More theater fun.
I frequently set up a small security camera and monitor system for shows. For instance right now we're doing a musical where the pit orchestra is behind a curtain, but the actors need to see the conductor's arms waving to get their musical cues. I have an old-school Swann IR camera pointed at the conductor that is hardwired to a monitor hanging on the back wall. The camera is dying.
So I went to Amazon only to find a zillion options, most of them wifi and 1080p. I need them to have as close to zero lag as possible. I don't need hi-def. Heck, I don't even need color. I need for the actors to be able to see waving arms, and I need those waving arms to show up on the TV without a big lag.
That means analog. No wifi to fail when dimmers offer interference or noise, no D/A converters in the monitor to add lag, just low-tech video. Needs in case you didn't read the whole thing: video. No audio. IR night vision for blackouts and dark scenes. Reliability. Don't need color. Can't have lag.
Have any ideas?
How is it hardwired ?
BNCs , RJ 11 , or ????
and is the camera powered by the cable or does it have its own power source ?
Call up https://www.supercircuits.com and ask them what they have for analog We get run analog at work for latency purposes too. You may have to go for the law enforcement stuff which is typically older tech.
Also, you can get an old sony camcorder off ebay and run that for your feed. You can look for old sony block cameras, they still make those on analog though it is getting rarer.
Camera 1: camera has about a 3' pigtail with red RCA (audio), yellow RCA (video) and a ring/sleeve power adapter connection. The 60' cord therefore is basically a F-M extension wire. You can therefore power the camera through the 60' extension, or power the camera straight into the pigtail on it. (which is how I have it now)
Camera 2: Almost the exact same setup, but the pigtail off the camera goes to an RJ45. Then at the TV end, another female RJ with breakouts to A, V, 7.5vdc. This is so you can set it up with whatever phone cord you want (as long as it's not too long that you get the blue screen).
Both use 4 conductors; a common ground for all, video, audio, 7.5vdc
That is how THESE ones work. I don't need to stick with that. The theater does own two HDMI-cat5 converting setups, so with one more electrical connection, I can transmit HD up to 250' or SD up to 600' over a single cat5. (which is overkill. The whole building is about 150 x 85 and the theater is 50x60.) Those cat5/HDMI boxes haven't shown to offer much lag if any which was a pleasant surprise to me, however I don't see the need to do that given the simplicity of an analog signal. Since the furthest it really will ever go is 50', I can envision just straight up conductors from A to B. That is to say, if I did use Cat5 to go 50 feet, I wouldn't convert an HDMI signal, I would just solder up an RCA-RJ adapter cord and transmit the NTSC directly without conversion.
Go on eBay, buy an old school CCTV camera, and you should be set. Burle was a big name in the analog cctv camera market. They're about $20-$60/ea it looks like nowadays. Funny, I could barely give them away when I upgraded our system.
