buellwinkle

Dahua is a manufacturer (OEM), they are not a brand, they do not provide support or warranty to consumers that I know of. They rely on camera companies, for example Q-See in the U.S. to provide service and support. I have never seen a camera branded as Dahua. This is why it's critical to buy from someone you trust to be there to support you and there's many small mom & pop shops that buy OEM cameras made by Dahua from China and HK and then resell them on eBay or through an online store. The problem is they are mostly bad at supporting you because profits are slim and they rather lose you as a customer than lose time and money supportting you and rarely have a support tech to help you. I've gone through this with one small guy in the U.S. selling on eBay, the moment the slightest thing goes wrong they point fingers and never help you. But at least you know you saved money, if nothing ever goes wrong.

I think V3.0 will open your eyes, it's a total re-write. Easier install, easier to use, more features and all for the same price as V2.3.

The old ACTi v2.3 was bad. It relied on SQL Server and IIS and never ran perfect. Their new NVR 3.0 is very good in comparison. Dead on reliable, extremely low memory and CPU, you can scrub the timeline in real time and watch 4 (or more) cameras all work in unison. Their NVR's are even better. But you are limited to ACTi cameras. Support is actually quite good. I reported a series of bugs in the first release, they fixed them all in a maintenance release a month later. I could not get NUUO software to work with all my ACTi cameras which surprised me. Also, didn't like the interface that much and CPU use was quite high.

That's high, I only use 1% with ACTI NVR 3.0, but neither it or Avigilon works completely with Dahua. Then you are comparing a quad core, probably newer i7 to my i3. If I had a modern day i7, I can probably get 6 cameras with BlueIris

I'm using the same thing, AutoNVR. So you kept the same box and power supply but changed the MB and CPU. I thought about that but everytime I try that it always costs me more as there's incompatible stuff. I didn't know they had an i5 that had integrated video, I'll take a look at that.

He bought a 4 channel NVR with PoE built in. The NVR has DHCP running and assigns an IP to the two included cameras. He has additional cameras, I'm assuming under the 4 camera limitation of the NVR that are connected to another switch. Other people here posted that they were able to add additional Dahua branded cameras to their Q-See NVR from Costco so that's not the problem, the problem is likely his network topography. I think the problem stems back to what I've said all along, the PoE version of the Dahua/Q-see NVR is acting a router. One obvious clue is that the NVR is running DHCP and assigning address to cameras. So now my guess is he plug the NVR into his router. So now you have two distinct networks that can't talk to each other. If he connects the NVR to a switch and not his home router and the camera is on that switch and set for DHCP or configured to an IP on that subnet, it would work but he can never access the camera directly from the internets, just connect to the camera via the NVR interface. This is one huge reason I tell people not to buy the model with the PoE built in.

MaxIcon, I know you use BI on the same equipment I do, an i3-540 and frankly, if I put 6 cameras on there (3 ACTi 1.3mp at 8 FPS) and 3 Dahua (1.3MP at 30fps, 2MP at 30fps, 3MP at 15fps) that sucker runs 100%. I ended up taking the 3 ACTi off and running them on the same PC with ACTi NVR software. With the 3 Dahua it's running about 50% with BI minimized. Should I pickup an old used i5 CPU chip and swap that out. The only problem is the i3 has video built in, so that may mess up the HDMI outputs I have now and I'll have to get an external video card. At this point I'm thinking that when ACTi gets their new cameras out, I'll switch back to all ACTi because their NVR software ran about 1% busy on the same PC and was miles ahead of BI. I liked NVR+ for Dahua, but they don't support ACTi cameras.

Most will not even give you the option to turn IR off at all. The best in this regards is Brickcom, I was able to turn IR off/on separately from the IR Cut filter D/N functionality.

Not a fan of NUUO, tried it and wouldn't work with half my cameras, even different models of the same brand and support was poor. NUUO's best attribute is their marketing that compensates for a mediocre product. Or as I like to say, they have best brochures in the business.

