bpzle

Awesome! Looks like I was on the right track.... What did you use for solar? How did you house the electronics?

I've got a few ideas, but thought maybe someone else has been there and done that, maybe learned a few lessons I don't have to. I have a client that lives in a rural area, who's only entrance is a road prone to flooding. He'd like an advanced warning of high water level. This road is aprx 1000' away (have not completed site survey yet). He originally thought of cameras, which we'll install regardless... but I was thinking a better, more proactive and instantaneous alert of high water... Not something he'd have to anticipate and be watching on a screen somewhere. I thought of water sensors... pretty common for basements, around water heaters and pumps. However what I'm looking for would be wireless, and be designed for outdoors. I thought of ridding something up from Inovonics and Winland... Or I could do something real simple like an irrigation rain sensor. I'd just have to do a little rigging on this and prevent it from triggering with rain and only rising flood water. I just need something to wirelessly transmit a NO/ NC signal to the DVR, which will text message the client. Any better ideas? Still researching...

Decoy cameras are inexpensive, yes... but I'm not entirely convinced they will solve your problems. There's a couple routes you could go... 1, the cheapest and easiest: Wireless outdoor PIR (motion) sensors tied to a receiver that would be a buzzer/ blinking light. This would warn you (and wake you up in the middle of the night) of the presence of someone in your driveway, without the fancy video gear. This equipment would be well below your budget... 2. Buy a decent DVR and a single true day night camera. It would be a good start for a real CCTV system, to help catch the terds when you're not around.

Welcome! Sorry to hear about your troubles. Pretty common these days... $600 isn't much if you want 4 cameras, dvr, and all the necessary goodies. The packages you were looking at are junk. Any professional would agree. The spec sheets look great, price looks even better, but those "package" deals are all the same... I know, I've bought a few for comparing to real CCTV equipment, and to see exactly what my customers were looking at. We can get as technical as you'd like as to why their worthless... but you've already mentioned information overload so I don't want to go there unless you just really want to. I would highly recommend getting a DVR, and 1 good camera. This will still be in the low budget range, but very do-able. Then as budget allows purchase more. Go for quality over quantity.

I feel stupid... what are you talking about? lol

Wow, you jumped right in! Before you order... if it's not too late... can you tell us why you selected these cameras? To be able to use both sets of these cameras, you are going to need a hybrid DVR. These allow you to record IP cameras (ACTi) and analog cameras (CNB). Have you considered DVR? There's lots to choose from. I'd recommend Avermedia, and no I'm not pushing any agenda... I've worked with numerous systems over the years and I just really like their hardware/ software.

looks like you are going from bad to worse ... +100

That would require trespassing and vandalism. What's ironic is, you would probably be caught and prosecuted against trying to disable the very thing that would turn you in. Your neighbor would have the last laugh. Have you tried the civil approach? Calmly walk over, knock on his door, and express your concerns that you are being watched on your property. Ask to see the cameras live, before he has a chance to reposition them.

hmmm... never seen that here in the States... I wish I had though! It's been my experience that you have to also use a filter coupled with an RF modulator. Even if a channel appears to have static and nothing is broadcast, it could still be used by your CATV company and trying to combine your CCTV signal over this invisible signal will have some pretty crappy results. The only drawback is, if the CATV company changes their lineup (they do around here almost every month), then you run the risk of blocking out a channel that people may want. IE, you've filtered out channel 67 because it was blank when you installed but today it's HSN and you've unwittingly screwed grandma out of her guilty pleasure.

what's a NV camera? What do you mean by a camera with servos? You mean a ptz camera?

The Q24 is a great camera if used in the correct situation just like any other camera. The Q24 is for wide coverage with no blind spots, not detail images of peoples faces 30 ft away. If you where going to use the Q24 in the location where the Vivoteks are installed and you wanted detail it would never work. The Q24 is a tool just every other camera, use the correct tool for the job! At those outside locations if you tried a M12 you say the Vivotek image is crap. What are you using for recording? +1

So how did you project turn out?

What do you mean limited by bandwidth? That's more of a NIC, network, and ISP question... I believe most of their standalone NVRs are coming with gigabit NICs these days... Not often one would need it though.... Most of the time the unit runs out of other resources before bandwidth is even a question. On standalones that is...

Thanks for that bpzle, I appreciate it I did look at the Avermedia EB range but I can't spot any feature that the Avtech lacks. The Avtech is considerably cheaper too, and I've had a difficult enough time as it is, convincing the wife to spend this much! Found the Avtech +500gb HD for 160 pounds. Experience in the real world has no match for spec sheets. You have to learn to read between the lines.

I think it would have worked fine, if it was Intel. You kinda hit a brick wall there... AV Techs are reliable and cheap. That's the only positive thing you'll ever hear me say about them. I've installed a few... just not a fan. But if you only have $200 to spend on a DVR, it can't be beat.

I'm not familiar with Digital Watchdog... I've looked into DM but still don't understand why they are so expensive. I've installed/ worked on a lot of DVRs from all kinds of manufactures in my day... I'd say Avermedia gives the best bang for the buck.

Aver's PC specs are a little on the conservative side... What are the specs on your PC? I've gotten some P4s to work without issue...

what??? what are you trying to do?

That doesn't sound right... fiber would be the ideal way to go

What do you mean by "motion detector cameras"? You mean the covert ones built into PIR (motion detector) housings? Or are you looking to be notified or recording to be triggered based on motion? What are your requirements for each camera? You budget is very do-able. I haven't worked with ICRealtime. I have a dealer account setup, but never tested anything from them. I only recommend or sell products I can personally vouch for... But I have tested a huge variety of products from numerous manucaturers. I'd highly recomend Avermedia for your recorder. In my opinion, the price point just can't be beat for the support, software, reliability, and features. Tell us more about what the sytem will be used for and we'd be glad to help.

$400 WITH bracket!

Probably a typo and they mean to say feet, not meters. You should see the typos in their class material/ Power Points.

Avermedia

Sharing contacts between 2 different devices is a bad idea. Either use a relay or use seperate sensors. Another trick I use is to use a relay on the bell (siren) outputs and use this to trigger the DVR. Simple, and you don't need an installers code or have to mess with programmable outputs on the panel. Plus you usually don't have to run wires down down walls or to the panel to get to the bell wire.

hmmm... Is that camera mounted under a porch or is it exposed to rain? Does it ever get direct sunlight? Can you see condesation inside the camera? Its usually pretty obvious. Its either condensation or the plastic bezel of the camera is cheap crap and has warped/ faded from UV exposure. I've seen this quite a bit on cheap cameras I've upgraded for customers. Most commonly happens on cheap Chinese bullet cameras.