Securame

Your camera has a CCD 1/3" inch in size, so you need a lens for 1/3". Anyway I don't think you will find 1/4" lenses any more, since 1/3" lens work on 1/3" and 1/4" sensors.

I had about two years ago a pain in the ass customer that got a 4 camera system installed. He was a cheap guy, so he thought that the price we were giving him for a 1Tb HD was way too high (it was a WD blue; I quoted the price we pay for it +20EUR for installing on the DVR, formating, and configuring the DVR, we only have to cross the street to but the HD). So he asked if he could bring his own HD, we said sure. He purchased somewhere a 1Tb external HD, ripped the enclosure case, and brought us the HD so we would install it for him free of charge (fine, after all, he was buying everything else). It was a 1Tb WD green, and he was even telling us how much cheaper he had bought it for. He got his 4 channel D1 25fps set up up and running, and we didn't hear from him in about 4-5 months. So he comes back with the DVR under his arm, his unit was beeping all the time. We check it, the DVR is fine but the HD is dead (the DVR was complaining, "HD failure"). So since he had not purchased the HD from us, I told him that he was on his own to get it repaired. I told him quickly how to remove/install a new HD, and he left. And a few months later, he comes back yet again with a beeping unit, and of course the same problem. No idea if he got the HD replaced the time before (I doubt it, he bought an external HD and destroyed the external case) or bought a new one, but he had again a non working HD, and again a WD green unit. He told us that maybe DVR was defective and was killing the HDs. I checked the DVR settings, and found out that he had reprogrammed the unit to record not just on event/movement, but 24h continuous recording an all 4 cameras. This is when I explained to him that there were different HDs. And that he had purchased a WD green USB external disk, which was supposed to be used maybe for backups, movies storage, whatever, and had it installed it on a DVR powered 24h/day; and not only that, he also had reconfigured the DVR so that the HD would be recording non stop until the drive died. He then understood why the HD we were selling him the first time was a little bit more expensive, bought a second (or third) HD from us, and left our shop for the last time (of course I also charged him one hour for all the hassles fixing his mess, and testing his non working HDs). That is I think the last time I have seen a WD green on a DVR. I am not saying they can not work with certain DVRs, and under certain configurations, but with the small price difference with blue units, I think it is not even worth trying.

Well, Western Digital manufactures those hard drives, and not NewEgg, and I am quite sure WD would not approve that description.

That is a WD green drive. I would also advice to stay away from them for CCTV and standalone DVRs, from WD we only use blue, red and black, price difference between green and blue is so small that it is just not worth it. Which one will depend on the DVR and how it will be working (depending the number of cameras, resolution, FPS and Mbps, recording 24h or motion, etc).

Your boss has watched way too many 007 movies. I second this.

192.168.0.10 and 192.168.1.1 are on different subnets, that will never work with mask 255.255.255.0 (and I am sure you have set up one of those numbers wrong). If your router IP is 192.168.0.1 your DVR IP should be 192.168.0.10. If your router IP is 192.168.1.1 your DVR IP should be 192.168.1.10.

Wow, that seems one very expensive camera at $170 given the specs... 450TVL, 3 lux, and they dare to call it "low light"??

Don't do it. You will lose the warranty on the camera (in case you have any, since you purchased from China), you will lose some options on the camera (in case you ever want to use it somewhere else; or want to resell the camera if you ever upgrade), and some of the cables might shortcircuit and make the camera work erratically or not work at all. Use a junction box.

Is it an amplified mic? Your problem might be due to a bad quality mic. You have to make sure you enable audio on your streams on the cameras you want to have audio. You can enable it on main stream, extra stream, or both. On live play I think you will get audio even if you are not recording it, but of course if you want to have audio on playback, you have to record it.

It is indeed, since Dyn.com went "payment only" now it is a great option to use hik-online.com with all DVR devices.

