Question:
Hey all, as U can see I am a “newb” here. Been lurking for a few days reading all the excellent info and finally decided to register and voice my interest in possibly changing careers.
At the moment I am “self-unemployed”, by that I mean by my own choice. I think I am going through my mid-life crisis, I love computers and IT but want to do something new now, I love to drive so decided to look into the trucking industry and see what is offered.
I have read the “High tech trucking” thread as well as the “A trainers tale continues” thread very interesting and informative to say the least. I can relate to the high tech trucking thread as I have been using a GPS and laptop on my vacations for years, I use both DeLorme and MS Streets and trips, I prefer DeLorme as it is easier on my eyes and I like the layout better, but I own them both so I load ‘em up. I use a GPS on my vacations as I never plan on heading anywhere particular when go out, I just go where my car decides it wants to go (Mostly out west as I live in KY). I use the GPS to find food, hotels or whatever, I guess I am mostly lost all the time but that is part of the adventure for me.
I also read in one thread somewhere that one guy used a web cam or two to monitor the outside of his rig when he is in the back resting, believe it or not I built a small PC for my ex-company-owner’s friend to mount in his truck with 4 CCTV cams to monitor both sides of his rig (front and back/night and day) while he drives or parked, he was in an accident and said he was railroaded, was not his fault etc., now he has video to back him up in case it happens again. That is not a biz plug for me, I am not here to try and make money just to get info, just thought it was weird hardly anybody else uses equipment like that now-a-days.
In time I will ask a few questions of you nice folk if I can not find the answers using the search feature, I will make a few comments in threads I have knowledge in like the “high tech trucking” and others with computer related questions.
Anybody in need of any PC or digital surveillance help feel free to ask away, I will do my best to try and fit in even though this is a totally different world than the one I have lived in for ten or so years..
BTW, I could not think of a NIC to use here so used my game related NIC, I am neither a woman, crippled nor a granny in case anybody was wonderin’..

Answer:
I also read in one thread somewhere that one guy used a web cam or two to monitor the outside of his rig when he is in the back resting, believe it or not I built a small PC for my ex-company-owner’s friend to mount in his truck with 4 CCTV cams to monitor both sides of his rig (front and back/night and day) while he drives or parked, he was in an accident and said he was railroaded, was not his fault etc., now he has video to back him up in case it happens again. That is not a biz plug for me, I am not here to try and make money just to get info, just thought it was weird hardly anybody else uses equipment like that now-a-days.
That was me....I'm the FEMALE Drvr that posted that. -->
Anybody in need of any PC or digital surveillance help feel free to ask away
How much would you charge to build me one of those small PCs with 4 CCTV cams?
Feel free to email me at rokki1p@yahoo.com

Answer:
Those CCTV systems sound interesting, would come in handy in alot of situations from truckstops to backing into alleyways.

Answer:
It would be interesting to find a way to hook 3-4 web cams up to a laptop..

Answer:
Sounds like you have a great bit of knowledge and at least if the truckin' thing don't pan out you wont starve.
But that GPS and street finder stuff is all well and good, but take into account there are a lot of streets and places a big truck cant go.
for that youll need to bounce your route off a motor carrier road atlas.
Good Luck and hope it works out for you.
Theres a lot of good folks here that will give you good advice. It may not always be what you wanna here, but its mostly factual. read and heed.
Ike -->
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
Albert Einstein

Answer:

