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Magic of Philly

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  1. Magic of Philly

    DVR CMS Remote Playback

    No H.264 support? Thats not good, depending on the current compression algorithm your DVR is using, it might not be hard drive space efficient, specially if its using Motion JPEG (MJPEG) among others that came before the invention of H.264 compression algorithm. So, upgrading your DVR will right of the bat give you H.264 capabilities which translates to being able to have a much broader margins of recorded days before the DVR starts deleting older footage in favor of newer footage when the hard drive rans out. And plus you will get the benefit of being able to use 1080P/3MP cameras if you go with a HiKVision TVI DVR, and wont have to replace your existing wiring, you can keep on using your existing coax setup. Mainstream. Substream is exclusively used for remove live viewing, so you can pick a way much more lower bitrate as Substream as Substream is never used to record onto the hard drive, but a lower bit-rate for substream will help you see live streams even when you have low cellphone signal, like under a low bar 3G connection with a speed of about 512 kbps (that's why on my DVR install, I set substream to resolution: 960x480 at a bit-rate of 256 kbps since I take under consideration all these factors so that customers can be able to watch live streams anywhere they are, too much of a high sub-stream bandwidth and then live viewing all of a sudden becomes mobile phone unfriendly as it will only work reliably when either with a full 4G LTE bar or when connected over a WiFi. * All remove viewing is doing is downloading recorded videos already saved on your DVR's hard drive and playing it back (streaming) to your CMS or your smartphone app, for this purpose neither "mainstream" or "substream" are being used, they are irrelevant as you cannot change the "quality" of the streamed videos once they are recorded and saved onto the DVR's hard drive(eg. you cannot adjust the quality of last week's videos, but you can adjust the quality through the Mainstream settings for videos that are to be recorded next minute and to the future), you can only change the quality for the videos to be recorded in the future so that in the future you can have a lighter bandwidth requirements when wanting to remote playback previously recorded footage (also known as bandwidth optimization - the recording of footage at a specific bit-rate that wont exceed your site's upload internet connection speed as to not cause "buffering" when playing them back remotely) Yes, whatever bitrate, FPS and Quality settings you have set on your "Mainstream" profile its used to record at that quality and save videos to your DVR. In turn when you are remotely located and open up the PC CMS software or the mobile app, it will be streaming videos that was already recorded and saved onto the DVR's hard drive utilizing your Mainstream bit-rate, quality and FPS settings. You cannot adjust the bit-rate, Quality and FPS to videos already recorded and store in the DVR's hard drive, but you can change these settings for videos that are to be recorded and stored onto the DVR's hard drive in the future (as soon as you press the Apply button and the new settings takes place then all further recordings are done using the new bit-rate, quality and FPS settings). 1. When adjusting your mainstream settings, the settings the DVR will base itself when recording and storing footage to its hard drive, you must take careful consideration your site's maximum available upload bandwidth because if you select a bitrate too high then when you want to playback a recording to see an "evidence" or an "incident" you will find yourself with lots of buffering/stuttering issues as the Site's upload internet connection speed cannot keep up with the demand. 2. You must also take under consideration your remote's location maximum DOWNLOAD bandwidth speed, this is almost a non-issue these days in year 2017 where most ISP are giving a very generous (25 mbps+) download speed so your house's download speed will almost be a non-issue and you wont have to worry about that, but your site's 5 mbps UPLOAD maximum speed yes, you do have to worry about that, its too little and its too easy to overboard that. 3. With all that said, you have to adjust your settings provided that your bit-rate is not too high in such a manner where your maximum 5 mbps upload speed wont be enough to stream your previously recorded videos without buffering/stopping here and there, and you also have to take care not to adjust the bit-rate way to low where the quality of the videos will be impaired and difficult the process of facially positively identifying a suspect, so dont set the bitrate too low for your desired frame rate, however if you lower your frame rate (FPS) way too low, then you can get away with a very little bit-rate. The rule of thumb is that the higher the FPS you desire, the higher the bit-rate has to be in order to ensure a good video quality where you have a good chance to have a positive facial identification. Many people and installers have a varying definition on what they consider "real-time", but I was told by my large CCTV supplier where I have been buying CCTV equipment since over 30 years ago that in the CCTV world, "Real-time" is considered to be 15 fps. That is the definition that I have accepted and currently do accept, for me 15 fps is considered to be "real-time" as far as CCTV is concerned. of course, 30 FPS is the real "real-time" for many non-CCTV applications like consumer video taping, etc and now the newer "real-time" has morphed into 60 FPS, specially for those blockbuster bluerays in 1080P/4K quality. But as far as CCTV is concerned, its 15 FPS for "Real Time" You can choose 7 FPS if you like, and a bit-rate of 512 kbps per frame (7 FPS * 512 KBPS = 3,584) Since you said your DVR is much older it is highly unlikely you are recording in High Definition and that your DVR is not one of those Analog High Definition ones such as HD-TVI, AHD, or CVI and your DVR most likely its a D1 only DVR, taking that under account you can further divide your bitrate by 4 since my calculation was for recording in 1080P Full HD, D1 is 1/4 of HD so you can do 512 KB / 4 = 128 KBPS, so my recommended bit-rate requirement for recording in D1 resolution would be 128 KBPS * 7 FPS = 896 KBPS way much better and under such bit-rate you shouldn't have any problems remote playing back under your site's limited 5 mbps upload internet connection. For mainstream, you can set it at 7 FPS and if the RESOLUTION is D1 (704x480) then you can set 128 KBPS per FPS, so 7 FPS * 128 KBPS = 896 KBPS per camera. If you DVR can only record in CIF resolutions (320x240) maximum, then you can further divide the bitrate by 4 since CIF is 1/4 of D1 so 128 KBPS D1 / 4 = 32 KBPS for CIF quality per frame rate, so 7 FPS * 32 KBPS = 224 kbps For Substream, if your DVR allows you to set D1 quality, then set 7 FPS per camera and 256 KBPS per camera, if your DVR does not allow D1 for substream and its capped at CIF (many older DVR's only permits CIF for substream) then you can set 7 FPS, at a bit-rate of 128 KBPS. To close, I would like to say, that if your DVR is a D1 only DVR or much worse a CIF only DVR that its time to upgrade to at least Analog High Definition TVI, you will get a much clearer picture on your recordings and the likelyhood of being able to positively identify a suspect at 1080P is much greater than at 704x480 and alot much greater than at 320x240. If you would like to keep on using your existing old DVR, then you can do so, but as soon as something critical fails, instead of replacing the failed component, such as the hard drive, just get a TVI DVR, you will even be able to continue to use your existing cameras and gradually upgrade cameras one by one to 1080P/3M ones. Your security is further improved the better and sharper your videos can look.
  2. Magic of Philly

