groovyman

I think you meant to say more hacker proof, not less. That being the case, the statement is not necessarily true. How secure a system is depends on quite a number of factors. At the top of the list, in my opinion, is how the system is configured, who is using it and how it's being used. Just keep in mind that a poorly configured Linux box is no more secure than a poorly configured Windows box.

monkeywash, have you updated the nano to the latest firmware release? The web viewer has changed quite a bit.

In the appendix of the user manual it states: 18. Forgot local menu operation password or network password a. Contact Q-See tech support and we can generate a new password for the unit. Link: http://q-see.com/files/manuals/QC444%20Manualv1_web.pdf If you have the local admin account though (888888 / 888888), then you should be able to change, add, delete usernames and passwords at will. See here on how to change & activate passwords: http://q-see.com/files/HowToFiles/C-Activating%20and%20Changing%20Passwords.pdf

Also consider the Aver Nano. The 8 channel model number is EH1008H. They're typically sold without hard drives, but support up to one 2TB drive, so consider the cost of the hard drive when making the purchase decision.

I use Sprint wireless broadband devices at 3 locations. While I don't use the devices like the Sierra Wireless Overdrive Pro, I use USB and PC Card devices connected to a 3G/4G Mobile Router (we've been using TopGlobal routers). Bandwidth is an issue at every location (referring to speed). At these locations we do not have live video streaming all day long for fear of using all available bandwidth for video streaming. The business owner (and myself on occasion) spot check live throughout the day using a smartphone &/or pc. Playback of recorded video is slooooow at all 3 locations, especially if the dvr is recording at higher resolutions and frame rates. It's more important to us to have better quality recorded video than better Internet playback capabilities though. If an incident happens and we need to save recorded video we're doing it on-site anyway. You're correct about the Sprint Wireless Hotspot devices allowing port forwarding. As far as Sprint allowing the amount of data that's required to stream the video, I'd imagine it all depends on the data plan that's subcribed to. I'd just be concerned if other people/devices need to use the Internet connection throughout the day. You may find that all available bandwidth is used for video streaming if it's being accessed all day long.

I'm a big fan of powerline network adapters and have them installed at many locations. I started using them about 7 years ago and find that they typically need to be replaced every 3 years or so, but I have some that I installed 5+ years ago that are still working fine. Surges can certainly shorten the life of these devices and/or disable them completely. If Internet connection is lost during brownouts/surges I instruct people to power cycle the devices, which really boils down to disconnecting and reconnecting to the power source. I haven't had much success connecting the devices to surge protectors as I believe the surge protectors block the data flow as a surge, so I connect directly to the wall outlet &/or use an extension cord or power strip if the outlet is in an inaccessible area (like behind a file cabinet). Another thing to keep in mind is distance. As the homeplugs have greater distance between them data throughput will decrease and there's really no way of knowing how much physical wiring distance is in between two wall outlets (unless you start crawling in attics and follow/measure the power lines). I typically perform speedtests when I install these devices and have run into situations where distance is too great and network/Internet throughput is unacceptable. However, I have many more success stories than failures with these devices. When they work they work great.

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Take a look at the Avermedia EH1004H Nano. It a 4 channel DVR that supports up to a 2TB hard drive. You might be able to find it within your price range. I tried one out several months ago and have since installed 6 of the 8 channel version. I've been quite pleased with them. They aren't perfect and have some operational issues that bother me, but that didn't stop me from purchasing them (obviously). Actually, every single DVR I've ever used had operational issues that bothered me.....none have ever been perfect. I would consider it an excellent budget DVR.

If it's a Windows based DVR you can just install logmein. Issue solved. If it's a stand alone DVR you can try contacting your ISP and see if you can obtain a static IP address that can be assigned to network devices behind the DSL/Cable modem. And, of course, another solution is to put the DVR's IP Address in the router's DMZ as previously mentioned.

