Why Your Yugo Doesn't Perform Like a Cadillac

I wrote this up today for a client who just couldn't wrap his mind aroound why his DVR sucks. I thought some of you might be able to use it. Feel free.

Yes you can get upto 30 days record time, but you will not be happy with the recording quality. You can only get it at an extremely slow number of still images per second stored on your recorder. About 2-3 frames per second.

Yes you can get decent usable record quality, but you can only get a couple days record time because you have more images to store in a day. At 20-30 frames per second you can be pretty sure of getting most things, but only for a couple days at best.

YOU CAN NOT GET GOOD RECORD QUALITY AND LONG RECORD TIME WITH YOUR KALATEL

2000 RECORDER.

You can not have both with this machine. The company who made it was bought out by GE Security Group several years ago, and they no longer support the unit. In fact it was no-longer directly supported even before the company was bought out. It can not be upgraded.

WHAT DOES FRAMES PER SECOND MEAN. A real time video signal is approximately

30 still images per second. Each camera on your system is sending about 30 frames (individual still images) each second to your recorder.

16 Cameras X 30 images per second = 480 images per second.

There are some very good video recorders available at a pretty high price that will record at up to 480 frames per second, but they can not store more than a few days at that record rate. Most are set to record at a much slower rate , and only record at a faster rate if there is an alarm activated or possibly on motion sensing. A machine that could record all of that still will have 1-2 Terabytes of data storage.

HOW DOES THAT COMPARE TO MY MACHINE? The little Kalatel DSR 2000 at your shop has about 80 Gigabytes of storage. That is approximately 0.000976 5625 Terabytes

A Kalatel DSR 2000 has less than one thousandth of the storage necessary to record real time video for several weeks.

HOW ABOUT PRETTY GOOD VIDEO? The unit will record for a month at 2-3 frames per second.

WHAT IS 2-3 FRAMES PER SECOND? At 2 frames per second that means during any given second 14 of your 16 cameras are not being recorded. OR... It takes approximately 8 seconds before you have a chance that all 16 cameras have managed to have a single still image saved on the recorder.

HOW ABOUT FOR JUST TWO WEEKS? This unit may record for two weeks at 4-6 frames per second. Assuming you can actually get two weeks record time at 6 frames per second, you may not be happy with the record quality.

WHAT DOES SIX FRAMES PER SECOND MEAN? At six frames per second during any given second 10 of your sixteen cameras are not being recorded. OR... it means that it may take 3 to 4 seconds before any particular camera has a chance of having an image stored to the recorder.

WHAT IS MOTION ACTIVATION? Motion Activation is a technology built into many digital recorders that will allow them to determine if the current frame from a camera is substantially different from the last frame.

HOW IS MOTION ACTIVATION USED? Often it is used to give one camera priority over another for recording or to change the record rate.

WILL MOTION ACTIVATED RECORDING SOLVE ALL MY PROBLEMS? No. The Kalatel 2000 is old 1st generation technology, and its not particularly good at video motion detection. Also, it can not even process the number of images being sent to it. The maximum number of images it can process is about 60 per second. You are sending 480 images per second to the recorder.

WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION? With this unit there is no best solution. It can not be upgraded, and it is no longer supported by the manufacturer. The only real alternative is to replace the unit with a newer better recorder with more storage and more processing capacity. Anything else will be an unhappy compromise.

Reply to
Bob La Londe
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do you ever get the feeling some people watch too much csi?

what do you mean we can't zoom in, clear up the image, and see the reflection in that guys eye from 100 feet away and see what he was looking at? this things a piece of crap

Reply to
CH®IS

my picture is not clear! what do you mean Sam, it's 540 lines of res., what's not clear (it's a perfect picture). oh, I can't focus in on it huh? You mean you want us to change the focal length so you see a tighter picture oh I guess yeah. ...up the ladder down the ladder oh that's better, but I want to see the people sitting at the other end of the bar too ...up the ladder down the ladder

Sam needs 2 more cameras to do what he wants but I don't have the heart to tell him because he's so damn cheap.

Reply to
Crash Gordon

You know you have a challenge when the customer wants "a" camera to see this view and his head is spinning like an owl. I also love the call that starts out, "I saw this camera system on the internet, do you install these?" I started qualifying the calls for camera systems many years ago, especially residential. Saved a lot of time and gas by not chasing every call that comes into the office knowing that the majority are not going to spend the money on decent eqiupment. That was an easy decision after I had been to one house to many where the camera system would have been more expensive than the car in their driveway.

Reply to
Bob Worthy

"Well, I saw this system at "box club" that was only "$cheap."'

My response to those is always the same. "Those are inexpensive consumer grade systems. Box club has a fairly liberal return policy, so if you want to install it yourself you can try it, and if you are not happy you can take it back. Just make sure you save your receipt and you try it out right away."

Of course they usually then immediately ask, "Do you install those?"