    DVR CMS Remote Playback

    The problem location has an internet connection whose DOWNSTREAM (download) speed is 60 mbps and UPSTREAM (Upload) speed is 5 mbps. Problem here is that when you are connecting remotely, say from your house, the DVR at that location is using the UPSTREAM speed to send the data to the Content Management Software (CMS), and in this case 5 mbps is too little, specially if the recording were done on a very high bitrate. Plus, some ISP doesn't deliver exactly what is promised so you might not be getting the full 5 mbps upload speed, but probably something like 3.5 to 4.x mbps which can further complicate the problem when attempting to view remote playbacks for high definition footage recorded at a bitrate higher than what your upload speed can accommodate. Remote Playback is never sent through "substream", substream is something that is only used for LIVE remote viewing so that users with a much slower, say mobile 3G connection can be able to fluently and easily be able to watch the cameras in live, but at a much lower resolution and bitrate, a non issue specially if you are watching multiple cameras in your smartphone's screen, say 4, to 8 cameras at once. Remote Playback basically streams the recordings off your DVR's hard drive at the exact quality they were recorded, so if you set your DVR to record at a very high bit-rate, then you will need a much faster upload speed to keep up with the demand. Live viewing is fine because when you are viewing multiple LIVE cameras you are technically using "Substream" and sub Stream is almost always streamed at a lower resolution and lower bitrate, much lower that your 5 mbps upload speed is a non issue at all (possible substream resolution of 960x480 at a bitrate of 512 kbps, and some DVR's can even have a crappier max substream resolution of CIF which is 320x240 at a much lower bitrate or something in the middle of 704x480 D1, so that's why with remove LIVE viewing through substream, it will almost be alright with almost any consumer level internet speed package, including on a 1.544 mbps D. / 768 U. kbps DSL plan Solution here: Either lower frame rate along with bitrate proportionally to compensate and get the same image quality for a lower frame rate or upgrade the upload internet speed of the site to a faster speed, say 10 mbps or greater. If the recordings on your DVR is set to a bit-rate of 4,96 kbps (4 mbps) then I would recommend an internet connection upload speed for the site at least 8 mbps or greater to compensate for the fact the ISP might not deliver you the full upload speed you pay for and want to have enough head room to ensure that 4 mbps can be uploaded whenever you decide to remote playback a recording - remotely. Here's what I would do for a 1080P quality: Main Stream: Set Frame Rate to 6 FPS and set bitrate to 3,072 kbps (3 mbps) or you can set frame rate to 4 FPS and a bitrate of 2048 kbps (2 mbps) add or substract 512 kbps for each frame you decide to add or elimiate to the equation to ensure the same exact picture quality. If your DVR is a HiKVision DVR, try enabling, if your firmware supports it, H.264+ which retain the same exact image quality for half the bit-rate required. To learn more about HiKVision's H.264+ codec you can read: https://www.securitymagazine.com/ext/resources/whitepapers/Hikvision-H264-Encoding-Technology.pdf If you DVR supports encoding at H.264+ you can decrease the bit-rate down from 3072 to 1536 kbps provided you set FPS to 6 FPS and the resulting video quality will be exactly the same if you were recording at 3072 kbps under regular H.264 (without the + at the end). So, with H.264+ you can set 4 FPS at a bit-rate of 1024 kbps (1 mbps) and add or remove 256 kbps per each frame rate you decide to add or remove to the equation, and with that change alone, to use H.264+ you may not even need to upgrade your site's upload internet speed. WARNING: ======= Beware of your site's potential "parasitic" applications hugging your limited upload bandwidth, such as leaving a computer on all the time while leaving a bit torrent client running with a bunch of files shared to the whole worlds. An employee of yours might have installed bit torrent and downloaded a few torrents, say the latest movie/tv show or even warez and those downloads, unless they are stopped/removed from the torrent client, are set to be shared (seeded), under such a configuration your upload speed will be used for anyone downloading such files directly off a computer at your site. So if you have multiple computers at your site you might want to monitor what bandwidths are being used to see if there is something you can optimize there.
  3. Magic of Philly

    Anyone used a DTS converter?

