matusiam

Hi everyone, I've been recently looking for a nas that could be a base for my ip surveillance system. I've got one of the synology ds110j as it seemed like a great product (and quite cheap : £110 including postage). I've got it today. Unfortunate the system is that bad that if you want a second camera you need to buy a license... Which is kinda of a trick as no one ever mentioned about any licences on the website. The license for one additional camera is around £50, and if you want to get a license for 4 additional cameras than you need to pay about £165 (license bundle). I think its a bit crazy to charge the customer after sales for using the software he already paid for... Well, that is why I'm asking if there are any other good nas systems that could accommodate at least 16 camera without the need of buying some superb expensive licenses just to use it. Lets stay in a price range up to £200. Are there any one that you could recommend ?? Or maybe you have a suggestion to use some really good software for ip surveillance that could fit the bill and could work on some kind of headless machine. Please help on this as the license stuff is annoying and a bit unfair to be honest. Thank You in advance. With Kind Regards

Hmmm... The majority of people I've been dealing with where concerned about the cost of the system rather then what it can do. Most of them wanted it done as cheap as possible so even telling them about these IP system wouldn't make any sense. For £500 you can get a decent analogue 4 camera equipment. Also, if someone is thinking of swapping to an IP system from an analogue system then that is going to COST A LOT !! Like what seanhawg said : Hence why now I'm working on a solution in the middle - could be that my idea will not work out as planned, but its always worth giving a try. And it has some limitations from the start. Still, one of my mates that lives in London told me the other day that his work place had an IP CCTV system installed. On 3 buildings (they are close together) , total 11 cameras. The installation cost was about £11k. Now I wonder - did they install superb quality cameras or the majority of the price went towards camera licensing and for the profit of the company installing it. Are IP CCTV systems really that expensive ??? I know that you can get a mobotix camera for £1400 but c'mon - does it really work that way ??

Ok, that is actually right - I did reassemble a DVR before. Sorry - my mistake. So is there a point of using a pc for a IP CCTV Surveillance System ? Even if I use a server grade components, would that still not do the trick ?

Thank you very much for your input. I'm trying to find a good way how to switch from analogue to ip cameras - hence the reason for this post and the "problem" that I came across with the synology nas. (btw lease post your iphone app experience if you can). Regarding the pc issue. Most of the DVR now are like a pc - running a linux os most of the time. The software you have mentioned is probably good (I will check it out later) but I would love to have something that runs on linux. Then I could set a dedicated PC with debian and make sure it will be capable of working 300 without a restart with no problems. The only software for linux that is capable of any similar surveillance is zoneminder (which I've been playing around now for a day...). Like you , I'm also liking the ip camera thing - and for a start I was thinking that there is true freedom there and that I can add as many cameras as my hardware can take - unfortunate the license thing blew my dream away. Ok, what your saying does make some sense after all. Its just the problem that I'm having when building a quite cheap IP system. So it seems that its kind of impossible. As when you add things up - you need to buy a license for the cameras (which is not cheap) and next you need to buy ip cameras (which are not cheap either). This ip system thing will work perfectly if its deployed in a middle sized business with quite a bit of $$$ spend on the system. I do appreciate the input you have given - very useful ! I'm actually working on getting a debian linux to be a small IP CCTV server. I've managed to get everything installed (using zoneminder obviously) and configured. The system works fine with my tenvis ip camera (experimental buy from ebay). The user interface is not the prettiest ones, but it does the job so far. But I've got no idea how stable the system will be after a week, two weeks , month etc etc I'm also working on my own rfid system- I've got the networking bit sorted and the server with a database up and running. Does all the authentications, but there is no user interface written for it yet Ahhh... I did that - using my tenvis camera I was able to set it up to send a picture every second to my ftp server. It is a solution of a kind , but as you said an average user will have problems with finding the pictures where something actually happened (genuine alert, intrusion etc). Maybe some sort of a python script with a simple user interface with some timeline search would do the trick... Maybe that is worth spending some time on. Thank you very much again for all of your input !!

Thank you for your reply gentleman : @Soundy : I understand the idea of licensing the possibility of using the ip camera. But I don't understand the crazy prices they are asking for. As an end customer I feel ripped off big style. If they would go and say : to get support up to 16 camera you need to pay £49 for that license. Maybe a different price for 24 and 32 cameras. But not £50 per camera - that is just insane ! Also I was thinking - what would happen if you would use the same let say 4 camera license key on two different Synology boxes... Still, I send my unit back with a request for a refund as on the amazon website it did not state anything about the need of purchasing extra licenses in order to use the device. I've always thought that ip cctv systems are only limited to your network bandwidth - but it seems that I was wrong big style. Now I'm looking into linuxmce - apparently it has some support for ip cameras @mike_va : Could you please elaborate on your statement - as I'm not sure what are you trying to say. @MaxIcon : I've had a look at the card you have mentioned. Seems its more of a analogue system (the inputs seem like BNC connectors) hence I don't quite get the idea how it would connect to the network. Unless it utilizes the network connection of the computer in order to get the feeds from the cameras - still that would have to be done via some kind of software that they provide - am I right ?

