Nimrod

I have seen a few posts refer to "4K". Such as "in 4 years all equipment will be 4K". What is 4K.

“hi you wont find Dahua DVRs being sold in the UK on ebay .co.uk only old models from china. they get removed.“ I think i saw that about CNB cameras also, why are these items removed in the UK?

D1 DVR’s can be had fairly inexpensively. Search ebay for “Dahua dvr” they have a good reputation.

Free bandwidth calculator. http://download.cnet.com/IP-Camera-Bandwidth-Disk-Space-Calculator/3000-2348_4-10602114.html

I guess the real question is how well does it work, does it have even lighting, and reasonable brightness, and at what distance.

Thanks for testing Mike.

What is your estimate of how far over 100 meters it is.

It looks like my original idea of using a ir pass filter to get rid of the dull red glow from the 730nm leds is a poor idea. I looked up the transmitted light of a typical 730 nm led and it has a rather narrow transmissive spectrum. Any filter that would get rid of the red glow would also stop most of the ir light from the leds. It looks like Soundy and Rory in the beginning of this thread had it nailed at the start, use higher nm leds.

“The 650nm are the ones to get if you want to cut out all visible light.” Sorry guys i made a mistake, 650nm is on the wrong side of the cutoff, this would mean 650nm and up would be transmitted making the 730nm ir leds visible. I should have said use the 760nm filter. I did find another place for filters looking at specs now. Chart of there filter cutoffs are here. http://www.maxmax.com/aXNiteTreeFilterComparison.htm

mike_va, thank you for buying this filter, could you do an experiment for us. Place this filter over a regular cctv ir led light source, and at night tell us how close you have to get to see the faint red glow of the ir leds.

Like he said. viewtopic.php?f=53&t=26048

I have been able to buy f1.0 fixed lens (CS) fairly easily and cheaply, but i never saw a f1.0 varafocal, they are probably made, but are very expensive.

Fixed lenses can typically be gotten with a lower F stop than varifocal so better low light performance.

Manual lenses are very inexpensive on ebay, no need to trash a good one to make a cheap one.

“Without getting too windy here... I'm looking for a good DVR that will do 8 channels. I would like the best cameras we can afford... we could probably start with 4 cams. I've been looking at a kit at tiger-direct but I don't know how nice it is... http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=165417&sku=Q300-2804“ As a general rule packaged systems are garbage. The cameras you get with them are throw away and the dvr usually has a small HD. The package you picked out is a good example of this. At this same store you were looking at they have Q-see dvr’s as bare units, no cameras, no hard drives, in 4, 8, 16 channel units. These are a good deal and they are rebranded Dahua units. “Found these: CNB VCM-24VF Looks pretty nice! I'm not sure how many of these they could afford but I think for the driveway and the back of the house it may be perfect” Good find, best bang for the buck. “We're also exploring options for home security and looking at ADT but we're not sure yet. We could do this ourselves too if we can find a good system. I'm not sure what the budget would be for this yet. ADT looks pretty good... but they will be living here for 20-30 years so the monthly costs will add up!” Hard to say if adt is worth it or not. You have other options here like using the optix brand pir sensors. They can be set up to look at an area, or as beams around the house. You could tie the output of these beams to your dvr (terminal block on back of dvr) to start recording, or if adt lets you tie it into there system to call for help. Or program your dvr to send you an alert. You also may want to consider beams and a VERY loud siren aimed at your neighbors, that may just scare them away before they get in. OH, and of course the tried and true method of protection, a very mean dog.