Numb-nuts

Why spend on a PTZ? there are perfectly good indoor zoom cameras available with motorized zoom and auto focus Why do you need infrared, are you spying on someone? Whats wrong with common PIR floods? They drive criminals away and startle would be criminals.

in one ear and out the other...

What for? Use camcorders for leisure pursuits and to capture sound where you want to react to a situation the subject, an area or location may have long periods of no activity but may be subject to activity you wish to record but without the necessity of being present the whole time. You do not need to record long periods of no movement, you can set CCTV to record on motion detection (pixel changes) to save recording space but you do need to set it up correctly and fix the device to a wall or structure of some type so that it can be left unattended. The idea of CCTV is to surveill areas of interest without the necessity to be in attendance, or to be in attendance but to give a single operator (or more) the ability to view and monitor larger areas and centralise that view in a single or multiple locations, which would otherwise be impossible by another method. Most CCTV has the ability to extend it's reach across the internet so can be viewed remotely in realtime or close to realtime. Both devices have different jobs to do. Use CCTV cameras where

Do you have a recycling facility near you? or it might be simpler to find a dead horse and start flogging it... correction this WAS your DVR model this is my dvr model TD-2704XE-P

Our laws are somewhat similar in spirit to yours in the USA. So far as I am aware, there is no law preventing taking oictures or video in public areas unless of course you live inear politically sensitive areas around secrecy sensitive installations such as GCHQ. On the other hand, some people think police have to ask permission to take measures to prevent a nuisance. Personally I would be grateful and I will say as I have always said. only those with something to hide have anything to fear from CCTV. You can't on the one hand ask police for help then complain when they take action to prevent the very thing you complained about. Of course you could always ask have the teens to return and drive the police out?

Buy a ready made kit and the best you can hope for is a COMPROMISE. SPREAD THE WORD PLEASE! The DVR will only display and record what you send to it. UNLESS... Hw are you connection your DVR to your diplay? VGA, HDMI, BNC? OSDs do often have a sharpness setting, doesn't usually solve this sort of issue but it's worth a try

Unless your phone is using only your wi fi then your DVR's local address should work from your phone. BUT you should have the Public IP (if it's static)or DNS hostname in the address bar for data use on your phone. Did you have the DVR connected when you did your port forwarding and did you point the ports traffic to the IP address of your DVR (which should be static). Some routers require that you reserve or set aside LAN adresses that re staic BEFORE you port forward. If you haven't done it, you will have to backtrack and remove the rules before reserving the LAN IP of your DVR

Not enough information to make a recommendation. Where will it be sighted, whats your budget do you want to fit it yourself, do you want to use it on your smartphone, if so which platform is your phone how fast os your broadband up;load speed Do you want to see a distance of 1m or 100m. They are so many variables you need to think about. If you want to buy a bargain bucket you might be better off at KFC at least you know what you are getting! Hope this you a refreshed approach to the project ? good luck ? In MOST cases, ready to go kits are at BEST a compromise and at worst.......... well lets not think about that at least you asked for guidance which shows you have capacity to learn..

EENY MEENY MINEE MO......

Hense my assertion put it in a airing cupboard to dry out.

Dry it out in an airing cupboard, then if you have a small silica pack (desiccant) inside if there is space. The desiccant will absorb the . The cable is usually sealed by compressing a rubber washer around the cable at the entry point. Also some plunger;s tape PPTFE) will help seal out moisture after stting up angle and focus fill the holes with silicone or even blu tack Well done for not letting thisdefeat you " title="Applause" /> " title="Applause" /> " title="Applause" />

wow talk about making life difficult. Try following your link even changing the xx for tt Life is just too short.

What model is your DVR, and are you using default ports? For example a QVIS DVR usually uses mobile monitor port =34599 HTTP port 34567 (for your Remote client software) TCP port 80 (try one in the range 81-89) and RTSP port 554 (Realtime Stream Protocol) Even if you are not using all the ports it pays to open them all since they may be needed in furure. I find that opening the RTSP port even though I don't always need it, always appears to help.