I have tried a variety of responses to this but have never found one that gives a good result. I tried, "Sure, the labor to install and stand behind that is $(original estimate * 1.5)." Most people who ask are too stupid to understand and just get pissed so I now I just tell them if they want a DIY consumer system the consumer needs to DIY it.

Its tough, but I can't go around pissing everybody off either. As much as I would like to.

As to the swivel neck people. I try to explain that the more they see the less they get. Then I ask them if they have ever been to the Grand Canyon. If they have it makes my explanations a lot easier from there. They can stand on the south rim in a few places and see most of the canyon, but there is no possible way they can identify a person down at the ranch in the bottom. If they get a really good telescope with video imaging and image stabilization they might, but then they can't even see the yard where they are standing, much less any part of the canyon.

Most simply can not afford even a decent video system. "Box Club" is the only real solution for them, but I still will not sell or install those because they will eventually not be happy, and they will remember the features I mentioned were capable with better systems and claim I lied to them or ripped them off.

Sometimes though you have a customer you have done work for, fixed problems for, they like you, and have always paid your service bill without question. You just don't want to piss them off, but in order to do that you have to make them understand what they have. That's why I started this thread.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

Try this one: "No."

If it's any consolation, online stores like mine get calls from the same people. They want to know why they can't get an Extreme CCTV camera for the same price as a Chinese import. After all, they're all "just cameras, right?"

Reply to
Robert L Bass

The way in which technology is publicized now ....... with the advent and advertising of the Internet, IPhones, IPods and every other "I" gizmo, the everyday people who are technically challanged think they can get Star Wars technology for a buck.

Then there are those who work in some faction of technology who think that just because they can write code for some electronic digital divice they must know about everything else that is remotely related to electricity.

And then there's the alarm guys who ( unknown, unrecognized and unacknowledged by the rest of the world) who actually DO ...... know everything about everything.

Reply to
Jim

LOL. I don't even pretend to that level, but I have always believed that all knowledge is useful. Simple things, like oak toothpicks make better door hinge screw repair filler than match sticks. In fact I told a lady just that the other to fix the sagging front door on her house so her front door contact would clear. I also put in a rare earth magnet in the mean time.

Seriously, everything you know and learn will help you in one way or another. Whether its to learn how having half a dozen different fishing poles will improve your performance in a bass tournament, or why it might be worth a few dollars more, but not a lot, to buy your next service truck from the guy down the street instead of the guy in the next city.

P.S. I had a lady complain about my rates the other day until I explained that while a plumber which she will gladly pay the same rate may have to occasionally get his hands in shit, I have to have more knowledge about more things including where his plumbing lines are likely to be in order to do my job. She never argued, and when I charged her for 2 hours instead of 2 hours and fifteen minutes she thanked me.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

I knew a guy many years ago @ Brinks who didn't know where anything was. He drilled through a water line a flooded a customer's house once. One time I was helping him on one of his jobs and he drilled right into some romex above a switch plate in front of me. I told him he was done drilling and I'd do it but I needed a new 18" bit because this one was now melted. We went out to his truck and I shit you not... all 3 of his other 18"ers had burn marks on them.

Reply to
G. Morgan

A friend had a cable installer hit power drilling through the floor. Started a small fire, in fact. Fortunately he lived right across the street from the fire department...

Took months to get the repairs paid for as the (subcontractor) installer and the cable company battled over who was responsible to cover the damage...

Reply to
Matt Ion

When I worked at Brinks we had a home damage "allowance", $3000 per quarter was considered "acceptable". Of course I was doing 2 jobs a day (40/mo *

3/mo=120 jobs/qtr = $25/job fuckup allowance.

When we damaged something we just called HQ and told them to come check it out. Things were repaired pretty quickly AFAIK.

I drilled through a fiberglass bar sink once :-)

Reply to
G. Morgan

That is the problem with some of these companies paying people as subcontractors. Or in other words, trying to beat the system by not paying them as employees. If a person is a true subcontractor, they need to sign a contract for each job they do, carry workers comp and liability insurance and have the applicable license. If this was a guy with a pickup working for a days pay, he wasn't a subcontractor by definition and probably didn't have insurance coverage. The cable company would be responsible. If the guy, by some chance did have insurance, it was on him. No battle required. When I worked nationally, I had 28 subcontract companies work for me. They all had to produce the required insurances and licensing in the states they worked in. Separate contract for each job. Any damage was on them. Had an underground contractor that put a hydraulic torpedo through a sewer drain under an asphalt parking area in Houston, TX. The heat of the summer came about a month later and had a garbage truck go through to it's rear axles due to erosion under the parking lot. When I saw our underground cable running right through the pipe, I called the contractor. He than called his insurance and I didn't hear another word about it.

Reply to
Bob Worthy

Yeah. I'm betting on the sub.

Reply to
alarman

That's because the mob owned the garbage truck.

You will never hear from that subcontractor ...... again.

Reply to
Jim

That's because the mob owned the garbage truck.

You will never hear from that subcontractor ...... again.

You know....it has been since 1984. You are probably right!

Reply to
Bob Worthy

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