras, or do you still hate them? How is the image quality? Are they easier to install now that you have learned the trick?

 

I'm wondering if I should find a different IP/dome/megapixel/IR/H.264 camera now for my application

I was responding to rory there on my last post.

I find them to be tricky ton install but got the hang of it now. I can adjust them easy enough so if the PDF is followed there should be no issue. Do a dry run before you drill in the base plate to be sure you got it.

The picture is fine in the day and the ir's work well in hallways at the school but the motion blur I get from them is horrible. I either got something setup wrong or there just completely useless at night for anything other than seeing an empty hallway.

I was told by acti that they have some new night cameras out. I was sent some today but have not read through it yet.

What if I said yes LOL. No this was 2.5 weeks of work. We have over a mile of cat6 cable run and about 1800ft of 18/2. The 3511's we just put into the ceiling in a day because the cable was already there.

Well I had a bad 7411 and a bad 3511 to replace today and tonight I found another 3511 that failed to show a night shot. The it's are on but no picture just a snowy screen but the day shot is beautiful.

3 bad cameras out of 34.

I am not happy with the night time shots at all. I mean this school is lit up like a prison outside and the TCM7411's do not perform at all. I'm very disappointed.

The motion blur makes no sense at all even without the 3511. I have some still shots of me walking a normal pace and you can't tell it's me at all. What's the use.

At least they work well in the day when school is in session.

Thanks hardwired.

Me and my installer installed all the cameras today. I basically figured out what was in the PDF on my own but also learned a few things from reading it which will hopefully make it a bit easier the time.

I really hope they fix this design and it would be nice to plug into the camera without having to remove it from the base but hey if they just fix this one thing it would be great.

34 cameras installed and they love the install using exacq. The only complaint is that they are not to impressed with the night time video from the TCM7411 cameras. They have plenty of light around this building but the cameras are very dark. Tonight I stayed late so I can try to manually set the nighttime profile instead of using the auto settings. Inwas able to get it brighter but not with having to fuss with the shutter speed. I told them what to expect from messing with the shutter but they didn't seem to mind

Seems to me these 7411 cameras were better at night especially with all the lighting they have.

Well I got 15 of these 3511 cameras to install, the cable is all run and would typically take a few minutes to install but these 3511 cameras will probably double or triple my install time because of the poor design of the dome housing. For those that have installed these cameras I'm sure you know what I mean. First off the base twists off and is not easy to twist back on making it difficult to install on a drop ceiling without shifting the ceiling tile all over the place. Second the plastic dome twists off instead of being removable by screws or whatever and when the dome is twisted off the whole lens assembly turns with it. Because of ir reflection there is a rubber seal surrounding the lens and it pushes up tight against the plastic dome cover cause the whole lens assembly to turn. Aligning this and adjusting this camera is a joke. There is no way to twist all the pieces back totally tight because as you twist the dome back on your freshly aligned camera is now not where you wanted it. I have almost thrown this camera down the hallway out of complete frustration.

Anyone have tips to make this a better experience with this camera?

Been looking for a reason to buy a rotary hammer drill. I'm still not convinced that a couple jobs will justify the expense. I have a Makita hammer drill and was just going to purchase a couple long bits and take stab at it that way. Found some long bits by B&A that should work out ok.

The most difficult will be the 4" solid block on the exterior.

I should be making the holes large enough to pass a ridgid conduit through but 100% of all the places I serviced so far that has brick or cinder has holes just large enough to pass the cable through. Seems to work just fine this way. When passing the cable into the back of a camera bracket do you folks use a ridgid conduit through the wall or just pass the cable through the hole and seal it?

Finished a school a month ago that had cinder inside wall and an outer wall of, I think was 2.5" red brick. I used a 12" cornet drill bit and made about 10 holes around the building to pass cable.

I now have another school that is a modern built school with a mix of rafters and drop ceilings and is pretty much a nightmare for installers. Today I stopped by to do some pre-installation planning and learned more about the building. There is a whole section of the building that has 19.5" thick walls and the rest of it is 16" thick with a few areas 12". The inside wall is 8" cinder block and some areas are 12" with a 4" decrative block wall on top of that all the way around the building. I always walked away and said forget it today when I saw what a nightmare this was going to be.

