buellwinkle

It's just the IR light reflecting off dust or moisture. Try going out with a bright flashlight, I bet you'll see the same thing reflecting off the light beam.

I have one of those ZyXel 310, lousy NAS, never use it.

Our longest Cat6 run we have is 1,600' using a Cat6 Ethernet extender.

You can FTP motion detect events but with FTP you have to manage the disk, meaning if you let it get full it will stop.

Yes, not happy with the new Mobotix sensor, it's smaller (1/2.5" vs 1/2" on older model) and there's noise. Also, not sure they corrected for the smaller sensor, so I have a 38mm lens that shows a narrower viewing angle than the 43mm lens in the older camera.

Basically it comes to cost vs. risk. If all works out well and you are willing to wait a month or longer for a camera to arrive, you'll save some money. If you expedite shipping with DHL or FedEx, you'll get the cameras in 3-4 days but you may not save any money. But if something does go wrong, they will say ship it back. If you ship it via standard USPS it may cost about $25 but no insurance, no tracking, takes a month so big risk because they can say they never got it. Now step up to FedEx and it's $105 for international economy shipping for a 2lb package (1 week). Then it may take them another month to ship it back unless you pay for expedited shipping so now you exceeded the cost of the camera, they know this and milk it. So you can see it's a risk. People in China are not like Americans, they do not have the same sense of urgency, so don't expect lightning turnaround. So why does it cost more than double to ship it back, it's because many of these businesses are in Shenzhen which is in mainland China, but it's a lot cheaper to ship from HK, so they send a courier across the bridge to a shipping service and they pay about half as much as if they shipped it from Shenzhen. On the other hand, you don't have that luxury as you have to ship it direct. Also, doesn't happen often, but a package can get held up in customs at either end. A U.S. company buying them in bulk doesn't care how long it takes to get product and then they save on returns as they can ship back multiple duds at a time and the timeframe for a return is not an issue for them as they carry replacements in inventory and the return rate is factored into the equation. I can definitely see buying 16 cameras separately rather than in a bundle because you have more control over lens size, resolution and types of cameras that you do not have in a bundle. You can also try out various types of cameras one at a time to see if it works in different locations minimizing your risk. Also, be careful of holidays in China as the entire country tends to shut down, not like the U.S. So you have a biggy coming up in a few weeks that will shut things down for a least a few days, if not a week.

This has been discussed many times before. Search and ye shall find.

I use the TRENDnet TPL-307E2K which you can google and see where to get it from. Then I use a wall type injector like this one - http://www.amazon.com/Autoranging-Switching-48V-0-5A-Injector-Security/dp/B00CWVYG50/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1388256595&sr=1-2&keywords=wall+poe+injector And then I use a short 1' Cat5 cable between the Powerline adapter and the injector and then a cable from the injector to the camera.

That looks about right. The camera comes with a tool to aid in focusing. Now you have if focused more for your driveway, but if you want the houses across the way to be more in focus rather than the driveway, you can adjust the focus further out.

Why not get the 8 channel Hikvision NVR for under $400. Add a hard drive for under $100 and done.

I do like that Powerline is built in to the Logitech camera but I just use a regular cheap Trendnet Powerline adapter with an outlet on it. Then I plug a wall plug style PoE injector and it works well for me. In most cases, it's about the same price to get an electrician in to run the Ethernet to where I want it. In the one case I use it, it would have been very difficult to hard wire.

Dahua is improving and has an actual distributor in the U.S. as well as a few OEM's, so while it does not have a U.S. presence like Hikvision, it's not as bad as it was a year ago. Yes, did notice the 20fps in their latest firmware, cool. And no, there was no option to turn IR LEDs off on the HFW4300S.

For what it's worth, other brands of cameras have this option including Mobotix which I played with last. Why it's there, don't know. Maybe it's related to the fact that light bulbs, especially LEDs blink at 60hz in the U.S. and if you film at 25fps you may get some of that flicker, so it's meant to reduce flicker.

Here's a side by side of an ACTi E32 (right) and Mobotix D15 (left) at night (both taken about the same time, mounted next to each other). The ACTi is a 4mm lens, the Mobotix is 38mm (their 35mm film equivalent, if I had to guess, probably a 6mm lens). This is the latest technology from Mobotix with MxLEO, their low light feature. The E32 is 3MP, the Mobotix B&W sensor is 1.2MP. Both were done at 1/30 max auto exposure. I have WDR at "medium" on the E32, so contrast may appear lower than in the D15. I shrunk the picture down and put them side by side to see. For me, the videos from both cameras are about equal at night in terms of noise and low light sensitivity although I get better frame rates from the ACTi.

Find an electrician and have the wires run. How are these cameras recording now? Is there an NVR and if so, what is it?

I reviewed both and they have different properties. I find the Dahua to have a wider dynamic range naturally without using digital WDR. I find the picture quality to be to my liking on the Hikvision. The Dahua has a wider lens at 3.6mm, so that may be appealing to some. The Dahua does 20fps at 3MP vs. the Hikvision at 15fps. The Hikvision is slightly smaller. I would say the IR illuminators have similar characteristics. The Dahua can FTP video to a website, the Hikvision can do NFS and playback from the camera. It's best if you just order both and let us know which you like.

I thought they sell the Derytech NC-KD032 or they actually selling the ds-2cd2032-i now? Any, I reviewed a few of the Hikvision cameras and they are pretty good at any price. The Dahua's are pretty decent too. I would not go analog, it's like buying an old analog TV or a flip phone, sort of takes you back 5-8 years in technology, but not in a good nostalgic sort of way.

Installed it on a brand new Hikvision ds-2cd2132-i china dome, installed via the browser, worked as expected. Thanks.

Many companies block RTSP, has nothing to do with ports. What you can do is convert RTSP to RTMP and hope your company does not block RTMP (flash or html5). First try it from someone else's home, McDonalds or Starbucks and see if you can access the camera not from work. If you can but can't from work, it's your company's firewall.

Maybe there's a 10x exchange rate from the UK to the USD, dunno. If you want a good low buck PTZ camera, the Dahua SD3282D does 1080P and 3x optical zoom, pretty nice little PTZ and in the US it's about $599 USD. ACTi is releasing the B series, low cost mini-PTZ, but should be about in mid-Jan and should be under a $1,000 USD from what they said at the last trade show but with 10X zoom but won't know until they hit the distributors. The models are the B94 (1.3MP), B95 (2MP), B96 (5MP). If quality or resolution does not matter, the Foscam FI8620 PTZ is about $400ish in the U.S. VGA resolution, 10x zoom. Can't really recommend it, not sure anyone here would but wanted to set the low bar for price expectations. The problem with these inexpensive PTZ is they do not have any illumination built in. Afraid that the few that have IR illuminators built in would be more expensive.

Are you trying to access the stream from outside your network? If so, try a different port number, like put a 1 in front of it, like 11085. You never know what your ISP is up to. Also, go to canyouseeme.org and see if the world can see that port.

I have not tried but people have said it works.

It depends on the distance, for example the case where this is a problem, the coastline 2 miles away would be too low and not capture the buildings behind it at the full 20x zoom. It's mounted on the roof of a building, so maybe 15-20' up.

Please report these issues with tech support because then they can fix it in the 5.1.1 release.

All BlueIris wants is the stream, so any adjustments to image quality, resolution, frame rate you need to do on the camera. Anything related to recording and motion detection is done by BlueIris, so don't activate any of that on the camera. The OSD (on screen display) is done by both, so pick which one you want to do it. If you do their direct-to-disc recording, then you need to do it in the camera.