shockwave199

To me it's actually tough because all those choices can be good and less than good for different reasons. One constant, no matter which you choose, is where you buy it. I'd sooner buy from a smaller reputable retailer than a costco or big box store. Yes, the big box stores have amazing prices on stuff every so often. It's tempting. But lost is the close relationship you build with a smaller scale, hands on person. And once you have that and you purchase a number of things from them, they in turn usually give you what amounts to substantial price breaks too. The big box stores put a hurt on the smaller operations. I prefer to give my business to the smaller shops and I appreciate that they know their product- they have a vested interest in it. After the issue of where to buy, is what to buy. In analog and mega pixel, I still prefer dahua. I like their operating system and GUI. I like that they have a wide choice of cameras and I like the quality I see from their 2mp cameras. I also like the examples I've seen from hikvision [swann & lorex], but I'm not sold on their operating system or nvr capabilities. So what to buy is up to you and what you choose after reading up. But personally, I'd steer clear of big box deals. It's just a company pushing out product they have no clue about. You want more after purchase support than that. In my opinion, of course.

Any night shots of these actual cameras?

Yeah I would think the other 1.3 or 2mp dome would be even smaller and lower profile.

And...no more IR. Dahua has 1.3 and 2mp dome cameras without IR, if that works for you. Btw in this thread 4 of the eyeballs are pictured at night and look fine, except for one. Wonder if this issue is with a certain batch of them. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=37873

" title="Applause" /> My biggest fan. Define 'reasonable' cost. Most people still see it as more expensive, which it is if you do it right. You can do IP/MP wrong too- cheaper, but wrong.

There's creative, and there's practical. Practically speaking, what do you need?

Qsee is just re-badged dahua. I'm gonna guess you'll like it, so report back. The only problems I have with qsee is the RMA process is pretty long. Don't be surprised if getting a replacement camera can take upwards of a month. Getting them on the phone is difficult. Their live chat assistance mostly directs you to their plethora of online documents. In short, customer service is the weak spot. It's not nonexistent, but it can be tedious. Sometimes fine, sometimes not. But if everything in your package works well, you're gonna find it most acceptable. At least, that's what I figure. Good luck to you.

The question is how far away will faces and plates be? I use a dahua 23x zoom at work and it's excellent. I don't miss a thing and at distances up to 200' and beyond. I have no problem with faces or plates, day or night. If you're gonna use an analog camera, 27x optical is plenty in most situations. I have many vids on my home ptz, 27x optical. Perhaps they can help as well. Btw lucky- that 1.3 is awesome!

Get a powered poe switch. It's the best way to go.

This is more to what you need to actually prove illegal dumping. I would suggest a proper camera for grabbing plates at the dumpster if possible. Make it easy, not hard- the best time to catch a plate is when the vehicle is stopped at the dumpster. If that's not practical, aim it where a vehicle is moving the slowest in the lot such as entrance/exit. A second camera should be aimed a bit wider at the dumpster with the goal of recording the person actually dumping illegally and if possible from that same fov, a shot of them taking the trash from the vehicle. From the combined footage, you catch them in the act, and then you can find them via the plate number. I wouldn't suggest relying on just one camera to do the job.

Good, so you can use whatever camera you wish.

Does the cable that goes to the cameras have bnc on the end, or 5 pin din connectors? That will mattter some when choosing cameras. Something like this would be good because you can dial down or turn the IR completely off http://www.securitycameraking.com/700tvl-super-high-resolution-day-59201-prd1.html

There are lots of cameras without ir, but then you will see nothing in the dark.

I made a post of steps to do this- maybe it can help you get to your cameras web pages viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35962&p=220793&hilit=hitting+camera+through+nvr#p220793 As for the condensation, I'm guessing it's your dome camera? It is not sealed well if it's fogging up on the inside. You should try to open it on a low humidity day, first off. Then clean it and try a small silica dry pack inside and see if that absorbs the moisture.

I'm confused where you're at now. At home within your LAN, you can now see video picture in IE and phone and that has been solved? To see your cameras outside you home- WAN- you will need to port forward 80, 8670, and 101. You should probably change port 80 in the dvr to another port such as 83 or 88 because many internet providers block port 80. In the dvr you will need to see what choices they give you in DDNS. Hopefully one of them is no-ip as it's free or at least, Dyndns. Then you'd need to set up an account at no-ip.com or dyndns.com and put your account settings in the dvr in user name, password, and host domain. Then outside of your network in WAN, in IE you would type in your no-ip host name- example benko.no-ip.biz:83 That's assuming you change port 80 to 83 in the dvr. In the phone, you would use for address, benko.no-ip.biz and for port you would use 101. In the dvr you should check your sub stream settings and make sure they are low enough that they stream well remotely in WAN, but aren't so low that the picture looks bad. You'll need to experiment with that. In LAN at home, you might get away with opening all 8 cameras in main stream but it would depend on your pc and how powerful it is to do that. Otherwise it may be better to open all cameras in sub stream even at home to avoid your pc bogging down. One or two cameras in main stream might be ok, but trying for all eight may be too much. But for remote viewing in WAN, always open sub stream. Hope this helps.