Anyone with experience here on drilling through such a thick wall. Trying not to have to drill a large hole, because I really just need to pass a cat 6 and an 18/2 cable to the camera. I got 8 cameras to install outside. I do have the customers approval to run conduit around the entire school on the outside of the building but this is a lot of conduit not to mention cables for 8 cameras. I will have to run conduit inside anyhow because a lot of areas I need to pass through have nothing but a raftered ceiling while other have drop ceiling.

Got myself into one heck of an install with this one. I'm open to suggestions and ideas for sure and seeking some professional input.

Thanks

A little over a year ago I order 5 of the 3105DN cameras and 3 were DOA. Never ordered another Arecont after reading about lots of other complaints. It seems nothing has changed over the course of the past year. Piss poor quality controls makes me extremely hesitant on recommending any Arecont. Sad to say since I went to there dog and pony show training. Appeared to be a good product and made in the USA was a plus and good selling point for a few customers.

Oh well this is just further justification for me to turn away.

Ya the spot out on the combo card seemed to have flaked out. Not sure why but there is no error or anything posted. The software seems to think it is working but there is no video coming out of it. Connecting the TV to the other PC works just fine.

Customer can't locate his cd. I will have to have him dig around because I don't want to do a full system upgrade on it as it is all tied into his grocery store POS computer. If I mess that up it could be more costly to him then just simply getting his spot out working.

Thanks again Rory. Not sure about the card versions but since they were both built at the same time I will assume they are the identical version.

Thanks Rory. Everything worked perfectly.

One issue the customer is having is the spot out. It all of a sudden stopped working. I verified all settings are correct and rebooted the DVR. Still no go. I swapped the spot out with the second PC and the spot out was working so I believe the spot out circuit on one computer is bad.

What I would like to do is swap the two 1480 cards around so that way the spot out will be working again to display the cameras he cares about.

Question, can I swap the 1480 cards with no issue? I would assume the software settings and everything should remain the same but I'm not sure if there is a hardware identifier in the software that may see a change and I really mess up his system. Should, I hope be an easy swap but I don't want to take a chance.

The software running on there is 8.12!

Thanks

Hey Folks, got a customer with two Geovision PC's. They have 32 cameras and and two computers each housing a 16 channel card. I guess they had this all set up before you could piggy back two cards in one system.

Anyhow. They want to remote in to there PC but since they have two how would they go about doing this. Should I be using dipmap like I've done in the past? Maybe set it up on separate parts and the customer would have to use dipmap with a port number such as dipmap.com:8080 for PC 1 and dipmap.com:8081 for PC two?

Thanks

A con on the ACTi is that it does not appear to support video motion detection, only hardware motion is supported.

Axis is more expensive and only has up to a 6 channel encoder but it does support video motion detection.

The video motion detection will be huge with the encoders because of the possibly of having 9 analog cameras. We don't want 24x7 recording and putting motion detectors everywhere may cost more than just going with a couple Axis solutions.

Some analog cameras have built in motion detection like many of the IP cameras but I'm not sure if this will work through an encoder back to exacq.

Acti 4201 is a cube camera?

A slight shift here. How about audio? Customer may want audio in the area of the cash. I know about the legal stuff, customer just wants to know if this can be done.

They have analog cameras so I was thinking of using one or two of the ACTi IP Servers. They seem to have motion built in but not sure which IP Server would be best to use with exacq.

I guess there are two parts to this one!

I am signed up for exacq training in June so I may have a lot of this answered. But customer wants to know now

Thanks Soundy. You can't search or anything though right? So if any zero sales are done we can't search on zero sales or voids or what not?

Customer was sold on NUUO and is now moving towards an exacq solution but may want to have pos integration in the near future.

Thanks

Anyone using exacq with a Verifone Ruby System II cash? Wondering what text insertion device is being used successfully with this cash register system and exacq.

Thanks

OK, I understand why exacq does it but why!? There is no hardware spec listed anywhere on there website regarding CPU loading and recommended hardware for a specific amount of cameras. Let's say I want 32 cameras all running MP so strictly IP, I want two gigE NIC's and would like to know what the recommended hardware is for Motherboard, CPU, NIC's, Video Card, Memory Size etc...

