Bench Testing Best Practices-

I'm not a professional installer or anything, but I do manage cameras in about 8 separate locations (gosh, when did it get to be so many?!). Anyway for camera prep, usually I just plug them in and set up various things: password, static IP, on-screen display, daylight savings time, network time server, video bit rate and resolution. This way I am pretty sure the cameras will work on location and I won't have to spend 5 minutes configuring each one with a laptop (or worse, a tablet/phone) and no table or chair. I do this with practically all cameras, even those that I am installing at my own house.

Though with larger and more complicated items, like the Ubiquiti RocketDishes that I set up last week, I must admit I got lazy and didn't assemble or test anything until I was on site with them. Luckily it all worked out, and we now have an ~18 mile bridge providing internet access to a PTZ camera on a radio tower in the nearby mountains.

 
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Excellent points; I haven't installed a ton of cameras yet, but so far I've powered up every one on my bench to at least verify it powers up and to configure network settings...

At work this drives me crazy, as most of my jobs are out of the country and getting parts/material is a pain... I can't say how many times I've wasted tons of troubleshooting time, assuming the item (usually some COTS media converter or similar) was tested prior to sending it to me, only to find out they never even took it out of the box...
 
Mike that is a very high rate of failure. I highly doubt that the failure rate is that high. Can it be user error?
 
even with SDI, did you test the camera on return? Did the replacement resolve the isssue? It could have been his lines (sdi is more sensitive to quality issues).
 
Im not an installer but i have installed about 50 ip cameras total. I have not had any total failures. The most common failure I have seen is IR related. I've seen several of first generation dahua 2100 domes that have a stuck ir filter and an IPS camera where the ir led's just died slowly over time. The dahua bullets as well as the hikvision cams have been rock solid.
 
Could be just a bad run of cameras also especially if all were bought at once.
 
bp2008 said:
I've also had LEDs on IPS cameras gradually die. On one of them the LEDs are completely dead now.
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Yeah they were probably over driven. They promised replacements but never sent them. At the time it was a very good camera for the money. I have the 914v. I liked that it was a 2mp 4:3 resolution at 1600x1200 vs the 16:9 the modern cameras have. Thankfully the dead leds are not a big issue in my application because the camera is used in a room with two cameras so i get IR light from the other.
 
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