FloodCam go Boom?

[drozwood90]

Kind of long, but hopefully you'll read the whole thing as I feel the need to explain...

OK, I'm a tinker-er.

I am a Computer Engineer, generally roped into stuff related to EE stuff (that is non-microelectronics).

As such, I get dangerous with stuff...Basically I like to take things apart.

So, I thought I was going to have a few flood cams (Vt38A??) around the house.

I hate wireless video.

So, I opened up one of my Flood Cams. Took a look at it. Based on research and "what-not" basically there is a single control board, a single Sensor board, and a single RF board.

The RF board is the same RF board that all X10 wireless cameras use.

Based on silk screen I took the "video" driver wire OUT of that board. The driver wire did NOT have a COM. The RF board only had 3 wires going into it. So I also removed the 12VDC wires. Removed two screws and "pop" the RF video board board is gone.

Next step...take the 12V + wire and put heat shrink on it. Next, cut one end off of an RCA cable that I had laying around.

Attach video ground to the 12V COM.

Connect Video driver line (it's a yellow line in the Flood Cam I opened up) to the center conductor of the RCA cable.

Re-package. Open back up, realizing there was no strain relief to the video cable I added. Put a fireman's figure-8 knot. Test, good to go. Re-package.

Remove X10 flood light from mount near garage door.

Add in flood cam. Try to fit RCA jack through hole in wall. Go get screw gun and large drill bit. Widen hole. Test RCA cable. Good to Go. Re-attach Flood Cam.

Plug in power. Good to go. Based on settings, the flood lights come on when there is motion. Ok, get sacraficial TV. Try to plug RCA jack in to TV. No go...too short. Take apart wires from entertainment center. Add length to RCA cable for test. TV shows surprisingly good image (at least for a X10 camera).

Spend 30 min. with wife walking around pointing camera. All is well.

Next Day:
My server is located in the crawl space. So, if I drill a hole 4" off the ground in my garage, I can punch right into the ceiling of the crawlspace. So, I did.

Next, I ran an ethernet wire from the server to the Flood Cam's rear side (inside).

I had made RCA to Ethernet convertor boxes. Basically take a ethernet juntion box, and solder RCA jacks to it. I have used this box with 100' lengths of ethernet with VCRs to TVs for experiments. The picture (to me) looks identical as running it over 5' RCA cables. I have also used this VCR with 35' RCA cable lengths...yeah, the picture sucks...so, I figure I stumbled on one of those magic impedance settings...

So, I plug the ethernet cable into one box. Then plug the video cable in. Then I decide, well, I need to put the connector on the other end of the ethernet as well. Better to NOT work with a live wire. So, I unplug the ethernet cable.

I go into the crawlspace. Add my connector. Verify on my PPC that the color order is correct. So, I plug the ethernet to RCA box in, and plug an RCA cable into the box. Then I realize that my 4 port Video capture card uses BNCs...dammnit...where are my BNC to RCA convertors...

I go back up to the garage, plug in the ethernet cable up there. Then head back to the office upstairs. Get my BNC to RCA convertors. Go back into the crawspace. Put the convertors on the video ports. Then, I plug the RCA jack into the PC. I get the tip in, all is good. I finish plugging in and I see a spark come out of my convertor box!!

I quickly unplug everything!!

My results:
it seemed as though I was shorting 120VAC across the ethernet lines as BOTH pins in the RJ45 jeck that were handling the video line on my box were melted back. The Cable end is blackened. I go to the garage. The box there is nearly undamaged. One pin is slightly heat stressed (it's blue so it got hot, but did not melt off).

The flood cam is dead. It will no longer respond to X10 commands, no video. If you plug it into the wall, the lights just stay on forever. No response.

So...my question, has anyone else done this? Am I missing something? Should I just sell the rest of these and get something else? Is there something else like this?

Do I need to get a video isolator (I've used these on Huge security installations where I've used this guy:
http://www.criticalimaging.net/SR-700.htm ... by the way, I designed some of the electronics in that bad boy, and wrote the control code!)

(maybe my video capture card's ground is not floating as the TV's was?? Hence the Floodcam's ground is really nuetral as most X10 things are... so I did kill it??)?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

This is a tough one. I would first suspect a cabling problem, guessing a short somewhere. But I'm just not sure...

