Top Mistakes Buying School Bus Video Cameras

1 - Buying a Fragile Hard Drive Based Bus Video system
Typical hard drives are designed for use under office conditions, meaning close to ideal conditions with low temperatures, low humidity, conditioned electrical source and no sudden movements. Now that the VCR has gone the way of the Dodo bird, the DVR hard drive now takes the position of arguably the most fragile device or mechanism in the school bus.

Think to yourself of every time you have heard of a hard drive problem, a hard drive crash from a friend or business college. Chances are those hard drives problems or hard drive crashes occurred while they were working on the PCs in a business office environment. Some may have been sitting still on a desktop or sitting safely under a desk and simply wore out or failed due to non-environmental affects.
They are fragile mechanical devices that we trust to defend our school districts when in the worst possible scenarios events occur that require their use as a expert witness, often in court.
When you are purchasing a video system to protect your district from liability and act as an expert witness in the worst case scenarios, it seems a wise idea to make sure the one you invest district budget dollars into will not fail you when you need it most. This is the type of decision that separates those of vision from those who might look back in hindsight after losing the lawsuit due to a failed hard drive system that was damaged in the crash.

Ask your IT department staff how many hard drives they have ever replaced from a fixed location in a controlled stabile environment. It has been my experience in a harsh mobile environment like a bus; the incidence of failure and problems will be geometrically higher. I have replaced far more hard drive based DVRs that I care to remember both under and out of warranty and the costs were considerable.
Most of us have several forms of solid state drive devices we use every day, in different locations we travel, in every environment and under conditions that would damage the average hard drive in about a week. That would be our cell phones, our MP3 players or IPods, GPS NAV systems, beepers or our Blackberries. With all the abuse we provide them the recording mechanism has no moving parts to wear out or break, so they are well suited for the mobile environment.

The only digital system I am aware of with any chance of exceeding the life of the average school bus is the solid-state drive based DVR. With children's lives in your care and million dollar lawsuits on the line when something goes wrong, can you really afford to have anything less than 100% solid-state drive?

2 - Choosing Old GPS Technology Versus On Screen Mapping
In the past GPS was employed in bus video systems as a way to document the bus speed on the playback as several bus manufacturers had changed their wiring to multiplexed wiring or simply made it bothersome to tap into the speed signal.

Currently there are two methods to offer an improved GPS feature we call On Screen Mapping. Like the “Introduction to Business 101” example of IBM versus Bill Gates, one manufacturer has chosen to go the way of IBM who pursued the hardware based solutions, while Bill Gates blazed the software solutions. A reseller of Republic of China DVRs was the first to offer On Screen Mapping, as I know it, a new technology application that deserves mention. Unfortunately like IBM this new feature was hardware driven through the incorporation of a large expensive mechanical solution that consumed one of the DVRs video channels. This meant the 4-channel DVR was only capable of recording 3 cameras when it had this mapping feature.

However it was American DVR manufacturers who deserve recognition for taking notes in business school and learning the genius of Bill Gates software provided solutions over hardware provided solutions providing this On Screen Mapping free of charge to all customers of their GPS equipped DVR systems.

As their path to the same goal was via software not hardware like the most successful PC Software maker in history, not only can they deliver this to their GPS customers free of cost, they also do not require a large and expensive mechanical device that can consume a valuable video channel with mapping, so their 4 channel DVRs actually record 4 cameras full time even with mapping. This could insure their customers 4 full time cameras and on screen mapping long after the hardware based solution has been forgotten.

This system can document or disprove parent claims that

The bus was too early and my child missed it. The bus was too late, and my child missed it. The bus did not stop at our stop, My child got on the bus at school, but never got off.” The bus was speeding past our house These parent concerns can now be verified or proven false with On Screen Mapping

This system can also document driver actions & performance such as

Did the driver stop at the 4 way stop signs, Did the driver stay on route or wander all over the place? Did the driver make personal trips in the bus? Does the driver speed on certain roads? Does the driver stop at a railroad crossing? Was the bus used on weekends for unauthorized trips? Where the bus is parked during the day and nights. These driver concerns can now be verified or proven false with On Screen Mapping

This system option requires no service connection or monthly fees from GPS satellite or cellular service provider. All that is required is a GPS equipped Safety Vision or FMI DVR to be played back on a PC that has access to high speed internet. It then connects to the Internet and provides the On Screen Mapping synchronized to the video footage from the cameras as the Meta data is attached to the video record.


3 -Believing What The Salesmen States or You Read On The PDF:
It is expected that when we walk onto a used car or RV lot, we need to be alert, focused and aware that those we may be working with do not necessarily have our best interested in mind. We expect the unexpected and when the deal sounds too good to be true we look harder for the reason why. It is your personal responsibility to be a careful and educated consumer, or you will suffer the costs of trusting in those who may end up deceiving you with false claims, features of questionable value or simply not providing you what it is you tell them you need. When the cost is high for your mistakes, sometime we learn not to be so trusting and naïve and we write it off as a life lesson.

However when the school district who employs you entrusts your judgment and business savvy to choose what bus video system best suits their needs that is an entirely different matter. As costly as it may be to be taken by a smooth sales pitch, from a skilled manipulator, this time it is different as it is your employer requesting the assistance on their behalf and with school budgets strapped a bad decision could cost the district valuable budget dollars and reflect very poorly on the person who did the groundwork and recommended a product that failed to provide the best value for the district.

If it were not for the constant and highlighted occurrences of impropriety, deceit, and corruption exhibited on a daily basis by our elected politicians, salesmen would be at the bottom of the list of “those whom you can trust”.