I personally haven't used any Lorex systems, but I think your videos are pretty decent. I've read many times on this forum "you're not making a movie, you're capturing events." The inexpensive systems can do a pretty good job of capturing those events with very decent video quality. The technology has come down in price incredibly over the last few years. I don't think some of the low cost surveillance equipment can be called junk or toys anymore. They can do a pretty good job and think they deserve a second look by both professionals and novices alike. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

Actually, you can use a VGA splitter cable in certain situations. I have a few installed the way you explain in the original post. However, with using the VGA splitter cable the signal will be degraded and you will notice the POS monitor may be dimmer with the splitter cable in place. Also, it's possible that the DVR will not detect the signal depending on the quality of the cable and output signal of the vga source. The solution tomcctv originally posted is one of my preferred methods - using a powered vga splitter device along with a vga-to-bnc converter (or vga-to-rca converter paired with an rca to bnc adapter). If your POS System is a normal, everyday computer (like a windows box) you can also install a dual head video card and clone the output to both video outputs. This is really my preferred method of capturing the POS screen on the DVR. One output to the POS VGA monitor and the second output to a vga-to-bnc (or rca) converter. The reason I prefer this method over using a powered vga splitter is that it's one less external device cluttering the point of sale area. Most vga-to-bnc/rca converters that I've seen include a USB power cable. If you can power it via a free USB port on the POS system, fine. If not you can always power the converter with a power adapter that includes a USB port (or two). They're very common now and I use them very frequently. The converters usually require 5V/1A. So, if you use a power adapter like this, make sure the USB output is 5V and at least 1A. Edit: Oh, one more thing. The recorded video from the VGA source may not look as clear as you might expect. Don't expect it to look as sharp as the image on the VGA monitor. However, in my opinion, it will be more than acceptable in both live view and playback.

Very nice job. Looks like you put a lot of thought into what you were doing and it worked out well. What type of DVR is being used? Is it a QSee?

My wife wanted a little portable 7" LCD TV a couple of years ago when the TV signals changed to all digital. We live in a hurricane prone area and she wanted it for the next time we get hit and the power goes out. It sat around collecting dust until I decided to use it one day to focus a couple of cameras. It's now part of my toolkit and works great Something else I've done when I've forgotten to charge the portable TV is to connect the DVR to a wireless router and use my laptop to focus the cameras. It can be a little frustrating because of the small lag (and balancing the laptop isn't fun), but it's worked in a pinch. Sometimes I'll have someone on the ground with the laptop and I'll yell out "how's it look" and am met with replies like "back a little, got it, nope, back, no - the other way, ok, just little more - oops, too far"

Love the music! Thanks for the camera review.

shockwave199 - Thanks for the review of the cameras and video review of the QSee DVR. Much appreciated.

I have someone I do work for who has some Q-See DVRs and although they lack many advanced features I find that transferring video to a USB drive is very quick. They are the QR414 models set at D1 7fps (DVR setting is D1 / Normal). I recently needed to save 3 hours worth of video from 2 cameras and the transfer went very quickly. An hours worth of video at the current settings is approximately 200MB. So 3 hours for 2 cameras was around 1.2GB and went as fast as i would expect 1.2GB of data to transfer via Hi-Speed USB. I also saved video from these DVRs by connecting a laptop to the same network as the DVR and logging on to the DVR (using it's local ip address) with the DVR software installed on the laptop. This isn't as fast as USB (about 4x-5x slower) but still works well. I would try the following: 1 - Use a different USB drive and make sure it's hi-speed usb 2.0. USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer rate of 12Mbits/second where Hi-Speed USB has a max transfer rate of 480Mbits/second. If by chance you use a USB cable to connect the USB drive to the DVR and the cable is not rated for Hi-Speed USB, that can slow the data transfer rate also. 2 - Connect to the local network with a laptop and save the video file(s) using the DVR's remote software. Slower method, but should work fine.

At the risk of sounding like a wiseass......contact the reseller or manufacturer and ask.