Yeah, you should bring them up one at a time with the others disconnected and set each IP. When that's done put them all in line. See if that helps.

Where did you get them from? Didn't you get a config tool included on a cd? It will help you configure your cameras IP addresses.

This is STILL a wonder? Lower or turn off any NR settings. Lower or turn off any sens up settings. Incrementally raise the shutter speed. You'll see a noisier picture but gone will be your ghosting. You can try any of those settings that apply one by one and find the sweet spot that you can accept. You'll have to accept some noise when you dial out ghosting and trailing effects.

Course there's always this combo http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/sd6463e65e66e-hn-234.html

If you're not good with networking, you might try UPnP first. That's a universal plug and play setting that can be useful if networking is just not your thing. It automatically port forwards everything. What you'll need to do first is check and see if the router has UPnP and enable it, and then enable it in the dvr. Once the router and dvr have it enabled, you should be done. It sounds like you're not network savvy, so it might be worth trying this. If it doesn't do the trick, then you'll need to be walked through getting the system networked. It looks like securix has their own ddns system embedded in the dvr, so that will help if you have to go that route. Good luck.

What dvr and what phone app are you dealing with? Before anything, it might be worth rebooting your router, the dvr, and your phone. When weird things happen but they worked fine previously, always reboot as the first course of action. Especially phones. People keep them on 24/7 these days but remote camera apps can get funky every so often and rebooting the phone can help.

Well congrats! I look so forward to your thoughts and review of that system. Once it's set up, an in depth review of the nvr itself, the web app and/or remote software would be great. Very little info is out here about that stuff. Tons of info about the cameras- very little else. It's hard to say where you should put the vari focals without knowing your situation and what you need to cover. Usually they come in handy for a closer look at a target area than the fixed cameras can give you. They are also handy if you're forced to install a camera in a spot that isn't ideal because of wiring- such as higher up. Being able to zoom it tighter to make up the difference can be useful. Btw- the 3TB hard drive included is excellent too. Overall, I still think it's a great package. Good luck!

OP- You need a decent amount of light to wake up a camera with no IR. Take a night pic and post it so we can see just exactly how much light you're talking about. What you think is plenty may not be nearly enough to be useful overall. It's best if you give us an idea of what you're looking to cover. A store front is vague. Store fronts imply the sidewalk in front of the store, the front door, immediate parking spaces, or a large parking lot with an entrance to cover. What is it you're dealing with? Again, a picture says a lot. I wouldn't say choosing a fixed camera or two is settling at all. With mega pixel cameras, you can view a lot of detail of different positions within that one shot. Here's a post I made earlier this year showing how much you can get out of one wide view- essentially acting like a ptz can but not sacrificing any one area. A ptz will miss what it's not looking at. A good high res image can yield many different areas within the shot. This is the front door camera to the building, one of three out there- viewtopic.php?f=19&t=36256&p=223289&hilit=decent+ip+cameras+under+250#p223289 But as far as a ptz, they are useful. People get hung up on movement and working the camera, tours, etc. One of the most useful things about my ptz is simply being able to re-position it at will to look at a new problem area. I don't track anything much really. I don't have the camera in a constant tour. Even though it can trigger to a preset from motion from another camera, I don't do that. It's most useful to schedule it to re-position to different areas at different times of the day and sit idle on those areas. That is the real power of a ptz. Not moving it all over the place all the time, but merely being able to point it and zoom it where you may need it to sit idle at a perfect fov for extended periods of time. And it's best to have fixed cameras as well for support. Anyway, it's hard to say what will be best for you without more info.

In my experience with domes, they're just more pissy than bullets. Even eyeball domes are better than domes. Domes can be a pain. IR in a dome isn't ideal. They can leak. They can fog up. They can be a pain to aim. They can skew an image because of the dome itself. They're just more...pissy. I like the look of bullets and they're just easier to work with and seem to have less problems in the long run. Maybe it's because they're just better sealed and we can't get in there to screw things up either. I like eyeball domes because of their sealed nature too. And I do like domes and I understand why they would be preferred in many situations. But ime, bullets have been better performers. That, and eyeball domes.