Operations tips

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This page discusses operations and troubleshooting tips for IPTrains Trainvision and associated components.

Contents

iMultiview

  • Overview The Multiview (AKA Multimonitor) program that is supplied on disk with the Trainvision system will give you fastest FPS rate of any viewing method and has enhanced control functionality over browsers as well. See Multiview Setup for installation and configuration tips. Multiview has three main modes, Large Icon, Small Icon and 'multi-view'. The program is 'stateful', that is, it preserves the state you are in between instantiations. If you have the program in one mode and exit the program and then restart it, it will come up in the mode you were last in. In multi-view all cameras in the system are displayed in a single pane. In either large or small icon mode you can double click any cam icon to 'pop up' a window and view that camera. The multi-view mode is very CPU intensive and best used for static monitoring of your trains.
  • Desktop Icons and a gotcha You can select icons in either small or large icon mode and 'drag' them to your desktop. They will serve as shortcuts to individual cameras. Dragging individual icons to your desktop is the most convenient way to operate multiview. However, there is a gotcha with doing this. If you exit multiview in 'multi-view' mode then it will try to access all cameras all the time for each instantiation of the program (every time you click on a desktop icon you launch another copy of the program on your computer). This will dramatically slow down the frame rate and rapidly load your CPU to 100%. Bottom line, when you have the program in 'multi-view' mode to monitor all cams simultaneously always be sure to put the program back into one of the 'icon view' modes before exiting the program.
  • Pop up controls Individual pop up windows have several controls on them that you should be aware of. The first is the 'settings' gadget, lower border, second from the right. This gadget give you access to a pop up that allows you to control all aspects of the camera except resolution (resolution must be set from a browser for the CM-51 but see below for the IP-2061). Item of note on this menu include window size (under camera) (called image zoom but really the size of the viewing window) and motion detection. Motion detection will allow you to set the camera to automatically record when it detects motion and is very useful for hassle free recordings of your operations. Be sure to turn the 'red mark' function off! The second control of interest is the 'full screen' gadget (lower border, far right). Selection of this gadget will place the view window in FULL SCREEN mode. Hitting ESC will return you to window mode. You can also double click the window to switch in and out of full screen mode. Finally there is a 'pull out panel' about 1/4 of the way down from the top on the left margin of the window. Click the gadget to pull the window out. This menu is pretty worthless for the CM-51 however is it quite useful with the IP-2061. You can use the bottom slider to change resolution on the fly, the top slider to zoom and the 'box' to selectively zoom in on an area. Once zoomed in on an area you can use the arrows to software pan and tilt the camera. Click the box again to restore normal view.
  • Use on the Mac iMultiview is a native windows program however we have successfully tested it on Intel Macs running Parallels 3.0 and Windows XP.

Browsers

  • ActiveX IE with ActiveX is the fastest browser (be sure to allow loading of the ActiveX control the first time you try to access a camera with this menu, watch the status bar). IE will also allow you to start/stop recording from the browser window. Warning: we have found IE 6 to be somewhat unstable if you change the default save path for recordings. IE7 does not suffer from this problem. We suggest use of IE7 overall.
  • Java Firefox works well on all platforms we have tested so far (XP, Vista and MacOs) but is a bit slower than either IE or Multiview and does not have all of the functionality of either of the other choices (full screen mode, start/stop recording, etc.) Most Java based browsers will work to one extent or another but Firefox is the best choice in this class.

Making Movies

Supported directly in Internet Explorer and iMUltiview. The WMV9 codec will normally give the best results. Save in AVI format, avoid WMV like the plague.

Taking Snapshots

There are several methods;

  • Save a movie and then use Windows Movie Maker to grab a frame
  • Take the code snippit above, edit for your values and then paste everything inside the "" directly into a browser address bar, save it as a bookmark. You can just call the bookmark and save the image.

Radio Trouble Shooting

(note, all AP specific trouble shooting tips assume that you are using our AP. If this is not the case, improvise ;-)

  • High level approach Can I connect to the unit? Test with a ping. Use the ping pulldown menu on the main page of the AP. If the answer is yes then check the Receive Signal Level (RSL) of the unit in the show connected stations pull down menu. You need an RSL of -70 or higher (closer to 0) for reasonable video. The main page of the AP has utilities to do all of this and much more.

Computer Trouble Shooting

Back to On board digital video products

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