Subscriber Discussion

Murphy's Laws Of The Security/Surveillance Industry!

RS
Robert Shih
Oct 10, 2016
Independent

I can't believe we don't have this topic!

Time for some fun!

 

Your premade cable will always be 10' short of target. - A Brian Rhodes law.

Your customer will always draw comparisons between your product and retail equipment.

Either too many ports are open on the network or the ports you need to use are blocked. No exceptions.

That legacy camera they want to keep so badly will be the biggest thorn in your side.

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Armando Perez
Oct 10, 2016
Hoosier Security and Security Owners Group • IPVMU Certified

WE have a saying around here for when something seems simple, but likely isnt.

"its only an alexor"

Stems from the days we used to install alexor panels in vacant rental properties and they always, ALWAYS had some random issue that made a simple lick n stick portable alarm install turn into some clusterf*&k of a day.

so, since then, anything that seems simple....

camera swap for legacy customer

reprogram some users

move a camera.....

its only an alexor.

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Ari Erenthal
Oct 10, 2016
Chesapeake & Midlantic

If there is a blind spot, an incident is going to occur there.

If you forget to mark a connection, that connection is going to go bad.

You only need an obscure piece of test equipment when you forget it in your other truck.

Every shortcut you take will come back to bite you in the butt somewhere down the road.

You will always discover some newfangled gizmo on the shelf at ADI just after it would have been useful for something.

The new technician who just isn't working out? You will only discover that he's been using a nonstandard color code after you fire him.

You will only run out of gas on days when you didn't have time to fill up the truck.

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Mike Dotson
Nov 07, 2016
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

A twist on your color code comment.... the tech was using this color code because they were color blind!!

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Brian Rhodes
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

The newest/cleanest work vehicle is the one that gets wrecked first.

A cable connector is the problem, after 10+ hours of troubleshooting.

That alarm system's 'test mode' still dispatches fire even if you call.

Your ladder is always too short to reach that one spot.

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KL
Keefe Lovgren
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

That alarm system's 'test mode' still dispatches fire even if you call.

that one made me shudder...

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Ari Erenthal
Oct 10, 2016
Chesapeake & Midlantic

That splice you spent 45 minutes trying to climb up to? Turns out it's guarded by a scary spider.

The day you're too lazy to go back to the truck to get your eyepro is the day you get something in your eye.

The customer you call from your cellphone turns out to be the one who is crazy and demanding and has boundary issues.

The day you forget your lunch at home is the day you get dispatched to service a camera in the middle of a field somewhere. Have fun fighting a squirrel for acorns.

When troubleshooting, the longer it takes to discover the issue, the shorter it takes to fix it.

If the issue is immediately obvious to you, it will turn out to merely be a symptom of another, larger issue.

No matter how old the product is, you only need a manual after you throw it out.

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Brian Rhodes
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

If the issue is immediately obvious to you, it will turn out to merely be a symptom of another, larger issue.

Dang, the truth burns

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

It always starts working 5 seconds before tech support picks up.

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GR
Greg Rhoades
Oct 20, 2016
IPVMU Certified

And starts again once you hang up.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

If a needed screw falls to the floor, it will do a physics defying series of bounces as it skitters away into a parallel universe, never to be seen again.

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RS
Robert Shih
Oct 10, 2016
Independent

That parallel universe may also be known as a drain pipe.

When you do lose that screw and you go shopping for it at an Ace Hardware shop or something similar, it will be the one screw they're out of.

The alternate, longer screw with matching threading that you were planning on buying and cutting down to size will be both more expensive and low in stock or out of stock.

The screw you stock up on is never immediately available or the one you need.

You will strip at least one old screw from an older installation you need to do a replacement on.

The board or drywall the camera you plan to mount to or a camera was mounted to is flimsy or prone to rot or already rotted.

Your customer will insist on at least one unreasonable mount point.

Studs, studs everywhere.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 10, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Never have two techs terminate both ends of an rj45 crossover cable at the same time.

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Oct 10, 2016

Huh? This one needs some explanation.

