Specifications

5
Gyyr DVMS Design Objectives
Nowadays it isn’t too difficult to design a Digital Video Recorder using a relatively low cost, fast PC. All it takes is
a clever software engineer to cobble together a video capture card, simple switching circuitry and a nice GUI to
make an inexpensive recorder. In fact, many of the Security DVR’s currently on the market are just that. The
easy road to the destination is not without major limitations.
The best solution is a clean sheet approach. By designing a purpose built device, you can often disinherit the
flaws of a common platform. Most PC based DVRs use a general purpose Operating System (OS), which is great
for Home and Office applications. This predominant OS was
not designed for mission-critical applications. Would
you want your Grandmother’s pacemaker or the nearby Airport Flight Control dependent on the same OS
optimized for a word processor or presentation program? Why should your security recorder have the same
limitations?
By this same logic, Gyyr felt that DVMS should be based on the most robust platform available, yet still be
affordable. To maximize reliability, Gyyr chose QNX as the operating system; this somewhat related to UNIX. QNX
is robust enough to be used in mission critical applications such as Nuclear Reactors. DVMS should not be
confused with a PC, as it uses a purpose built motherboard that is not designed for personal computing.
However, it does use some common PC components, such as IDE/SCSI hard drives, removable media etc, to
leverage the costs of changing technology.
The three major design criteria were to excel in Intelligence, Quality and Connectivity. By using a combination of
Video Motion Detection, advanced program options, you can greatly reduce storage requirements. Set up
properly, you can record just the events that are important to you, based on activity, time of day, text generation
or external alarms. These recorded events should have the detail you need, based on your criteria. And you
should be able to retrieve the specific events you want, quickly and easily from the local site or remotely.
A properly designed and installed DVMS system will be a reliable, flexible recording solution. All with the benefit
of longer, unattended operation with the freedom of remote access.
Hardware Architecture
The single main board of DVMS is purpose built, and shares no lineage with any PC based Motherboard. It
integrates several sub-systems controlled by a modest microprocessor, a National Semiconductor 486-25 CPU.
Images are digitized, and analyzed for motion detection. High resolution images are compressed at up to real
time speeds using our hardware based Wavelet compression engine. These images are then transferred to the
IDE or SCSI based Hard drive controller, and to the remote transmission sub-system. Tight code, low overhead
operating system combined with optimized hardware allows DVMS to operate without the complexity of a PC.
This results in a system that is high performance, yet extremely reliable.
Chassis Architecture
The DVMS chassis is approximately 17” wide, with 2 internal drive bays. The lower bay allows for an available
fixed Hard disk. The upper bay allows for available removable HD, Jaz drive or DVD-RAM drive.
The Front Panel also has an ergonomic Jog/Shuttle wheel, with STILL, 4 forward and 4 reverse speeds. Several
buttons on the FP allow access to common VCR like transport functions, like Play/Record, etc.. Additionally,
buttons are available for Program, Search and Password access.
The Rear Panel has a rocker power switch, the I/O connectors and a PCMCIA card slot. This PC card slot fits
standard PC cards, which are commonly used for Laptop computers. DVMS uses the PC card slot to accept
Ethernet and Modem connectivity cards. Additionally, we use this slot to configure the system, diagnostics and
provide for future upgrades.