Surveillance systems (home CCTV)

My bro has this thing about CCTV at home so if someone decideds to steal any of our stuff they will be caught maybe. The problem is that the cameras are an awesome 640x480 which kinda sucks, it just means if someone does steal anything the picture is so crap that you dont know who it is anyway.

Currently on his second lowrex Security system. Video only type thing. the first one was USB and only done 30fps for the first 10seconds of recording could handle a few cameras, 4 wired ones and some wireless ones. problem is he wants many cameras doing 30fps all the time, recording or not. fair enough surely there is a system that can handle that, so after finding out that the USB version sucked bad, took it back and got it replaced with a slightyly more expensive PCI version, which you would think would have enough bandwidth in the PCI slot to handle 2 cameras at 30fps, but you'd be wrong.

seems that when 2 cameras are in the card. and it is recording or just viewing both without recording, that you would be able to get the 30fps. well ya can't for some reason. it could be the speed of the PCI slot that is slowing it dows and there is not enough piping to handle the stream of data from the cameras. How much data can raw data from a camera that does 640x480 need. I would'nt think much but im obviously wrong. even still, with PCI-e out there could they possibly make a freaking system that didnt slow down

The PC that the CCTV card is residing is : 3.06Ghz P4, 2GB ram, ATI x800GTO and a 160GB HDD. so its not top of the line but it is also not crap either. sure there are faster systems out there. but still, this machine should be able to handle viewing 2 video streams from a video capture card at the oh so low resoloution of 640x480, even if it is raw data and not compressed.although the software that records everything does have the ability to compress everything and even make backups in triplicate.

In this day and age of such awesomeness as one can have home security at albeit a lowish price. the systems in question cost around 800-1000$ which one would think would give you a product that does what it says. on the box they mention that this system can do 30fps and handle 9 cameras. one would assume that because that is the only mention of it that it can have 9 cameras hooked up at the same time and be able to do 30fps per camera. It could be that i am just stupid and that it actually means that it can do 30fps over 9 cameras. which would be utterly pointless. as when the camera does start recording because is seen something on the screen, that it does not actualy record anything because of the apalling frame rate. Which is then useless because you dont know how stole your stuff, so in turn the manufacturer of the CCTV system you are using has just been able to steal your money beause you bought a crappy product.

Fortunatly here, if the product in question does not do what it was designed to do then they are not allowed to sell it. which is cool. they can still sell it else where though.

Most of this dont make sense but meh, if anyone know of any decent and cheap CCTV systems put one in the comments, maybe i can get a decent system that does that is advetised.

Wireless Keyboard, to use or not

I have been using a wireless Keyboard and Mouse set since the start of the year. Thus far I have used 1 set of batteries every 2 weeks on the mouse. which is all good, since I have 6 rechargable AA's for that, the Keyboard on the otherhand takes 2xAAA batteries and have since lasted 6 months, which I am rather suprised with, although never having used a wireless combo before, this could be normal.

Since the mouse has a light which turns off and on all the time, it would use more battery power than the keyboard which has no lights on it, just uses power whenever a key is pressed - I would assume.

This will not be long as don't really have much to say.

So is it worth getting a wireless combo so that there are no wires attached to the devices. As a gamer I would say yes, but always have charged batteries handy as the mouse could die during a gaming session, could be annoying at a lan or something. not so much for the keyboard. just remember how long they last and when they were changed.

Also really useful for all those people whom love to keep a really clean desk space, as no cables means no mess / eye sore trailing to the back. Although made redundant if you have a Keyboard and mouse draw.

Tis all I have for now. Rather bored as mentioned a while back. will hopefully soon be doing something fun and worthwhile, maybe carpentry, cabinet making and so on.