Most likely the problem is within the DVRs other ports. Most of the time the Dahua (and other) use few ports to actually deal with the data stream. As far as I remember from the top of my head it is port 80 and 37777 / 37778. Have a look at your manual and check what other ports does it use. Maybe it will be in your DVR configuration. Question : does your web interface work on FireFox, Safari, Chrome ? Or its just Windows Internet Explorer ?? You can check that within lan - just let me know. btw: I hope that you have forwarded the port 81 from the router to port 81 to your DVR.

Hello gents, If I can I will add my 2 cents here. If I got it right you got : Internet ----> Router ---> DVR First, if you want to know what ports your dvr is using the best way (if you don't have the manual) is to port scan the DVR. You can use nmap or any other network scanning tool that is around (just google it - there are lots out there). Now, regarding port 80. If I was you I would change that on your DVR to port 8080 (or something else). The reason behind this is because your router also uses port 80 for its own web interface. And when you are trying to connect from the internet to port 80 to view your DVR if could potentially clash with your routers 80 port (even if its set to forward the incoming port 80 to port 80 of the DVR). It can cause you some problems so please change your DVR web port to something different. Also if you have a dynamic ip then that could be a pain. So as probably someone told you a dyndns would be an option It will update nearest gateway ip and will update it in the dyndns database so everytime you query the name of your home ip (the dyndns address) you will be redirected to the good ip address (the one that will be active at the time). Hope this helps a bit

Hello everyone, I was told that you can bend the coating (outside protective one - thick plastic one) in a cold way with some kind of tools. Could anyone please clarify this for me if possible (if its technically doable that is) ? With Kind Regards

Hi, Some of the outdoor cameras I have seen have some sort of small square box near them. The cable (coated) from the camera goes to that strange "box" and later on goes from that box further and later into the wall. Could anyone explain to me what is the purpose of this mysterious box ? --regards

Thank you gentlemen, So let me get it clear - the box can be used for example in a case when the wall is to thick and the cables from the actual camera are to short to go all the way down through the wall - hence you get such a box , get all the connections (bnc & power supply) there and later the cable goes through the wall. So if I will need to buy one for an external camera then I would need to look for : cctv junction box Thank you again guys - your all very helpful !

Hi, I'm just wondering what DVRs would you recommend on the UK market. I'm looking for something that will work with android, iphone, blackberry, symbian and most of the web browsers. 4 and 8 channel system would be good. I know the KPD 674 is a good one but would like to check out something else apart from that line. With Kind Regards

Hi, I've got an AVTech KPD674. I was able to get it working online, setup the email notifications etc etc But the only problem I can't get my head around is the recording timer and motion detection. I would like to configure my DVR in such a way that it would record to HDD only when motion is detected (lets say on ch1) instead of recording everything. I've been trying lots of different configurations and so far I'm not able to get it up and running. Any ideas gentlemen ?? Thank You in advance

Hmmm... I'm not sure at what stage you are but in order to get your DVR to be accessibly over the internet you will need to configure port forwarding on your router. In the case of avtech 674 its very simple as you need to deal only with one port (80 by default). DHCP is not an account. It stands for dynamic host configuration protocol and can be disabled on your DVR as your router does that job for you. Having two DHCPs on the same network segment is not the best idea in the world in your case. You can set the DVR ip to static but make sure its outside the scope of your routers dhcp address pool (you need to access the router configuration for them details). Make sure it will have a proper subnet mask and default gateway address etc Also I'm not sure if you will need a dyndns account - it all depends if you have a static ip or dynamic assigned by your ISP. Next what you will need to do is open a port on your router (8080 could be an idea) and forward it to your DVR ip address and port 80. So then when you will be using your phone to connect you will be providing the ip address of the router + 8080 as the port address to your DVR (your router will forward it remember ?). Hope it helps

Hi, I'm not sure if you have managed to get it working as you have posted your questions some time ago. Still, I had the same problem. I have managed to get it working so when I got a motion detection then it also starts to record it to the hard drive. My trick was to disable everything (even camera recording). Then I have gone to setup the record timer and after that I have enabled the recording function for the cameras. Then it just started to work as it should. Also now I'm able to set the dvr to record continuously and later to actually only perform motion detection. Hope it helps --regards

Hi again, I've managed to get it all working by disabling the manual recording in the record timer settings (If anyone would have a similar issue as me). And later on it was just a matter of selecting the appropriate time slots. Seems sometimes that the simplest things are the hardest.

I think this is the sticky your after : http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=12156

Hi, All you need is to configure your router and potentially signup for a dyndns account (I don't know if your isp gave you a static IP or you got a dynamic one). You will need some basic knowledge of how the network works and also the ports of your DVR that need to be forwarded in order to get it all working. For example I configured an apollo dvr recently and it used two ports : 80 and 37777. So read your dvr specification and it should be there. Also I think there was a sticky here around the forum somewhere about port forwarding - also you will find it via google (who is your friend). Hope this helps a bit