Have you ever wonderd why some BNC connectors are more prone to issues than others? I recently suffered a horrendous batch of BNCs, the worst I have EVER experienced, almost dropping off the cable simply handling the connectors. Thge BNC Bayonette Niel Concelman design was for a fast and very efficient connector that could be engaged in difficult military field conditions i.e. while the lead is flying around you. Take a look at these two BNCs, notice any difference? The one on the left is missing the locating guide bush, an essential component of the design, was the connector would efficiently engage in difficult conditions. The one on the right has the guide bush which located the pin and receptacle centrally 100%, however where the outer guide bush is omitted, there is potential for misalignment. We all know that BNC jacks are not always easily accessible and often face away from us when installed, without the guide bush, any slight pulling on the cable, the pin could mis-align going into the jack's dielectric or worse still being bent. Take a look at the BNC with guide bush and then look at the 90 degree convertor and you can view the mating guide bushes. I have just been offered plugs at a very good price, an excellent nickel finish but NO GUIDE bush. From my perspective too much potential for failure or misalignment. To me this rather defeats the object of having a tried and tested connection system so as good as these are I must pass on them.

Oh you mean the bulkhead BNC jack on the DVR itself ? Yes I think we've all experienced that at some time. If you put too much stredd on those they can short out and cause intermittent video during connection. One reason I bought myself a BNC insertion/extraction tool which allows you to do te job in a tight space and without risk of breaking or shorting anything

Just wish I could get my hands on such people for 10 minutes.

I have a customer on Chess Broadband (fibre) and he gets very good results, the router is a netgear and reasonably easy to set up after a little tinkering. i.e reserve the DVR's IP address then restart and do the port forwarding. Chess Broadband technical support line are rather helpful too, after initially getting permission from the account holder.

WOW Thank goodness for that !

I've taken the temperature of a rabbit, a cat and a dog too, but where oh where yo gonna stick the thermometer on a DVR?

Sky do not allow a service for a static IP. Sky only have an option in router settings for DynDNS, but I believe I can not do this for free. This is NOT a static IP, it's an alternative to a static public IP address. For $29.00 pa you get upto 30 DDND hostnames. Now I realize you only require one but there is no other way that is practical. You can also use a DDNS account to access your own cloud storage located at home but accesible from anywhere in the world that has a internet connection. Just think of it your private file accesible from anywhere and if your system goes down, none of your data is lost? However if you were able to have a static IP from sky it would likely cost you about $80 - $120 pa anyway. There is one alternative forthose users that have not purchased their DVR yet and that is the DVR manufacturer often offers a free DDNS service FOC for life. Hikvision is one of those manufacturers for example.

While amps are important, they are NOT so important as the resulting volts at the camera. Using a voltage drop calculator might help you discover what voltage you are getting at the cameras in question. Cameras usually tolerate a drop of no more than 10% i.e. 1.2 volts. which frankly is just at the edge of their requirement. You can tackle this in a number of ways, my preferred way is to use a 24Volt AC power supply and transform it down to 12v DC this way you are assured of the ideal voltage reaching the camera. Another way is to back-calculate the voltage required to result in 12v at the camera. Fine in theory but there are NOT an infinite range of regulated power supplies available so unless you can get hold of a variable output PSU it's not practical or economically viable. Volts drop off over distance, amps do not. One reason manufacturers often quote watts as the power requirement. Of course if you have mains power more local to the cameras you can take power more locally and transform it down to result in a better voltage. This has been done before and is regularly carried out with good results for the amateur installer. Why do they always put those locks in PSU cases? I've never seen anyone lock them, the keys are there always.

Nobody is thinking you would buy a TV specifically to accommodate this project and that would be a slight over reaction frankly. The suggestion about the audible buzzer or alarm and then switching from your TV to your VGA/PC AV channel is about the most likely scenario. HDMI and VGA are your best options for viewing CCTV on your TV set. I personally prefer VGA as it never lets me down whereas HDMI has it's own pernickety issues. Invest in some huge CCTV warning signs and install them where the perpetrators cannot miss them, with any luck they'll move on to the next easy target. I always find that local kids that play in the area around a home are greeat at spereadin the word' "HE;S GOT CCTV CAMERAS INSTALLED" Do yourself a favour, allow the police to deal with the criminals and DON"T get involved yourself.

