VCL dome repair solution

VCL dome repairs.

VCL were a company who were one of the great success stories of the late nineties and early part of this century. They were a British organisation who revolutionised the CCTV market with their orbital domes.

Takeover

Their success was soon recognised and take over was inevitable. First Ademco then Honeywell also profited from the success of the dome through aggressive take-overs. Buy dome spares

Honeywell.

Honeywell however have fingers in many pies and the orb 6 and orb gold dome was eventually superseded with Honeywell’s own product lines, no surprise but a great shame. One thing however has over the last couple of years though has been neglected and that’s repairs of the domes themselves! The CCTV domes won’t last forever. They have moving parts and are of course vulnerable to wear and tear. Some large repair houses will take on refurbishments but Honeywell no longer support the product.

VCL orb gold camera

It is here that a great opportunity exists for companies willing to help out the tens of thousands of end users out there that still have VCL domes and still need them as part of their overall security package. 360 vision technology are one company that we have sourced that has cleverly taken advantage of what is going to be a very large market as the VCL domes reach the end of their life cycle.

The 360 dome inner

The 360 vision dome inner can be adapted to fit into the existing orb gold housing. This dramatically reduces the cost of an upgrade and often works out cheaper than actually trying to repair the old dome inner itself. The outer housings of the VCL dome are brilliantly robust and will go on working for years without needing any attention at all, so the smart businesses out there might find a cost effective solution with 360 vision technology.

Repair it!

Servicing a VCL dome can also be carried out by Maxey Moverley. This is a repair house that has  skilled staff to look after the inevitable rise in demand to fix what after all is a very good product, many years after its original conception.

International Security Exhibitions

We may be based in the UK, but we always like to follow some of the up and coming International Exhibitions!

Volcano ash permitting, we are looking to bring good information on emerging technologies from the following exhibitions in 2010

ESSEN – Essen, Germany 5th to 8th October

ASIS – Texas, USA 12th to 15th October

ISC EAST – New York, USA 3rd and 4th November

more to follow!

Black Hawk IR dome from 360 Vision

Answering the age old problem of how to illuminate PTZ dome pictures at night time, 360 Vision have announced the availability of their Black Hawk IR Dome range

Drawing on over 20 years of CCTV Manufacturing,  the 360 Vision Technology Black Hawk IR Dome with twin LED IR illuminators is available in a choice of either Cool Grey, White or Black.

Options include:-

  • Dual 830nM wide angle IR Lamps providing 100m of illumination
  • Sony Ex-View WDR Camera options in 18x, 26x and 36x zoom
  • Multi Protocol Integration
  • OSD
  • Motor Motion Design
  • High Quality Components
  • Intelligent Alarms
  • Creative Privacy Zones
  • True Day/Night performance
  • Picture Freeze and Fast Shutter

we certainly think this is a great addition to their range – domes have always suffered from a lack of travelling illumination as found on the older overt PTZ units.

we think that the Black Hawk is a great ‘in between’ product, sitting perfectly between their VisionDome and Predator range !

we hope to bring a review shortly of the claimed 100m IR range……

Emerging Video Technologies – Megapixel Cameras Pt3

Taken from the ‘Emerging Video Surveillance Guide 2010’ from http://ipvideomarket.info/

Megapixel cameras

Potential Benefits: The 2 most fundamental benefits are (1) reducing the number of cameras deployed and (2) increasing the quality of the video, leading to greater identification of suspects / incidents.

Both benefits derive from the significantly higher resolution of megapixel cameras (compared to all analogue cameras and standard definition IP cameras)

Beyond the increased resolution, as megapixel is a subset of IP cameras, the benefits and risks of megapixel cameras inherits those from IP Cameras.

  • End User Risks:
    The 2 biggest risks are (1) over-hyped claims to increased video quality and (2) storage utilisation.
    Often, resellers/distributors will claim that megapixel cameras provide 4, 16 or even 81 times greater resolution.
    While this is ‘technically’ correct when comparing specified pixel count, this is generally not achievable because of 3 practical factors:

    (1) Multiple cameras can be placed in different locations while the megapixel camera’s greater resolution only covers a single area (since it is still a single physical camera!)

    (2) Looking at pixel counts (e.g. 0.3MP for standard definition vs. 5MP) is fundamentally misleading. Most megapixel camera provide only modest increases in visible quality – especially over 1MP

    (3) In low light conditions, the effective visible resolution drops dramatically – to the point where a megapixel image usually provides no greater visible details than a standard definition camera. Additionally, megapixel cameras generally require significantly more storage. At some level, this is simply a matter of paying the additional cost of storage. However, the additional storage needed may be so great that a dedicated storage cluster may need to be used

  • Installer Risks:
    Over-selling the quality of megapixel cameras is the most signicant risk. It is likely that the sale of  megapixel cameras will be based on either reducing the total number of camerasor one capturing specific details (e.g. people’s faces or car licence plates). Installers should be careful about testing actual camera performance including low light abilities, as applicable

What do you think??!

Basler IP CCTV camera

Basler has just released their new IP dome camera.

Basler have released two new ip dome cameras. There are two models, the BIP-D1000c-dn and the BIP-D1300c-dn. The former offers a resolution of 1028  x 768 and the latter a resolution of 1280 x 960 pixels.

On board storage.

On board storage is a great feature and the camera has an operating range of -35 to + 50 degrees C. This allows the camera to be used externally in very tough conditions and energy efficiency is also an important feature that Basler have not neglected to include.

Power over Ethernet.

POE and multi-streaming mean this camera meets most requirements and true day night functionality means there is not many environments that this camera range will not fit into.

well worth a visit to the website to view the specification in more detail.