EP
Eddie Perry
Oct 10, 2016

then it wouldnt be a cross over cable it would be a straight though patch cable

U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 13, 2016
IPVMU Certified

So put 2 techs in two rooms, seperated by a Chinese Wall, with ten unterminated cables run between them. Tell them both you want them to make 10 crossover cables.

Question: Assuming the company preference is for TIA-A coding, which tech goes on break first?

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JR
Jeff Russo
Oct 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Wasps will always buzz you just as you are lining up the first screw for a camera while on the top of a ten foot ladder

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 11, 2016
IPVMU Certified

It is a universal law that if a power supply is listed in watts, the device will be listed in amps and volts.

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RS
Robert Shih
Oct 12, 2016
Independent

Right after putting in X brand of cameras for an installation, IPVM comes out with a damaging article about your manufacturer.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 12, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Right after putting in X brand of cameras for an installation, IPVM comes out with a damaging article about your manufacturer,

where you slowly come to realize that your choice has single-handedly compromised the safety of the entire free world, as well as infest your customers network with virulent malware, turning his 8 channel system into a botnet platoon in the red cyber-army all at the same time.

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 13, 2021
Independent

At least now that brand will be removed from the US market entirely! OH WAIT! WHAT ABOUT YOUR WARRANTY?!?! OH NO!!!

U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 13, 2021
IPVMU Certified

“Any discussion that can be necro-posted, will be necro-posted”

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
Oct 12, 2016

If you're on a job site and your cell phone hasn't rung once in the last 3 hours, it will most certainly ring when you're at the top of a ladder with a camera in one hand and a drill in another. When you do some acrobatic shifting and leg straddling to free up a hand and retrieve the phone, it will be your wife calling to see how you're coming along.

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RS
Robert Shih
Oct 12, 2016
Independent

Speaking of wives, they will always hold it against you that you do a better job of servicing your customers' projects than the ones she assigns you.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Oct 20, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Speaking of wives, they will always hold it against you that you do a better job of servicing your customers' projects than the ones she assigns you.

Mine too. Til' I started asking for 50% up-front.

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jason oneal
Oct 13, 2016

No good deed goes unpunished! A friend said this to me a few years ago and I have since found it to be true. Yet I keep doing good deeds.

Latest good deed... Agreed to cut a couple hundred dollars off of labor because the job seemed to be a lot smaller and easier than anticipated. Get started on the job and realized that the building's owner installed two feet of blown insulation over the drop tile ceiling... and they had carpet floors!

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #4
Oct 13, 2016

This is my experiences this week...

You hang a camera, get the view just right and the landscape guy places a tree right in front of it the next day.

Your best placed junction box is now held hostage by a 6' ceiling tile bolted down by an exit sign and that bad patch cable standing between you and a job well done is now just out of reach thanks to some architects dream.

The device that fails is always the furthest away, and requires multiple trips up stairs to figure out the issue.

You realize that your electrical contractor forgot to perform your rough-ins in a parking garage, places camera right behind a light fixture, fixes it by lowering your camera down below posted height, only discover your camera was too low when said electrician hit it with his truck.

You are troubleshooting why a device won't show up in software, you swap switch ports on the device to get it onto a known good VLAN to default device, now two devices won't work, you spend an hour discovering their network admin enabled port security.

Your electrical contractor does rough ins of wires for doors, doesn't give a damn about labeling just places labels on cables, you can't figure out why your Rex and door contact are screwed up, then you realize said electrician just stuck labels on cables, now have to fight 6' ceiling tiles, HVAC and fire alarm crap in your way to change cables. Questioning who the hell specified 6' ceiling tiles.

Offer to general contractor that you would install strikes (doors already prepped for them) first strike goes in well, next 12 doors you realize that every door frame in the building is warped, and none of the strikes fit, and you spend the next 12 hours and work until midnight grinding door frames because your life safety inspection is the next day.

You look out window of new building during lunch time and see electricians coming out of the bar across street... instantly things become more clear on why your rough ins are so wrong.