 

[drozwood90]

This is a tough one. I would first suspect a cabling problem, guessing a short somewhere. But I'm just not sure...

Thanks BSR. I've checked that last night. All seems good.

I did some research on the thing. Basically, the video output was not isolated, as X10 was FCC compliant due to using a RF layer to isolate everything. So, when I plugged in the TV, the TV must have been isolated and everything was fine. However, when I plugged this in to my PC, the PC must not have been isolated. As such, I dragged the camera from it's Common (Neutral as most X10 devices are) to the PC's common through the video card. BING, one dead camera.

Basically, had the camera been powered by a wall wart instead of directly off the AC line, my isolation layer would have been the floating Wall wart output, instead of hard to Neutral.

All because there wasn't a $0.50 cap. Oh well. Now I know.

I suppose I'll just sell the last working Flood Cam that I have as I don't want to risk killing my server.

--Dan

 

[CollinR]

You are better off with a decent camera and a seperate lamp, those are a bad combination to start with. All you get is constant moth motion and the camera will waste time adjusting to the massive lighting change when the flood kicks on. You really want 48" or more between the cam and a large light source like that.

 

[drozwood90]

You are better off with a decent camera and a seperate lamp, those are a bad combination to start with. All you get is constant moth motion and the camera will waste time adjusting to the massive lighting change when the flood kicks on. You really want 48" or more between the cam and a large light source like that.

Collin,

Any recomendation on a decent camera for the house? I'm only really aware of the ultra elite cameras for the security market (let's say $10K+ per camera). I design them =-)

--Dan

 

[CollinR]

I have some OEM bullets that I basically consider all purpose residential low light cameras, $120 each or 5 for $500.

600 TV lines of resolution and very low light sensitive, they don't need that flood light at all. A couple of small LV landscape lights is plenty for them.

 

[drozwood90]

I have some OEM bullets that I basically consider all purpose residential low light cameras, $120 each or 5 for $500.

600 TV lines of resolution and very low light sensitive, they don't need that flood light at all. A couple of small LV landscape lights is plenty for them.

How many lumins do they work down to? What is the F number of thier lens?

Thanks!

--Dan

 

[CollinR]

F 1.2 at 3.6mm fixed, it can be changed to other focal lengths but 3.6mm serves more residential "overview" purposes well. Also the 3.6mm isn't bad on the front porch or over gates to provide more detail where you need it. Often I use these as I said "all purpose" then I can come back with something else where specific duties are required.

The cam is like 3/4" diameter so you basically can't get a much better F.

Manufacturer claims .05 lux, however it dominates most of the .005 lux cameras.

As I am sure you know the Sony EX-View CCD puts a bunch of noise in the feed as it raises the gain to get the "low light" video. This uses the regular 1/3" Sony SuperHAD CCD.

I forgot to mention they are black and white cameras, as such they have no light filtering. That helps a bunch as these can use your electric stove as a source of illumination.


This camera does not have IR on it, as I am sure you know how well that effects the video. It will however as mentioned use any IR available as lighting, so add-on illuinators are a go.

 

[CollinR]

Oh I see, you have been in the thermal side of things. I sell Flir, but I would be open to your offerings. As you know these aren't the fast movers in the market place but I do have some military installations near me. I'm sure you also know thermal can't be beat if you have a very large open area to detect. Very cool stuff.

 

[ver0776]

I bought this low light camera rated at .0003 Lux.
http://www.supercircuits.com/index.asp?Pag...amp;ProdID=4185

I was hoping to cut power draw and get cleaner sharper images than I was getting with my color IR cameras. Sadly I no longer believe in low light at all now. Granted, this camera saw much better at night than any of my other cameras, but it was still pathetic. I consider low light unusable in my situation. Basically, I am starring at 8 cameras at night and with low light, mostly all I see is black, and for this I would be giving up my color in the daytime too.

For half the price of the cheapest solutions usually recommended here, I run 66+ feet IR CCD day/night color weatherproof cameras that light up the whole yard, clear to the street and in the day time, I have beautiful color. for under $60 each! Now at night, I noticed they seem a little grainier than the Swann $140 equavalents, but did I mention all these great features for under $60! and it is far brighter IR than the Swann.

