What is PTZ Camera?

In recent decades, PTZ cameras have widely been used in government establishments such as Police Stations, Hospitals, and Local and State Parks. They haven’t been used as home security. Until now!

Technology for security is rapidly changing, but what always remains the same is the need to prevent punishment and ensure safety within one’s home. The PTZ home security camera does just that holding an increasingly important role.

PTZ camera,  a pan tilt zoom camera is a camera that is capable of remote directional and zoom control.

In television production, PTZ controls are used with professional video cameras in television studios, sporting events, and other spaces. They are commonly referred to as robos, an abbreviation of robotic camera. These systems can be remotely controlled by automation systems. The PTZ controls are generally sold separately without the cameras, but can also be sold as a set, as in the case of Fletcher cameras.

PTZ is an abbreviation for pan, tilt and zoom and reflects the movement options of the camera. Other types of cameras are ePTZ or virtual pan-tilt-zoom (VPTZ) where a high-resolution camera digitally zooms and pans into portions of the image, with no physical camera movement. Ultra-low bandwidth surveillance streaming technologies use VPTZ to stream user-defined areas in higher quality without increasing overall bandwidth usage. Surveillance cameras of this type are often connected to a digital video recorder which records the full field of view in full quality.

PTZ Cameras are commonly used in applications such as surveillance, video conferencing, live production, lecture capture and distance learning.

Most of the ball machines need to be used outdoors, so waterproof and dustproof are very important. Generally, the main body of the ball machine is made of metal, and the sealing is very good. The IP protection level can reach IP65 and IP66. The transparent cover of the lens and infrared is generally made of acrylic material to ensure good light transmission while ensuring hardness.
The ball machine generally uses two mounting methods, hoisting and wall mounting, and needs to be used with the corresponding mounting bracket.

PTZ generally use high-power IR lamps such as dot matrix, laser, OSRAM or laser.
In order to match different magnifications of the lens, the low beam, high beam. When the lens magnification changes, turn on the different lights so that the illumination angle and distance of the infrared light match the lens. Some can also dynamically adjust the power of the infrared light to achieve better night vision.

The lens can be selected with different zoom ratios as needed. For example, 18 times, 20 times, etc.
Like the ordinary IPC, the core part of the network coding board of the movement is also composed of DSP+sensor. The original signal output of the movement is typically output via a 30-pin LVDS interface (SONY EH6300 calibre) or a 36-pin YUV interface (Hitachi SC110 calibre). Then access to the network code board for encoding compression.

The PTZ Camera can be rotated up and down/left and right, and there are two stepping motors respectively. The ball machine rotates 360°, and the camera needs to access the external tail wire. At this time, the outer tail wire needs to be introduced by means of the slip ring. Some domes consider adding a limit switch to the rotating pan/tilt. Some limit switches are physical switches and some are controlled on a single program.

Control the PTZ motor to rotate, preset points, cruise and other functions, you need to use the decoder board. Including the address code of the PTZ device, the protocol, the baud rate, the PTZ control parameters in the network coding version and the matching of these three parameters, the PTZ can be controlled through the network. (The movement zoom does not need to go through the decoder board.)

Power the PTZ camera and take into account certain anti-surge functions.

Generally, the tail line has DC power supply and RJ45 network port. Ball machines with extra features can bring these functions out through the tail line.

Temperature control (cooling fan, heating)
WiFi
4G
TF card
alarm
audio
wiper

There is a statistical trend for our PTZ cameras, look at the charts below. The first chart represents the trend over the past 5 years, the second over the past 15 years. Both displaying an increase in people searching for PTZ cameras throughout the world, because they know the cameras are trustworthy. Now they can purchase their very own PTZ camera for any purpose they choose to.

Compared to the other CCTV security camera, the biggest difference is that

1. the PTZ camera’s pan tilt direction can be remote control, usually pan 0-360 degree, some are 0-355 degree, and tilt 0-93 degree, some are -45-45 degree.

2. The PTZ camera’s lens can be auto zoom-in and zoom-out from 3X, 4X, 5X, 10X, 18X, 30X, 27X, 33X. that make it clear when surveillance a large area.

Other features is that it can set many presets, and they can make several cruise. What is cruise? for example, you have several place need to surveillance, house gate, your garage，your pet’s little house, then you can make your house gate preset A, your garage preset B and your pet’s little house preset C. Preset A, B and C make a cruise, you can set your PTZ camera surveillance follow the route A to B to C, then back to A, do the cycle. And you can set the speed when it moves.

Some PTZ camera has auto tracking function.

Amazon is the largest online shopping marketplace, but when you search the ptz camera there, you can only search about 3000+ results of ptz camera there and most of them are the several similar ones and most of them are low customer review. But I have visit many PTZ security camera factory, and they have so many good and new ones.

Currently, you can search many kind of pan tilt zoom camera online on Amazon. But what about the the security camera supplier that offline? There are many supplier offline that has many high quality, low price products but they have no opportunity to list their product on Amazon.

I must say that eBay is typical representative of PTZ security camera. During the past 15 years, they are selling the old ones that design in the early of 2005, the price on eBay is low and no reviews about the products.

No new product list on eBay. Why? I guess most sellers on eBay just want to make some money but refuse to make something useful information to the buyer, like some video or some useful operation of the PTZ camera, because it will take a lot of time.

When you search on google, it has about 22200 search value per month, that means, every month, there are at least 20000+ people search for them and about 33,300,000 results. Over 33 million pages, how should we choose which one is better for me?

The search results come with the PTZ camera shopping market, some CCTV security camera websites, some are posts of PTZ camera. When you click the page, you will see most of them are so expensive, will we spend  over 1000 USD dollars to choose a PTZ camera?

And strangely, you can see there are no website that focus only on PTZ cameras. This kind of security camera, I think, is a little bit complicated and there do need some details of introduction, like video, to show customers how to use,  how to install and how to operate. To make it really useful for person.

1)    They have fewer options.

2)    Their price is very expensive.

3)    They don’t have detailed instructions and specs.

A PTZ camera is a security camera. It is a special security camera, its pan, tilt direction can be remote controls and it can be even to zoom-in and zoom-out.

And they are widely used in our common life and workplace.

Most importantly, they are becoming more and more popular all over the world, I think, many people especially the personal buyer will choose the PTZ camera when considering their home security and for some small business owner, the speed dome camera will play a really useful role.

It is a technical and kind of complicated security camera. So if you are interested in this camera, and you are going to buy one, you need to know more about them. Come to visit us or subscribe to us, we will update more and even make some video to you.