    1. I didn't took a look at either the date or the poster's post count, all I did was read the post and answer it to the best I could. 2. And if OP post was a spam post, at least you could say I counteracted the spam by posting an excellent multi-codec freeware open source alternative to the paid for/shareware the OP might have been advertising on his link.
  4. Magic of Philly

    Server CPU constantly at 100%

    I understand plenty in regards how IP cameras work. Changing passwords on an IP camera is not difficult for me, all it takes is logging into the camera's HTTP(S) configuration page and performing the password change, but the issue here is that when you are going to do a 32 or even a 128 IP camera installation, having to change the password of each IP cameras one by one becomes a tedious and laborious task. With an TVI DVR, you only have to change the password of the DVR and only once, thats it. Plenty of time saved. Who cares about not being able to save stuff directly to the camera via a (Micro) SD card. I prefer things completely centralized and if you justify saving stuff directly off an IP camera for redundant purposes in case if the hard drive of an NVR were to fail, you can create a much better redundant approach such as configuring another or a few computers with a VMS installed and configured to save footage on these computers and then strategically place these computers that will keep a clone of everything saved on the NVR/DVR in a combination of onsite and offsite. Says who? There is always the risk of the power adapter of the DVR going bad or other issues and the DVR shuts down, This very same risk ALSO HOLDS TRUE FOR IP CAMERAS SETUPS, The power adapter that feeds into the PoE'd Network Switch can also go bad and if that happens all of your IP cameras goes offline, even if the NVR stays up and operational. I have installed almost 1,000 HiKVision TVI DVR's within the span of a few years and I have YET to see ONE of these DVR's fail, any failures always happens either on the DVR's power adapter, or the DVR's hard drive, things that are remediable without having to sell the customer a new DVR/change the DVR. Once again, all of your IP cameras gets their power from the PoE'd network switch and that PoE Network Switch gets its power from a power adapter, if that power adapter fails, all of your IP cameras goes offline, no question about that, there is no refuting that. Sure, you may say that not all of the IP cameras might lose power if there are a cluster of IP cameras on the far reaches of 500 feet that relies on a secondary PoE network switch that gets its power from another power adapter located on spot where that secondary network switch was installed, but if the long network cable is connected from that secondary network switch directly to the uplink of your primary PoE network switch and the power adapter failed on the primary network switch, it doesn't matter if the secondary network switch that is located 328 feet away to power those 500 feet away cluster of cameras remains operational, the network path between those IP cameras on the far reaches and your NVR/main router breaks the moment your primary/master PoE network switch lost its power source, unless you plugged in the secondary ethernet cable that goes to that far away switch directly to your customer's router instead of your PoE switch but most likely the customer would have occupied all of the ethernet ports of their router so you would have plugged in the cable to that gigabit PoE switch, the one where on my hypothetical example was the one who lost its power source. The same can also be said for other network switches you had to install, say 750 feet away, 1,000 feet away or so, any one of those can loose its power source locally affecting any cameras connected to those far away PoE network switch and all the other network switches of yours whose data unlink depends on the affected switch. So YES! There are cases where one power adapter failure that powered a PoE Network Switch can take out all of your IP cameras. Also, if you do a 8 IP camera installation and all the network cables are homerun to be back of the NVR's PoE network switch, the power adapter of the NVR can also fail, in such a case this will take out all of the IP cameras plus the NVR, if you had inserted SD cards to each one of those IP cameras as your redundancy measures those will also fail as all of the IP cameras would no longer be powered, so nothing would be recording in such an event. And what's the problem with this? I have seen IP cameras where all of the ethernet cables are homerunned to the back of the NVR, NVR's come in two modes, one with a PoE network switch already included on the back of the NVR and another where you are expected to bring your own PoE network switch, in either of the case you are required to homerun ethernet cables to either the back of the NVR or to the back of the Poe Network switch, you still have to homerun cables. With TVI you have to homerun coax to the back of the DVR and the Camera's location, I find that to be a great reliability feature. The less intermediaries you have to use between the Camera, Cable and the DVR, the more stable the connection is, the chances of future failure is reduced to a very low probability, if you use quality BNC heads you virtually dont have to worry about any point to point failures for literally ever. You are dealing with less equipment and less electronics. Here let me give your your worst case IP camera installation project: Scope of the project: NVR to be installed in the company's CCTV room located in the middle of the large premises. a few IP cameras to be installed over 1,000 feet to the north in relation to the location of the NVR A few IP cameras to be installed over 1,000 feet to the south in relation to the location of the NVR The same for west and east directions. In all four corners of the CCTV room you are required to run 1,000 feet of ethernet cable and because flimsy ethernet doesnt go farther than 328 feet without requiring network switches in between to give you another set of 328 feet to travel, you will need to daisy chain 4 network switches in each direction in order to reach the target areas where the owner wants you to install the cameras, so you will need 16 network switches, that 16 different power adapters that can go bad in anytime, chances are you are going to use the manufacturer's power adapters that came with each of your network switches, and manufacturers sometimes like to cheap out on the power adapters and you end up with a 500 mA 12 V DC power adapter for each network switch. Now fast forward 1 year after completion of the project, half of the power adapters of those 16 network switches fails, most if not all of the IP cameras are down depending on which network switch were to be affected by this. Customer is now calling you angrily complaining that in just one year most if not all of the cameras went offline. IF this was a TVI installation, all what you have to do is perform a long 1,000 feet run of a cable between the DVR and the TVI cameras, there is no further power requirements other than a SINGLE Power distribution box for which amperage I can control by buying the correct one for the load I want to run, I wont have to worry about spending extra money buying a higher amperage power adapter because the one that came with a network switch I deemed it to be too low for me to think it was going to keep on working reliably in the long run. And the other power adapter would be the DVR's power adapter. Just two power sources (DVR's power adapter + CCTV Power Distribution Box(es)) and the whole operation is powered for many years to come reliably, possibly I would have to return back to the site one every 2 to 5+ years to replace failed hard drives, but I wont have to return back to deal with some cameras having gone "offline". With an IP camera for a job of this magnitude, you have the issue that you cannot power all of the IP cameras centrally like you can with TVI cameras up to 1,000, well 1,500 feet now. The last network switch where all the cameras will be connected will be the PoE network switch and that requires a power adapter that is able to deliver many amperes in order to be able to drive all of the cameras behind that PoE switch, and because of the high amperage requirement you can't just run the power cable 1,000 feet to power it centrally, you will have to run a much bigger gauge copper cable and that would cost alot of money, specially since you are dealing with DC that on itself will require the AWG of the cable to be much lower. Sure you can run AC instead of DC and then use AC/DC converters or just a bridge rectifier with capacitor's if you prefer to build the AC/DC converter yourself. But the fact you had to run a low AWG copper cable at a length of 1,000 feet away to centrally power the PoE network switch located 1,000 feet away and chances are you would want to run multiple 1,000 cables to also centrally power all the other intermediaries (non PoE) network switches that wont require that much amperage will rapidly increase your investment, investment for which you might expect proper compensation from your customer unless you eat up the costs and agree to turn a much lesser profit. What a such a headache thinking about the possible expenditures in order to fulfill such a project using IP cameras instead of just TVI. So you see? TVI has its own set of benefits you must appreciate, you can perform a single cable run of up to 1,500 feet and dont have to deal with intermediaries. With HiKVision you are not locked into anything, Well I haven't checked and tested other software for mobile platforms, all what I know that when mobile is concerned, the IVMS-4500 app is one of the greatest thing there is, its super stable, its easy for customers to understand, specially those customers that only thinks Facebook is the internet and barely knows what "email" is. As far as PC is concerned, there is many options, you are not locked into IVMS-4200, you are use any VMS software you like and you can manually add all of your TVI cameras one by one as if they were "IP cameras" by using a special RTSP URL with your username and password included on the URL, then all of the cameras will show up on your VMS and you can take advantage of all the features your particular VMS has to offer you. So no, you are NOT locked into any particular one software. Partially that is true, because TVI IS cheaper than IP cameras for the same quality. I am not installing TVI exclusively because its cheaper and I just happen to make more money, I am installing TVI because I DEEM it more reliable, its my personal option, its what 35 years on the industry has taught me and my own observation and seeing others complain that their IP cameras keeps on going offline and that they have to constantly keep on restarting the IP cameras in order for them to appear again on the monitor. Now I dont know how cheap or how of a Chinese generic brand of such an IP camera is, but all what I know is that a great quality name brand HiKVision TVI camera can be had for $68 dollars at my supply house, a camera I know that is not going to fail me or make me look bad, a camera that is capable of capturing very clear and crisp enough videos to be able to read a license place of a vehicle a mere 40 feet away parked on a side walk where the camera is facing. To buy a similar camera from a name brand that is reliable enough to possibly not give the user uptime based issues I would have to spend about 2 to 6 times as much as what I currently spend on my motorized zoom TVI cameras. Um no way. Correction, it doesn't take me hours to post this, it takes me minutes, I type at 140 WPM, as part of me having signed up on this forum to help those asking for help, I am doing this as part of a challenge to further increase the amount of WPM I can type. I am trying to bump that number up to at least 160 WPM. So, in a sense my participation here is an attempt to further increase my rate I can type while I help others at the same time. Now, I dont know how fast you type, but if it would have taken you hours to type a reply like this one then I feel sorry for you, you will need to work on improving your keyboarding skills, there are many free websites out there that can further help in boost your WPM speed. I would not have any problems installing VMS and IP cameras, but I dont feel that the IP camera technology has met my expectations yet, I feel that its not stable enough, and that those ones (IP cameras) that are deemed Reliable Enough by the community are over priced and the equivalent TVI can be had for the fraction of the price. And sure, I am open to revisit IP cameras in the future, but it wont be now, not yet. When you enter a business store front, do you see them inform you that there are other alternatives? No, they sell you, or mention you only the things they currently stock. With all that said, when a customer comes to me asking for security via a CCTV installation project, I don't have to inform them about choices currently not available within my own business. --and no, I am skilled enough to install IP cameras if I want to, like I said before I have a CompTIA Network+ certification, I know all about networking, I have built networks, so I have a very strong networking foundation, installing IP cameras shouldn't be a problem for me since the very same ethernet cables that I have been crimping since way back before the concept of IP cameras existed, but I refuse to do so at the moment. I believe in CENTRALIZATION not in Decentralization, I believe in having just ONE server in the premises, not 32+ different servers being each one of those IP cameras in addition to the NVR that is also a server on its own. No, just ONE server is enough, the TVI DVR and all the other cameras doesn't need to have such functions. Its my own personal through out opinion to decide how I want to run my own business just like its your own personal through out opinion to device how you want to run your own business. I have perfectly valid points and there is nothing in the world that is going to convince me until my expectations in regards to IP cameras are met.
  5. Magic of Philly

