CCTV Faults

[CompostCORNER]

Typical or what! lol. A few months ago, I installed a large CCTV system that comprised of a fair bit of wireless technology. Heres the job as I've been documenting it. Needs the last section adding though:- http://www.compostcorner.karoo.net/pat.html

Firstly, what do you guys think about wireless CCTV systems?

On site, we have around 10 Luminite 5.8Ghz video transmitters and of course 10 matching recievers. Worked fine until the hot weather. After a month of investigating and endless calls to technical, the video problems were traced down to the most unlikeliest circumstances. The site contains 4x8mtr towers and 3x8mtr wall posts all painted black. Well, at the customers request early in the installation, the wireless boxed transmitters and recievers were painted black from the standard IP65 enclosure colour. After many changes of units, the fault was traced after a squirt of 'Freeze it' and a little bit of experimenting later, we established the faulty video was entirely down to the boxes being painted black. The heat absorbtion was enough to make the units throw a wobbler. I've now adopted a policy of not allowing the customer dictate to me the decor of the equipment I install. Talk about being dead surprised about the cause of the fault. I'm sure one or two of you guys here wouldn't have thought such a little change would cause so much trouble.

Second ongoing fault of the day was with our M.E.L. wireless telemetry from the DM Digital Sprite 2. Certain days a couple of recievers stop working. On investigation, the unit has a strength meter built into the unit. It was on full strength for all recieving units. The 485 telemetry LED blinked away as we sent telemetry out to the unit but the camera didn't move. Both this fault and the above fault caused such a lot of remedial work that was all in vain. Physically moving the units thinking line of site was an issue, we even upgraded the antennas for hi-gain units. Still no joy. This Friday, using the tin of 'Freeze It', I blasted the PCB's of both units and telemetry resumed for about 10 minutes then went tits up again. So, heat again. lol.

The thing is, these boxes were not modified. They were installed as they came. no painting, no improvised fixing methods. I informed technical and asked for advice on a remedy. guess what??? It just so happens that these units were recalled for this very same fault so it looks like we can have them all replaced. We were told to contact Gardiner Security CCTV for technical information on these MEL products and in all the time we contacted them, they failed to notify us that our units were part of a duff batch. Not entirely Gardiners fault as I should have bypassed them and contacted MEL themselves a little earlier. So a couple of lessons learned there.

Tony