White Fox

Thanks, I will see what they can offer. WF

Yes exactly

We have a need for fitting plactic screws to secure our cameras on the rail inside the camera housings. After much searching we cannot find a supplier of these screws here in UK or through our partners in Sweden. All suppliers only want to stock metric. Does anyone know where we can source these. WF

Rory - I am not familiar with matrix, I checked out the geindustrial.com site about matrix, only overview info available, I have sent them an enquiry. Have you used them? do you think it will do what I want? WF

We install systems in industry, monitoring a high speed process. Capturing and processing the images is no problem, we also display images from each camera using real time quads which work great, however we have experimented with a 16-in - 2-out Bosch mux, with 12 cameras connected, set to display 4 and 4 on each monitor, the update rate drops from PAL 50 fps to something like 4 fps. in our application this is useless. Is this normal when using mux's. What we would like to do is use one 40" lcd monitor to display the 12 cameras in a "real-time" view, I guess 25 fps would be the minimum. Any ideas WF

Vortex cooler, it is a device for cooling compressed air, it spins the air in a cyclone, and the hot component is exhausted out one end, and the desired cooled air is then passed out other end to the device to be cooled (camera house in our case) there is some air lost in the exhaust 5~10% so this might not be good if using bottled supply. http://www.exair.com/cabinetcooler/cc_page.htm If you chose nitrogen (inert gas - totally safe - probably all they would allow in a mine) then yes you will have to change the bottle when it runs out. Perhaps better to find a camera that will survive those temperatures. I am in UK so no local knowledge on suppliers, pm me if you want info on our camera house.

This is becoming an interesting project We tend to use the rule of thumb that anything above 40 degrees C will seriously shorten the life of any camera. Using a fan may work, are you thinking of moving air in and out of the housing or just circulating within the housing. If moving air in and out, then you have to consider the effects of dust in the air contaminating the inside of the front window. It might be better to use compressed air, but if it is on a rail wagon with 200 metres of track then that will be difficult/impossible, perhaps an air/nitrogen bottle would be better. Above 50 degrees we also use a vortex cooler to take the heat out of the air, this works very well. I know nothing about wireless cameras. Hope my mumblings are of some help.

We install cameras systems in paper mills, the camera housing in aluminium is air purged and the air then exits round the front glass acting as an air curtain, we can then use an air knife in front of the camera house for added protection. In some cases where a camera would keep clean for maybe only 4 hours we have managed to reach 30 days using this housing and air-knife, typically these cameras are cleaned once every 24 hours. The same technique is used on high frequency lighting. Paper mills are fairly harsh environments, steam, heat, vibration chemicals etc, normal housings and lights do not last. We have just developewd a low-cost plastic version, first trials have been successful and customer has just ordered a bunch, so we now have to wait and see how they stand up to the environment. A thermal camera will show just that the thermal picture of what you are looking at, it is very different to a normal picture, and may or may not be of any use, in the paper mills we use thermal cameras just for troubleshooting the process every once in a while, they are normally used in switch rooms looking for hot-spots in electical cabinets etc. As for looking through steam or haze, this is a common challenge for us, colour cameras certainly perform much better than B/W, play around with the lighting, try putting the light closer to the target, or avoid illuminating the steam, this has helped us. Also consider installing fans to move the steam away from the field of view. Hope this helps

Dusan and Rory thanks for the replies. I hadn't thought of using the Linux platform, our web server uses Linux and is very stable. Dusan can you let me know how you get on with your testing, my criteria of 60 seconds pre record at 50 fps is important for our application. Rory - yes the open source would be very interesting. WF

My first post on here, it looks like a great forum. I am looking for a PC sysem that will pre record up to 60 seconds at 50 fps. Using between 1 and 4 PAL colour cameras. It is for use in process control. I tried using forum search but couldn't find anything. The GeoVision 650 system I am familiar with, only allows a few seconds and not at full frame rate. Has anyone got any ideas or suggestions? WF