No CCTV Sunday #23 Happy Chinese New Year

Gong Xi Fa Cai !!!

Our very own world lion dance champ



the naked lion

Jimmy Choo's Sandals?

The other day a rather well-dressed affluence looking lady came to our CCTV outlet to claim warranty for her CCTV cameras.

Our technician advised her that those cameras were not from us.

She could not produce the invoice but insisted that those cameras were from us.

I approached her, picked up one of her cameras, looked for our warranty sticker on the camera which I had found none.

I kindly told her, "Ma'am, we can tell if a sandals was Jimmy Choos."





I must admit I was rude. Guilty as charged.

Destined to Fail

Some CCTV systems were badly designed or deployed, it is destined to fail.




It is sad to see some arrogant CCTV installers heading for trouble as their CCTV designs are faulty. Most of the time we can see it coming but not many of those installers will take our advice.

Once the cable is laid and equipment purchased, there is no turning back.

Firefox DVR

Some Mozilla Firefox die hard fans, for whatever reasons they just refuse to use Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE).

They said the browser is unfriendly and not safe.

But when it comes to Internet remote monitoring function for Digital Video Recorder (DVR), those Firefox users used to have no choice but to use IE as older generation DVR supports only IE.


DVR Internet remote monitoring with IE Browser




Nowadays there are DVRs that support Firefox browser. One of those is TANDER 3000 series DVRs.


TANDER DVR Internet remote monitoring with Firefox Browser




Not only the DVR suports Firefox but it supports other browsers as well.


TANDER DVR Internet remote monitoring with Google Chrome Browser.




TANDER DVR Internet remote monitoring with Safari Browser




TANDER 3000 series DVRs also supports mobile devices like Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian OS phones.

One BB and Firefox user happily call his newly deployed TANDER DVR as Firefox DVR.

Workers Caught on Camera

It doesn't matter if your workers were white-collar or blue-collar, It is wise to have CCTV cameras monitoring them.


A MACQUARIE stockbroker, David Kiely being caught live on television looking at a series of near-nude snaps of supermodel Miranda Kerr. (Thanks Kenny)




A shell station worker had a cigarette break while working.

Simple Solution

Few months ago, a factory owner complained to me that a CCTV installer had quoted him dearly for deploying a cctv camera at his factory's guard house to monitor the incoming and outgoing vehicles.

The guard house is 30 meters away from the factory building with tar road in between.

To pull a cable from the factory building to the guard house is no easy task, its involve the expensive water resistant armoured cable, hacking of the road, power and lightning surge protection and traffic obstruction during the cabling job.

Eventually the factory owner had adopted my idea which is cheap and hassle free; to deploy a box camera with a lens at the factory building which can zoom in the guard house entrance.

This experience reminded me of a NASA story.

In the 60s NASA had invested billions of dollars to make American astronauts first on the moon.

During the journey the astronauts need to use pens. Ordinary pens can not function in zero gravity as ink needs gravitational pull to move from pen to page, so NASA invested over $1 million to design a special space pen that works in weightless conditions.

At the same time, the Russians astronauts opted for a simpler, cheaper solution; pencil.

Great solution does not has to come at high price. It is often the cheapest solution that works best.

Apple iPad vs Amazon Kindle

This morning one IP camera prospect called to ask the differences between IQeye IQ511 and Arecont Vision AV1310.



I jokingly explained to him that it is like Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle.


Steve Jobs with his new toy, iPad.


Jeff Bezos with Kindle