I am looking for advice on how to modulate several cameras to a 25 unit condo building. I know how to do the quad/sequencer/modulater stuff - what I am stumped on is how to tie it into the entire building. There is an equipment room in the basement with all the necessary wires in place. A cable hard line comes in from the street (I believe it is .500). There are taps in place with one RG6 feed to each unit in the building. There are no amplifiers - the hard line drives the entire building. Some units have digital cable boxes, some are just basic cable. My big questions are:

1. How to tie my feed into this setup to drive the entire building without (a) feeding the signal back out to the street and potentially messing up the cable company, and (b) get the correct and appropriate signal strength.
2. What channel(s) do I modulate to? How high do I have to be to stay away from the digital box signals?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

We use OnQ for all of our structured wiring, so this is what I would recommend.

1. Take main cable line coming into the building into a 1x4 Passive Video Module (364222-01)

2. Take two outputs of the Passive Video Module into two separate 2x16 Enhanced Video Module into a (364522-01). These Enhanced Video Modules have a channel modulation input that combines the signal and sends it along with the cable.

3. Take the ouput of you channel modulator (364458-01) and split it using a coupler. You will have to purchase a bracket (364457-01) to fit it to the structured panel or wire tie it

4. Run both sides of the coupler into the channel modulation intput.

5. Now connect each condo to the Enhanced Video Module.

When faced wiht the task of a digital cable box you must use an amplifier that will allow two way communication with a cable box. Also you must use a digital cable bypass kit (364557-01). Or use a splitter that will spearate the modulation and the cable signal, run the cbale into the cable box, run the cable box to your TV viw AV Inputs, and run the channel modulaion into the RF input. Also you should be able to fit all of the OnQ stuff into a 42" Enclosure (363476-01). You will also need a low pas filter to nothc out wherever you wan the channel modulation to be; I would suggest a 5-560 MHz low pass to blok out channels above 80. This will aloow it to work with or with out the cable box. Call OnQ Tech support if you have questions. I wrote praise about their customer support in a previous article. They are a great comapny to work with. We just started a home that has 162 cable outlets, channel modulation, DSS, and Internet and the client wants all of them activated! Big job and good luck.

www.ontech.com
www.onqhome.com
1-800-321-2343

Mike

Exactly how many cameras do you need to modulate???

You need to get a channel map from the cable company. Just because you find a channel you may thin is free it may be transmitting info such as Video on Demand or the channel guideor the cable modem. Every cable company is different and if you put a modulated signal on a channel sending info you will lose those features that were being sent on that channel.

Do all of the televisions in the buildings have 125 channel tuners??? If so I would start with channel 125 and work backwards until you have all cameras assigned to a channel. There needs to be at least 1 channel inbetween (ex 125, 123, 121, etc.).
Again this depends on the channel map from the cable company.

You can install a low pass filter as suggested above but again, you need a channel map to know what channels they are using. If I were to use the one suggested above none of my customers would have cable modem service, or channel guides on their digital boxes.

Did I mention you need a channel map from the cable company?????

Post how many cameras and I'll get you a list of what you'll need and how to hook it up. Granted there are several ways to do this so feel free to follow anybodies suggestion.

Robbie S

Well, If your Condo Building is like most, then youve got one feed thats being split at best, on each floor... Youve got to do the modulation at the head...

More than likely you'll need a QAM modulator (Like the cable companies use to turn their satellite feeds into Digital channels)

This is pretty common, you should probobly call the cable company to find out what they recommend. It may take a while to get the right person.....

Inthis kind of enviroment, you are not going to want to bypass every cable box in the building so people can tune the lobby cam on their TV. Its best to get an available channel from the Cable company and do it directly onto their boxes.

All good advice. This will be messy and not easy.

Mike's answer would work great if not for the fact that you have no right to get into the cable box itself and do anything with the splitters inside there. If you do indeed get to the right person at the cable company, they might be nice enough to engineer a connection for you to feed modulated signals into. They have an interest in you NOT doing that, though, because they have to guarantee service to get their money, and they have no way of controlling what you pump into their system.

What you could do would be to add a splitter, wired backwards so it will mix instead of split, at EACH tenant's output from the cable box. At that point the wiring belongs to and is the responsibility of the building, not the cable company. You would mix the modulated channels with the cable signal at that point. This means you have to have a HEFTY modulated channel level, because you will have to split it 25 ways to be able to add it to each unit this way.

The cable boxes will probably not tune into your modulated channel because they are programmed by the cable company as to which channels to tune. There is (well, WAS) a clumsy way around this, which is to separate the high channels and the low channels and route the high channels around the cable box. The TV then goes to Channel 3 for the cable box, but the TV (not the cable box) goes to the actual modulated channel number. This method worked before digital cable, but it might not work any more as the high/low separator might keep digital cable channels from getting into the box.

If you use filters to remove channels, your tenants will be deprived of some of their service. It might even be illegal for you to do that.

the only way to do it since the advent of digital cable is to run a separate line to each tv, not very practical. But the bandwidth used by cable companies definately takes up all available channels that cable rdy sets receive. Modulating the signal would only cause trouble calls and the cable company would not want you to inject into there system. You can ask them to provide a separate IF feed for the condo and have the cable boxes address that feed. If the condo only has satellite....no problem

Current number of cameras: 2 (I may add 2 more and run them thru a quad in order to put all four images on one feed I could then modulate). I have no idea what equipment is in the 25 units (cable ready TVs, cable boxes, cable modems, etc. I highly suspect all of the above). All cable distribution is done from the basement within a box that contains taps from the main hard line coming from the street. This main line is not small - about 1" in diameter and all the taps cascade off of it (each tap handles 4 feeds). I think a conversation with the cable company is in order (we all know how helpful they can be.....).

By any chance is there dual coax running to each unit?

Mike

Frank White, and thats all I got to say about that!

If your tied up with Cedia, you know who he is. Find him and ask for his oppinion.

I was at CEDIA but did not take any classes that he taught (too much to do in too little time...). Thanks for the lead .

Just another thought, how about a wireless experiment?

Is the building brick, wood, steel or stucco? Maybe you could try building a portable reciever with a battery and a small LCD and take it to as many units as possible to see if the signal will reach.

Yet another thought, In the demarc, the Condo association could pay for internet service and upload the camera images to a server, similar to what panasonic offers, and the owners could view the cameras through their internet accounts.

OMNI LYNX makes a professional modulator that will provide very narrow channel injection. I would bet that the cable company will demand that you use one of these or a similar grade model for thew injection. Get the cable company involved in the installation and let them deal with all of the combining and distribution amplification.

what is your objective? is this for access control?

Yes, the two cameras are for access control. They are pin-hole cameras located inside the access control boxes at the car gate and pedestrian gate. If someone calls an apartment unit from one of these boxes the homeowner could tune the TV to some channel and see who it is.

is it an audio only system now with lock control? and would it be possible to run cables if needed? you may be better off going with an access control with a video phone. you cant assume that everyone has a tv cuz its quite possible that people dont. and it sounds like a hassle to have to turn on your tv to see who it is. I retrofitted a few systems like this and was able to use existing wire in a few cases and had to run a video feed to others.one of them was a 50+unit buildingwith front and back door access. if there is access above and below you dont need to home run everything.you can run it all to a central location on each level and feed it from there.belive me when i say you would like to keep the cable company out of it if at all possible. Look into it.