cctv woes

Hi folks. I am presently trying to sort out our village hall cctv. the system as was consisted of one largish outdoor camera of indeterminate make and 7 indoor cameras with the name ob sys on them. All seem to be monochrome and none have IR illuminators. The old d v r had given up the ghost and would no longer record. It had 4 input channels and one output channel (sound and vision) to a monitor. Only two of the dvr inputs were used as there were two scanning multiplexers name ob sys on them too with 4 camera inputs each. One camera on each multiplexer does not work so the scan was disabled and only the front entrance and back entrance were actually observed. Unlike the modern cameras which have a 2.1 / 5mm 12 volt power connector, a BNC video connector and an RCA sound connector for plug and extend connections the old cameras have 4 pin and shroud (5 wire) moulded on connection plugs with lo-o-ng leads between camera and multiplexer. The moulded plugs resemble s-video connectors. To cut a long story short I have bought a new 1Tb 8 channel dvr to allow full individual camera control/recording, with 8 BNC video iinputs, 8 RCA sound inputs. Today installed it in place of the defunct unit and connected it to the old monitor. I have one new camera installed and working and for the short term connected the multiplexer outputs to two of the available 8 new inputs. The old cameras which are still working I hope to use with the new dvr but to do so I need to fathom out what each wire in the cable to the camera does. These are red, black, yellow, translucent and copper braid. Google has not been my friend with this as the cameras and multiplexers are old and must be obsolete. So - is anyone familiar with these beasts and knows what the colours signify (presumably red black is power)? Also is the old camera signal likely to be compatible with what the new dvr expects to see? Sorry for the length of the question John

Reply to
cynic
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Hi John,

To make it easier for someone to read and to get a reply break the block up with a full line space between small paragraphs. That way if you are making several points/questions it's easier for a respondent to inject answers after each point.

Hope that helps with any future posts. Personally I skip straight past such a big block of test without reading more than a line as I find it impossible to follow. :¬(

Cheers Pete

Reply to
www.GymRatZ.co.uk

Probably mini-DINs, bottom 3 entries on page

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I don't think you can presume anything about the colour codes. It's quite possible the system makers buy in the leads pre-terminated in bulk.

Opening the camera hopefully you will see + and - for power, then you have a video and an audio wire, with screen for video and audio ground.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Connect one of the cameras up to the original DVR and use a multimeter to confirm the power and ground connections, voltage and polarity.

Perhaps you will find red is +ve and black is dc ground, so that only leaves two wires to play with as you can safely assume the braid is the signal ground. The translucent will be the video I should think, and did you say these had a microphone? The yellow perhaps.

Reply to
Graham.

yellow is usually video would go for traslucent as audio, at first guess

PS2 connectors, as in P.C. keyboard connectors appeared on a few cheapo cctv systems.

Cheers Adam

Reply to
Adam Aglionby
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This is typical of cheapo cameras. Black -V Red +V just test the remaining 2 for video . There may or may not be a built in microphone. Al

Reply to
Allan Mac

Apart from the braid being signal ground... B-)

Unless you can find something "authorative" on the web, just model numbers are sometimes more productive than maker and model or maker and camera etc. Opening up one of the cameras and tracing out what goes where is the safest and best bet and may well be the quickest.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Connecting them up and measuring the DC and AC voltage on each wire relative to the copper screen and black wire would be my preferred approach. You can probably figure out video and audio lines by tickling the bare wire with a fine conductor. Mains hum and nasty scratching sound on the audio glitch of noise on the video. A video signal should show up as an AC voltage (under a volt rms) if you have a dvm to hand.

Likely that video will be yellow (it often is) but don't make any assumptions. The other way would be to connect each output pin of the camera in turn to a known good video input and see if it behaves. You aren't looking for a perfect picture here just an indication of which line carries the video feed and the power lines and polarities.

If you are in luck the new kit will also supply the right power to the cameras otherwise you may need an extra wall wart or six.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Yellow is usually video, white audio (translucent ~= white?)

Avpx

Reply to
The Nomad

The camera is a glued together seam assembly but has a label model obs sys mono. Power consumption 2.4 w and made in Korea. I was hoping someone knew the beast but it looks like a measuring job is going to be needed. Thanks for the suggestions everyone

Reply to
cynic

That or open up whatever they're plugged into at the other end... (noting OP's comment about cameras being glued together)

Reply to
Jules Richardson

An update - having broken open a non-functional camera I can report the screen wire is a common 0 volts return, the red is 12 volt positive supply, translucent is video signal, yellow is audio, and black is a pir motion sensor output. The new video only cameras are wired using translucent and screen for the video and red + black for power. Hope this helps someone else out there.

Reply to
cynic

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