aliciac

Hi guys! Just an update to my upgrade issue please. I'm now ready to purchase a new DVR as was advised to me since my current DVR appears to be past its sell by date! I have about £400 to spend on a new 16 channel DVR and three extra cameras. I currently have eight 'QVIS EYE-1000-V2B 1000TVL Weatherproof Varifocal Dome Camera, Black' cameras (http://goo.gl/JYBwJJ) and would like to buy another three to take the total to eleven. Here's my question. I would like a DVR that I can connect to my router and view video on my mobile phone from a remote location. I've researched a few 16 channel DVRs that all appear to be capable of remote viewing, but there are huge variations in price, even when they have the same 1TB hard drive capacity. I've seen some at £200, and some at £400. I presume the price difference relates to build quality and the quality of recording that the DVRs are capable of. If my current eight cameras are not HD quality, do I still need a DVR that can record in HD quality? Is it just future proofing to buy an expensive DVR? One final thing - is it possible for the DVR to show the current eight cameras on a screen (as is the case now), but the extra three cameras, record their feed but not show them on the screen in store? The reason being that cameras 9,10 and 11 are planned to be installed in a store room, and obviously I do not want customers seeing what stock there is in the store room! Any guidance on a suitable DVR choice would be much appreciated! Thank you so much! Alicia.

Thank you tomcctv for your reply. Of course you're right, I do need to invest in a new DVR now, I think I've had this one for more than ten years now, it has behaved well though! I thought the battery issue would be a quick fix, but I guess not! Thank you again! Alicia.

Last picture.

Thank you brebenac for your reply and your offer to help locate this battery! Sorry it took a while, had other pressing issues of late. Opened up the DVR to find a load of dust! Took some pictures of the PCB as requested. There's a risen PCB also which slots into the main PCB and connects to the hard drive and CD writer. I was able to remove this riser card to take a photo underneath. However despite taking out all the screws for the main PCB, I was unable to remove the PCB from the DVR casing to take a photo of the underneath of it, not sure if it's glued on something underneath. Did try with a little force, but not too much so as to break the PCB. Anyway, have cleaned out all the dust now at least with compressed air! So please if you get a moment, take a look at the photos I'm attaching. Hopefully you'll be able to identify the battery somewhere. Also I noticed that when the power is removed from the DVR, whilst the date resets to 1st January 2000, 00:00, the settings for menus remain and do not revert to default. Don't know if this information is of any significance. Thanks very much! Alicia.

Forgot to mention, there's no mention of a battery in the manual either! A PDF of the manual can be found here is anyone is kind enough to take a look please! http://www.cpcamglobal.com/support/manual/CPD507_505_503.pdf Thanks!

Hi again! I've just opened up my DVR to locate the battery, and I just can't find it! There appears to be no battery, unlike a computer motherboard. The model number of the motherboard is AV-785M, there's a sticker on it saying that. I can post some pictures if anyone can help me identify where the battery is? Thanks! Alicia.

brebenac, thank you very much for your reply, it's much appreciated. I'll order a new battery and give it a go. Will buy a 2TB SATA hard drive with a IDE to SATA converter also (cannot find an IDE hard drive bigger than 500GB). Will keep you posted! Thank you again! Alicia.

Hi everyone! I'm looking for some advice regarding my CPCAM CPD505 DVR system (8 cameras). The first issue is that the time defaults to zero after a power cut, so I have to set the date and time after a power cut, even a momentary one. Not a huge problem I know, but if there's a power cut overnight and I don't know about it, the DVR won't be recording with the correct time until I spot this. I presume this has something to do with the battery (if there is a battery inside). Is it just a matter of changing the battery like on a PC motherboard? Would it be a CR2032 battery? The second issue is regarding a hard drive upgrade. Currently there is a 400GB hard drive (IDE) in the DVR. With 8 cameras recording at high quality, only 13 days are stored before being overwritten. I am not sure how big a hard drive will be compatible with this DVR. I might also have trouble finding a 3.5" IDE hard drive larger than 500GB. Is a IDE to SATA converter a recommended workaround? Or a slave hard drive perhaps? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you for your time! Alicia.

Hi everyone! I have a CPCam CPD505 system. I am trying to backup to USB, but get the following error message: WARNING USB ERROR The system seems to recognise that a USB drive is connected, otherwise it gives another message, but will not backup to USB. I am using a SanDisk Cruzer Blade 4GB USB drive, full formatted as FAT32 (not NTFS). Please can someone tell me if there is only a limited number of USB drives this system works with? Thanks very much, Alicia.

