Soundy

That could be your key there - a connection could have worked loose through vibration or temperature variations. It also would probably be a good idea to power the garage cameras from inside the garage, rather than over the thin Cat5 wire - the voltage drop COULD cause issues, especially if the cameras are equipped with the IR LEDs.

Actually, simple viewing of multiple cameras is something I deal with regularly. Our biggest business segment is fuel services (ie. gas stations), and they almost without fail want some cameras displayed stand-alone on a remote monitor... this is almost always done independent of the DVR or recording system. You don't specify that you need to actually view these cameras on the computer, so: for cheap and simple, you can use a quad (if you want to view all the cameras in split-screen), or even just a switcher (to automatically toggle between cameras). Or you may be able to find a used multiplexor for cheap, as they're finding less and less use in this DVR-based business.

My home one is on a shelf in my rack... but on sites, I've done just about every type of mounting imaginable - in ceilings, in lock boxes, on shelves, under desks, in utility rooms, in cabinets... wall-mounted, rack-mounted, bolted to a shelf to prevent tampering and removal... just about anywhere or any how you could think of placing or mounting a DVR, I've probably done it.

How about re-soldering a torn coil wire on a 12" speaker in the middle of a gig, in the middle of a lake? JBL speaker, too, with aluminum coil wire... soldering aluminum is fun! Great way to break in a brand-new butane soldering iron

Bingo. Sometimes you're better off just to split up the functions into their separate appropriate devices. Just as a suggestion, I've used the LinkSys SFE1000P switch on numerous sites now and found it to be an outstanding performer: eight 10/100 PoE ports, plus two gigabit ethernet/fiber ports... these work great for adding several IP cams and some NAS storage to a DVR.

Suky is (mostly) correct... however, some third-party players support a LOT of different formats and may work for this one, as often a standard file type is "disguised" with a non-standard file extension. Try using VLC (www.videolan.org) and see if it will open the file. If not, try adding the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (google will find it for you). You can also sometimes find a clue by plugging the unknown extension into www.filext.com, although this one doesn't appear to be recognized as anything appropriate.

Current (amperage) is not your problem - a device will draw only as much current as it needs. Two possibilities come to mind: too much voltage, or incorrect polarity. Either will fry cheap electronics in a hurry. Since you're running this all on a 12V battery, I'd suspect polarity... since the camera alone was working for months and the letting of the smoke corresponds with adding the wireless, my best guess would be that you go the polarity wrong when you reconnected the battery to the whole assembly.

That's your key right there. Is wireless bad? No, not in and of itself. There are some very good high-end systems using wireless. There are lots of "wireless sucks" replies here, and I'd lay money that every one of them is using low-end consumer-grade equipment. And as with all consumer-grade wireless equipment (phones, WiFi, mice and keyboards, etc.), it can be adversely affected by other consumer grade equipment - it's common for 2.4GHz cordless phones to cause WiFi connections to drop, for example. As Scorpion says, wireless is just another tool, one with specific uses, and one that you'll pay a lot for if you want to do it *right*. You can use a hatchback to haul a ton of gravel, too, but don't expect it to make that trip more than once... the proper tool for that job is a lot bigger and beefier and more expensive, but it will do the job reliably for a long time.

f-stops are more commonly a photographic term - in short, it's a ratio of a lens's focal length to the diameter of its opening (or the opening of the iris). The term is properly written "f/number"... or mathematically, the diameter of the opening is the focal length "f" divided by the given number. Thus, a lens that's f/1 will have an opening twice the diameter of one that's f/2... and will allow four times as much light. The lower the f-stop number then, the more maximum amount of light the lens can pass, and the better it will work for low-light uses. There are trade-offs to everything, of course, and the wider the opening, the shallower the depth of focus (the distance from front to back in which objects will be in focus).

That should be fine. Baud rate shouldn't make a functional difference, as long as controller and camera both use the same rate.

In my experience, any camera that has a blinking LED on it is a fake. Do you want people to think your camera is a fake?

There are switches that do PoE... I've never seen a router that supported it though. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but I have looked before and not found them.

I wouldn't say it's "better" or "worse" to use one method or the other... but it should work just fine for your purposes. Each has its place.

Baluns won't fix it if it's a ground loop... in fact, they'll probably make it worse.

What sort of domes are you testing with? Sounds like possibly signal-strength issues, or even ground-loop problems. Covert cams like that are generally built on super-cheap board cameras, while the domes you're testing with may be more robust.

BNC and RCA are two common type of video connectors. BNC are a twist-on locking connector usually used for professional equipment: RCA is a friction-fit, push-on connector used for audio and video in consumer equipment: The two are wiring compatible - there are adapters to mate both ways:

Sounds to me like you're talking about compression artifacts, which are inherent to any form of lossy compression like MPEG, H.264, WMV, etc. The live view you're seeing at Best Buy doesn't have them because the video signal is going straight from the camera to the monitor, uncompressed and unprocessed.

I wanna know where you shop that Cat6 is the same price as Cat5e, because everywhere around here, Cat6 carries a pretty hefty premium. Example: one retailer has 1000' boxes of FT4 Cat5e at $96 while 1000' of FT4 Cat6 is $230.

Haven't played much with the Spectra, but we have a Pelco Esprit on one site that works great in night-mode.

I can't comment on the superlatives because I haven't used any of the other systems listed to compare it with, but we're used 3xLogic's VIGIL systems on a number of sites for years, and found the software to be excellent all-around. The central management utility works great for health monitoring and multiple sites/multiple systems can be integrated nicely. The great thing is, the software works the same for NVR and DVR so if you ever do need to add hybrid analog capability, it can all be done in the same interface and same systems - just add the supported analog capture hardware.

It is with cheap, low-quality cameras.

There may be a size limitation on the picture you can send, either filesize or picture dimensions. That would be a question for your wireless provider.

Don't see why that wouldn't work... just as Twilo123 notes, if there's TOO much traffic going through your account, it may appear that you're a spammer, and they'll shut you down. If alerts are infrequent though, it shouldn't be a problem.

Looks like it should do the trick!

Most wireless carriers support emailing to your phone's SMS... typically you'd use the format ##########@txt.carrier.com - substitute your number and the carrier's text-messaging domain. Check with your own provider's tech support for the exact address to use.