Think about there being two ways to connect to the DVR from a computer. 1 - via the local network - where your computer and DVR are on the same network, or LAN (Local Area Network). Depending on the DVR it can transfer data at 10, 100 or 1000 mbps (most likely 10 or 100 mbps). In this scenario, logon to the DVR using the LAN setting. In effect, your telling the DVR to send data at higher quality because your on a local network that can handle the amount of data transfer required. 2 - via the Internet. When connecting via the Internet the bottleneck is the upload speed of the Internet connection the DVR is connected to. Typically I see upload speeds in my area as 350kbps for DSL and anywhere from 1mbps-3mbps for cable. When you logon to the DVR using the Internet setting you're telling the DVR to transfer data at a lower quality setting because you're connecting via a slower connection. The image quality is lower, because less data is being transmitted, however live viewing is smoother than if you connect via the Internet via the LAN setting*. *Note: Lately I've been seeing upload speeds of 20mbps (and higher) in my area as Comcast upgrades their network. I had Comcast Internet service installed in a restaurant a few weeks ago and was blown away by the speed tests. Their upload speed was faster than the download speed in my office. Downloading video from the DVR via the Internet is an absolutle pleasure from that loacation.

lemme201, I understand your frustration. I came across your post via a google search I was doing for a project I'm working on and realized that I joined cctvforum many years ago, asked a question and disappeared. Here it is 6 years later and hopefully I can finally give something back A feature that really attracted me to the EH1008H (and EH1004H) was the Integrated POS function and the thought that the POS system could connect directly to the Nano. No dice. After a few hours of tinkering on both the POS and Nano I finally contacted my distributor as well as Avermedia directly. They both said that the POS capture box was required. So, I bought one and was capturing text within a few minutes of connecting it. I can't say with 100% certainty that this will solve your problem, but I can say that the pos capture box solved my problems.....and that I was advised to use the box from both my distributor and Avermedia tech support. But, please keep this in mind - the box is not foolproof. I've run into scenarios where the box will not work. It has to do with capturing text off an Epson TM-T88III, IV or V receipt printer using the Epson advanced printer driver with some features enabled. That can be a topic by itself and I won't go into it here.

A few months ago I had a 4 camera DVR system installed in my stores. It's a Mace 4 Channel DVR in all locations. I also have the Micros Eclipse POS system with an Epson TM-T88III thermal receipt printer connected to the serial port. The company from which I purchased the Mace DVR equipment also did the installation and was supposed to install a text inserter for the POS systems, but they never did. Frankly, after weeks of asking I've come to the conclusion that they just don't know how (they also botched the DVR installations, but that's another story which I won't get into here). In each location Camera 1 is watching the POS system and the video is displayed on two monitors: 1) a monitor located behind the POS system, and 2) a monitor in the back which displays video from all 4 cameras. Video from all 4 cameras is recorded to the Mace DVR. I can access the DVR remotely via the Internet to see what's happening in real time or search through recorded video. I'm leaning towards the AVE VSI product for the text insertion, but am unsure if it will work with the MACE DVR &/or Epson receipt printer. As I understand it, I'll need a splitter for the serial port on the Micros Eclipse (it only has one serial port) and I'll need to configure my POS software to always print a receipt as the text inserter grabs the text being sent to the receipt printer. Is this correct? I'd also like the ability to search through the text to find certain items that were rung up during the day or to see what each clerk has rung up. Would this be possible with the Mace & AVE product? Is there another text insertion product that I should possibly consider? My main goals are to be able to insert text as sales are rung up, have the ability to search through the text and be able to view the transactions w/ video. The bottom line is loss prevention and to provide a deterrant against theft at the point of sale. I'm new at this, but after fixing the installations at 4 stores over the past few weeks I've given myself a decent enough education as to how the whole system is connected. Certainly, this doesn't make me any sort of expert in installing DVR equipment, but I feel I've learned enough to go forward with completing the rest of the project. Thanks for any assistance or advice you can provide.

Thanks for the reply kandcorp. It's the MACE 400RW that I have. I'll check with AVE to see if the unit is compatible with the Micros Eclipse POS System.