buellwinkle

Not to add more confusion, but 720P video cameras seem to have a 1.5 MP sensor and 1080P cameras tend to have a 2 MP sensor. I use a Flip Ultra HD, $159, works for me

I know you have start somewhere, but here's my thoughts. People learn to play a musical instrument by buying the cheapest instrument, like a guitar or piano not realizing that having a poor quality instrument makes it more difficult to play, especially for a beginner because on top of being more difficult, you don't know if you are bad because of you or because of your instrument. Having said that, I can tell you I've spent days trying to get cheap junk Chinese ebay special cameras to work only to have them break or have the image quality deteriorate to worthless status over time. What I would recomend is that you go with the low end of some name brand camera. For example, at my lake house, I use Axis M10 series and not only is the image quality far superior, you have good tech support if you have a problem and the camera's web interface has help built in and can has so much more flexibility than the Chinese cameras. As for price, I paid about $157 for their WiFi model, so not really that much more than junk and certainly worth the difference.

Doesn't appear to be a name brand camera, probably an inexpensive camera made in Shenzhen, China. Most higher end cameras have the ability to provide pictures or video starting seconds before the motion detect occurred. Less expensive cameras that I've used do not but still seem to have that figured out as they provide video throughout the motion. If you don't see any activity, it could just be the wind blowing, a squirrel or rabbit or like someone said, a cars headlights. The IR LEDs they put around the lens on these cameras, from my experience are usually good for about 10' for the indoor models and about 30' for outdoors cameras. Ideally, you want a PIR motion dectector for outdoor night surveillence and most cameras have a connector on the back to add one. Also have the PIR trigger flood lights and avoid the whole IR thing, then you'll have a color image. I use a cheapy from Boya and it's an outdoor camera mounted outdoors and from the top of the landing on stairs, in pitch darkness, I can see about 30' out, here's a sample picture from 2:30 AM.

Don't know how this turned from Mobotix is good to megapixels vs. vga. But outdoors, having more resolution is always helpful because if you are trying to cover a large area like a pool or parking lot. you need all the resolution you can afford Indoors, VGA cameras are usually good enough and that's all I've used indoors. Of course, you can never have too high a resolution, so then it becomes, is the extra dough worth it to you.

My projects are outdoors, so I have to assume the total cost of the cameras. So take a simple 3.1 MP Mobotix M22, single lens, about $900, seems high? Compare that to the low end like Arecont, around $700 for the AV3100. So you think you are saving $200, think again. The Mobotix comes with a lens, comes ready in a wateproof exterior enclosure good to -30C and software. Arecont, lens is about $80 more, waterproof enclosure is about $200 more, software is about $100. Not to mention that Arecont requires a PC to capture video's, Mobotix can write directly to a NAS. Mobotix uses 3W of power, a Arecont in a heated ventilated outdoor enclosure will use about 10 times more. What's the cost of running a PC all day to capture and log events? Now I like to use Mobotix M12, dual lens, about $1,600, Arecont dual lense is cheaper again at about $950, but now you need 2 lenses, housing and software, maybe you save a few bucks, but just try and get Arecont to help you. Sure, if you really want to save money, you can get a Chinese 3 MP camera for about $400 but you get what you pay for.

Very good, the largest manufacturer of mega pixel cameras in the world. They have many unique features, for example the ability to write directly to NAS, low power consumption, sharpest picture I've seen from an IP cam, excellent night vision on their b&w sensors and pretty good support.

To do good low light, I feel you need a dedicated b&w sensor like on the Mobotix M12-SEC Day/Night. There are some cameras like Arecont that boast their Moonlight mode, but really, it's just an extended exposure per frame, so what you end up with is a fantastic sharp night shot as long as nobody is moving. Stardot claims they can maintain a color image in less light than Arecont or Mobotix, but of course, that's the point, color, you really need to go b&w to get true low lux. From what I can see, from red light cameras and toll road evasion cameras and my vacation point & shoot camera, they all have one thing in common, a flash. If you need to capture a nice crisp color shot that's sharp even with motion, you need a flash or a powerful light. The red light cameras by me use 2 lights per camera that are huge, about 2' long and 10" diameter and they blind you when you drive through, but they work. Alternatley you can get some IR panels that are invisible or near invisible light, but that's for IR, which is b&w anyway. This is what I get from our Mobotix on a none moonlight night, just with some fluorescent ligths in the pool area which are terrible for IR.

Sorry, my spelling error, but it's Stardot, and their website is www.stardot.com

Like thewireguy says, it's not the DVR or camera, it's the network. I have a Mobotix camera with it's proprietory compression which is pretty good and at 1024x768, I can get about .5 fps on a good day. If I lower that to VGA, I can get a consistant 1 fps. that's on a 3MB DSL line, and I believe the upload speed is 768 KB/sec.