    [HELP] AVTECH issues

    1. What did you restart, the cameras and/or the router/switch hub? 2. If after restarting the cameras the images comes back up, provided that we have RULED OUT any potential router/network switches failures, then you should do the following experiment: 2.1 Lower down the frame rate of each cameras, dont set them to real time, lower them to, like 6 fps, that way not to much stress is applied onto each cameras. See if they last more than the typical 2 days straight up operating. 2.2 alternatively, try enabling the camera's built in auto reboot to occur one at 2 AM every night, that way you will always be on a 1 day restart configuration and your cameras will be operating up to 1 days perpetually. - theoretically no more failures after 2.x days of up-time since the cameras will be restarting itself every night, there will always be a max of 1 days of straight up, up-time. Thats it, provided that such a feature exists on your camera's HTTPS configuration page. Lets assume your router or network switch is the failure point: 1. Experiment by connecting the cameras to another router or switch hub. 2. Set static IP addresses for each cameras, dont use DHCP. If your router behind the IP cameras's gateway is and the router's DHCP's pool is set to ~ like most linksys/CISCO routers, then set the NVR's IP address to and then IP camera #1 to and IP camera #2 and so on going backwards, or if you prefer to go foward instead, then start at, say and then proceed forward. You will be setting static IP addresses outside the router's DHCP addressable pool (by the way the DHCP pool is configurable too in case if you want to adjust the pool higher or lower for your own IP addresses "aesthetic" purposes). 2.1 Having set static IP addresses to each IP cameras and including the NVR itself and these static IP addresses assigned by yourself being outside your router's DHCP pool, you should now wait a few days and see if your particular problem reproduces. If the problem reproduces try enabling the cameras to auto reboot once every night at 2 AM or anytime you like, if the problem went away, your IP cameras have trouble keeping multi days up-times.
  6. Magic of Philly

