danger_e

I know I'm a little late to the party on this one, but we've been successfully using the TrendNET TPE-224WS: http://www.trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=130_TPE-224WS&cat=58 It's got 24 10/100 PoE ports and 4 Gig ports. We've been pretty happy with them (I don't recall any issues) and the price point is lower than Cisco's.

The HJZTP was discontinued and it was replaced with the new UltraKey controllers: https://www.honeywellvideo.com/products/accessories/ke/307527.html As far as I know, it uses the same control protocol, so it should work with all the same equipment.

The Western Digital AV drives are specifically made for DVR and other high I/O system (AV = Audio/Video). However if they are Green Power drives (GP) they have a function called "IDLE3," or Intellipark, that spins the drive down after a certain amount of inactivity. This can manifest dangerously (as described) when performing motion only recording. This is usually handled fine by Windows based systems, but embedded (standalone) DVRs can have issues with spinning the drive back up in time to write to them. I've got several thousand WD AV drives in DVRs, hybrids, and NVRs in the field, and I'm not currently having any issues. Caviar drives are desktop rated drives and are not actually as robust as the AV drives. I hope that this information helps you with your issues.

This is usually called VMS (Video Management Software) or Central Station. Many companies make this for connecting to multiple DVRs at once. Honeywell has a few, WinPak for access control, MAXPRO VMS is more geared toward video. There are also some DVR manufacturers that build VMS software for connecting to and managing many DVRs at once (OpenEye) across multiple locations. What do you mean by this? Do you mean that you would like to re-transmit the video coming in and stream it back out to another location? What would are you trying to accomplish here? I'm not sure I know what you're looking for, but if you could describe what the end-user experience would be, I might know of something that does that.

After you scan for devices, you have to select the device. Click on scan, once the scan is complete and the bottom area says "Two devices detected" the area between TARGET and SCAN will be populated with the device type. Default is the DVD drive. Click on the device (in between TARGET and SCAN) to cycle through the devices, it should change from DVD to the External USB Device. Auto-USB back up is a type of simultaneous recording. This function is for recording to your local (internal) hard drive and to an external USB drive at the same time. Please let me know if this works for you.

Most standalone DVRs do have browser based access, but you should be careful to ask which ones have PTZ control through the web interface. It might not be a bad idea to do some research into GVI before purchasing one of their DVRs. It is starting to sound like they are closing: http://www.securityinfowatch.com/is-gvi-security-out-business

@OP: Hey Numb-nuts, what type of DVR did you use in that install? Also Honweywell? I know that they re-brand from a few manufacturers, I know I've seen some of their equipment with other names on it. One thing I do know is that their qualification process is pretty strict. I think that's how they are trying to justify the price point, their hardware qualification process is pretty extensive. Although it's sounding like that's not working for the cameras? That sucks.

I'm pretty sure that you are taking the idea of surveillance to an illogical conclusion. While I agree with your earlier assessment that if I was a victim of a crime I wouldn't be interested in getting the guy, I'd be more interested in putting myself back together, I do think that I would be interested in making sure that the same thing doesn't happen to someone else. The suggestion that analytic software would somehow grant the government some kind of omniscient view of my private life is also a bit ridiculous. This isn't CSI, there isn't some magic software that can enhance and resolve aspects of my privacy that any camera can't see, and most CCTV is run by property owners, not the government. (at least in the states) Also, I'm a little confused. You say that all the government needs is some analytic software to totally invade your privacy, and then you say that the cost/benefit ROI is not there. Which is it? Is CCTV totally invading your privacy, or is it as useless?

We bought DeWalt drivers in 2006 and haven't needed to replace any (except for the one or two that were lost). We have had to replace batteries occasionally too, but so far no major issues. I'm sure that there are a lot of folks out there that are harder on equipment than we are, though. I'm pretty careful with my tools, and I know a lot of guys that are too...

Well, BLC changes the brightness of an entire image, where the DWDR only changes the darkest areas of an image. It's a good feature to have if there is concern that BLC could blow out the image. I've been pretty skeptical of WDR in the past: with WDR turned on, many images have a lot of noise, leading to an image that was not as clear as without the WDR. However, you are correct, the Pixim Seawolf looks much better.

From what I understand, DWDR can't balance an image the same way that true WDR can. Real WDR lightens dark spots and dims bright areas to bring a whole image into balance. Digital WDR is capable of bringing up dark spots, but can't lower the level of bright spots. I would guess that SWDR is the opposite. It's sort of a gimmick, but it's better than nothing in some situations.