Googling hik-online I found this thread which I started myself over half year ago. Since then Hikvision has updated all their softwares (iVMS-4200 for PC and Mac, iVMS-4500 for smartphones, and iVMS-4500 HD for tablets) and now it is possible to connect a hik-online DVR, NVR, IP camera, etc. from web browser and any client. I wrote two posts on our blog explaining how to configure and use it, they are in spanish but hopefully they will help someone. http://www.securamente.com/como-utilizar-el-dns-dinamico-hik-online-com-con-tu-grabador-hikvision/ http://www.securamente.com/como-conectar-a-un-equipo-usando-hik-online-y-cliente-ivms/ Everything that can be done with hik-online.com can also be done with hikvisioneurope.net, in fact I think euro costumers should be using hikvisioneurope.net now, but since I started using hik-online before they had hikvisioneurope.net I am sticking with it just so I do not need to reconfigure all my machines.

You don't. I guess those cables are from a zoom camera that is supposed to be mounted on a PTZ enclosure. The PTZ enclosure will be the one with the RS485 receiver, and it will be the one who will tell the camera when to zoom and when to focus. Those 4 wires are not for RS485.

We have done some installs with 2 DVRs on the same place. A hidden NAS somewhere on the local network should also do the trick. I think it is way easier and cheaper on the long term than having to keep remote backups. The real/good one hidden, and another crappy/cheap DVR in plain sight. In the event of a break in, normal behaviour is to steal the DVR as soon as it is found, and they will not think that there is a second DVR recording everything somewhere else (that is what happened the only time there was a break in on a customer with 2 DVR setup, once they found the "bait" DVR they did not look any more, and meanwhile everything was being recorded on another unit hidden on top of the bathroom's ceiling).

Good info, thanks Ilkie!

Is that so? Any Cat5E cable must be pure copper in order to be certified?

If both brands have an SDK available, can it be done? Probably. Will it be easy? Surely not. Is it worth it for you? I don't have the answer there, if you tell me that you have dozens/hundreds of Dynacolor DVRs and dozens/hundreds of Hikvision DVRs, and you want them to work toguether, it is probably worth it to give it a try. Otherwise, I doubt it. Try to find a programmer and ask him for a quote, but if you only have one (or a few) Dynacolor DVRs I can tell you for sure that it would be way easier to just replace them with Hikvision DVRs.

DNS and DDNS (or DynDNS, or DYnamic DNS, or however you want to call it) are two complete different things. If your router did not have a Dyndns client and you wanted to set it up on your DVR, your router IP address would be the right setting to put on your DVR DNS settings (if your router acts as a DNS server), but your router IP would NOT be the right setting to put in your DVRs Dyndns (or DDNS as you say) settings.

What you are looking for is a modulator. You would need to be more specific on what country you are from or what TV system you are using in order for someone to recommend you a given manufacturer/model.

I really just answered to the part I fully understood... I can not tell you what DNS to use on your DVRs. Does your router act as a DNS server? If so, you should be ok having your router IP as the DNS IP on the DVR. What DNS do you have on your computer? The same DNS should work on your DVR. If some of your DVRs do not update the dyndns after a power outage, it might be that the DVR only updates dyndns when it powers up, and maybe the DVR is powering up quicker than your internet connection, so when the DVR tries to update the dyndns it still does not have a working internet connection to do so. That's why it is always better to have the dyndns client on the router.

Router's dyndns client always if the router allows it. The router will be the first one to know if your public IP has changed, so it will update your dyndns domain sooner.

You can't, IVMS4200 is unable to connect to a Dynacolor DVR.

If five DVRs have had the password changed from one day to the next one, this has not been "by mistake", someone has changed it. If you do not have the current password, you will not be able to log in the DVR neither from Internet Explorer, IVMS4200, IVMS4000, or any other way. You can ping the DVR IP to know if it is still up and running (if you get to the login page, it is). Removing the battery will not reset the DVR to factory settings, this is not a computer where you can clear the BIOS settings. If you have to reset the DVR passwords, contact your Hikvision supplier, they should expliain you how to do so and give you temporary passwords to enter the DVR and change the admin password.

Your DVR only updates your dyndns host maybe on powerup, or maybe every X hours, so until that happens there is not much you can do. You could change that 3G dongle to a 3G router that has a dyndns client.

A picture would help. What is "WHEN I ON THE DVR THE DISPLAY"?

2nd and 3rd pics do look better than the first one, that being said, they are not good. The two cameras you are linking, second one is just a normal camera (not good for sunlight/contrasts, indoor camera looking at a glass, etc), the first one is junk.