    Change alarm beep to dog barking

    Terrible idea, and here's why: You setup your DVR's beep indicator each time your outside camera's motion are triggered, for simplicity sake lets say you only have a front yard and all the other three corners of your house are sealed off. You setup motion recording for that front camera and instruct your DVR to perform a BEEP noise each time the motion is detected. Then you perform some electronics modifications to the PWM pulsed beep coming out from that small piezoelectric speaker on your DVR's logic board to trigger a loud dog barking sound effect amplified by your PA speakers, you are going to have the following: 1. When it rains you are going to have a loud dog barking hear-able from the outside and this sound effect is going to occur randomly as motion detection gets un-trigered only to a few seconds later to get trigger, specially if its only lightly raining where its noticeable enough to trigger the motion here and then (when its pouring on the other token you are just going to have one long continuous event with the initial bark until it stops raining). 2. Is there too many plants outside and moving leaves from trees? Unless you took really good care at discriminating any portions where there might be leaves moving specially when its windy, you are going to get the leaves to trigger the motion detection of your DVR once every time the wind blows hard enough, that easily get translated to thousands of motion detection events per day, or in other words thousands of loud barking noises blastered off your PA speakers, lets assume that each bark trigger event is a double bark sounding noise, for example: "baw baw", what real dog will bark twice each and consecutive times, obviously the fact that the bark are going to sound so monotonous and robotic sounding exactly the same each and every time (whether its just one, two, three barks, or more) its going to give it away that the "dog" is not real, plus potentially labeling you the "weirdo" of your neighborhood for having such a sound effect sounding thousands of times through a day. Well with all that said, if you still want to carry on the project of converting the beep that comes out of the DVR into a bark, here's what you will need (note, I have never done this but its totally doable): 1. You will need a reed switch that can be activated by the low enough pulsed voltage signal going to the DVR's piezo electric speakers. 1.1. Such a reed switch will have an interrupter on the output/other side that will act as an "ON" switch when the reed switch is activated and when the reed switch is deactivated (when the beep signal goes away) it will change the ON switch into the OFF default position. 2. You will need the "device" that causes the Dog's Barking effect, the more configurable the device is, the better it is, for example you want a dog barking sound effects device to trigger different styles of barks and different quantities of barks once activated, preferably in "Shuffle" mode in such a way that is will playback a different random bark sound once power is applied to the sound effect device. (Power is applied when the Reed Switch is set to ON position/is activated). 2.1 If you cannot get a dog barking sound effect device that randomly plays different styles of barks per different sessions, then you will have to make do with the model that plays the exact same sound each and every time which increases the chances of people knowing its a fake dog, or you will need to improvise with an actual MP3 players with a variation of Dog's sound effects manually imported to the MP3 player by your self. Or you can go the old school way and use a cassette "walkman", fill up the cassette with 90 minutes of a variation of dog barking sound and then you leave the walkman in play mode pressed, powered is delivered to the walkman when the Reed Switch is activated to "ON" position, the cassette begins to play and sends the audio for amplification and stops playing when the reed switch goes back to the OFF position. 2.2 If you use an MP3 player, you will need a model that automatically playsback an .mp3 when power its applied, or else you will have to modify the MP3 player to wire up the reed switch to the MP3's play button, when the reed switch activates, the MP3 plays a file randomly. So thats what you need. Now, you will open up your DVR, take out its motherboard, solder up two thin speaker wires on the two terminals that feed the piezo electric speakers, then install the motherboard back into the DVR's case and connect the resulting ends of the two wires to a reed switch sensitive enough to get activated by just the pulsed electric buzzer going to the piezoelectric speaker. Once you do this, now you have a method to turn on anything you like each time a motion event gets triggered and that reed switch gets activated to the ON position. things you can turn on thanks to this reed switch is some special lights/lamp of low wattage (read: LED), flashers, loud alarms, and of course your dog sound effect equipment. In order to pull off this project, you need a good level of creativity and ingenuity, if you have that then good luck you can undertake such project with virtually zero risks of damaging the DVR's motherboard and with a high success rate of actually being successful. If you need to activate a much bigger load, then the smaller reed switch will need to be connected to activate a much bigger reed switch with a bigger load capacity it can handle and then connect that bigger load to that much higher rated reed switch. **you might have to create/elaborate some special circuitry depending on what you want to do. If no reed switch is activate-able from the low enough voltage signal going to the piezoelectric speaker on the DVR's motherboard, then you will need to create a small circuit to create/amplify the signal big enough for the reed switch to pick it up and activate, such a circuit will need its own power source (12v power adapter, etc)
  7. Magic of Philly

    Anyone used a DTS converter?

