HA cameras / Idratek

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Aha ... thanks, a full camera set-up looks to be expensive, but I'm
thinking I should make provision for later fit ...

Going back to the Idratek, I was wondering about current monitoring ...
I know Comfort do a suitable 'board, with coil through which to feed the
cable to be monitored, and I would imagine others would also be
available, but 'not sure how this could be connected to Idranet ...
similarly a frequency meter / counter ... and pattern recognition /
neural-nets (for better trend-analysis / curve-fitting / elimination of
rogue data, for example) ... no doubt the Idratek guys have such
subjects on their to-do list !

There are a couple of references to radio links on the Idratek web-site,
presumably in connection with the remote operation of garage-doors &
gates (radio key-fobs being the usual thing in such cases), but I've no
idea how the connection to Idranet would be made ... ?   Maybe they go
via an X-10 device - 'though that might not be a very robust approach
... ?   Similarly, links to PDAs are mentioned ... 'wonder if that
includes IR, with the Idranet acting as a conduit, between PDA & PC ?
Maybe Bluetooth & WiFi are also on their list ? !

Questions, questions !

Chris



David Gumbrell wrote:

> On 2/5/06, Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> >'must say 'am a bit hazy ...

> Hi Chris,
>
> You would not be connecting the cameras to the Idranet cabling. You'd
> install a multi-camera card into your Cortex PC, in the same way as
> for Geovision. Each cable run from your individual cameras then
> connects to the camera card in the PC. The camera runs have to be
> dedicated end-to-end runs, they cannot use the "branching"
topology
> that the Idranet can.
>
> Cortex will "manage" the camera card and provide the motion
> detection/capture features in the same way that the Geovision software
> would for a Geovision installation. The advantage is that the camera
> activities can then be more tightly coupled to the other features of
> the Cortex system -- for example, integrating into alarm
> arm/disarming, sending messages or announcements on detections,
> turning lights on or plyaing sounds on detections etc etc.
>
> Remember - the Idranet is using a proprietary protocol that happens to
> run over CAT-5, it could also run on a 2-pair cable (if you dropped
> the audio). It is *not* Ethernet. It is *not* TCP/IP.
>
> I'm not sure of whether Cortex can support IP cameras or not -- I've
> not looked at it that much since I have a Zoneminder based setup
> already running and am still busy with other stuff  -- that's really a
> question for the Idratek guys.
>
>
> -- Gumby