POS Question

[kccustom 0]

First of all I really don't know anything about Point of sale except that I believe it is supposed to tag the video with text out put from a register or something.

 

If that is true could you have something else tag the video with text, Like an alarm system?

[Soundy 1]

There are typically two types of POS interfaces used with DVRs. One overlays the text on the video itself (using hardware like a Honeywell SmartPit box or similar), and the video is recorded that way; the other captures the text to a database on the DVR that allows it to be searched, usually allowing playback linked to the video.

 

Either way, the text is generated by the POS itself, usually just plain ASCII with maybe some basic formatting codes. It's common to use an output designed for a "Polewatcher" display. All the DVR interface does it capture that text and process it.

 

You could conceivably do what you want, but the alarm would have to generate a plain text output for the DVR to capture.

[kccustom 0]

I have been playing with my alarm system (ELK M1 Gold) and it says I can output text via a rs232 port, so in theory I should be able to get it to work?

 

Oh ya the DVR is the AverMedia EH5108H.

[tomcctv 187]

I have been playing with my alarm system (ELK M1 Gold) and it says I can output text via a rs232 port, so in theory I should be able to get it to work?

 

Oh ya the DVR is the AverMedia EH5108H.

 

 

 

what and you trying to do. on the eh your alarm text will only display for a few seconds and you will only get jumble i.e XXX@+: the dvr has to understand the data from your alarm.

[kccustom 0]

I have been playing with my alarm system (ELK M1 Gold) and it says I can output text via a rs232 port, so in theory I should be able to get it to work?

 

Oh ya the DVR is the AverMedia EH5108H.

 

 

 

what and you trying to do. on the eh your alarm text will only display for a few seconds and you will only get jumble i.e XXX@+: the dvr has to understand the data from your alarm.

 

What I am imagining is something like when the alarm is armed it would send the text to the dvr and I could search for the event

 

or if the alarm is triggered it would tag the video with something that says "alarm activated"

 

I wont be sad if it does not work, it would be super cool if it did!

 

I think what you are saying is along with the text being jumbled it might be only on one or two frames of video?

 

Also my alarm has several outputs that I am going to use to set up things like when someone presses the doorbell to take a snapshot and email me a pic.

 

Wouldn't it be cool if the alarm could also tag the pic with some text too?

[Soundy 1]

I don't know about your DVR specifically, but almost all of them have alarm inputs that you can use to trigger various behaviors... often recording priority (for a given input trigger, a defined camera would switch to high-res, high-quality, high-FPS recording for a set period of time), but most would also be able to simply log that input as an event. Your doorbell could easily be configured as such an input trigger.

 

This is far simpler and more do-able than attempting to receive and decipher text from the alarm panel.

[kccustom 0]

I don't know about your DVR specifically, but almost all of them have alarm inputs that you can use to trigger various behaviors... often recording priority (for a given input trigger, a defined camera would switch to high-res, high-quality, high-FPS recording for a set period of time), but most would also be able to simply log that input as an event. Your doorbell could easily be configured as such an input trigger.

 

This is far simpler and more do-able than attempting to receive and decipher text from the alarm panel.

 

Ya but that would be doing exactly like it was meant to be done, where is the fun in that?