    I did a cursory google search and found the perfect, or one of the perfect free open source software you can use to convert .dts to .mp3 or any other audio file formats. You can take a look at that software here: http://taudioconverter.sourceforge.net/ Its called TAudio. I even liked what I read on that page that I downloaded a copy for my own use as well, so here is what you do: 1. You add the file or directory containing the files you wish to convert 2. on the bottom left where it says Settings Type, you change it from Presets to Codec from its pull down menu and then pick a codec you wish to convert to, in this case .mp3 or .aac 3. Next to Codec pull down menu where you elected .mp3 there is a tab next to it on the right section called Codec Options, I recommend to change from Variable bitrate to Constant Bitrate CBR and set bitrate to 128 kbps (cd quality) or greater if you like, the greater bitrate you pick, the most disk space you consume per .mp3 file, then click Close. 4. From the top left of the program's menus, click Start to start the conversion project. The default save folder is: C:\Users\\Documents\TAC\ This is evidenced by seeing it listed on the Output field on the almost lower left section of the program's screen. To access the default folder, you go to Documents (My Documents) folder, then go to the TAC folder, there should be your converted audios. * I have not tested the .dts to .mp3 conversion since I dont have any .dts files with me, but .dts conversion is listed on the developer's website, so I dont see why it shouldn't work. By the way, the google search that led me to this software was: dts to mp3 converter open source
  8. Magic of Philly

    Server CPU constantly at 100%

    It is widely accepted and tested time after time again that analog will always be more stable than ip cameras solutions, while its true that IP cameras are getting stabler as the time pass by, it can never beat the stability, reliability and delay free that analog systems can offer. Both IP and TVI are great technologies, but I prefer to do TVI installations on most of my jobs, here are the reasons: 1. 35 years on the field Analog proving I can count on it, I will not adopt another technology that may or may not bring me problems, I am not a gambler. I am going to stick with what has been working for me for the past 35 years and I am glad that Analog is being improved upon and that improvements are constant and that we may see a future TVI 8 MP camera, who knows? 2. The different between what people see on the monitor and what happens in the moment is near 0 ms response time, the same cannot be said for IP cameras where it is known up to 300+ ms delay to occur, for picky customers who might get irritated due to this delay there is not a cure for this for IP cameras setup, sure you might be able to decrease the buffer at the peril of introducing stream based instabilities. 3. The single longest coax run is 1,000 feet for TVI version 2.0 and 2,500 feet for TVI version 3.0 or 1,500 feet at full quality at 3 Mega Pixels, the same cannot be said for Ethernet which caps out at a mere 328 feet and then you have to use network switches that must be powered on the spot to further expand and gain another 328 ft, adding a critical potential future point of failure to those cameras connected to that distant network switch (maybe another contractor could incidentally or accidentally disconnect/unplug the power to that network switch? Maybe the electrical line you used to tap the power for that network switch could be decommissioned in the future and the CEO had no idea the CCTV system depended on power sources other than the one that goes to the CCTV server room and then you will be labeled a "bad CCTV installer". With a TVI system, you can stretch that coax to up to 1,500 Ft and provided that you use a low amperage camera for example a miniature TVI 3.0 MP 0.001 Lux consuming 40 milli amperes) can be entirely powered where the DVR is located. You cant deny that being able to go to the far reaches with one single cable run is very attractive and super reliable since you didn't had to include any intermediaries between the run. I did my CompTIA Network + Certification along with being a computer engineer, I have created and wired networks more than what you can possibly dream of, however I am still not sold on the idea of IP Cameras. You see? I am a perfectionist, I will always go with the most stable and reliable solution. While IP cameras has been increasing in stability as the years pass by, it will never EVER be more reliable and stable than analog systems such as TVI and others and when I am doing a CCTV installation I feel that what I am doing cannot, CANNOT FAIL! I feel like if the life of others depend on my work, that's how serious I take my job and for that reason I have been reluctant to move away from analog, Full HD analog. That, you are right! I thank God that the mode of technology that I have been using for the past 35+ years, even though recently has been upgraded to support HD and beyond, is cheaper than IP cameras solutions. This means that I don't have to settle to earning a $500 profit for a 16 camera installation like a competition I have seen that have thrown himself to wasting lots of money on 16 IP cameras and an NVR, a few PoE Switches, etc in agreement that the most he is going to pocket as pure profit is $500(!!) because because the competition (well actually a computer customer of mines that installs CCTV on a different state than mines) on his area is so fierce that he literally had to sell himself away just to take the job and send some change to his bank account. Are you kidding me? The same job could have been done with an HD-TVI 3.0 DVR and 16 TVI cameras, a 20 Amps Power Distribution Box, a few box of coax and he would have pocketed over $1,500 of pure profit for this pocket. Admittedly that guy had no idea that TVI existed, he personally told me this when I told him why didn't he consider TVI, I showed him my TVI DVR and he couldn't believe that such a great quality was possible via conventional coax cables. By the way, I know this guy because he is one of my customer that I service his computer from time to time (its possible to have a mutually B2B relationship while being competitors on a different field at the same time - but he services CCTV in a different state so not much of a competition directly with me). -- So this guy was installing mostly IP cameras because he as been told its the best in the market (well depends on who you ask and what variable you look at), he was spending his @$$ off on IP gear and IP cameras to service consumer base where such an endeavor would not be profitable. Come on? You are not going to tell me with a straight face that you will go full blown IP on a customer that doesn't want to pay you what you deserve? Even you, a person that heavily promotes IP cameras will go TVI when your pockets are threatened, now dont lie to me, its a business decision to make decisions that doesn't affect the bottom line. What.. exactly.. are.. customer.. losing.. out? 1. Multiple point of failures? 2. Having to change user names and password individually per each camera? 3. Clusters of cameras going offline because that PoE network switch you installed 328 feet away to connect a cluster of cameras averaged approx 500 feet away lost its power source because the electrical line you used to tap power to that distant PoE switch was decommissioned? 4. The 1 to 3 second delay between what happens in real time and what shows on the monitor? (by the way There are picky customers that will take issue on that and will give you a hard time because of it) Okay, enough of pointing out IP based pitfalls, customers are not loosing out anything with HiKVision HD TVI 3.0 DVR and its accompanying cameras, they can get the very same benefits IP cameras customers get. Here is an example: Did you know that you can install any, yes ANY VMS software, yes even your favorite VMS software and connect to any or all of the cameras behind the TVI DVR in the same manner you would for IP cameras? All what you need to know is the RTSP URL for the camera, lets say you want to connect to mainstream camera #1, the RTSP URL which includes user authentication data would look like this: rtsp://usename:password@DVR's.IP.Address:Port/ISAPI/Streaming/channels/101 (102 would be for its substream) Lets say you want to add Cameras 2 to your VMS, well the URL would be: rtsp://usename:password@DVR's.IP.Address:Port/ISAPI/Streaming/channels/201 (202 would be for its substream) and so on and so on on this format. Heck, if you want to add an NVR you can even do that, all what you have to do is add one by one each cameras following this same format, all feeds would be fetched form the HiKVision TVI DVR and would show up on the NVR or your VMS software as if they were actual IP cameras and for all intent and purposes they would be treated just as if they were IP cameras, you can take advantage of every single features and functionality your VMS software has to offer. Do you want to have a backup recording at your premise? Well you can use a cheap refurbished Intel Core i5 computer you purchased at Micro Center, etc install a VMS, connect all cameras and instruct it to record at all time, or Motion record, or however you like, then you take that computer and hide it away. Do you want to have an OFFSITE backup recording, say at your house? Well, just configure another computer with an VMS software, connect all cameras, set it to record all the time, or motion detection, or however you like and then take the computer with you and hide it somewhere in your house after making sure its working. In short you can do everything you can do with an IP camera installation with a TVI installation. So... What exactly are customer missing out?
  9. Magic of Philly

