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meridian1

grainy interference only at night

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Hi, New member here.. I am having a problem with a new install.. The equipment is speco. d16cs and 11 intensifier cams.. all the cable is cat5 / baluns. The cable is minimum 2 ft away from any power.

 

I have 4 in the store are in this warehouse. The cams look ok during the day time. Once it gets dark, 3 of the cam get very grainy. The grainy image seems to crawl around the screen which in turn looks like movement to the dvr. The one cam that looks perfect is the closest to the security light that is on 24 hrs. You would think that one would have the interference.

 

I would appreciate any advice.

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You have just discovered the difference between cheap IR cameras & quality IR cameras. You can either live with it , upgrade the cameras or get some lighting in there

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speco HT7246iHR intensifier are cheap? they are designed for low light situations. here is a pic of what I am seeing.

2126255450_willcall4.jpg.c01b57db6cea8faaa88157570832069d.jpg

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You have just discovered the difference between cheap IR cameras & quality IR cameras. You can either live with it , upgrade the cameras or get some lighting in there

 

That speco camera does not have IR. It's called intensifier and is a low lux day/night camera without IR's. It's

supposed to be better than that picture. I do not have any out there, but I do know they are not cheap and

are not supposed to be bad. Does that have any settings on it? If I recall, rather than an OSD, it has dip switches

on it? Did you change any settings on it?

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Thank you for the clarification about the speco cameras, I didnt want to be rude and correct toss about his lack luster reply. especially since this is my first post. the cameras are all set the same. It has a push button switch that brings up a menu. We have made a few small changes but we can not see if it really effects the camera until night. Are you thinking it might be a setting or could I be running into an electrical problem?

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What dvr do you have this connected to? I haven't played with those cameras but would guess it might be a setting. Have you called speco?

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That looks normal to me considering the amount of light you have. If you dont want to add lighting go with an IR camera. Because the camera you have is using a combination of DSS, DNR and higher gain to achieve that.

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I'd check the settings to see if there is a DNR or noise reduction setting and put it all the way up. The low light performance, even if its very dark looks pretty miserable.

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I will check that as soon as i get back to the site. Im sure the dnr is on.. It is a missrible image.

 

I have talked to speco tech a few times. They have looked at the dvr and I have gotten very little in info back.

 

The dvr is a d16cs.

 

I do agree that they may be grainy at night but the grainy image crawls around the screen which in turn looks like movement to the dvr. So the dvr records all night. I will attach a few pics if I can.. first one is the good cam image out of 4.. The camera obviously has a security light close by. the other is the day time image to give you an idea of what it looks like during the day

991092607_willcall1.jpg.26d970c574871ef3eef6799640ba262f.jpg

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here is the second image.. I will post a night image later of the out door cams so you can get an idea of how they look .

2043252280_willcallday.jpg.d32d6f30018fa66c3d811bdd5be73679.jpg

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From the menu:

- Make sure the AGC setting in the Exposure setting is not set to OFF. Then as yakky pointed out, the DNR gain might be adjusted upward to see if it can reduce the noise.

- I recall that the intensifiers have a menu setting to turn the intensifier on for very low light service. I'm not sure what camera models and version you have, but It is typically found in the AGC menu option. You might try toggling it off and then back on.

- You might look and see if the max AGC setting can moved be down a bit. Sometimes the AGC can try to compensate for low light and introduce more picture-wide noise when in color mode, that crawls around on the sceen.

 

Lastly, maybe BW might be a better option as you approach the lower spec limit of 0.00002 lux? The light source from the initial picture is quite a ways away and does cast some shadows that the camera might be having difficulty in compensating for, the further away you get. You can see what it looks like in BW, by taking the camera from Auto to BW in the menu.

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Thanks ChuckE. Here is the model CVC6246iHR. Outside are bullets intensifiers and two domes intensifiers. I will try the adjustment to the AGC and I will try bw. What would be the minimum you would be from any electrical fixtures? My wires are a minimum 2 feet above the fixtures.

 

Thanks again

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I've only had some limited problems with florescent lighting and camera wiring that was within 2 feet. But the size of the light, housing that it was in and brand of cable also seemed to make some difference when I was troubleshooting. So I really can't say what a recommended installation practice would be, because I ended routing better coax in metal conduit anyway, and didn't have a problem afterwards.

 

I'll let someone else give you what they typically use for distance and other details.

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Thank you for the clarification about the speco cameras, I didnt want to be rude and correct toss about his lack luster reply. especially since this is my first post. the cameras are all set the same. It has a push button switch that brings up a menu. We have made a few small changes but we can not see if it really effects the camera until night. Are you thinking it might be a setting or could I be running into an electrical problem?

 

My mistake . but my comments still stand ( just not with regards to your problem )

As suggested I would be looking at your gain/agc settings & the dnr setting. to a great extent these work against each other. As you increase you gain you will also increase noise level & at the extreme the noise may be so great that the dnr has little effect. It looks to me that the camera is simply trying to operate beyond its capabilities. As suggested try adjusting the colour/B&W threshold & get it to go to b/w earlier.

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speco HT7246iHR intensifier are cheap? they are designed for low light situations. here is a pic of what I am seeing.

 

It looks like your camera is caught right at the brightness level where it can't decide to go B/W or stay in color. What you're seeing is camera noise from low color viewing.

 

The intensifier should have an option to adjust the day/night switch trigger brightness level. It looks like your DNR is not turned on either.

 

Make sure that your DNR is turned on, your DSS set to less than 32x (anything above will be useless) and see what happens.

 

Good luck.

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