Hi guys.
A customer wants a camera put in the birthing room of his horse stables so that he can monitor a horse that is soon to deliver.
The stable is about 450' from the house. There may be a vacant 2" conduit from house to stable. Will check that out on friday.
I am installing a wireless router in the stable office on Friday for internet, (modem is located in the stable office) and he already has internet service in the house (modem in the house).
What are your thoughts on using a wireless network camera vs. hardwiring? He has an apple laptop at the house so was thinking about wireless. Any thoughts on a camera, and the setup? Thanks...

450' feet is a fairly long run for composite video, but it can be done.

In most cases, I'd advocate doing a conventional hardwired system, but this could be one example where wireless IP might make sense.

we use NVT stuff when we have to go long distance

www.nvt.com

hope this helps

Thanks AHEM. If there is no conduit from stable to house, wireless will be the only way so far as budget.
Any other thoughts?
I haven't done any IP cameras yet.

The concern about wireless over IP is going to be bandwidth. The higher the resolution, and the more FPS will result in progressively larger packet sizes, which could very well prove to be a log jam in their network, and other network traffic will progressively add latency to the video transfer.

This is an area where the conventional, analog, composite video signal will outperform IP cameras. I'd ask the customer what his/her expectations are as far as video quality and capture rate. If he/she's looking for full motion, live video then IP (wireless or wired) is going to be a dissapointing option.

Look into the Panasonic IP cameras ( I think Fred knows about them...) They would be perfect for this application, since they have internet in both locations. The bigger one has remote pan/zoom - really cool.

Good luck.

most of the decent security distributors have cctv specialists you can ask. There are several long-distance wireless IR cameras (up to 2 miles) if you have line of sight. I forget the company names but the distributors should know.

The answer is,

what does your customer want to do? If they are interested in being able to monitor Silver from a remote location, ip makes total sense. If they want to pan and tilt and zoom, ip makes total sense. Panasonic came up with a device to plug into their ip camera system that also allows composite output with remote control, so you could establish preset zoom/camera angles and easily access accordingly.

if the guy is a cheap skate, you certainly could use moderate priced video baluns and send a signal down cat 5 from stable to house and simply monitor the picture.

I'd push for fancy, because he's got the dough.

IIRC from some Homelogic training, Panasonic makes a pretty inexpensive ip cam with Pan and tilt, just no zoom. Under $200, model 110 sumn sumn (lots of help huh?):)

Thanks all.
What I am thinking is to hardwire to the router in the stable that has it's own modem, and then he can view it from his house which has it's own modem and router. Does this make sense? Pan, tilt, zoom isn't important. One camera placed high in the stable should cover it. The stable that the horse is in for birthing is only about 12'X12'.
Do you think I could get a quality pic using this approach? Thanks guys/gals

Fred, I'm looking at the panny BL-c10A or the KX-HCM110A. This barn/stable is not heated during the winter. Will the camera hold up to the freezing temps? Is there a housing I can buy for it? If anyone has any input on either of these cams let me know as I'm trying to put this together for the A.M. Thanks

I looked at another job today. A furniture store. They want 4 cameras, with network capability, and a DVR recorder. Suggestions? It must be my week for cameras..

I have used the greyfox system in a commercial enviroment with great success. The IP server piece works very well and you just tie it into any computer, set up your addresses and go. Can see the cameras remotely, just can't pan/tilt/zoom. The cameras are set up for cold weather applications. All you need to run is a single cat5 to each camera.

please remember that video over ip is awfull at best and unexceptable at worse.... video over ip even the best pelco , honeywell or toshiba is choppy and kinda pixalated. then your upstream from the stable will be bad as well.

the video server will eat up a ton of the available upsrtream bandwidth. most cable modems have a max of 380 megs upstream even though they have like 2 gigs on download.

best image quality will be standard analog camera with ballum.

hope that helps

ed

Thanks guys. The pic quality is that bad?