Your router is the center of your home LAN. It dishes out the IP addresses to all the devices on your home network. These are usually Dynamic. The DVR is a device on your home network, but because e need to access it from outside the LAN we need to know wheat address on your LAN to address when we want to access it. For that reason, it requires a static local IP. There are two ways of doing this depending on your router. Some routers recognize there is a static IP on the device and set that address aside, but on some the address has to be reserved manually but the user. Now we come to your network in terms of the WWW, to find it we need again to know at what address to find yout network. Since most home networks have a Dynamic IP address (IP Address changes) we need a method of keeping track of what your network IP address is. Of course you could have your ISP provide a static IP address but that is relatively expensive. There are other alternatives and the most reliable is DDND (Dynamic Domain Name Server). The two best known DDNS services on the internet today are NO-IP and DYN. That is not to say these are the ONLY services available. Both offer a free service which is effectively a free one month trial and not intended for continued use These services both offer a pro service which allows you to create several hostnames and includes the annual subscription so no need to keep logging in and re registering every 30 days. ( How ridiculous) Written into your DVR software is a DDNS service updater which updates the server to advise what your network's public IP address is after it changes. In this way instead of using a IP address for your server address in the settings of remote devices, you simply add a hostname you created and this hostname addresses the server to know where to find your network. DDNS updates. The DDNS update software can be either in the DVR or the Router or on any device on the LAN since they are all n communication with your router and gateway I have most of my customers using the DDNS service that I provide and correctly set up, it is 99% as reliable as having a static IP address and there is no discernible difference in use. DDNS is a cheaper and as reliable as having a static IP. The only potential thing that can go wrong is the server's domain is allowed to expire which hapened to me recently, but that aside there is little to go wrong.

CLUE Take a look at the posting date

As we al know, that installation can be an expensive business especially with the amount of materials we have to use when we choose NOT to cut corners. It's therefore no surprise that when a trusted supplier offers one of your regularly used products at a really low price. The parable of the crimp on BNC. I am always looking to save money on crimp connectors, BNCs, wire end ferrules, cable ties etc When my first choice supplier starts to offer BNC crimps at £11.000 per 10 I am thinking 'oh goody that'll save me a ££££££' so I order a couple hundred and confidently take them out of their bags to use making fly leads for my 4 way Balun receiver. Obviously I am not going to mention the supplier since it may just be that they aren't yet aware of this problem. It's NOT the first quality supplier who's BNC offering has turned out to disappoint. These damn crimps look great but thats where the great STOPS. I prepare the cable with a proper 3 blade wire stripper and trim the center core to ensure proper seating of the center pin onto the dielectric, clear the braid ready to receive the plug body nad then insert the ping until there is a distinct click of the center pin engaging, only thing is the click is not particularly distinct except by it's abscence or it's dullness. I then pull up the outer ferrule and crimp that. Then I pull up the cable boot I purchased seperately as I like to use the Greenpar ones which are tight. Only problem is that as fast as I can install these plugs they are dropping off with the slightest tug even when dressing the cables into a bundle. NOT ONLY ARE THE CENTER PINS DISENGAGING, THE CRIMP FERRULES AREN'T HOLDING ONTO THE BRAID. THE ONLY THING THAT IS HOLDING IS THE CABLE BOOTS ONTO THE FERRULES and I supplied those. NOW IF I'D GONE AWAY AND LEFT THAT AND THESE HAD COME OFF I WOULD HAVE TO RETURN COSTING ME A CALL OUT THAT I CANNOT CHARGE. MULTIPLY THAT BY EVERY JOB I HAVE DONE SINCE I STARTED USING THESE PLUGS AND THEY DON'T LOOK SO CHEAP ANYMORE. PHOOOOOOOOEEEEY! fortunately enough, this was the first job i'd used these nasty plugs so I took them all off and I'll be replacing them all with some others I have in reserve, tomorrow. TOMORROW A that supplier is getting a strongly worded email and I will be demanding not only that they collect the whole lot but also that they pay their courier to collect them. I have had some dodgy BNCs before but these were simply the WORST EVER. Oh so you think it was my Weidmuller crimping tool that cost an arm and a leg and has been outperforming other toolks for over 20 years, when I used it for RG58 50 ohm plugs in the radio comms industry? I too had my doubts, so I tried my apprentices Pressmaster crimping tool that is a fabulous quality tool, same result. ITS THE PLUGS NOT THE CRIMP TOOL. I have only just recovered from a batch of rubbish baluns now I pay a bit more and they never fail me. I suppose I'm going to have to bite the bullet on BNCs too after this experience. UPDATE: I'm going back to the more expensive ones I usually use, at least with those I could sleep soundly in the knowledge they won't fall off., but at double or more the price. COME BACK TRANSRADIO, ALL IS FORGIVEN