NUUO at least has all this info along with tested hardware so as long as you stick with that you should be good. I'm looking to do a Linux based server setup....taking a chance here because it has been about a decade since I last used Linux in depth.

I refuse to pay exacq for there highly over priced server and crazy margins per terabyte added. WOW when I saw that I figure I'm in the wrong business. I might as well build my own. I'm thinking a Core 2 QUAD with 4G Ram as a starter should do me fine.

Anyone with hardware recommendations for 32 cameras and linux based OS (Ubuntu 6.03 is latest supported with 8.04 soon I read) running exacq server and webservices. I will be installing the client as well but it will not be autostarted.

Thanks

Anyone with experience with this camera. Looking for one with H.264, Megapixel, IR, True Day night all in a vandal enclosure. This camera seems to have it all even including a built in PIR, except the vandal part I think, and is priced right. I'm not sure about picture quality of this camera and if it should be a contender in a bid I'm going after.

Anyone use it? I have ZERO experience with Vivotek.

Thanks.

Exacqvision...... Cheap compared to other enterprise class solutions..... Works with Windows, Linux, MAC, Firefox, Chrome, Iphone Blackberry, and Androd....... Runs on Atom based servers for low cost low power reliable systems. Feel fee to PM me for more info http://www.exacq.com

Wireguys, I'm in the process of building an Atom based dual core system and giving Exacq a run. Most of these small chassis' don't have much room for multiple drives. How do handle this with a small system? I'm assuming like with other NVR softwares we want to keep the OS and NVR software on it's own physical drive and put the recorded data on another. I'm thinking of using a solid state drive for the OS and software.

How many cameras can you see this system operating with lets say 1.3MP's and maybe a 3MP or two?

Thanks

Using my NUUO DVR and this snapshot taken on my home PC (so done remotely). This is a dumbed down printscreen shot of an ACTi 7411 and an unmarked 500TVL bullet camera side by side. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the difference here

I agree, thats a real crappy bullet camera. (or its not focused, or its faulty, or the DVR is not setup correctly)

 

Rory the problem with his sample (3RDIGLBL ) is

He did not posted properly

He should show 7411 in full (native res) versus CIF or D1 from his bullet

then you can truly see difference

just my opinion

I did say it was a remote image and main purpose was just to show the difference in image quality. The post was not supposed to be a full (native res) as I did not intend that so I posted it properly for what I intended I do not need to do what you said in order to see a clear difference in the image quality.

Glad you posted this because I was looking for one myself. What camera and solar setup do you plan on using?

I contacted http://www.sunsurveillance.com/ and spoke to them for a while. They build systems specific to the area of the country they would be installed in. Not really a solution geared toward a small residential install unless that person has the money to spend for such a small return.

My customer wanted to have the camera mounted at the camp and wirelessly transmitted down to his house. YES....it can definitely be done but at a cost like every other special application.

Anyone know of such a beast? I have a special install where the customer is looking to do a fully self sufficient video recording setup for a camp he has high up on a hill. He is looking at between $5k and $10 for a single camera setup with solar panels, batteries etc to keep an eye on a camp.

I did a site visit and we can see the camp in plain line of site from the roof of his residence with only a couple minor trees in the way so I was thinking of using a 5mp Arecont with a highpowered lens to get up there. His camp would be between 1500 and 2000 feet away up in the hill. Major challenges include for one the sunlight. We would be looking up towards the hill so making sure we have as little as the skyline as possible is key but that will not really prevent the glare anyhow. An analog WDR would not be sufficient due to the distance and width of the area to be covered unless I can get a close enough view with a good lens.

The width of the lot he is on covers about 65' and with a 100mm lens it will get us to about 100' width. That's why I was looking at MP but I can't even locate a 100mm MP lens. I would prefer 150mm and anything higher than that I might as well get him setup with solar LOL!

Using my NUUO DVR and this snapshot taken on my home PC (so done remotely). This is a dumbed down printscreen shot of an ACTi 7411 and an unmarked 500TVL bullet camera side by side. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the difference here

I installed the latest firmware and profile on the 7411 last night so I did not touch any of the default image settings.

I think NUUO probably supports the most but many more MFG's are coming on board supporting a large assortment of models. Best bet is to select which cameras you want and to look at the supported list for the NVR's your interested in.

Or pick the NVR you're interested in and select from the list of supported cameras