Anybody familiar with this English company?
I bought a "project camera" of this manufacturer, and it is a project to get it to work!
It has NTSC video out, which works OK. However, there are also Ethernet connectors, and a 9-pin serial port on this color video camera.
Inside the box looks like a computer, complete with Ethernet Adapter card, a 486 processor chip, tons of RAM, and in short, a lot more than a color video camera! What do I have here? Is it an IP camera? Maybe a high speed digital camera?
I'm hoping to find any info, drivers, or insight as to how to get this camera to communicate with my computer.
Seems to have been built around 1995, and have found little about this company- now defunct.
Appreciate any help folks!
John

When year did you buy this camera in?

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

I bought it on ebay last year, as used. Have you heard of this company?

I haven't heard of that company until know, does the camera have a USB or Firewire port, if it only has a 9 pin serial port to connect it to the computer (these aren't used anymore) it looks like you've bought a lemon. 486 processor, ram, ethernet port, it sounds like some odd device to me. Can you post a picture of it?

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

No USB or Firewire. I'd like to turn this lemon into lemonade!

Hi,

I used to work for Active Imaging....
What you have got there is one of the world's first commercially produced IP cameras (Axis may claim otherwise). It's actually stand alone unit that should be accesible using a web browser rather than wiring it directly to a PC using USB or Firewire (both came after this camera). The trick is finding what IP address is uses - it's all a bit of a distant memory but if you use the reset then it may default to 192.168.0.x. The first stage in progressing is to get access to the embedded web site and take it from there. When you do get it going, it'lll transmit JPEGs using server push.

The connectors on the back do the following:

The 9-way is a straight RS232 serial port - we used to use that for driving pan-tilt heads to move the camera around remotely. It may have also been used to connect modems at one point.
The 15-way is actually an analogue video in - you can connect up to 5 NTSC analogue cameras (as long as you know the pin outs which I can't remember). You'll need the web access before you can do anything with that.
The 4-pin Iris port is for use with auto-iris lenses. If you get a standard CCTV lens you should be able to wire it up (again it may need the web acces to configure that opertaion)
The phono connector is simple NTSC analogue vidoe out - that bit you know.

It is actually a full blown PC (of sorts inside) running QNX. There's not a lot you can do there as it's an embedded system designed to run as a network camera only. It was also very expensive when first sold....

Thank you, Richard!
If you know of any more information, please send it my way! How long ago did you work there?
When was Active Imaging around? Do you know what happened to them?
Are you saying that I can plug the Ethernet cable into my network, and begin my search for the IP of its embedded website? That's cool!
Will I need any additional software to make it operational?
Do you recall if the imager is CCD, or CMOS?
I appreciate all your help Richard!
John