You look out window of new building during morning break and see general contractor coming out of bar across street... instantly clarifies why the floors and doors are not installed.

You bid the job because it appeared to be a Gravy Job, spend the next day sitting in bosses office trying to explain why it took 5 hours per door, when you quoted 2...

After all is said and done, customer calls and said that card reader is on wrong side of door because your electrical contractor can't read a print, and at midnight your on autopilot and its the last door of the project.

Ordered 15 Honeywell Motion Rex's and Single Gang Adapter Plates from ADI, 15 Bosch Rex's show up, with single gang adapter plates that don't include screws, spend afternoon searching for screws.

Turn system and you realize that your version of Normally Open is not what Bosch felt should be Normally Open, Realize that all Bosch REX's have to be wired NC, thankfully they are mounted on the wall and not to the 6' ceiling tiles...

I kid you not, this has been my week...

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Brian Karas
Oct 13, 2016
IPVM

But other than that it's been normal?

;)

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RS
Robert Shih
Oct 13, 2016
Independent

Safe to say that Murphy might have been too optimistic when it came to your last week.

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Mark Jones
Oct 14, 2016

Plug-n-Play

dw
dean woodyatt
Oct 14, 2016

can't wait for NFC setup to be a 'thing'

No F#ing Chance of that working first time

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Oct 14, 2016

For integrators:

  1. If a sales person sold it without engineering support it will be fictitious product, impossible to implement, and have no chance for profitability.
  2. Electrical contractors claim your cabling work to save cost, claiming competence. Upon award there are many questions about how to do the work, what type of cable to pull, and how to terminate it.
  3. When on a customer managed network you will invariably be called in to chase down issues with cameras not working, only to see a client IT subordinate randomly unplug cables in order to repurpose ports for something else many times.
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CH
Corbin Hambrick
Oct 17, 2016

The client will always have "1 more thing" right AFTER they hand you the check.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #5
Oct 17, 2016

No one can find the _____ that was drop shipped to the job site

No one knows the tracking # of the shipment

You're installing where there is one bar or no cell / data service and the wifi isn't up yet so you can't reach your PM to get the tracking #

You're installer plugs the ethernet into the LAN port and when they turn on the NVR it floods the network and takes down the POS (this happened to me 3 times back in the day)

Fire Marshall just had a fight with his wife the morning your supposed to get inspection

You're not ready for the Fire Marshall and he can't get back till Friday. The store needs the OP to move in Thursday

You're subs look like they just crawled in from a Grateful dead concert and smell like the rode to the job site with Cheech & Chong

It's a Union job and they wan't you to pull CAT 5 at same time the IBEW crew is pulling wire

You have to get your CAT 5 out of your Company's Honda Odyssey Van parked next to a whole row of the IBEW F-150

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Oct 17, 2016

This one:

No one can find the _____ that was drop shipped to the job site

No one knows the tracking # of the shipment

So true! I once had nationwide retail rollouts to manage where we shipped pallets full of equipment to the site in advance of the install. I started calling the site receiving manager to verify equipment was there. I had one site say there was no equipment received, though I showed it delivered. I dispatched a tech 5 hours out of his way to go figure out what was going on as I could not understand how 6-8 pallets wrapped in black plastic could disappear in a warehouse that held maybe 50 pallets. The equipment was not only there, wrapped in black, but immediately outside the receiving office.

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MI
Matt Ion
Nov 06, 2016

No one can find the _____ that was drop shipped to the job site

No one knows the tracking # of the shipment

Had this more than a few times. The corollary to this is that the further the site is from home base or the supplier, the more likely it is to happen, and/or the more equipment that's likely to be missing. You'll never be missing a tool when the job site is five minutes from home, but fly halfway across the country, and things you KNOW were in there when you packed will be MIA.

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Brian Karas
Oct 17, 2016
IPVM

The one site you didn't backup device configs for will be the one that suffers a lightning strike and needs 90% of the gear replaced or reprogrammed.

A "quick" firmware upgrade to resolve a few bugs that don't even really affect the site will render the most difficult to reach camera inoperable. At 4PM on the Friday before a long weekend.