Coming back from CES, I've noticed some interesting companies I've never heard of before. A good alternative to Arecont in L.A. would be Startdot 40 miles south in the O.C.. About the same price point, makes a very traditional looking box camera, includes the software and lens in their price from what I've seen. The 5 MP runs about $800 retail, the 3 MP runs about $700. The picture quality is up there with Mobotix, meaning it's way better than Axis or Arecont for example not even counting the fact that Axis doesn't even make a 3 or 5 MP camera. Like Arecont, they can't write directly to a NAS, but they are close to coming out with that. I would notconsider a camera that can not write directly to NAS. Also, they include software for free, another reason I stay away from Arecont. On the low end, I came across a company based in LA, but makes their cameras in Taiwan, TSM (or netzeye.com). They make up to a 1.3 MP camera but for an Asian made camera, it was way better than anything I've seen from Shenzhen for example. Their VGA camera dome camera was for sale at the show for $159. I may use them in a project that does not require high resolution. Don't know anything about their built in software, but the PC software is completely free. I did run into a company making their IP cameras in Shenzhen that were in the $400 price range for 3.1 MP. I have their brochure somewhere but I was dissapointed in the image quality. It was like having a Foscam VGA camera but with 3.1 MP. I like Foscam for what it is, but not for $400. I would rather kick in some extra coin at this point and get a Mobotix dome. There were other companies with cameras there, but nothing that stood out. Most of the booth babes knew nothing about the cameras and there were no techs in the booth. A lot of money to pay for a booth at CES to blow it.

Cable modems come in all sorts of varieties, some are just cable modems, some include routers. Call your cable support number and see if the model you have is just a modem. If it is just a modem, just get any cheapie router. I just got a Netgear at Staples for $39 for my kid to put on a cable modem and it works fine and even self configured itself. If you are not sure how to setup a router for external access, you may benefit from buying a camera that auto configures itself and you don't have to stress about it. I'm not recomending it as a camera as I do not have either one, but here's 2 IP cameras that self configure the network, no messy port forwarding router configuration and static IP addressing, literally plug and play - Mole - http://www.molecamera.com/ Gotcha - http://www.gotchacam.biz/

This gizmo that mention, it appears to be made to allow you to use an old CCTV camera and give you the functionality of an IP camera. So I'm not sure how to answer you, a) do you already have cctv cameras and you want to plug them into this box so you can access them from the internet, b) you don't understand what an IP camera is. I have zero experience with CCTV cameras, so can't help you there. If you are not sure about how IP cameras work. They are basically a computer with an embeded web server inside a camera. They come in all sizes and prices, from $90 cameras from China, to $2,500+ cameras. For the most part, you don't need any PC for them to run. For example, I have a Foscam pan/tilt camera that cost about $90 shipped that is at my cabin, does not have any computer attached to it. It connects to the internet through WiFi. When motion is detected, it sends me an email that I can view on my Blackberry or at home on my PC. I can connect remotely to look at the live feed from any PC or Mac (supposed to work on cell phones, but doesn't on my Blackberry). It has built in IR illuminators that work well at night, even total darkness. For long term storage of video events, you can buy a good network attached storage (NAS) that has FTP, NFS and CIF access, meaning it will write the videos using one of these methods. I use a WD World Edition 1TB that works well for me, runs about $169 and 1TB of disk will hold a lot of video. The NAS need not physically be in the same area as the cameras, it can be Sweden, your cameras in Australia, you in the U.S.. I don't know what "the clarity of this unit" means as the unit you mention is not a camera, it's just device that allows you to connect a CCTV camera to it and view it on the internet. Clarity comes with the quality of the camera and it's sensor and lens and resolution, so the next question is, what is your budget?

I have to use a Macbook for work and all I can say is thank goodness for VMWare Fusion. Even simple things like email are terrible on a mac as you can't get Outlook on Mac or any decent MS Exchange client. Now that Mac's are Intel based, can't you just install Windows 7 right over OS X? Then you can still look cool with Macbook, but run all the software the world has to offer. Heck, I think there's more software that will run on my iPod touch than will run on OS X.

Wow, 30km range, 100mb/s and for $29.

They came recomended from people on this forum, but I have not yet tried it. As soon as the holiday madness is over, I'm going to buy a couple and try them out. They also make a lower cost model for $49 and I haven't yet figured out the difference. They come with the power supply and pole mount, heck, those 2 items alone from Mobotix sets be back $200 wholesale just for one camera so I can certainly understand your fears. What I would love it to do is transmit over a 30-40' hill but just about 1,000' away to a switch with a pole mounted camera and control panel for key fob access countrol for gates, so that's my first experiment, if that doesn't work, have a repeater at the top of the hill but that raises the costs a lot to run electricity and a pole on a slope. If you think of what it is, the price is not so high. It's just a wifi bridge with a good antenna and good transmit power that they cleverly packaged. They can act as a bridge or a wifi access point which is cool. People even run dd-wrt on them.

