buellwinkle

You can use an old trick that has been around a while for Flip cameras and I helped someone try it with an Axis camera with a glued in place lens and worked. Since clearly you don't need the IR LEDs since they won't reach the mountain miles away, you can glue a camcorder add on lens to the front, one with a 2x telephoto would do the trick. Google - flip lens. Basically, you buy a converter lens for a camcorder that has 2x telephoto. They come with a generic ring that you glue on the front of the camera and then you screw the lens of your choice in front of the camera lens. The newer ones seem to come with a magnatized ring the holds the lens on but I would look for the screw on ones.

Check with bikerider, he posted this when he tested a 16mm lens. If I remember right, he got the multiple lens kit from dx.com and went through and tried them all. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32694&hilit=16mm&start=225

Every dome is different in how you adjust it but most are 3 axis, meaning you can move the lens up and down, side to side and rotate the lens. Adjustments vary but larger domes like that usually have 180 up/down, 360 side to side and 360 rotate. Many cameras come with the ability to do this locked down with set screws, so look for those if the lens doesn't move freely. Also, be careful with the rubber donut that separates the lens from the dome, it has to be perfectly in place. Clearly, to reach the lens you have remove the dome. The camera probably comes with an allen wrench to remove the screws that hold the top section of the camera in place. If mounting under an eave, make sure there isn't a fascia board near the camera that may cause the IR LEDs to bounce back and create glare.

Take a look at the Dahua IPC-HFW3200C, it is 2MP, has an SD card slot and has analog video out. Same with their IR vandal dome.

You can try and have the cameras do the recording and use the free Dahua PSS software. BlueIris is popular software that people use with Dahua. Lastly, NVR+ from Linovision works well with Dahua cameras.

You are lucky in Canada to have access to thes Q-See cameras. The PTZ camera is analog. BlueIris will work fine with the first two you have links for. The equivalent Dahua that I reviewed are the IPC-HFW3200C (Q-see QCN8002B) and the IPC-HDB3200 (Qsee QCN8001D). The advantage to the Q-See is excellent customer service at Costco as well as good customer service and support from Q-See.

Looks pretty good. Are you going to get one?

I've used a Veracity Pinpoint, about $60. It takes the Ethernet with PoE on location and splits it so you can attached a laptop and the camera at the same time from the one connection and then connect to the camera to aim & focus it.

What sort of alerts you looking for? With Dahua, with their paid smartphone app, you can get immediate alerts through the app. Just about all network cams can send you a text or email. Alerts are great because you'll get so many false alarms after a day, you'll turn them off.

That's why I don't like NVRs, if there's a firmware upgrade, you buy a new camera, good luck getting the NVR company to get it resolved quick. At least with software, you don't lose your hardware investment, just switch software.

PTZ cameras can easily cost 3-4X what a fixed dome costs, it is what is. You don't want a cheap one because usually people put PTZ cameras on patrol, meaning they automatically go from one preset location to another and cheap motors would likely not last as long. I tried autotracking and it drove me nuts. I did this on the Axis Q6035-e. It would lock in on a tree that was swaying in the breeze and bounced around parts of the tree, so I have not seen the value in autotracking yet, but that would be a cool feature. It certainly looks cool in videos that manufacturers put out. There are some fixed dome cameras that now have motorized focus and motorized varifocal lens. You can't change where they are aimed, but you can adjust the focal length and re-focus from the comfort of your browser. Cameras with this feature are slightly more expensive, maybe $50-100 more. Don't confuse motorized varifocal/focus with zoom. Zoom implies the focal length and focus are linked together. Autofocus means the camera will be automatically kept in focus. The motorized focus in most cameras that have it can be as tedious as manually doing this but the comfort of doing it from indoors. The camera that does this best is the Axis P33 series domes. All others I tested are hit/miss with remote focusing.

Yes, hence the bargain price. The 2MP mini bullet will be slightly higher, maybe $30-35 more.

You can use the same switch to do all cameras and 2 NVRs. When I setup the NVR, I found it best to define each camera's fixed IP address ahead of time and then add them to the NVR manually.

