Old tech beats new tech

Sometimes it's the old tech that works best. After an incident a client called me to their home to export video from their security system for the police. I don't normally do that kind of work, but they hoped not to have to give the police their DVR and they didn't want to call the security company back in.

I spent a few minutes looking over the control software (PC only, of course) and the manual and began an export of the relevant time period. I gave the parameters in 24 hour time as the entire system used it, but the resulting footage was nighttime and the incident was daytime. I switched to 12 hour time and got daylight, but it wasn't the period I was looking for. Since the first error had shown that time was not properly registering, I wondered about days and exported the time period from the days before and after the incident, but still didn't get what I was looking for.

Finally, I noticed a lamppost... Sure, at night it provides illumination, but by day it just sits there, acting for the all world like...

A SUNDIAL!

Back to the footage of the incident. I compared the position of the shadow to what I was getting in the exports and guessed I was off by about 5 hours and reset the export times. I got part of the incident, but realized I was off by an hour. I reset for 6 hours and exported again, this time I got exactly what the client wanted. Somehow, despite all the cameras and the unit itself being sure of the correct time there was a skew of exactly six hours. Once I had that calculated it was easy to export each of the relevant cameras and burn CDs with the video.

I'm not sure what tech is out there that's older than a sundial, but it sure did work well for dealing with this year's model of security DVR! Bonus points if you know how this relates to Kerberos...

Solutions Consulting - 310-838-5224 or benlevy@rockinbeat.com