    Which free DDNS service. Need help finding one.

    Hmmm interesting, I didn't knew about this, I guess I should not be expecting to be buying the very latest model further evidenced the DVR being HD TVI Version 2.0 when HiKVision has since long time ago released the HD TVI Version 3.0 so I take it that my supply house must be inundated with new TVI 2.0 waiting to be sold out, hence their reluctance to stock up the TVI 3.0 ones which would be the most recent ones, and I keep asking them about the TVI 3.0 DVR and they keep on saying not yet. Regarding Hik-Connect, is that service free? The fact that they are using Amazon AWS means that they are enduring a costs there. They should have kept their DDNS solution in house, that way they could have avoided the Amazon AWS bills. As an Amazon AWS EC2 user myself I know how high AWS can end up costing.
  10. Magic of Philly

    Install 20 cams and quote

    Your quoted price is good but not for an IP camera job, but for an HD-TVI instead. You see? 20 quality reliable IP cameras are going to cost you plus the 32 CH NVR big time, good Poe switch hubs, etc. Here is my proposal idea: buy 20 HD TVI 1080P 0.01 Lux 2.8mm to 12mm motorized zoom varifocal brand: KT&C or HiKVision. Each of these cameras can be had for $68 each at a good supply house, a 32 CH HD-TVI DVR for 350 and each 4TB WD Purple hard drive for $120 you will need 4 of these hard drive for a total of 16 TB, Sure you can skimp on the hard drive but then you will have to skimp on the bitrate to ensure satisfactory number of days of recordings, I would rather just install the four 4TB hard drives and then pick a reasonable bitrate. You will need a 40 A 32 CH CCTV Power Distribution box or get two 20 Amps 16 CH power dist. Box if you can't find the 32ch 40A one. The 32 one shall cost $90 and the 16 one $45 A 500' RG59 Siamese cables runs at $50. There are 1,000 ft rolls too. HD TVI can go up to 1,000 Ft. In one cable run much better than Ethernet's 328 ft max and then having to deal with intermediate switches. You will need BNC heads plus male DC plugs for the cameras and one Ethernet cable for the DVR. Here would be your total investment: $68 Cameras x 20 = $1360 32 CH HD TVI DVR = $350 4TB HDD x 4 = 480 500'RG59 Siamese x 8 = $400 Power Dist Box x 1 = $90 BNC Heads x 40 = $40 DC Plug, male x 20 = $10 Ethernet cable x 1 = $5 Total Investment $2735 and the customer will be left with a setup he will really like. You will charge $7500 therefore your profits would be: $4765 I have doubled your profits. If the customer doesn't want to pay you what an IP camera setup is worth then give them a TVI setup the customer wins in getting name brand quality full HD cameras and a name brand DVR and you win more profit. *I would ever in my wildest dreams agree to install 20 cameras to earn a profit of only $2000, I would rather stay asleep. **You shot yourself on your foot when you told your customer the job is $7500 when you knew your IP equipment would cost you $5500, You should have quoted your customer $11,000 which is double your investment, why? You are not only charging for installation, you are reselling the equipment to your customers, if you invested say $200 on a camera, you would want to resell that camera to $300 and on top of that charge for installation plus materials. I have seen that mistake being made by lots of installer, pretty much giving away the cameras and materials at exactly their costs and only charging for installation, that's loss profit, you know that you had to drive to your supply house to buy everything, you had to spend your time plus gas money, all that is compensable activities, so plan to make at least a 1.5x profit on the costs of your merchandise AND charge for installation. When you go to home depot to but a book shelf that requires assembly and then you contract them to come over to install/build the book shelf for you, you don't see them all of a sudden selling you their book shelf for exactly what they paid their supplier just because they are going to charge you an installation fee to build it.
  11. Magic of Philly

    Which free DDNS service. Need help finding one.

