dahomes555

Are you an installer? Do you have an acct with distributors (ADI, Tri-Ed) etc., or just looking to buy something online? Try searching for "Effio bullet" on amazon and there will be a ton of results. Read through the reviews and you'll probably have the same experience. If you don't care about having a dome instead of a bullet (I almost always use domes because they look better) then consider a 700 TVL IR Bullet camera. Good camera that should do the trick for most basic surveillance applications.

Never seen that error before. Try resetting all devices (router, computer, and DVR.) If I were a betting man, that fixes the problem.

When you try to open PSS do you get an icon that pops up in your dock that has an orange X? Or do you get one that says X11? Or do you get nothing at all? If you are getting X11, that means your system is still trying to use it instead of XQuartz. Logging out and logging back in on your computer should resolve that. If it is showing the orange X (meaning XQuartz) but nothing else is happening, wait up to 2-3 minutes. The first time you try to use PSS with XQuartz it can take a LONG time for it to initialize. Each boot up after that should be much shorter (I usually find it is 15 seconds or less). If you are not getting X11 or XQuartz icon to appear in dock and you have waited 2-3 minutes at least and still don't see anything, you've got something else going on.

It's probably a decent camera. There are so many brands out there, especially off-brand stuff coming from Asia that it's unlikely that anyone here has installed that particular camera. I think you could find a less expensive camera with same features though. Site I found that camera on had it for $245. You ought to be able to find an Effio-P camera with 700 TVL and a VF lens on it for under $175.

Your question was pretty vague, so I'm not sure what you're looking for. All DVRs are basically the same, though, so there isn't a whole lot of specific things you would need to know using a Digimerge versus Bosch, Samsung, HIKVision, Honeywell, Speco, et al. Give more specifics that you're looking for and you'll probably get a better response. We're happy to help.

In what way do you find the audio doesn't work? I have dozens of audio cameras installed in remote locations and I can listen in on them all using PSS on my Mac. Running Lion, but Snow Leopard had the same capability as well.

On Monday I installed an Everfocus EZ Plate Cam camera on the exit gate for an HOA. I have been out there twice to try to tweak the positioning and settings of the camera and the customer is only seeing about 1 in 5 license plates with enough clarity to tell what they say. I don't know if the camera itself is the problem or if I'm just not installing it correctly. Here's the layout of what I'm working with: The camera has a 9-22mm VF lens so I can definitely zoom in close enough, but part of the problem is that the exit lane I'm trying to cover is 20 feet wide and it's hard to zoom in close enough for the camera to do it's job. Cars could get to this exit from any of the three streets on the left, so it's very important to cover the entire 20 foot wide exit lane span. Making things a little more complicated is that the camera location is about 500 feet away from the DVR location and is being transmitted with a VideoComm wireless transmitter, so simply adding another camera or two isn't really an option, since those things cost $850 ea! Any recommendations you have would be greatly appreciated.

D1

Last response was a little unclear (to me) so thought I'd clarify a little bit. IP vs analog will require totally different equipment from a recording standpoint and from a camera standpoint. They're not really interchangeable, unless you get what is called a Hybrid DVR which will support a certain number of analog channels plus a certain number of licenses for IP cameras. In any event, what I would make sure to do when you are bidding this job is run Cat5e cable plus an 18/2 power cable. You can use the Cat5e cable with video baluns if the client ends up opting for the analog Digital Watchdog system, but if a year or two down the road he wants higher resolution cameras your wiring is all in place to convert him to IP. You will potentially see a quality difference in going IP vs analog. But there are also a lot of crap IP cameras out there that have lower resolution than a decent analog camera. As a general rule, I would say for a decent analog camera you are probably looking at $75-150 per camera, while a decent IP camera is probably more in the $300-500 range. Anything outside of those ranges is going to be missing something. At the end of the day, though, your cameras are only as good as the recorder/monitor. Get a good quality D1 DVR (the Digital Watchdog brand is fine) or if you are going IP, get a good quality PC with a zippy processor, upgraded video card, and plenty of RAM. Couple that server with a good quality VMS (IP software) and you'll be in good shape. One other aspect of IP that you'll want to be sure of is bandwidth. For a 16 camera system, I'd recommend that the cameras be on their own dedicated network. Buy a 24 port switch and a decent router that is only being used for the cameras. The customer will want their computers, wifi, printers, etc. on its own network otherwise everything will run slow and will need to be rebooted more frequently.

Agreed. Using RG59 will probably underwhelm you. If your DVR is close enough to the TV you will be using, try connecting with VGA or better yet, HDMI if your DVR supports it. That's the best possible video output that you will get.

