Airship DVR / NVR Video & Video Management Blog

Airship DVR used to exonerate Aaron

On Friday afternoon our in house security systems proved useful in a case against developer Aaron Olds.

It began when I passed by a refrigerator that was partially open. Since it was a Friday afternoon, leaving the refrigerated partially open through the weekend would have been disastrous. I remembered Aaron mentioning how he resisted the urge to eat a slice of pizza a fridge he opened just minutes ago, and so I charged him with the crime. Reluctantly, he accepted the charges.

However, he later returned to he scene of the crime and noticed that the pizza box seemed to be rotated 180 degrees from when he last remembered looking at it. He felt it was enough evidence to warrant an investigation. Luckily we had an Axis IP camera recording at the scene of the crime.

Here is the recording of Aaron visiting the refrigerator at 5:39:30 PM.

The refrigerator was clearly shut after Aaron leaves.

We reviewed the recordings after Aaron leaves to find the real culprit.

John Zhu was caught leaving the refrigerator partially open while taking multiple slices of pizza at 5:47 PM. He also rotated the pizza box so that it would be inconvenient for anyone to get a slice without removing the box from the refrigerator.

by John Su

[editor's note: The two YouTube videos you see are screen-capture videos of our new Clip Viewer. If you would like to recieve the original Clips (so you can see first hand all the improvements) just email us as sales@airshipdvr.com.]

Hidden Feature of the Month: Movable Client

 Exit your Airship Client. (Don't worry, it's only for a little while...)

Go to C:\Program Files\Airship\Client and find the setup.ini file. Open this file in Notepad.

Look for the header:

[Client]

Add this right under that header:

;set to 1 to allow the client screens to be movable

WindowedMode=1

Save the setup.ini file. Exit Notepad.

Re-launch your Airship Client. Now you can move it around.
This uses a lot of CPU to move it around while viewing video, so watch out for that. (That's why it's not an easy to find feature....) 

Also, let us know if you have any trouble with it so we can make it a main feature in the near future!

Enjoy!

by Gryphon MacThoy

Airship DVR Server and Client 4.53 Now Available

AIRSHIP DVR Server and Client version 4.53 is now available for download.

New Features

• Multi Clip Export (Quad Screen Clips and Multi-Clip Movies!)
• Improved Clip Export Speed (a VAST Improvement!)
• Client Auto Scan (Just like the Server!)
• New Playback Seek Feature (Pull up video for a particular time from many cameras much easier than before)
• Support for Hikvision IP camera
• Support for Axis H.264 IP camera (BETA) (Interested in helping us BETA Test? Call anytime to let us know what you are testing with.)

NOTE: Server and Client must be updated at the same time with this release. Older Clients can connect to Airship DVR Server 4.53 if the older Client is restarted first.

Download 4.53 from here:

http://www.airshipdvr.com/support/downloads.php

Brought to you by Airship Dev and QA, May 2009

RED - Much Respect

Check this out:

http://www.red.com/

This guy made his money from Oakley. This is his new baby. It's amazing. We hope there's a future of surveillance camera equipment from this DNA...

noted by Victor Huang

RAID5 vs RAID6 in a Video Recording Environment

http://ipvideomarket.info/report/advantages_of_raid6_over_raid5_for_video_surveillance

This is a great article and should be reviewed by anyone building or buying RAID video storage systems.

New Audible Alarms for your Airship

  Not always looking right at your video surveillance system, huh? Do you wish it could shout in case of an emergency?

It can!

One of many Alarm Actions that Airship can do to alert you of an Alarm Trigger (like Video Signal Loss, Motin Detection, etc) is to play a sound through your PC speakers. This can be done on Clients as well as Servers.

Airship 4.5 has new Audible Alarm Sounds available, from the really noisy and unforgettable to the subtle nudge.

Here's how to find them:

1. In Airship DVR Server or Client, login as an Administrator (such as the 'system' user.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Click on the System, General folder.
4. Here you'll find the Audible Alarm check box to turn it on.
5. Click the folder button to select a *.wav file.
6. Our new ones are located in the Airship\Server\Sounds or Airship\Client\Sounds folder.
7. Pick one and click Open.
8. Use the little speaker button to hear it. You'll want to make sure your PC speakers are plugged in and turned up (not TOO loud!) in order to hear them.
9. Then, go to the Camera's Alarm tab to setup which Alarm Triggers will use this Audible Alarm action. Best used for REALLY important things, such as Video Signal Loss or maybe Motion Detection after hours in super critical areas.
10. Click OK to save your settings. Done!

We included the sound of dogs barking so you could hook up your speakers really loud for after hours alarms - just scare the hooligans away...

Of course, my favorite is the Tune Up, but there's plenty to choose from. You can even use your own! Just point Airship to the location of a *WAV file you like as an alarm sound.

by Gryphon MacThoy

AIRSHIPDVR.com Updated

We just updated our website with some new products and tools:

Embedded DVRs : Support for certain embedded DVRs has been in Airship for a while, but now you can buy them from us!

DVR Calculator : Tools to translate your real-world needs into technical specs for storage and networking

Updated Product Specs : See new higher storage capacities

 And some other assorted specifications updates and what-not. Explore, learn, have fun!

by Gryphon MacThoy

Airship 4.52 BETA now available

Airship 4.52 BETA now available on our downloads page:

http://www.airshipdvr.com/support/downloads.php

--------------------------------------
04-01-2008 Build 4.5.2.0 release notes
--------------------------------------

New Features:

- Add support for Hikvision IP camera
- Clip export now supports multi-clip exports and sync play exports
- Passwords now can include special characters
- Client on startup now auto updates any camera name changes from the server
- Client now has the option to add all currently live view cameras to a new group
- Client now will attempt to reconnect to the server if the server goes down unexpectately
- Support for Axis H.264 IP camera (beta)
- The About box shows version 4.519 to denote this as a pre-release version.

Please note that this is a BETA release. It is not recommended for production systems.

by Gryphon MacThoy

Airship DVR Mobile Access - BETA (for any browser we can think of)

This is a new feature now available in BETA form in all Airship 4.5x releases.

OK, this is a little hard to explain briefly, but here goes:

See image:
 

Just do this

1 - Open ANY browser we can think of, mobile or desktop, mac or windows.

2 - type in this url:
http://70.99.146.180/1

3 - Get browser prompt for login : demo / demo

4 - See latest IFrame of video from channel 1 of our online Airship Demo server.

5 - Hit browser refresh button to see next available IFrame.

To review:
In your browsers URL field enter
http://
followed by ANY Airship 4.5 Server IP Address you have access to
/
channel number

User permissions are enforced by browser login. (Best to have browser save the login name and password so it doesn't annoy you with it all the time.)

Ta-Dah! Try it on Windows Mobile, iPhone, Safari, Firefox, IE. Let us know what you find.

There's no helpful UI or anything, but the fundamentals are there for an IFrame Only webclient that works on ANY browser we can think of.

You may now display your pleasure... or call us to tell us if you found a problem: 877.462.4250

by Gryphon MacThoy

Product Review: AVG Free Anti-Virus at Home

The best FREE Anti-Virus available:

AVG Free:

http://free.avg.com/download?prd=afe

Many of the Airship folks use this on Windows at home. For professional or office use, you have to pay for it, and it's worth it. For the 'leave me alone' user, it just runs and updates all by itself without bothering you until there's a major version update or a found virus. Small pop-ups by the task bar remind that it's doing it's job, but otherwise it stays out of the way. For the Virus Vigilante, there's plenty of toys to play with in your crusade against digital demons.

ps- we aren't paid to advertise, we just think it's a good product.

by Gryphon MacThoy