Today, Geeks.com has these cameras on sale for $54.99!
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=OU...&cpc=VIDbsc

Try one and see, I think the camera is a absolute steal at this price and I have cameras sitting in drawers at 3 times that price because they suck. The only reason I would recommend against this camera is when the camera is mounted very close to the subject, they are too bright and will wash out a face at night, but rare situation, use a low light at the entry way and let it bask in the light of the other cameras.

(I am not hating the higher end recommendations, just always like to throw out the "Best bang for the buck" options that us normal people can afford. Several co-workers are now running these cheap cameras, if I had recommended a $120 camera they would be using nothing at all. I just ordered two more of these and are considering them my offical camera as over half of my system is using them now.)

Vaughn

 

[CollinR]

Sadly I no longer believe in low light at all now. Granted, this camera saw much better at night than any of my other cameras, but it was still pathetic.

Most and I mean by far and large MOST low light cameras aren't, they are marketing hype.


If you want to talk real low light drozwood90 can probably educate both of us, but he has been working on $10K-20K cameras. In contrast $120 isn't so bad, I call it cheap. To get the same level of performance from a color camera you are in for at least $350 if you get lucky with some decent chinese cam, $4-500 for it once it has been branded and brought into the US.


Here is an example of the BS specifications supplied by super curcuits.

I bought this low light camera rated at .0003 Lux.

1/3" Sony Ex-view Chip set
420 Lines of Resolution
0.0003 Low Light Rating

Well it appears it has that crap EX Veiw CCD chip I just mentioned as being crap. So that there tells me you will have a crap picture. All thats basically taking place is cranking up the gain, you can do that on most recorders no need to do it in the cam. when you crank the gain up you get noise, this noise basically overpowers your video feed.

Onto that crazy .0003 lux rating...

What is a lux?

Since I am in the US and so are by far most of my customers we prefer to use the term foot-candles, a foot-candle is very simple to quantify. It is the light from one conventional candle on a surface 1 foot away from the source. I like simple stuff.

1 foot-candle= ~10.75 lux

So doing some simple math .0003 / 10.75 = 2.7907E-05

WTF is that? Thats a camera that can read a piece of paper 1 foot away with the light source equal to 3 millionths of a single candle's light. Thats just plainly not possible. The specs are just bogus BS.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Collin;

Do you have a cheap source for IR illuminators. I mean, I used some at work for a remote underground location that work great, but they were also $600! Is there a cheap source for home use?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Also Collin. Maybe ponder the idea of a group buy for such a "utility" overall camera!?!?

 

[drozwood90]

Also Collin. Maybe ponder the idea of a group buy for such a "utility" overall camera!?!?

BSR, you can certainly make one using a group of IR LEDs...unless you need more distance...

--Dan

 

[CollinR]

Collin;

Do you have a cheap source for IR illuminators. I mean, I used some at work for a remote underground location that work great, but they were also $600! Is there a cheap source for home use?

Yes, to be best served take a snapshot of the area to be illuminated and PM it to me.

Also you caught me in a lie. I will sell an IR on the cam camera as an IR illuminator, I feel that doesn't count though as I never connect the video feed. Still sometimes it is cheaper to buy a camera with IR then to buy the IR alone. I don't know why, not my fault just the way it is.


This IR will be nowhere near as powerful as your $600 unit though it will be a fraction of the cost. Be careful around that thing, as you cannot see IR you won't squint or blink. Thats probably a 120v halogen powered badboy, it'll snowblind you in second and perminently blind you before you actually feel pain. This is totally unlike the UV from the sun, your pupils will stay dialated. It's much more dangerous then given credit, don't look into it.

Also Collin. Maybe ponder the idea of a group buy for such a "utility" overall camera!?!?

Well I don't want to spam the board with a bunch of group buys that nobody really buys. :lol: I will definately keep it under consideration, as it sits I have a good relationship with Dan and I don't want to botch that by acting a fool. I know I am probably conservative in my netiquette but conservative keeps friends.