These are the situations Madison homeowners, their families, co-op boards, supers and shop owners describe when they call. Each answer is written for the houses, buildings and storefronts here.
Families looking after a house from somewhere else
My mother on Avenue R calls me every time the camera screen in her kitchen turns blue or shows a menu, and I end up talking her through it on the phone. Can it be set up so there is nothing for her to press?
Yes, and it is one of the most useful things a repair can do in a parent's house. A blue screen or a menu usually means the recorder or the television lost its video source after a power blink, or the recorder restarted into a setup screen. We set the recorder to boot straight to the live camera view without a login, turn off the setup wizard, and set the television or monitor to wake on the right input automatically. Where the screen is a television she also watches, we can give the cameras a dedicated small monitor instead, or use the television's input settings so it returns to the cameras when she presses a single labeled button. We also put the recorder and the screen on a small battery backup so short flickers never reach them. At the end she gets a one-page note with a picture of what the screen should look like, and you get alerts on your own phone if a camera or the drive stops, so you hear about a problem before she does.
Four of us check our parents' cameras, and we all use my brother's login. Should each of us have our own?
Yes. A shared login means that when anyone changes the password, everyone is locked out, that the recorder cannot tell you who exported or deleted a clip, and that if one phone is lost or sold, the whole system is exposed until someone notices. Most recorders and camera apps allow several user accounts, each with its own password and its own permissions. We set up one account for each of you, give the person who manages the system administrator rights, give the others viewing and playback, and keep the master password written down in one safe place. Alerts can go to one person or all of you; most families pick one or two people to receive them so four phones are not buzzing at once. If one of you has an old phone that should no longer see the cameras, we remove it.
Detached, two-family and row houses
At night the camera in the narrow alley between our detached house and the next one shows either a white glare or nothing at all. Is the camera bad?
Usually not. In a passage only a few feet wide, the camera's infrared lights hit the neighbor's wall and bounce straight back, so the picture whites out near the camera; when the camera tries to correct for that, the far end goes black. In daytime the opposite happens: the alley is shaded and the street at its end is bright, so anyone walking in looks like a dark shape. We fix most of it with settings, by switching on smart infrared, lowering infrared strength, weighting exposure toward the alley and turning on wide dynamic range, and by aiming the camera along the passage instead of across it. If the alley has no light at all, a small motion or dusk light mounted high often does more than any camera change. We test it after dark before we leave, because that is the only way to know it worked.
We had new windows put in last spring, and the camera over our row house's front door has been dead ever since. Is it the camera?
Almost certainly not. On many Madison row houses, the front camera's cable was brought inside through the old window frame, and window installers cut whatever crosses the frame when they take it out. The camera is usually fine; there is a short tail of cable outside and another inside with the new, sealed frame between them. We test the camera to confirm it is alive, then bring a new cable in on a route that does not depend on the window, usually through a mortar joint beside the frame, through the cellar ceiling under the stoop, or along the inside of the bay. On a limestone front we use mortar joints, not the stone itself. If the windows on the back of the house were done at the same time, we check the yard camera too, since it often has the same problem.
Our two-family's cameras are plugged into an outlet downstairs, and when our tenant's power was shut off for a day, every camera went dark. Can they run from our side of the house?
Usually, yes. We trace which outlet and which meter each part of the system uses, the recorder, the power supply or PoE switch, the internet router, and then move them to an outlet on the owner's circuit, adding a dedicated outlet through an electrician if the owner's side has none in a sensible place. AESS does not do electrical work itself, so where a new circuit is needed we tell you what to ask your electrician for and finish the camera work once it is in. We also check whether the cameras reach the internet through the tenant's router; if they do, the same thing will happen the day the tenant changes providers or moves out, and we move the recorder onto your own connection. Everything is labeled so the next person can see what is powered from where.
Apartment buildings on Kings Highway and Ocean Avenue
The lobby cameras in our Ocean Avenue co-op and the intercom panel at the front door both stopped working the same night. Is that a coincidence?