I'm assuming that you have your software now, since it's 24 hours later. But I have a question for you - how did you get a 4FX? When Honeywell puts the "X" at the end of their part number, it means PAL. Not that it matters with the HRDP4F, the DVR auto-detects the signal type. I'm just curious because the "X" usually means that it's sold in Europe or Asia, and your post says you're in the states.

Sorry for the delay, here we go: 80Gig HDD? That's sort of small potatoes for a Dowshu DVR. BUT shouldn't be an issue, the DVR does not record to the boot drive, only to the additional HDDs. [As a side note, if your boot "drive" is only 80Gig, I'd bet willing to bet that your C drive is a logical partition on the first HDD, in which case there is saved data on that drive] I would recommend contacting a local IT professional if you are interested in recovering the drive, but this might not be cost effective. Otherwise I would recommend contacting your installer/integrator to get a repair disc.

Either the boot drive is toast, and you will need to replace the drive and re-image, OR the drive is no longer properly connected to the main board. Check all your cable connections to the HDD. That model has an HDD cage, right? If so, check and make sure that the boot drive is "turned on" (I've actually seen this happen a few times, I have to ask). If all that fails then try a new drive and use the repair disk that came with the system.

Shwanseb: Sorry, I put your name on the wrong question answer there. In relation to your data retention question: Data retention depends on a lot of things. Frame rate, resolution, recording mode and motion of the scene all play a factor. With the DynaGuard 200 series there are also 4 different models that Dynacolor sold, L, T, S, and U. Each has slightly different performance and will have different data retention. But the DynaGuard series has accounted for this, and the software will estimate (based on the current recording rate) how much video it will store. You'll have to check it out when you set up the DVR. I hope that this answers your question.

Agreed, especially since he's got links to all the documentation and all those accessories.

tlavite: Data retention depends on a lot of things. Frame rate, resolution, recording mode and motion of the scene all play a factor. With the DynaGuard 200 series there are also 4 different models that Dynacolor sold, L, T, S, and U. Each has slightly different performance and will have different data retention. Also, I don't think that there was a standard HDD size for that DVR, so it depends on what's in it. Fortunately, Dynacolor accounted for this, and the software will estimate (based on the current recording rate) how much video it will store. You'll have to check it out when you set up the DVR. Shwanseb: the iPhone app won't work with the old DynaGuard DVRs, I think that you have to have a 600 series with newer firmware on it to use that.

Let me know if I get this wrong: Record 6 cameras (8 channel DVR probably) at 4CIF/D1 @ 7FPS. This means that you'll need a DVR that can record at least 168FPS. DVRs usually come in 120FPS or 240FPS. If you don't want to compromise those settings you'll have to get a 240FPS DVR. You can probably find something around the internet for 200 - 400. (I don't personally recommend that, my experience with DVRs that cheap is that they are not very intuitive, and come with little to no support services)

I'm glad that worked!

On some models Cisco reserves port 2000 for their own services, this could be what's causing the image to not come through. Try switching to port 2001 or something and see what happens.

Have you seen the Antec ISK chassis? I kind of like the style of these: http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?Family=Mjg4 But it's not quite the same as that Exacq case. If that's what you're looking for you could probably mod an old embedded DVR chassis, or a VCR...

Hey guys, I have a customer with Exacq software and several ONVIF cameras. He said that he hasn't had any issues to date with ONVIF, but that when attempting to add a couple of new cameras, he can't get the H.264 stream to work. A while back someone said that they heard that Exacq wasn't planning on doing full ONVIF implementation, and just yesterday someone else told me they didn't think that Exacq had implemented H.264, only MJPEG. Has anyone had any experience with Exacq and ONVIF? Is this accurate for Exacq? Thanks! -Danger

I've used some of the deView cameras with the Orca as well, and they are pretty decent. I do think that the Seawolf is going to be a lot better. The specs on that look pretty good so far, I hope to get my hands on a couple of cameras here pretty soon. I'll let you guys know how it stacks up.

SeanHawg, that's a good idea. With previous hardware I haven't always had the best luck with the resolution that way, but if it's working for your DVRs then that's fantastic. I just had another idea as well: Loop the main out into one of the DVR channels, set that channel to the highest resolution/fps/qual, then go through all the steps that you want to record and export that video. This would work especially well if your DVR or CMS can export an AVI. Good Luck!

HA! Yeah, Soundy, that was a little intense. ALTHOUGH, I'm a big fan of the sink or swim method of teaching. Every time I train someone, I give them the information they need, show them what to do, and then make them do it. Then take questions when they get stuck. I also agree with everything Soundy just said. Having a good switch makes all the difference. I just had a customer that was using the PoE switch I sold him to power his cameras, but the cameras kept dropping out on the NVR. It turns out that he connected the switch to the network, and there was a cheap 8 port 10/100 switch between my switch and the NVR.