shockwave199

I don't like split adapters. And they are made to be full up. I really wouldn't have anything less than eight cameras in them long term. But you might try and get separate adapters and see if it helps. Most would recommend a quality power box rather than a lot of adapters. Certainly that's a good idea, but depending on the quality of your cameras it could just perpetuate a ground loop issue anyway. As much of a drag as separate power adapters may be, I just prefer it. You could find the slim type so they all fit nicely in power strips. And you could try maybe four of them to start and see if that helps those four cameras. If it does, it may be the way to go. Good luck.

I check out large file motion events, which means it recorded longer for some reason. Most all other small file motion events are false triggers. My cameras are all exterior.

How do you have all those power adapters distributed- in power strips? If you're maxing out six way channel strips, you could try using one more strip so each one isn't full and redistribute the adapters around to see if they all get happy. Oddly enough that worked for me in the very beginning when I had a similar flickering problem, but I didn't have horizontal roll though. I think I may have also swapped out a couple power adapters too- the ones that come with cameras are usually really poor and can be hit and miss. Are your cable runs very long? Also flickering can happen when the available light changes drastically, back and forth throughout the day. If it's seriously dark and cloudy at times, a couple of my cameras in shady areas will flicker a bit until they settle in. It always clears and they always work properly at night- being IR cameras. Are your cameras TDN and do they have menu items to tweak, or is everything auto with no menu in the cameras?

Shouldn't be a problem. Don't use a thin light gauge wire though- I would use a bit thicker medium gauge wire.

Cameras of that type are made to be out in the elements without a clear bottom dome. Of course that doesn't mean it won't fail in severe conditions, but that's what it's meant to handle and if it's a well built camera, it should be okay. Your ptz has IR built in, in which case you should not try and enclose it. You'll get terrible IR reflection and the picture won't be good at night. If by chance you don't need the IR's and they can be turned off within the camera menu, you might be able to get away with some type of clear enclosure. But really, in that case you should just have an appropriate dome ptz camera to suit your needs. Good luck with your camera.

I understand where you're coming from with that. MANY people should leave well enough alone if they don't know what they're doing.

Which camera is which? Not sure why your thread asks about adjusting color when it's a light problem you're tackling. Looks to me like your first pic where you adjusted it is about the best you can get. Super bright sun will always be a challenge. There may be a number of WDR settings within the that menu, including level and shadow compensation. Be careful with highlight compensation- try it and see but it can do some wacky stuff to the image. You can try different settings but I would suggest writing down where you start from and what settings you change along the way, so you can go back if you need. You can change so many settings along the way that you get lost, and it's not always the case where you want to default the camera back to square one. Depending on how important the night picture is, anything you compensate for during bright sunshine may make the night shot too dark, so it's a balance between the two. Sometimes you just have to move the camera or change the direction of the lens, keeping it as low as you can so it avoids direct sun. In most cases you only need a field of view that's as high as the tallest truck in a shot, and no higher. That can help keep direct sun out. You may want to point your driveway camera down more. You'll lose the end of the driveway and street but what are you gaining by seeing that anyway. Your FOV will be more productive. Camera settings can only go so far. If it doesn't help you'll need to consider adjusting the field of view to avoid bright sun.

Have to tried to contact CS at gadspot.com? I wouldn't stand for not having admin control of my dvr, no matter what any installer said- even if I didn't know squat about the dvr. Keeping admin access out of the customers hands is not the right thing to do at all, imo.

They're actually lucky the ladder was all that was stolen. They could have used the ladder to gain access to the whole house at any number of entrance points, most commonly attic windows. It's always a good idea to have ladders around the property securely chained locked to something so they don't get stolen or worse- used to gain access to the whole house.

I have some documentation that came with my system which suggests the splitters are best used completely full. I suppose an 8 way splitter with only five used might be ok, but I don't like those splitter things. And even though I don't use a power box at home, I don't like them either. Ground loops always seem to loom using them. In my home where I'm only pleasing me, I prefer to use separate power adapters per camera into a power strip. Not as tidy looking, but never a ground loop problem or glitch in years. I'm not saying to do as I do, but that's just what works for me.

The only brand I'd consider there is q-see and none of the packages would be appropriate overall. Not one of the packages I looked at in your price range has a varifocal camera. Every package had a fixed 5mm lens and all of them were bullet cameras. One package had a laughable ptz. As I suggested, buy all items separately and you will get more flexibility, better quality, better results per camera location, and actually save money. You mention nothing about what you actually need out of a system, how many cameras, or anything. You need to figure out specifically what you need and what you need to look at. Otherwise you're surly headed for the typical mistake of buying a package thinking you can't go wrong and you'll be the one person the package will work for, only to set it up and look at the shots and THEN understand what the deal is. Know what you want to monitor, understand what you need to accomplish that well, buy what you need accordingly. Otherwise sure- pick a package and toss the 800 credit away.