Probably not. In many buildings the lobby cameras and the intercom share a power supply, a circuit, a battery backup or a wiring closet, and a single failure there takes out both. A surge, a tripped breaker, a dead backup battery or water in the closet are the usual causes. We check the shared parts first, because fixing one item may bring both systems back, and then test each system on its own. AESS repairs intercoms and door buzzers as well as cameras, so both can be handled on the same visit with one appointment and one set of findings for the board. If the two systems turn out to have separate faults, you get separate prices for each.
Our Kings Highway building turned an old storage room into a package room, and nothing watches it. Do we need a new camera, or can one be moved?
Often one can be moved. Most building systems have at least one camera on a spot that matters less than it used to, such as a second view of the same corridor or a storage area nobody uses. If its cable can reach the package room, or a short extension can, moving it costs less than adding a camera and a new run. The camera should go high, where nobody can reach or turn it, and see the door and the shelves, so it records both who comes in and what they take. We also check how many days the recorder keeps, because package thefts are often discovered days later; a drive that overwrites in four days can lose the evidence before a tenant reports it.
Shops on the edges of Madison
The outside camera at our Avenue U store covers a long stretch of sidewalk, but people walking past are only a few pixels tall. Should we narrow it?
In most cases, yes. A camera's resolution is spread across whatever it sees, so a view of half a block gives each face only a handful of pixels, enough to show that someone walked by but not who. Narrowing the view to your doorway and the curb in front of it, by re-aiming or zooming a varifocal camera, puts far more pixels on each person. The trade-off is that you see less of the street. Many shops on Avenue U and Kings Highway end up with one camera tight on the door for faces and one wide for what happened, and if you have only one outdoor camera, the tight view is usually the more useful one to keep. We set it, then walk past it ourselves and check the recording to confirm a face is readable at the distance that matters.
Since the new streetlights went up on our part of Kings Highway, the camera over our door shows a bright glare at night and dark figures underneath it. What changed?
The light, not the camera. Brighter fixtures, like the streetlamps the Kings Highway BID added around Sgt. Joyce Kilmer Square, change the exposure a camera set itself for, and a lamp now inside the camera's view makes it darken everything else to cope. We adjust backlight and wide dynamic range, set the camera's exposure for the doorway rather than the whole scene, and if the lamp itself sits in the frame, tilt the camera a few degrees or fit a hood so the lamp falls outside it. Sometimes the new light helps: a camera that used to switch to black and white infrared may now stay in color all night, which we set on purpose once we see the street's real lighting.
The recorder in our Nostrand Avenue store's cellar, down the sidewalk doors, has died twice in three years. Is it the location?
Very likely. A cellar under sidewalk doors gets damp air every time the doors open, water running down the stairs in heavy rain, and in summer, heat with no ventilation. Hard drives and power supplies wear out fastest in exactly those conditions. Before replacing the recorder a third time, we check whether the drive or the power supply failed, copy any footage you need, and then move the recorder up into the store or onto a high, ventilated shelf, with a battery backup. If the cables from the street-facing cameras pass the sidewalk doors, we check them for water as well, and seal or reroute them.
Power on a hot day
Every July, when the air conditioners are running, half our cameras go dark for a few hours and come back by evening. Are they overheating?
Sometimes, but more often it is the circuit. If the recorder, a camera power supply or the PoE switch shares a circuit with a window air conditioner, the breaker can trip, or the voltage can sag enough for a supply to shut down, whenever the air conditioner starts. Cameras on that supply go dark while the rest keep working, which is why only half drop. We measure the circuit, move the camera equipment off the air conditioner's circuit, and put it on a battery backup that smooths brief sags. If a recorder or switch is in a hot attic or a closet without air, we also check its temperature and move it. A camera in direct afternoon sun that shuts itself down from heat is rarer, and we can tell the two apart on site.