    You are talking about hik IP cameras, should I be worried that future hik HD-TVI DVR that I purchase might not come with HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS support? If HiKVision decides to eliminate HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS off their DVR's they better at least include easterndns in them as the other alternative currently present on the DVR which I believe is either dynddns or no-ip are not acceptable, they are not free, and the free version requires the customer to re-validate once monthly by clicking a link they get over email, ummm no! I see them forgetting to do that and then calling me complaining that they can't see the cameras on their phones.
  12. Magic of Philly

    Which free DDNS service. Need help finding one.

    HiDDNS is no longer supported? hmmmm? I dont exactly know what you mean, I mean 3 days ago I did my latest project, a beauty salon that wanted 4 cameras, she had an older obsolete early 2000's CIF only DVR and the whole place was wired with coax, so it was cost effective for her for me to install a TVI system since she didn't have to pay me to re-wire with ethernet cable the whole place, I gave her four 1080P TVI cameras and a HiKVision TVI DVR of 4 channels, I configured everything there, on the networking > DDNS page I created a domain name for her, it said it registered successfully, I then downloaded the IVMS 4500 application on the apple store (iPhone), went to Device > New Device > Register mode was changed to HiDDNS and I simply entered the name I created for here on the DVR, followed the custom port I elected that I opened up on her router, her chosen user name and password, then clicked on Live View and immediately I had the 4 cameras showing up on the smartphone under her Tmobile mobile connection. So, I was able to create her HiDDNS domain just fine, it worked and I got no errors or warnings. I also remember like over 8 months ago reading about HiDDNS to stop working for certain areas but not to affect the domain registrations done on the DVR's, and clearly its not affecting users creating their domain name off their purchased HiKVision DVR's. Now, in the other hand, I hope the HiDDNS service doesn't get shut down in the future, because then it would be a tragedy, sure I could move to using EZVIZ, sure I have never used EZVIZ cloud before, but there is always a first time and I hope its as free as HiDDNS DDNS service while I wont get my hopes up as being a cloud storage service most likely the user would have to pay for XX amount of GB's to store up the videos on the cloud, or maybe EZVIZ has a feature that can be setup to act just like HiDDNS without the cloud storage options for free... IF, lets say HiDDNS/SimpleDDNS were to stop working in the future, I would have a big project ahead of me for probably the whole entire months just on changing over all of my customers to a different DDNS service since I have hundreds of customers, almost approaching 1,000 on the same exact setup, using HiDDNS or SimpleDDNS.
  13. I have found iVMS 4500 to be easy for my customers to learn, its pretty much straight forward, category oriented apps, where you have Life view, Remote Playback, and Picture & Video this are the only three choices from the left pull down menu where I focus my attention when I train my customer and most all gets it, after 3 to 5 tries it becomes second nature for them. In the other point DMSS from Dahua is a comvoluted mess and hard for some customers to get. All of my installs now are HiKVision or any of their rebrands.
  14. Magic of Philly

    Which free DDNS service. Need help finding one.

    If the DVR or NVR is not made by HiKVision or one of their rebrands then I would recommend easterndns.com you create your account and then you get presented with the Windows client to inform your easterdns domain of your new IP address when it changes. This requires leaving a PC on all the times and the client set to auto start when windows starts, it starts completely minimized to system tray, public IP address changes your domain at easterndns knows of the change and passes on the information on all of your software that is configured with the domain, such as mobile apps, etc... IF the TVI DVR or NVR is made by HiKVision or one of their rebrands such as KT&C, DVRDVS, etc then its pointless to use easterndns or any other ddns service as there is a great one included on the DVR, called HiDDNS or SimpleDDNS for the rebrands where you only create a user name and thats it, you enter that user name on the mobile app and you are connected, very simple. Note: Many Dahua based DVR's and NVR's supports updating straight to EasternDNS from the DVR itself, bypassing the need to install the updater software on a Microsoft Windows PC, Linux PC or a Raspberry Pi.
  15. Magic of Philly

    Public IP works, DDNS does not

    You could use http://easterndns.com go ahead and create an account there, its free, after the account creation you will be prompted to download the Windows update client, install that to any computer in your network and input your user name and password you created on the account creation page, the easterndns updater will be in charge of updating the IP address for that ddns free service. in your mobile laptop you can in turn use the domain name instead of the ip address and it should work. Example: Lets say you requested the domain name of "johndoe", your domain will be: johndoe.easterndns.com So, if your mobile app configuration looked like this: Server: you can now change it to: Server: johndoe.easterndns.com:8888 When your IP address changes, the updater installed on your PC will inform easterdns of your new IP address and you should be able to connect right away. There is even a Linux updater version available on their website so if you want to configure a raspberry raspberry Pi for this purpose you can and that would be a great updater to have running, very minimalist. Why am I recommending Easterndns? Because its the one I have used in the past and it has never failed me, that was until I discovered HiKVision DVR's and NVR's it comes with their own in house DDNS service called HiDDNS and for rebrand like KT&C called SimpleDDNS on these DVR's all what you do is enter a name as the domain, then on the mobile client you enter that name, port number, username and password and you are connected, very easy. I haven't used no-ip so I can't tell you pretty much why it isn't working under no-ip, probably the dvr is not updating it correctly? Have you tried downloading their updater client and running it on a PC to update the IP for that DDNS? If it works, probably the DVR isn't sending the update command to the no-ip ddns service, or there is some credential based info set incorrectly on the dvr's no-ip ddns section. So, just for experimental purposes you should try easterndns with the windows client send the update command and then see if using the domain created from easterndns works just fine with your mobile app, if it works then there is an issue with no-ip that you will need to resolve either from your DVR's configuration and/or from the web administrative console at your no-ip account.