dvarapala

I have a cam in the window of a spare bedroom. It's fine as long as there is no light on in the room, which is OK since the room isn't used very often. If you want to put yours in a room that is regularly occupied, however, you'll want to cover it with a black blanket or the aforementioned shadowbox to kill the reflections.

You only need a reflector when the light source is omnidirectional and you want to force it to be more directional. Unlike an incandescent or fluorescent bulb, LEDs are inherently directional, hence no reflector is needed.

You should also consider the Axis P33 series. More expensive than some, but rock-solid and tons of useful features.

First of all, my condolences for having to live next door to your in-laws. You mention a distance of 400 feet - is this a real number or just a guesstimate? The reason I ask is this: if the actual distance is under 100m (~300 ft), you could just run a direct-burial Ethernet line or two between your houses. That would both cost less and be more reliable. Even if your span is truly 400' and you need to put in a mid-span switch to act as a repeater, you'd still be better off with a hardwired solution. That's my suggestion.

This was reported on the local news a few week ago. Apparently some guy got fed up with scumbags peeing on his building, so he installed a remote-controlled shower. http://www.youtube.com/dan291968 On my own cams I have captured countless instances of public urination. Usually the perps are drunk and/or high teenage males. The one time I saw a girl do it I was sitting in my truck in a parking lot while my wife was shopping; a girl dropped trou right in front of me, squatted down in the landscaping, and let loose. I guess when ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

In the olden days what you're talking about was usually done by modulating the baseband video onto an unused TV channel and then distributing that channel to all the apartments in the building. Residents could then view the camera on their TV sets simply by tuning that special TV channel. Nowadays, of course, there are other options such as streaming the video over IP from a server fed by the camera.

In general it should work. I use that exact same app with ZoneMinder and it works fine. Assuming it has support for your DVR you should be good to go.

I guess I'm lucky. My AV1310DN is ~3 years old and still working fine . If it ever fails, I'll just replace it rather than try to get it repaired. As far as the LEDs go, mine is inside of an outdoor enclosure, so the LEDs have never been a problem. But the electrical tape should work just fine.

My cat-cam is a DLink DCS-5010L day/night PT(no Z); IIRC I paid around 89 bucks for it. The PT really comes in handy as cats like to change their hiding places every now and then.

Yeah, I bought a kit from "The Birdhouse Depot" called "Clearwater" which is their largest kit. I had originally planned to put a larger camera in the base, but when I discovered the Dahua eyeball I realized I could fit it into one of the 3 compartments and leave the other two available for actual birds to use. @shockwave199 Yeah, the other Dahua domes are smaller, but this one has the nice flat front which seems like it would work better when pressed up against the birdhouse entrance hole.

Not a problem in my case. I like to keep my IR illuminators separate from my cameras, and I also prefer the more discreet 940nm wavelength, so ditching the built-in IR was a no-brainer. Alas, not in this "eyeball" form factor. It turns out this is the perfect size and shape to fit inside a bird house, which is where this one is going. Once you take it apart you realize the IR "barrier" is a small annular piece of sponge rubber that sits wedged between the IR board and the front glass piece; the camera lens sits inside the "doughnut hole". It's not attached to anything, so perhaps a slight misalignment during assembly and/or an imperfection in the sponge could result in leaks.

As noted in Buellwinkle's review, the Dahua IPC-HDW2100 1.3MP eyeball cam has really annoying IR bleeding/reflection from its built-in illuminator. While there is currently no way to disable the IR illuminator in software, you can perform a little "cataract surgery" and remove the IR illuminator board from the camera. The front of the eyeball unscrews from the back half, and the IR board is held on with two small phillips head screws. Unplug the small 4-pin connector, tuck the cable back inside the case, screw the eyeball back together, and voila! No more bleeding IR!

Speaking of hard-core dyed-in-the-wool analog guys, where has Rory been lately? Although my first-ever CCTV camera was analog, once I tried IP cameras I never looked back. One reason is the ease of installation. Most of my IP cameras connect with one single cat5e cable. Cat5e has a smaller diameter than siamese, which means smaller holes to drill and easier to route through the woodwork. It also means one wire from my PoE switch in the garage back to my server room - a wire that I already had in place for my home LAN. I currently have 9 cameras and can't imagine snakling 9 pairs of Siamese cable in retrofit fashion through This Old House - that would be a nightmare! The other big reason to avoid analog is the interlacing, which is a major PITA when objects move across the frame. Progressive scan rules!

That's nothing - wait until you go to the airport.

I don't see anything that looks like a lens, so I'm gonna go with motion detector. If the LED turns on and off based on your movements that would tend to confirm this hypothesis.

Unless he really doesn't need PTZ. Why would you need 12 PTZ cameras for your back yard?

Try amazon.it

We might be able to tell if you posted some photos larger than a postage stamp...

Sure: http://bit.ly/1gzxpKf

So when you decided to purchase this rotating camera stand, did you make any effort whatsoever to make sure that it was compatible with your DVR?

The OP may find this to be of interest: 1GhNXHCQGsM It's based on OpenCV, an open source computer vision library, and they have an open source version of their algorithm available called OpenTLD.

After futzing around with anemic IR illuminators which just aren't up to the job, I've decided to bite the bullet and buy one of the best. My problem now is finding a place that has them in stock. Raytec itself is of little help; they sent me to a distributor, who told me "we don't sell to end users." Although I found a few online retailers who sell Raymax products, none seem to actually stock the model I want (RM100-F-30-C) - they quote a 2 - 4 week wait to get one. Any suggestions as to where I can buy one of these bad boys today? Thanks!

While a facial recognition door lock could be a fun project, if everybody who needs to get into your house has a smart phone you might also consider something like this.

You're not the only one. I get to see all kinds of activity near my house, everything from underage punks smoking cigarettes and drinking beer to drug users, k00ks taking naps, vandals, and people having sex. These douchebags are the primary reason I have cameras.

I have a couple of the $79 cheapies as well as a RayMax 100 (all 940nm wavelength). The difference in light output is, well, like night and day. I use mine to capture license plates at night on a street about 15' away from the camera. The cheap ones are completely useless for this purpose, whereas the RayMax lights up plates even if they are clear across the street. I did use one of the cheap ones in my garage and it worked just fine in that enclosed space, so they do have their uses. It all depends on what you want to do with it.