Thanks for your detailed posts the toss, Horizon and shockwave199. The camera was £80, so not very cheap, but yes, not particular expensive either. I concede I did make the mistake of not getting it installed by a professional though! Would have saved me this bother. Armed with the excellent advice I have received here, I will have another play about with the camera this weekend and try and get a decent gap between the DAY -> NIGHT and NIGHT -> DAY numbers, with the latter being distinguishably higher than the former. Will leave BURST on and DELAY CNT as 30. Will keep you guys updated on how I get on! Thanks for now! Appreciate your time! Alicia.

Thanks very much for your post The Toss! Yesterday I tried to change the settings as you described. I attempted to change the 'DAY -> NIGHT' setting to 20 and the 'NIGHT -> DAY' setting to 50. However, when I moved the number for the first setting, the second setting also changed! I don't know why this would happen. As you explained, these two numbers should be different, but as soon as I started moving the first from 3 to 20, the second started moving by its own from it's 5 position to exactly the same as the above. Bizarre! Unsure of what to do, I left them both on 20. Had no choice. I also changed DELAY CNT from 10 to 30 in case this helped because I had doubts the other changes I'd made would help. I also switched BURST to on. And then about an hour before sunset, the camera switched to black/white mode. And just sat in that mode all night until an hour or so after sunrise. I think I might have made it worse! No colour at all in night mode. Where am I going wrong? I don't want a black/white picture at night. I want a colour picture all through the night. I got this with the old camera, I should be able to get the same with the new one. Next time I think I better call in a professional to install a new CCTV camera. This is a lot of work when you don't know what all the settings mean and do! Anybody feel free to offer any other suggestions on settings changes to get colour back in night mode. Thanks so much! Alicia.

Thank you the reply MindTwist. Sorry about the delayed reply, been so much else going on at work at the moment. I've had a look through the small manual that came with the CCTV camera. Whilst the menus look similar to those that I posted a link to, they're not the same. In the manual for my CCTV camera, in the section for "Day/Night mode", it says: "Day/night mode. Auto: Select this and the camera will show a colour image in high lux and will change to a black/white image in low lux. I have five options to play with in this menu: DAY/NIGHT - Auto. BURST - On or off. DELAY CNT - Choose number between 1 and 100. Default is 10. DAY -> NIGHT - Choose number between 1 and 100. Default is 3. NIGHT -> DAY - Choose number between 1 and 100. Default is 5. I presume I have to change the latter two settings, but to what? I have a feeling you're going to say trial and error which means climbing up a ladder several times and waiting for night each time! Any further comments most welcome! Thanks very much! Alicia.

Hi everyone! I've had to replace one of the CCTV cameras on my system because the previous camera stopped working. It was an outdoor camera. I bought another outdoor camera online from a website for £50. I think it is a generic brand but has a SONY EFFIO-E 700TVL chip. The camera was installed and works well, in daytime at least. The camera certainly gives a sharper clearer image than the previous camera. The problem is at night when the camera continuously switches from night colour to night black/white every two seconds, non stop from dawn to dusk. However when a car passes by, the headlights from the car appear to keep the camera in night colour mode! I have tried changing the power supply but to no avail. All the LED lights on the face of the camera appear to be on at night. The camera has a small control unit built into the wire which provides an on screen menu. When I installed the camera, I did not change any settings (all have been left as default). I have checked the manual, but am unsure which setting it is that I need to adjust to ensure the camera remains in colour mode at night (if indeed this is a setting problem and not a fault with the camera). I found this website, but am not sure if it helps my problem: http://www.eclipsecctv.com/OSD-security-camera-578-explanations.html Please help someone! Any ideas welcome. Thanks very much! Alicia.

Thanks for the reply Neutech. Yes I meant 1TB not 1GB! Having regard to what you said, I'll think I'll stick to a 500GB model because that's probably the max on this old DVR. Will let you know how I get on! Thanks very much! Alicia.

Thank you SectorSecurity kindly for your reply. Yes I have checked and the noise is coming from the hard drive. But the system is still working. You said I can replace it with any make, but can it be any size too? The current hard drive is 250gb, but could I replace it with a 1gb one? Assuming I can find a 1gb hard drive in with IDE connector! Thanks again! Alicia.