How much would you charge to build me one of those _small PCs with 4 CCTV cams?_
Feel free to email me at _rokki1p@yahoo.com_
Tell ya what, I will give you my digital surveillance hardware source and all info needed to build one yourself, that cool..?? I can be persuaded to build, install and service them if needed but that is not my goal on this board.
This will be a long one so I hope you have some free time to go over all this stuff.. This info will be the “in a nutshell” variety, if you are totally gun-ho about needing one of these jobbies in your rig or home I will provide prices and places to purchase all the hardware needed to build one.
I get the surveillance cards from www.pcsurveillance.net, some cams as well if what he has in stock will suit my needs. I have been “away” from work for almost five months now so I doubt I can still get hardware from him as a reseller..
For this rig I used a small PC barebones unit called a shuttle, it is about the size of a shoebox, it had two expansion slots and an AGP port, just enough to do what I needed it to do. Power requirements can range anywhere form 500 watts to over 1000 watts so you would need a very good quality inverter, one solely for the DVR (Digital video recorder) alone would be a VERY good idea..!! The wattage I mentioned will be what the unit will need to consume to operate, power usage solely depends on what type of hardware the unit will be built from, for only a 4 cam rig I would go for the 300 WATT power supply as it will not require a ton of CPU power to do the work (will consume something like 500 Watts max), something like a 2Ghz P-4 would work perfectly along with 512 megs of DDR memory. A cheaper video card will work for such a unit as well, an ATI 7500 video card will work perfectly. A CD/RW is a must, you can burn video to a CD ROM and hand it to the police/insurance person on site. CD/RWs are very cheap now, under 40 bux for a quality 52X LiteOn, and that is shipped to your door. The recorded video is playable from any modern PC and DVD player (if burned properly), one could even send an “event” via email to anyone in the world if they have access to the net at the time. I feel one 120 gig hard drive will do, a 120 gig hard drive will hold approximately 2 or three days of video, less if the cams are run in 640x480 resolution, at 640 a day could be saved I would imagine. How much room consumed by video is greatly affected by how much motion is recorded per cam as well. There is no need to change a tape or other media with this type of set-up, the video is “recycled” once the hard drive gets full, like the video that was recorded two days ago will be deleted then over written by current video streams, very handy dandy if you are used to the older style “tape” CCTV units.
I recommend WindowsXP for 99% of any build, I prefer XP Pro but if money is tight Home will do. Such a unit will work equality as well with Windows 2000, it will work under 98 and ME too but stability and performance will be greatly reduced.
The cameras are something I did not get to pick out, an auto stereo place down Florida sold him 4 400 line cams with infrared diodes for night vision, they were already mounted on the truck before I even set foot in the rig to see what will and will not work hardware wise. They looked to me to be regular all weather dome type cams like what is listed on the web site I mentioned above, but with the force rain and other debris will be hitting the forward mounted cams while the rig is under way I could be wrong. The camera’s I would pick would use regular 12v DC to operate, very little power to run these compared to the PC they will be connected too. They also use industry standard BNC connectors to connect to the DVR just like a professional CCTV unit would, mounting the cams and running the cable is the hardest part I feel.
The owner of the truck had a DVD player mounted in dash for his stereo, very popular now a days. The DVR connected directly to that unit via an AUX input and he could monitor his cams while he was driving, the viewing area is very small compared to a normal monitor so to me it seemed useless.
The guy already had a laptop in his rig with a 17” flat screen (TFT) monitor in the back, so for him to review or monitor the video all I needed to install was a KVM switch, that tiny piece of hardware will let a person switch between 2 to 10 or more PCs but still only use one keyboard, monitor and mouse. With a converter the video feed may be able to go directly into a laptop as well but I am unsure of this at the moment, I am not much of a laptop expert I am afraid.
So basically a modern DVR (Digital video recorder) is only a computer with a multiplexor installed to receive and record video, I do NOT recommend any propriety computers for such a job though, Compaq, DELL and others make pretty good machines but they (for the most part) are not built out of the best components that will work reliably as a DVR, they are not designed to be run at 100% load all the time they are powered on, which a DVR will be doing the moment it is finished booting. They also produce allot of heat, so wherever the units resides needs airflow, the cooler the better.
The DVR in the truck can be accessed via the web and or palm pilot as well, but the bandwidth needed to stream video is much greater than what is available over wireless cell phone networks though, Wi/Fi will work but still depends on how the network admin set up the bandwidth to there server. Even though the IP (network/internet address) will change regularly for the trucks DVR it can still be accessed quite easily without going to the unit and getting the IP manually, I can explain that in more detail if needed.
As you can see there is a little work involved to getting one of these little critters going reliably in a vehicle. I highly recommend quality hardware for the unit, I have been forced to build DVRs out of cheap hardware and if they lasted a year they were lucky, the business owner where I worked made me build one from “as cheap as possible” hardware for his laptop store, it lasted a week then died, I then rebuilt it my way and has been going for over a year none stop.
The owner of one of these DVR jobbies would need to have at least basic knowledge of computer operation, but more is better..!! As the owner will be the system administrator, the owner will be required to know how to locate the recorded video then burn it to a CD ROM. Defragging the HD is a must as well, once a month minimum.
Lemme know what you think now that you have an idea of what is required in getting something like this to work in a moving vehicle, also keep in mind this is not something that can be completely done in one day, the DVR is basically a PC but much needs to be done to it to get it to work properly and reliable as a mobile DVR, the cams could be mounted and wired in one day easily though.
CG

Answer:
Originally posted by telephoneman:
It would be interesting to find a way to hook 3-4 web cams up to a laptop..
U can use a USB hub to connect 4 cams to yer puter, but getting the video divided into 4 differant streams to be played at once would be the tricky part.
CG

Answer:
Originally posted by Flatbed:
Those CCTV systems sound interesting, would come in handy in alot of situations from truckstops to backing into alleyways.
Would be a little expencive to be used solely for backing, 700 dollars to one grand for a backup monitor is way too steep.
Monitoring your rig when U are away a short distance will work though. Add a Wireless trancever in your rig and U can monitor all the cams live via your laptop or Palm top. Works exacly as the Wi/Fi at the Flying J's but only U would have the password to access your trucks surveillance server.
U could use a single CCTV cam and plug it directly into a TV tuner card in a laptop I think, if not directly there may be converts out there that will turn the signal into something useable by a TV tuner card..??
CG

Answer:
Originally posted by ike910:
Sounds like you have a great bit of knowledge and at least if the truckin' thing don't pan out you wont starve.
But that GPS and street finder stuff is all well and good, but take into account there are a lot of streets and places a big truck cant go.
for that youll need to bounce your route off a motor carrier road atlas.
Good Luck and hope it works out for you.
Theres a lot of good folks here that will give you good advice. It may not always be what you wanna here, but its mostly factual. read and heed.
Ike -->
"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
Albert Einstein
I never once thought about travel routes, very good point, one better learned here than on the road for sure..!! Saving 300 bux would not be worth pulling a load over gravel roads or pinned under a bridge, maybe even stuck between two buildings in an alley, that would ruin my day for sure. I have a sense of humor but not sure if I could keep smiling in one of those situations..
CG

Answer:
Keep the CCTV and computer questions commin' guys and gals, for once in five months I feel usefull..
CG

Answer:
Crippled Granny,
Feel free to throw some of this over on hightech trucking. It seems to be more fitting for that subject, plus your knowlege and experience will be helpful over there
DRIVER BY CHOICE
Buzzdog

Answer:
Originally posted by Buzzdog:
Crippled Granny,
Feel free to throw some of this over on hightech trucking. It seems to be more fitting for that subject, plus your knowlege and experience will be helpful over there
_ DRIVER BY CHOICE _
Buzzdog
Man I finaly figured out what U were talking about, others than seen this before I edited it knows what I mean..
I guess I need to get to bed, I will blame my ignorance on lack of sleep..
[This message was edited by Crippled Granny on November 11, 2003 at 0:05.]