the toss

In Australia the cablig standards state the conduit should be no more than 40% filled.

As Horizon has said a complete re-think & re-wire is required at the DVR end. 48 cameras would warrant using a small rack mount cabinet. Inside the rack mount a termination panel & fit 48 panel mount baluns. Your cat5 cables can connect to the baluns at the back of the panel using standard data cabling techniques. Then make up 48 BNC-BNC patch cables to go from the baluns to the DVR inputs. For your power I'd use 3 x 16 feed distributed power supply units. The hard part about using cat5 is separating the power pair/s without interrupting the signal pair twist too much and then keeping it neat. It can be done but requires extra expenditure for things like RJ45 terminations etc. I always break out into a sweat when I come across installs like you have shown

Doing the conduit by yourself was your biggest mistake. Just by having one other person would have saved you a HUGE amount of time

I'm with boogieman , why not put some effort into solving the problem rather than trying to get around it?

This seems to be an escalating worldwide problem. You are getting off lightly. I talked to someone a while back & they were getting their refridgerator blown up by these wayward lasers. In this case it was a green laser which I think is an argon one. Maybe putting mirrored glass in your windows will help.

Check to see that you haven't got the pair reversed at one end

All the major manufacturers make them

I second that no grounding issues Even though I had a building inspector wanting the fiber connection and box (plastic) grounded, I said its plastic how do I ground it? He said just run a ground conductor to it because it is a new code. Why are these people allowed to continue breeding ? As for the OP , whichever way you go don't use RG6 it IS NOT better for noise immunity than RG59 when used at CCTV baseband frequencies. It is designed for RF frequencies.

Generally detection of the HDD is part of the boot sequence. If the HDD is not detected then the boot up will not proceed to its conclusion. HDDs are pretty cheap but get one designed for CCTV. (ie continual running ) NOT one designed for computers.

Don is sort of right - it is a lighting/camera quality issue. In your first pic the camera is operating in the IR mode as the B/W pic would indicate even with the light from across the street. That "white" light is part of your problem together with the limited IR range the camera will have. ( you could halve the stated IR range of the camera & end up with the realistic range). It is simply struggling in the lighting conditions & increasing the AGC in a futile attempt to cope. Result - lots of noise. I'm betting that if you got rid of that light across the street then the pic up close would improve dramatically. This is demonstrated by the pic looking straight down. Shorter subject range & plenty of IR light resulting in a fairly good pic. People need to remember that to get a picture you need light , be it white or IR. There are cameras that will operate in low light & you pay for them. THE main difference in cameras is the low light capabilities which you PAY for, regardless of what the sales material says

That relay would do the job but I would not recommend it. The problem with it is the plug-in base. It looks like connection to the base is by soldering to the pins which if not illegal for 240V is certainly not a good idea when you have your low voltage coil connection in such close proximity. Try Jaycar. They have a similar one with well spaced spade connectors .

Put it this way. If you were doing the job for me and I found out you had never done one before then I would not pay you an hourly rate. I would pay you a job rate on completion and acceptance.

If it is a duel voltage camera (12Vdc/24Vac) then it will not matter if you connect the DC reverse polarity. If it is a 12Vdc camera it will have a diode in the power leg to prevent damage from reverse polarity power, unless it is a cheap piece of junk.

Put a decent power supply on it.

Those multiway power boxes are (generally) based on a computer style switchmode power supply with either fuses or PTC protection. The most likely cause of failure will be the caps. Look for the expansion joint on the top of the caps.

Probably due to IR reflection. Make sure the protective film has been removed from the dome and /or check the seal between the lens & dome is in place

Without a doubt your best course of action will be to power the camera from the gate , especially since it is a 12V dc and not 24Vac camera. So the problem you should be looking into is how to switch it on/off although I'm not sure why you would want to. As jazzar siggested you could use a relay controlled over a spare pair or even easier get a single chan transmitter/receiver.

In years gone by there were cameras that were powered over the coax using a system called phantom powering. (google for more info) . I don't know of any that had the option of phantom or direct powering but they may have existed. It sounds to me that the best option would be to replace the lot.

The main thing to remember is that customers like accuracy in your quote, they like to know what they are up for. If you lack cabling experience then you may find this to be a problem. Customers will be unhappy if you allow for problems in a job that turns out to be a walk in the park but have charged for a worst case scenario. On the other hand if you charge for what you percieve to be an easy job & it turns into a nightmare, they will not be happy if you try to slug them more. DNS & smartphone setups are only charged when cabling is involved , the actual programming setup is part of the installation commissioning. I have been doing this for 18yrs and my quotes are based on an hourly rate. When doing the quote mention ANY possible problems that may cause a blowout in the time - the customers appreciate being kept informed. I suppose they are not quotes but rather estimates. There are plenty of jobs I've done were the final cost is less than what the customer is expecting. This works for me , I dont advertise , all work is word of mouth and people seek me out.

Your question is really beyond a comprehensive answer on a forum But I'll give you some direction to aid your own research. A camera can be divided into two basic components. Sensor & electronics. The sensor receives the picture information & the electronics processes it to design algorythms. The two main types of sensors are CCD (charge coupled device) and CMOS. CMOS used to be low res , low power , cheap & nasty but because of R&D due to the consumer market (smartphones) they now compete with CCD performance wise & are the preferred sensor for IP cameras. As far as the end user is concerned , about the best way to judge the quality of the sensor is to look for a reputable manufacturer (sharp , sony etc) Even quality manufacturers can have problems like Sony had with the "super HAD " chip. As for the electronics there are all sorts of ways to massage the signal to give a desired result. The important thing to remember is that most things are a compromise and one camera will not cover all situations. You need to understand the situational requirements and then get the suitable camera. Lots of info on manufacturers websites.

That is a bit like saying every car with a 5 litre V8 motor will give the same performance. There are a lot of things going on besides the sensor.

So much to say about this, I'll do it in point form - * most cctv stuff is from China so don't let that be a factor. The effio chipset is quality. * 1000 tvl is sales bull, max useable is 580 ntsc , 620 pal & 750 @ 960H. Don't let the 1000 tvl claim be a factor in your decision. * one of the main differences with entry level DVRs is the ease of use , espescially image retrieval. Smartphone compatible is standard nowdays. * the price seems reasonable & you get a 2yr warranty which is a good start. * since it appears to be a "kit" it will come with miniture coax which is nothing more than shielded audio cable and is the cause of much grief with these types of installations. I'd try to talk him into swapping it out for real (copper) RG59 coax. * rather than worry too nuch about tvl or chipsets have a closer look at other camera features like wide dynamic response , backlight compensation , smart IP etc Hope this helps you out.

That is not correct. It is the power supply you use that determines the ground isolation since that is where it occurs.

yep, auto iris sticking open. I had this problem with a number of high end cameras of a particular brand. It took forever to convince the supplier that there was an embedded problem. They finally admitted it & retrofitted a new iris control board free of charge for the camera as long as they were still in warranty.

While I am NOT a great fan of cat 5/6 & baluns, the scenario of 4 cameras to a detached garage is THE perfect situation for their use. Use the 4 way baluns shown by numbnuts and power the cameras from within the garage.