A customers site will work perfectly for a year, until the day after you call and ask him to be a reference for a new customer, when all the equipment will begin acting erratically. Oh, and the root cause will end up being something he plugged into the network, which you discover after a 2 hour trip to the site.

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MB
Mark Bottomley
Oct 17, 2016
System problems cannot be replicated in front of the tech. The manual is for the other not quite identical model - only differs in the areas you care about. RTFM - Read the "Fine" Manual.
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Gert Molkens
Oct 19, 2016
IPVMU Certified

The battery of your tools and testers is allways empty when there's no power socket around

Security installations allways refuse to work on a friday after 4PM, never on a monday at 8 AM

Thought i had my lucky day when drilling right next to a big watter pipe when drilling though a floor, missed it by only 2mm. The next hole went straight through the cable of the hallway lighting. At least, that was easier to fix than the watter pipe

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CP
Chris Powell
Oct 20, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Rule #1: It's always something simple.

Rule #2: The trick is finding which of a thousand simple things it is.

Rule #3: It's not just one thing ...

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 05, 2016
Independent

Your primary project manager/lead technician communicates poorly in English and is busy with the star project of the company, leaving you, a lowly, newly hired Sales Engineer, to take over as your own customer's Lead Technician with zero training. (My only advantage is that I learn quickly when I'm hands on and I have tons of IT experience)

You find that, while powerful, your CMS is translated by non-native English speakers...thus the entry for "Router IP" does not actually want the router's IP but the WAN IP. You find that out from JP Wenger only after you and the IT director collectively killed the video feed to apps outside of the network when you were only trying to follow contextual instructions.

Only AFTER provisioning your massively powerful CMS/VMS manually to match the settings with your cameras and network storage device, you find out there was an option to pull the data from the network storage device in the first place.

After finally scoring victories by perfectly provisioning everything and getting the logical camera organization to display for non-admin users, you then have to tackle the Video Wall device...whose interface is wholly alien and different from all the other equipment from the same company you've been working with thus far. THEN you find out that not even your Project Manager might have touched that before...

Time to self-train some more.

Suffice to say...DSS4004, EVS7048S-R, M70-4E-U....very powerful trifecta... and a hell of a lot to learn...FML

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MI
Matt Ion
Nov 06, 2016

When the client insists you hang ALL the cameras early in the finishing stages, guaranteed at least two will end up blocked by last-minute decor or lighting changes/additions.

This is why I always put in a group email, for everyone from my boss to the site super to the client reps can see, that we want to wait as long as possible to install the cameras specifically to avoid this recurring fact of life... so when they insist it get done sooner anyway, I can say "told ya so".

U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 06, 2016
IPVMU Certified

put in a group e-mail...that we want to wait as long as possible to install the cameras specifically to avoid this recurring fact of life...

Make sure to add "Murphy" to the group. :)

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 14, 2016
Independent

After busting your ass for your largest order/installation to date, the guy with the money decides to be delinquent on their payment and it's the last day of your sales cycle...and it's a bank holiday... which you didn't realize yesterday.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 14, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Generally speaking, Murphy loves Mondays.

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 14, 2016
Independent

Actually, this was Friday.

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Dave Gideon
Nov 14, 2021
IPVMU Certified

When you fall thru the sheet rock ceiling it's right over the secretary's desk and before you can do anything the customer yells "CANCEL THAT CHECK! EFFECTIVE YESTERDAY!" prior to checking on either your or his secretary's well-being.

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 14, 2021
Independent

OOOOOF! Was that you personally or one of your workers?

U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 14, 2021
IPVMU Certified

When you fall thru the sheet rock ceiling it's right over the secretary's desk…

In my experience, it’s usually the customer who goes through the roof…

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #6
Nov 15, 2021

You dig all of the holes for your perimeter security poles on Friday, and when you come back on Monday, the landscaper has planted trees in all of them. True story.

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RS
Robert Shih
Nov 15, 2021
Independent

And I bet the end-user/client asked, "Well why can't we just use the trees?!"

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