BFRO Remote Monitoring Equipment

Last update: 21-Jun-2001

 CAMERAS & TRANSMITTERS

X-10 Night Watch Surveillance Camera
STATUS: Installed on location; not in use

  • $49

  • B/W with sensitivity to .5 lux

  • CMOS imager (does not pick up near-IR light)

  • Hard-wired to based unit; 60' cord length 

We thought this unit would work great, but it turns out that it (as well as *all* the cameras at X10.com) use CMOS imagers, which do not pick up any near-IR light at all. This camera is useless with an IR illuminator. As it is now, even with a bright porch light outside on all night, it picks up very little. Images we obtained at night were very noisy at that light level. For these reasons, we won't be worrying about any other cameras from X10.

Ramsey Electronics Mini-Peeper CCD Video Camera
STATUS: Installed on location hooked up to VCR

  • $70
  • B/W with apparently sensitivity to slightly better than .5 lux
  • CCD imager (picks up near-IR light)

    Unfortunately, this unit came with an unprotected circuit board--not at all weather-resistant. Thom enclosed it in a weather-proof box with a window in the front. This unit was ordered as an interim solution because the ExtremeCCTV camera was taking so long to get in. It has worked fairly well, but with limited viewing range. The built-in microphone has proved useful in several situations for picking up vocalizations, though still with a fairly low signal-to-noise ratio.

ExtremeCCTV EX25S304
STATUS: Installed on location and hooked up to both the computer and the TV/VCR

  • $357 + $111 for the power supply (educator's discount included in pricing)
  • B/W and optimized for IR viewing at better than .1 lux
  • Enclosed in weather-proof housing

    This is the biggie we waited long for. As several dealers had indicated, ExtremeCCTV does seem to offer the highest quality monitoring equipment available on the market. Image has been excellent with this camera, due in large part to the ExtremeCCTV IR illuminator used together with it. The camera is currently located almost 100 yards from the residence where the computer & TV/VCR are. The video feed is carried via buried high-quality coax cable. The power feed is also via a buried power cord.

Ramsey Electronics Video Transmitter Cube
STATUS: Unclear

  • $90
  • Transmits on UHF channel 59 up to 300'
  • 0.07 lbs. and 1" x 1" x 1"
  • 20 mW power draw; 9 volt battery connecter

    This transmitter will likely be used in conjunction with either the Mini-Peeper to transmit from a clearing near the residence where BF activity has occurred in the past. The problem of power supply is still to be solved. 

 ILLUMINATORS

Ramsey Electronics IR Illuminator Kit
STATUS: Three in place on location; paired together with Ramsey Mini-peeper camera

  • $25 each
  • Illumination range is approx. 10' (3m)

    All three illuminators, each essentially nothing more than a circuit board with IR LEDs, are now mounted inside a weather-proof box. 

ExtremeCCTV UF100 Illuminator
STATUS: Installed on location; used in conjunction with the ExtremeCCTV EX25S304 camera.

  • $437 + $10 for the power supply (educator's discount included in pricing)
  • Small, low-voltage
  • Weather-proof
  • Uses quartz halogen bulbs with bulb life at greater than 8000 hours
  • Illumination range is approx. 120' (40m)
  • Power supply has photo sensor to turn it off during daylight hours

    Has been doing an excellent job of illuminating the area in front of the camera. Seems to run rather hot--occasionally raindrops hitting it will vaporize causing a mist cloud to pass in front of the camera and trigger image captures. Also apparently glows slightly red at night. Bright enough IR output to even illuminate raindrops at close range well enough to trigger occasional image captures.

 RECORDING & CAPTURE DEVICES

Thom's Camcorder
STATUS: On location

This is the portable device the residents have been using for informal video & audio recording.

Monitoring Computer
STATUS: On location & actively monitoring only nocturnal activity on the ExtremeCCTV EX25S304 camera.

Capturing & uploading video frame stills fine. Initially, software had problems with period auto-upload to the BFRO site. Not using this to capture audio capability at the moment for a couple of reasons. First, the computer is already pushing its processing limits just monitoring the video feed at the video capture resolution we currently have it at. Second, audio capture uploads are much larger in file size and can take much longer to upload.

Vaughn's Combination TV / VCR
STATUS: On location; hooked up to the ExtremeCCTV EX25S304 camera

Is used to capture 8hrs of normal video footage at a time off a given camera. A&A are running it only when bigfoot activity is clearly apparent in and around the camera location. They manually change the video tapes and review them on their own VCR later. Quite a bit of work, but for the times when activity is clearly taking place close to the residence, the possibility of capturing some real video footage as opposed to only still images easily justifies the effort involved.

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