Don't let the fact that these are toys deter you. Most of these work just fine by accessing the camera from a web browser. They usually come with software that lets you find where they are in your network. If you want software, check out BlueIrisSoftware.com, they have support for many IP cameras, and if not, they will help you get them working. I believe their multi camera version is about $50. While I have expensive cameras at commercial sites, these sort of inexpensive cameras are great for home surveillence. The trick is to focus them on a choke point, a point where an intruder will likely go so you can get a close up of their face. I use stuff like this at home and our vacation home and it sends me an email if it detects motion and I can log in from anywhere in the world and check on the place while I'm traveling. For example, I have one trained on my driveway and street so i can see when the snow plow comes and when the driveway snow removal service comes.

I don't understand why you have to trick the camera, doesn't it have a setting for what lux the camera switches to B&W or moves the IR filter. For example, our our Mobotix, the default is set for 10 Lux, but I can change it to 0 Lux and it won't switch to B&W, not that I would want that, but you can. Same with Arecont, you can set a what point to move the IR filter (assuming it's the DN version that has the filter).

Setting up port forwarding on your router is key as previously mentioned. There's a basic knowledge if TPC/IP and routers that's important in making this work. First step is make sure your device has a static IP address set, or it will only work temporarily. Then you go in your router and setup port forwarding for that IP address and typically port 80 to an outside port, like 8001. Then you need to see what your real IP address is (not the one your router assigned you, or the the static one of your DVR). You can do this by going to a website like www.whatismyip.com. This will work for a day or two until our ISP changes your IP address unless you are paying extra for a static IP. So you need to setup an account with a DDNS service like dyndns.com and set it up in your router if it supports this to update the outside IP address and map it to a domain name. This can be free, the account I have is free for what I use it for. Feel free to ask questions, but the reality is, there are many different routers, they all program differently and I have no clue how set a static IP on your DVR, but I'm sure the manual will tell you. One thing I do with routers is get them on ebay with DD-WRT already installed, that way you'll know the feature you need are there. Many routers have over simplified software that makes setting up ddns and port forwarding difficult to impossible.

What they mean by forensic zooming is that after you take a megapixel image, you can look at it from a small window on your PC and then virtaully zoom in on what you want after the video was taken. So for example, I have Mobotix 3PM camera, on the monitor I show a small 640x480 picture which is 0.3MP, but it's really recording 3MP, so I can zoom in 10x digitally in a sense, not in real time, but when I'm examining an event that happened days ago or 2 minutes ago. If your needs are real time, for example, this is for a live guard in a guard station, you should look for a camera that has the ability to optically and mechanically pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ). In my situation, there is no guard, surveillence is purely for after the fact forensic analysis of a crime that took place and that's where PTZ camera is not needed. So cameras like the Arecont or Mobotix that are megapixel fill that need of forensic zooming.

Check out Ubiquiti Nanostations, runs under $100 U.S. and will allow you to have a camera up to 15km away assuming line of site. Their website is ubnt.com. I like Mobotix camera because they are very self contained (doesn't require a pc and software), has a very sharp picture and you don't need to mess with enclosures and power for fans, it's ready for outdoor use and the camera, despite all the features only consumes 3W (compared to some camera with heated enclosures can use up 25-50W), so it makes it more suitable for solar power.

The cameras are Mobotix M12D-SEC 3MP day, 1MP night. I tried Arecont, but to me, not as good but a little cheaper.

Does it have the CE mark on the back? That's the equivalent of UL, different certification company and accepted more worldwide.

Most IP cameras, cheap or expensive have web servers built into them. So you expose the port to the internet via your router and you create visitor/guest userids that are allowed to view the camera live. The only camera I've used that don't do this is Arecont. There's limitation of about 5-10 users per camera. The other alternative is to have the IP camera ftp an image to your website and then put the image on your website. For example, I put an image every 5 minutes for my community of our park cameras. With this, you can have lots of people looking at it.

I record what they refer to as events to a NAS. You setup zones on the image where you want motion dectection or you can use can use the IR sensor on the front of the camera. You then tell it how many seconds before and after the detection to run the video and it stores it on the NAS as an event so you can view later. I get funny looks when I tell peope about storing video before motion has been detected. It's because it's constantly getting images in memory, but writes the events from memory, not from the image sensor.

For that large an area, you need a good camera. We use the Mobotix M12D-SEC Day/Night. Here's an image from last night (no special lighting, no IR lights, just available light) -