Re: pir false alarms

[Matt Ion <soundy106@xxxxxxxxx>]

Roland Moore wrote:
> That is not nearly the same thing. No one suggested disabling anything. The
> customer ended up in a better condition not worse.

You don't know that.  I don't know that.  The OP doesn't know that, and neither
does his installer.  He may have ended up with the problem fixed, or he may have
ended up with a band-aid and the problem will reappear tomorrow.  From what I've
read, my bet is the latter.  If the installer had done the job properly, there
would be no question.

> A MUX? Unless you do prisons who the hell still uses a MUX for anything? Or
> a switch for that matter. Your shop or the dumpster at your shop should be
> waist deep in those things by now from pulling them out.

That would be lovely.  I'd love to go into every customer's site and shitcan
their MUXes and VCRs and shelves full of tapes on the spot and drop in shiny new
DVRs, and even roundfile their analog cameras in exchange for nice hi-res IP
cameras while I'm at it.

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to bankroll that little project myself, and
convincing most of them to do so is generally futile, especially the oil
companies where the individual site owners expect corporate to pay for it all,
and corporate has no intention of upgrading anything outside their own long-term
schedule.

> At least your MUX post is a good example of one thing. And that is why all
> that old crap is going away. Way too many points of failure, and ones that
> you can only watch on an analog monitor at that.
> The new stuff would send you an email and you'd know before you even got
> there (or the customer noticed) what kind of failure you had (camera, power,
> or network). I like it!

I *love* it.  Half the problems can be fixed remotely from the comfort of my
nice big office chair.

Alas, making the change is not up to me.


>
> "Matt Ion" <soundy106@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:Xhtah.376316$1T2.266956@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>>Roland Moore wrote:
>>
>>>I agree.
>>
>>Alright, so the next time a customer complains that their MUX is beeping,
>>and I find the cause is a video-loss alarm caused by a camera being out, I
>>guess the fix is to just go into the MUX menu and disable the VL alarm.
>>
>>
>>>"Nomen Nescio" <nobody@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>news:3149630eb734f9ca60442b81e8dce34d@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>
>>>
>>>>Matt Ion said:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>My take is, the installer who's billing him has failed to correctly
>>>>>diagnose the problem and has merely treated the symptoms, and should not
>>>>>be paid for an
>>>>>incomplete job.
>>>>
>>>>The installer's job is to make the false alarms stop, not to determine
>>>>the
>>>>precise cause of those false alarms.  In other words, replacing
>>>>relatively
>>>>low-cost equipment like PIRs is often cheaper than making multiple
>>>>service
>>>>visits to try and nail down the exact reason the substandard PIR went
>>>>off.
>>>>
>>>>If the customer is in a city that charges for false alarms, it's even
>>>>more
>>>>important to get the problem fixed immediately.  In this case, replacing
>>>>the sensors made the false alarms stop.  Now, if he had installed three
>>>>new
>>>>dual-tecs and the false alarms continued, I would expect the tech to make
>>>>a
>>>>healthy adjustment in the bill, and spend more time figuring out what was
>>>>really going on.
>>>>
>>>>The cost of the parts vs. the cost of troubleshooting labor is what
>>>>counts.
>>>>I gather you work mostly on more expensive video components, where it
>>>>makes
>>>>good economic sense to spend more time troubleshooting.  With a PIR,
>>>>weigh
>>>>the cost of the part against one additional service call, and it just
>>>>makes
>>>>more sense to change the damn thing.
>>>>
>>>>- badednov
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>