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CSG

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Posts posted by CSG

  1. Posted

    I wouldn't quote cable "by the foot." It's going to lead to disputes, where after you run the cable the customer is going to say "if you did it my way" we would have only used 300 feet instead of the 400 feet you charged me.

     

    Just give a flat price, and leave enough cushion for error. Typical commercial install is going to use 250 - 500 feet per camera. Remember the short leftover piece on the reel is waste, as are overpulls.

     

     

     

    I try to give a real accurate rough quote. I'm usually within 100 or so feet. When I quote them, I line item the cable with feet and the cost per foot. When I deliver the quote, I tell them the cable price will vary depending on actual cable used. Its .40 cents per foot and you will be charged for each foot used. This is perfectly okay, they can't expect to get "free" cable out of it.

  2. Posted

    I'm not a big fan of motion based recording. It can lead to missed video, and I think it makes an incomplete record for evidence purposes, in case the video needs to be introduced at trial.

     

    I'll give you an example that happened to me. Once a neighbor's car was hit while parked in front of my building.

     

    A week prior to this incident I was playing around with motion recording on the DVR and left it enabled to see how it would do. I left it set for "Outdoors, medium sensitivity" with no masking.

     

    Well, I told the guy not to worry, we should be able to see the vehicle that hit his parked car, as there was a hi-res Sanyo D/N box cam positioned on the building close to the car. I would burn a CD and he could take it to the police. We suspected it was a truck that caused the damage, therefore we had a good chance of seeing the name on the side.

    The car was pushed up on the curb from the impact, making the "before" and "after" easy to located in playback.

     

    Well you can imagine my embarrassment when during playback, with my neighbor watching, the motion detection had stopped the recording at that critical moment. There was video before and after the accident, but not during, and we could not see the truck.

     

    I told them I was sorry, but we could not find the video they needed.

     

    Since then, no more motion detection for me. When I setup for a client I leave motion off, if they decide to turn it on they do so at their own risk.

  5. Posted

    I don't think it's going to be possible for you to replace the HD. The factory has to do it. And they won't upgrade the drive to a larger size from what I understand, they rather you buy a new DVR at a higher price.

     

    IF someone has field replaced a HD on a DM DVR, I'd love to hear it. There are some guys on eBay from time to time that replace drives on DM DVRs. My guess is they are former employee's.

     

    You might wanna contact them.

     

    http://cgi.ebay.com/BN-160GB-DEDICATED-MICROS-REPLACEMENT-UPGRADE-HARD-DISK_W0QQitemZ200063668951QQihZ010QQcategoryZ48632QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

  12. Posted

    I installed several Sony SSC-DC593 Day/Night box cams about 3 years ago. This location had several power failures, probably which resulted in the power flickering on and off.

     

    Anyhow after power was restored, the video was messed up on all these cams. Went up on the ladder to take a look, all the settings were defaulted (the default is manual iris and no day-night.). I had to re-configure the iris settings and the D/N settings. Never had this happen before as the settings are stored in non-volatile memory.

     

    Well the worst part was the pidgeons like to perch on the Pelco housings and the housings were a bloody mess.

  16. Posted

    Don't write VB, (even forgot most of my C/C+ at at this point) so I guess I'll wait till the new software release is out, I have 8.0 now.

     

    Still working the kinks out of this thing, finally got rid of the annoying XP login prompt at bootup, which will allow the auto reboot feature to work. I used the Microsoft Tweak tool, which is a free download that allows tweaking of the OS.

  17. Posted

    I'm using a Samsung digital monitor DVI (26" widescreen), and the main Geovision window is stuck on the upper left handle side of the desktop. I can minimize it to the taskbar, but I can't get to the title bar because it's off the screen.

     

    I tried different resolutions but it's always in the same spot.

     

    Any suggestions?

  24. Posted

    Rory,

     

    Look at the Asus mobo's, they have on-boad Sata raid. Saves you the cost of a seperate card.

     

    Raid 1 just mirrors 2 disks.

     

    Raid 5 allows for greater capacity because you can use 3 or more disks, although the usable space is less than the sum.

     

    I don't think from a practical standpoint read/write speed is much different.

     

    However, once you setup a raid, you can't undo it with reformatting the drives.

     

    I've always stuck with Adaptec cards for drive controller or raid when not implemented on the mobo, but they prolly cost a few dollars more.

  25. Posted

    yeah, XP doesn't go blue screen, it's the send/dont send

     

    http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/7021/senderror0oi.jpg

     

    windoze phone home message

     

    Most DVR users are not going to check up on their DVR until they need to review video, and that's when they want the DVR working, not a Microsoft phone home message.

     

    When I refer to an embedded DVR, I mean a quality unit like GE, DM, Bosch,Pano, Sanyo, or Samsung GVI, not a cheapo alibaba.com OEM.

     

    yeah I know DM is not a true embedded, but they rank right up there in reliabilty. I have an old 16 channel DM Sprite 5+ years old that keeps on ticking like a Timex. Took a lightening strike this summer that knocked out one channel, but it soldiers on.

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