Btw- I watched the vid on the MP cam. Nice but looks pretty freaky when in motion. What do you have that thing installed on, bamboo? Looks like it would track horribly. Stills ok, but tracking looks terrible.

These are some shots I grabbed along the way thus far. They are snapped on the fly remotely, some during blustery winds. This camera may be analog, but damn it's good. LPR of me. I cropped this, but the plate is clearly visible. I was just hopping into my car. This is with no IR on. I have the digital zoom on at the moment. Up on a pole on a blustery windy day, I snapped this tower at, I'm guessing, at least a mile away and likely more. Digital zoom is impressive. Here it is zoomed back out. You can make out the tower slightly, to the right of the sand mound behind the office. Nice zoom shot at the gate- This is another shot at the gate. This is with the IR off. This camera is superb in low light. I will add more of these for samples later. I only need the IR when I hit really dark areas.

It's actually a fairly deep blue, not purple. Nor does it look purple.

Spend the costco credit on something else. Avoid Lorex. Q-see is fine, but it's better to pick one of their dvr's and buy it separately and then pick and choose your cameras for each location you'll need. The boxed kits are never a one size fits all and you'll be spending more after the fact even if you think everything is right in that box. What is the specs of the q-see boxed kit? I'm curious what package they put together.

I always prefer to have the horizontal plane level. Personally I'd fix it.

I have many vids covering many things about my home setup and what I use currently. Check them out. If I were replacing my fixed lens cameras today, I'd be sure they were varifocal and had smart IR, for starters. But it all works very well. The newest video on the dahau ptz- please don't reference where I bought it here in this thread. The retailer can't be mentioned. Maybe some of those vids will help you narrow down what you may need. But understand that your budget, especially including a good ptz, will be closer to 3k. Good luck.

First off be sure of the length you really need. Sometimes you think it's less than you actually need. But generally, get an appropriate length cable. If it's a pre-made type, get a shorter one. If you're putting the connectors on yourself, cut the cable to the right length. You have quite a lot more cable than you need. You can be lazy and use it, or you can get an appropriate length. Better habits improve results overall.

That shot needs help. I'd work on that.

Upwards of 1K.

Glad everything is working out so far. As per the power box- you may find all cameras work best on individual power adapters. Maybe the new power box will be fine. But individual adapters puts an end to any ground loop issues that may arise from powering different cameras of differing quality from one box. It may not be be as neat and it may be a pain when you have lots of cameras, but there are ways of making it all compact and fine. I prefer individual adapters for cameras. If you still have problems with the new box, consider it.

I feature two different ones in my videos. I like them both a lot. However, please contact me via youtube as the newest one that I purchased for my employer cannot be spoken of here even in private messages. Maybe the videos featuring them will help you get an idea.

No. There are no presets in the dvr. All presets are in the camera, called up by the controller.

Such as what, specifically? It may be hit and miss until you find the right ones. I'd try everything from 80 through 99.

From my experience you can do it either way. Positioning the camera and then setting a preset with a software ptz controller or keyboard will serve to store them in the camera as well. Or, you can do it right in the cameras osd. If you are going to setup alternate tours, going into the cameras osd to do that is needed, ime. Most cameras will store more than one tour- upwards of eight different tours is common. The ptz manual should provide the specific presets to start tours, scans, and patterns, as well as stop them. Depending on the controller or even the dvr's remote control, it may provide buttons to stop the tour. Or, stopping it may require you hit another preset specifically to stop it. It really depends on the dvr and it's software, or the keyboard you're using. When it comes to buttons for controlling ptz's, I'm finding it isn't always universal as far as control for all features. It depends on what you have and how it talks to each other and the camera. It may, or may not. You'll have to see. If you just start a tour, it may interrupt it and not restart. If a scheduled tour launches for a certain amount of time, it may go back to the tour after the interruption. If you really want the tour going full time and it gets perminently interrupted, you can set the idle to launch that same tour, programmed for a short amount of ilde time. So for instance, the camera is on a tour and you hit preset 3 to see something. The tour gets perminently interrupted. But in perhaps a minute or so, the idle setting relaunches the tour. A decent ptz will have nice control and be flexible for different scenarios. Good luck.