ZoneMinder Forums

I have a very strange problem. (Again.)

I've just set up two ZM boxes at a remote site. One of them was working perfectly when I left last night and now the first 4 cameras show nothing but blue screens. I haven't checked the inputs since the site is over an hour away, so I called and had somebody check to make certain the inputs are connected to the coax, which they are. (The employees there are not happy about the cameras going in.) Strange that the last 4 cameras work, when these inputs are on the expansion board and the first four inputs, which are soldered directly to the capture card, do not. xawtv shows the same - blue screen on channel 0, picture on channel 1. Ideas?

The second box works fine for the first 4 inputs, however the last 4 show nothing but a red screen. This is much like the blue screen when there's no signal to the input, but red instead. (I've never seen this before.) When I disconnect one of the first 4 inputs, that monitor turns red as well. It's using the same Spectra-8 capture card as the first machine with an expansion board for the second set of 4 inputs. Everything is wired the same as the first and /etc/modules.conf is the same as far as card ID, options, etc. It's also using the same version of the bttv driver (0.9.15). xawtv shows a blue screen for the last 4 inputs, although I know that the cameras, power, and cabling are all fine because they work if I connect them to the other inputs.

I have remote access set up to these machines and have been playing with it all day today trying to figure out what's going on, but have had no success. Does anybody have any ideas of what I could try to fix the problem?


(I'm going to be on vacation starting in about a half hour, but will try to check in as often as I can get an internet connection. I should return on November 10 to commence bashing my head into a brick wall with this. )


I've got blue screens and red screens - I wonder if this means that I have purple (combination of blue & red) screens...

Nobody?

whats in your logs

Have checked to make sure no one pulled the power to those cams?
Seems very odd that only half the card is working and it's the half that uses the second input to each chip. I'd start looking for externel issues.

Regards,
Cordel

Well, went to the site today and found something very interesting. Instead of running a separate power cable for each camera, I used heavier gauge wire and pulled one power for each cluster of cameras, then split it as needed at the other end. The power supply box I found out must supply .5 amp to each of 9 terminals instead of 4.5 amp total as listed on the box. Therefore, wires that have 3 or 4 cameras hooked up to them are drawing 600 or 800 milliamp instead of the supplied 500. WARNING TO EVERYBODY - don't do this in your systems.

I still have no idea why the null signal input on one is blue and the other red, but I'm willing to let it go, as it seems to work fine when the cameras have enough power to run... (Here I was investigating kernel settings, card module parameters, etc, etc, etc and it turns out to be roughly equal to "it's not plugged in". Still can't explain why it worked when I left and quit working overnight though; I'd figure that it wouldn't work at all in this circumstance, but I guess I've seen stranger things.)

glad its sorted,
just a note some of the intruder kit we use is designed to allow for peak demand and is basically a thermal fuse. Will work for a few hours (days in the right conditions) if only just overloaded.

Bring aback fuses lol