NotoriousBRK

The short version is that probably won't ever work the way you expect. In most areas you'll find your upstream Internet bandwidth to be fairly limited and unreliable. The practicality of streaming 4 cameras at a bit rate and resolution sufficient for any purpose is pretty low. You'll also likely run into overage issues (even in most places that have "unlimited" Internet, it's really not) at one or both locations. You didn't specify what resolution of IP camera, but let's assume a basic 720p camera. That would likely be at least a 2Mbps video stream to get decent resolution out of it. Times 4 is 8Mbps, most Internet connections have significantly less upload speed than that. Additionally, 8Mbps is going to be roughly 80GB/day of transfer. Many companies will start to harass you if you use more than 250GB/month. Put the recorder on-site...

How big of an area are you looking to cover, and what generally happens in that area? Outdoor PIRs can be serviceable in some locations where you are trying to cover a relatively small patch (like a standard residential 24'x30' driveway) that doesn't get much random activity. Trying to cover a commercial parking lot, a large yard area, places with lots of nocturnal animal activity and so forth are frequently a giant headache with PIRs and other non-intelligent systems and you'll need to step up to more advanced analytics.

You'd have to use an encoder. A balun is still an analog signal, it just carries that analog signal over a different kind of wiring.

That was hilarious, this post should be framed and signed.

The 78xx series regulators are simple devices, but they're really a poor choice for anything that draws more than a very small amount of current. 78xx regulators essentially work by converting the excess voltage into heat, so the greater the difference between your input voltage and their regulated output, the more heat they put out (which is also impacted by current draw). The recommendation for most 78xx regulators is to keep the input voltage not more than ~3 volts higher than the regulated output. These days it's better to use a switcher style regulator instead of a linear like the 78xx, even if it requires a couple of additional external components since the switcher will run much cooler.

Not knowing what you wired up it's hard to recommend suggestions... If you google "24vac to 12vdc converter" you'll find a bunch of products in the $9-$20 range that solve this problems directly. Doesn't seem like a wheel worth re-inventing.

I use Omnigraffle Pro.

A guy that used to work for me was previously a service tech for ADT. One of their accounts was a "Gentlemans Club". There was a flaky window contact in the girls dressing room. He told me it took 3 techs a total of 6 visits to "fix" the contact, and then come back to "verify" it was still working OK before they closed the ticket.

Out of curiosity, do you provide all your customers the same brand of phone system, or do you deal with multiple lines?

If you just paste those part numbers into Google you should find hits for all of them. Looks like a Geovision fisheye camera, and then a couple of no-name dome and bullet style cameras.

Totally, especially if the camera is at the door and you want to see someone within a few feet of it. Most cameras with built-in IR are just going to totally wash out on anything close by if the IR even had a *chance* of reaching half that distance. Cameras and illuminators are frequently items that need to be chosen, and placed, independently for maximum performance. It rarely works out that you find the perfect + illuminator combo, other than for the most basic scenarios.

The main thing to look out for on the cheaper PoE switches is their *total* rated power. They may supply power on 4 or 8 ports, but sometimes it might have a low limit (30 Watts, etc.), which prevents it from supplying *full* power on all ports. Make sure whatever you intend to use with it won't exceed its power budget.

In all honesty that video does not show much value in auto-tracking. 1) It does not seem predictable in terms of what the camera does or does not key in on. 2) It appears to miss a lot of semi-dominant objects in its decision process 3) The constant motion of the camera creates significant motion blur, obscuring details 4) The relatively slow focus of the camera adds delay to getting a sharp image after it stops at a dwell point 5) The level of zoom does not appear to be enough to give much usable detail, it only provides a tighter relative shot. In a real life scenario, I think you would find that the auto-tracking would have a greater probability of obliterating or missing detail/info, rather than enhancing the scene in any usable way. Go back through that video and try to find a crisp shot of any of your "suspects"... Not sure what your background is, and it's not super important, but most of the people I've met who have tried auto-tracking PTZs in professional installs (eg: where they are only getting paid if the system works/continues to work as advertised) have decided the reality of the concept does not live up to the hype. The only systems that *do* seem to approach a reasonable level of usability are ones where you have a spotter camera that can maintain a view/context of the entire scene, and then drive a secondary PTZ to the key points of activity.

800 ft. is to far for *ethernet*, forget about PoE. You'll probably need/want to use some sort of distance extender product. There are units that can do data+power over coax or Cat5 at that distance, but even if the camera could run off a battery, you won't get a link over 800ft of Ethernet.

If you can run everything off a 12V bus, you can just use a simple 7Ah battery, and a $15 solar charge controller. The charge controller keeps the battery topped off, and provides a battery-backed 12V power source if the main power supply fails (like when power goes out).