I downloaded NUUO a few months ago and it didn't play nice with all my ACTi cams so I gave up and deleted it.

Looks like a cool switch, you can have 16 PoE ports as long as you don't exceed 120W.

You want a PTZ Dome then, none of the fixed domes can be aimed remotely, hence they are called fixed domes. They make PTZ domes that do this, I reviewed one on my blog. Just click on Panasonic on the right menu on my blog.

There's a camera company in Canada, forgot their name, starts with an A but AK357 knows them. I used to go to Montreal a few times a year when I lived in NYC, even sailed up the river from NYC to Saint Jean when I was a kid.

I prefer ACTi over Vivotek but ACTi's outdoor 1080P speed dome won't be available until March, but I would imagine pricing would be comperable to the Vivotek. ACTi does have the indoor version available now in 1080P but you can set it to 720P. With speed domes, the key factor is low light performance and I think the ACTi will win by a wide margin there. If you stick to one brand, both companies provide free NVR software so you can setup a PC to record. Also, ACTi sells an NVR that's very good, fast, responsive but only works with their cameras. You can get the new ACTi indoor domes like the D51 and are priced well, under $200 and are 720P. Axis makes excellent cameras to do what you want, not sure it would fit your budget. The Q6035-E, a 1080P speed dome I reviewed on my blog would work, but would cost maybe double what the ACTi or Vivotek speed domes would cost. Also, don't forget to get IR illuminators as the speed domes don't work in very low light or no light.

The camera you are looking at, the HDB3200C is a day only camera, meaning it has a permanent IR filter, meaning you can't use it with IR light.

I can't see how that works. Keep in mind, something may work on Windows because of drivers the manufacturer put in that makes it look like a NAS. I once bought a NAS that only worked with Windows. Spent days trying to get it to work with Mobotix cameras and took it back and the guy at MicroCenter said it only works with Windows, I said I don't have Windows, I have Mobotix, haha. I use the WD NAS drives, different models through the years, always works the way I would expect, no problems. I've also used Netgear ReadyNAS, again works as how you would expect and both I've used for years without any hickups or problems. I also recently got a ZyXel NAS, very cheap, I forgot how much but $29 comes to mind when it was some Newegg deal of the day. Then you can take the hard drive out of the USB drive and put it in the ZyXel, but I think they cost more now. Also, I have a USB to NAS gizmo, pretty cheap, makes any USB drive into a NAS. Mine is Addonics. But really not worth it as it was glitchy, not something I would rely on for day to day use.

Ando, you work in the U.S. office or back in Taiwan or somewhere else?

Doesn't show support for Dahua on their website, but has that been done and it works correctly, all functionality?

Don't know about telephone poles as we have underground utilities, but we mount cameras to light poles owned by the utility company, had them come out to replace the light bulb and never said anything.

I love the VLC idea, haven't thought about it but if you stream your camera via RTSP to a PC running VLC and it re-streams it as flash, then you can use an emedded video player to play the flash file. I'll have to experiment with it when I have time just for fun, but a quick look at it shows it's doable and cheap and does not restrict your camera since it's only a single stream to your PC. The PC is just running VLC. Not a huge fan of flash but at least people with PCs or Macs with just about any browser can view it.

Adequate in a very loose sense. Here's what happens in real life, the camera triggers on video motion detect, so it will come on for sure when the flood lights come on, but two bad things happen, first, all the pre-event frames that are crucial will be very dark, obviously, the light wasn't on then. Second, the first several frames while the subject is being lit up will be washed out because it takes the camera time to adjust the exposure settings. By the time the camera adjusts say a second later, the subject may have moved past the range of the camera or has already turned away or covered his face because the lights are blinding him too and not just the camera. This doesn't happen with IR illuminators because they are on all the time at night and the camera is already set to the proper exposure. It's possible if your camera allows this, pretty sure Dahua does not, you can set profiles seperate for day and night. At night, you can set a profile that sets a fixed apeture and fixed gain that works with the lights on. This way the camera is not trying to auto adjust instantly. You still have the issue of pre-event frame, but at least your post event frames will be good.