The short answer is no. You can't change the lens as the camera is precisely built for a lens of as specific size. If you put a longer lens it will hit the dome, if it's too short, you'll get severe light bleed from the LEDS. Besides, going from 3.3mm to 2.8mm is not going to change the view that much from such a short distance. Also, what do you expect to capture from that angle, the top of someone's head? It would make more sense if you had an indoor camera with PIR motion detect like an AVTech that can alert you on your phone if someone enters your garage and play back the recorded video or view the area live. Then use the Dahua to cover the front of your home at a much higher angle to see people's faces, car's license plates and such.

Very few NVR's have any sort of PoE switch. With 24 cameras, you will want to have a network topography that supports that bandwidth if you are using megapixel cameras. For example, maybe three seperate managed 8 port switches with gige uplinks to a GigE switch and connect the NVR to it. NVRs are sold for a specific capacity as to how many cameras they support. For example, you may buy a 32 channel NVR to support your 24 cameras. Software is typically sold by individual license. For example, Milestone XProtect is sold by camera license, so you would buy 24 licenses to support 24 cameras.

If you have time, try another NVR solution, for example NVR+. I found it did better with Dahua cameras and used less CPU resources than BI. I can't use it because it won't support my ACTi cameras, but when I tested it with Dahua it worked well. It's sold by Linovision.com. Honestly, if I had all Dahua, I would go this route as I've yet to find something better for Dahua, not to say there isn't better out there. http://download.cnet.com/NVR/3000-2348_4-75578497.html?tag=mncol;1 I did have BlueIris and the Dahua HFW3200C both crash at the same time. I had to restart the BlueIris, the camera worked but it was sooo painfully slow and gave out of resources errors so I rebooted it and all went back to normal. Don't know what triggered this.

I never had any problems using generic injectors or PoE switches with Mobotix cameras, actually not so the other way around where I tried using a Mobotix PoE with another camera and flat out would not work. Injector is good if you just have one camera. Consider a switch with 4 PoE ports, will be cheaper if you have 2 or more cameras and you are not stuffing all that traffic on your router. I use the Zyxel and Trendnet switches, fairly cheap at about $65 for the 8 port model (4 PoE). The Zyxel is better because it's full power on all ports and runs off 110V (no adapter brick).

I never tried it with Dahua, but on other cameras it's just a simple fat32 format.

Something is messed up, may be permissions for unsigned Active X controls or the Active X control didn't get installed properly.

I think it's a good product for what it is. Speed is an issue retreiving video, even from an FTP server, but I think it's targeted at very small systems for personal home use or very small businesses for security and if it takes a little longer to view the video, it's not something this class of users would do every day and can live with it, heck, some not for months until something happens.

You can use NVR software like BlueIris for $40 that gives you the option of outputting in AVI format. Also has the ability to FTP the videos automatically.

Ouch they are expensive, full list price, $349 for a camera Costco sells for $150.

These cameras come with SSL as the default, I usually change it as soon as i get the camera, but try putting HTTPS:// when referencing the camera

I checked their website, they don't sell Q-See IP cameras. Lots of places sell Q-See analog products, but it was Costco that was unique in selling the IP cameras. The best is Costco Canada that sells the 1080P Q-See cameras.

You can't break the camera, you can just make non-functional. Go to System, Upgrade, browse until you find the firmware file and click Upgrade, easy peasy. Then you wait, you sweat, not sure if the camera will be better or worse, work or not work. You can telnet into the camera, snoop around, maybe backup some files, that way if the new firmware makes a boo-boo on your camera, you may be able to still telnet in and recover.

You could call Costco Concierge support and ask them, also you can call Q-See and ask them.

Any Dahua branded product you buy in the U.S. will come only with the personal guaranttee of the person that sold it to you. Dahua does not sell in the U.S. so no warranty from them. Q-See is a U.S. company that will warranty Dahua made products the sell, not sure what a Q-See NVR costs and they only sell through resellers like Costco and distributors like Ingram Micro. The problem with U.S. Costco is they are very limited on the Q-See products they sell. They only have the 4 channel NVR and it only comes with 4 of the same camera. Costco Canada has a lot more selection.

Q-See is not about being happy, it's about getting something cheap.

That was the original post, HDD vs SSD, the OP changed his post, so I have no idea what he's asking about SD or SSD. This is someone that spells cameras with a k, so not even sure he means cameras.