While the used car salesmen stereotype does hold some relevance, and we all know better that to trust a used car or RV salesmen, unfortunately those in that field do not always stay in that market and often cause havoc when they start promoting other products they know very little about. I have been witness to some of the most fabulous acts of ignorance, arrogance, incompetence and oversight, causing confusion, calamity and expense as in some cases guys like me were quickly dispatched to clean up their mess and manage damage control after the fact.

Some of the more common problems customers might experience from salesmen:

Product ignorance- commonly used to conceal product weaknesses When you ask them if the fragile hard drive is protected from shock and bumps, and they reply I'm sure it is. Plausible deniability- fail safe tactic to defer blame if customer finds out truth. Those who point to specs on the product PDF like they are absolute truths usually exhibit this, when some cited specs only apply on the 31st day of February and then only in fantasy land. Omission of truth- one does not need to advertise their products weaknesses, but when directly asked and known, it is deceitful to embrace ignorance and deny the school district that information. Deflection and misdirection- in politics this would be labeled “spin”. A good example is when you ask how many hard drives have failed and in what time period so you can evaluate the future cost of the fragile hard drives, and the salesmen asked tells you “We have some hard drives that are still working after 7 years”. Not only did they refuse to provide factual information when asked directly they deflected the question to an irreverent fact.

In the past I have found that those selling and promoting the products know much less than those who must work with the systems and assist customers in the use of said systems. Those who install, setup, train and work with customers in support of sales often know so much more about the product and actual features and applications than those who sell them. This is why it is important to deal only with a professional bus video vender. I refer to those reputable companies with a serious track record of 10+ years service the school bus market.
Impressive esthetical features or specifications that salesmen insist are” must have items” are sometimes either of questionable value, misrepresentations or simply false.
So many games are being played with product specifications regarding; “G” ratings, temperature rating, resolution and shock or vibration buffering that it might be possible those selling those products may be unaware they are misrepresenting their own products to your district.

Search for one claim in their literature (PDF) or on their web site you believe to be false or misleading such as:
Standard hard drive rated at over 3 “Gs”,
Hard drive operating temperature less than freezing without a heater,
Their cameras are waterproof,
Their cameras are vandal proof,
Vandal proof lock box

The above claims are my first clue, that I may not be getting accurate or factual information on the product. When I believe I am being deceived about those aspects of the products, I can only imagine other areas that I may not be getting full disclosure or at least being provided accurate information in good faith.
Should you suspect or realize that you are not being provided accurate and factual information in good faith, you might be better served moving on to the next product vender in the hope of an honest description of the product capabilities.



4 -Buying Outdated MPEG4 Technology Over Massive Storage Technology of “H.264” Compression
The only credible advantage of hard drive based DVRs over the solid state drives I have seen, is their ability to store massive amounts of data in a DVR for a long time before it is recycled (rewritten over).

Should the primary concern be massive memory capacity and massive data storage then you have but 1 system requirement to list:
“H.264 image compression”
Without compromising image quality, an H.264 encoder can reduce the size of a digital video file by more than 80% compared with the Motion JPEG format and as much as 50% more than with the MPEG-4 Part 2 standard.

The H.264 encoder was at least three times more efficient than an MPEG-4 encoder with no motion compensation and at least six times more efficient than Motion JPEG.

While some may offer your district an outdated technology like MPEG4, then bleed your district budget with upgrade costs for larger capacity hard drives, you need to know this is not necessary to get larger storage capacity.

Why pay for overpriced hard drive upgrades in memory when the largest upgrade in hard drive memory storage is achieved through “H.264” compression over the older M-JPEG or MPEG4?

H.264 versus MJPEG

For example an 80 Gig HDD with M-JPEG compression (old technology) can hold 80 Gigs of images on the hard drive.

While the same 80 Gig HDD with “H.264” compression can hold approximately 6 times as much data or about 480 Gigs of uncompressed images at the same cost for the same size hard drive.

H.264 versus MPEG-4

For example an 80 Gig HDD with MPEG-4 compression (old technology) can hold 80 Gigs of images on the hard drive.

While the same 80 Gig HDD with “H.264” compression can hold approximately 2 times as much data or about 160 Gigs of uncompressed images at the same cost for the same size hard drive.

Those technically savvy or budget conscious will quickly see this as a way to increase the memory storage of their existing hard drive by up to 6 times with no additional cost or hassle of replacing hard drives. For those determined to invest funding in a hard drive based DVR, this is the single best choice for a bid specification to maximize the memory storage of a hard drive at no additional cost for larger and larger drives.




Note;
Do not expect an impartial and non-biased opinion in any of the above, as I sincerely believe school districts; deserve the best systems available for their tax dollars and those who push them to purchase short lived products should at least be honest enough to let them know before those school districts are burdened with considerable future expenses when those fragile hard drives wear out or crash.

The opinions expressed in the above documentation is based on decades of hands-on personal experience of the author in the mobile digital industry, problems seen firsthand, worked on with customers or manufacturers to remedy, based on customer complaints made to FMI, and extraneous influences.
These opinions are provided for relevant contextual perspective purposes only as opinion based reasons why we advocate the use of solid state drives to save school districts budget dollars and why we encourage those considering purchase of these systems to exercise jurisprudent and be aware those offering these systems to your district may not have your districts best interest in mind.

I strongly encourage all who sell these products to learn something about the application, installation and use of them before making claims about their function.
Just because something is written on your product PDFs or posted on a company web site, it is not always accurate or true.
School districts deserve to be treated in good faith and phony claims knowingly sold to school districts and other government municipalities may constitute fraud.

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