Never bought cameras from monoprice, though I buy a lot of other stuff from them. Effio is the way to go, in my experience. Monalisa is a technology largely found on CNB cameras and according to reps for CNB, it maxes at 600 TVL. Effio gets you 650 TVL, although NTSC format on DVRs doesn't let you really take advantages of higher than about 480 TVL anyway. My experience is that the DVR makes a bigger difference. You will get better results on a cheap camera on a good DVR than you will with a great camera on a cheap DVR.

How many cameras? What application? That DVR has a pretty antiquated looking GUI. What they selling it for?

80 and 37777 on tcp, 37778 in udp You can change those to whatever ports you want, but those are the default ports on the DVR.

You need a router. You will need to go into the network settings on the DVR and assign an IP address and set the default gateway of your router. Once you have done that, just open up Internet Explorer on a computer connected to the same router as the DVR. Type in the IP address for the DVR and you'll get a login screen. Depending on security settings for Internet Explorer, you may need to change a few settings. You will need to set setting to "prompt" for all the settings that contain "unsigned activex."

Yeah, that app doesn't appear to have any support for Dahua DVRs, nor any of the brands it is commonly sold under (ICRealtime, QVIS, A-Data)

Recently took over an installation at a self storage facility. Customer had 1 camera that was about 650 feet away connected over standard siamese cable. I'm not sure how it was transmitting that far successfully without amplification or using UTP/baluns, but at some point it was. I swapped out all their cameras and added a full D1 DVR. Easy peasy. About 1.5 weeks later, that far camera has started blitzing out. It will show a jumbled picture. It also causes the TV monitor (connected via BNC) to go all wavy. My first thought is that it's a ground fault loop. There are 4 spots between the camera and DVR where the cable was spliced for trenching under road). I thought I isolated where the ground fault loop was occurring, but just to be safe I replaced every single BNC connector in all the junction boxes. For two days the problem seemed resolved. Customer emailed me today that the problem has returned. How can I fix it? The conduit is too tight to fit another cable (or pull out the existing cable) to re-run Cat5 to use with baluns. I know there are ground fault isolators. Will that help in my case? Obviously there is still the issue that it is 650 feet away, so I don't know if maybe the issue is more an issue of amplification and there is some sort of an amplifier that I could put in-line with the camera to help. I appreciate your assistance.

I have installed a couple hundred of QVIS' eyeball domes. All in all I think they are great quality for the price. Blows anything else away in that price range. Couple of issues: - their effios are much better than Nextchip. Bought a batch of Nextchips that had a bug in the firmware that would make the image go totally white and stay white if the sensor detected too much light. - the WDR isn't great. It's actually D-WDR, so that explains it. - the white body scratches VERY easily when putting the camera up and aiming it. Just be slow and careful and don't let the metal pieces rub together as much as possible. As mentioned, the OSD controls are great. Cameras all come with power connector which allows you to screw power cable in cleanly. Not bad camera at all.

Thanks everyone for their feedback. I don't know that there is really an effective solution at this point besides pulling UTP. The four splices are all made with just standard crimp BNC connectors with a male to male adapter in between. It was probably an easier way of pulling all that cable back when it was installed years ago, but hey, there's a reason that entire row of 4 cameras was not functioning before I arrived.

The IP address you gave appears to be to the router for your ISP, not to the DVR.

From experience, I couldn't disagree more.

The idmss-t hd app for iPad (only) is the biggest improvement to date. Significant features are: -view recorded clips, in addition to live view. To my knowledge, this is the first app for Dahua DVRs that allows for playback. That's a HUGE feature - ability to change camera configurations (quality, fps, bitrate, camera name) - push notifications: you are supposed to be able to set motion triggered alarms that will push a notification to the device that will automatically load the recorded clip. I haven't been able to get that to work yet however. In answer to previous post about pixelation occurring, the remote viewing apps ALL use the extra stream, not the main stream. The default quality settings on the extra stream are for QCIF. To significantly improve the image clarity, change the quality to CIF. This will use more bandwidth as well, so you may need to lower your frame rate as well. I set all my installations to CIF @ 3 fps and typically don't have any issues with that.

This has probably been answered more than any other topic on this forum. See here: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=27858&hilit=dyndns

What's your budget?

Stay as far away from zmodo as you can get. I stopped using them over a year ago after 30% of the dvrs I put in died. Then I RMA'd them and the replacements have almost all gone out. Don't go cheap. Look at a QVIS (Dahua) for the best bang for your buck.