yakky

Comparing something like a VFL-20s to a VCM-24VF is a huge difference in night vision. The 20s series are pretty blind without a lot of light, essentially useless, even on a well lit street. The thing I don't like about the 24VF series is that they use an extremely aggressive noise reduction system that ends up smearing detail at night time. Also you get this fog looking stuff on road surfaces as it tries to cope with noise.

If you get a 404, sounds like the camera url is different for yours. Did you ask foscam for the SDK? It has all the urls and parameters.

so, you checked both ports from the outside world via telnet?

So I'm getting some horizontal rolling bars. This is a new setup, pretty simple for now. 1x CNB VCM-24VF 1x Qvis Eye 34 1 Dahua 16 channel DVR. Both cameras are powered by individual power supplies, 1-12v switching, 1-12v transformer. The camera with the transformer seems to be doing much better. The Dahua has its OEM powersupply. Both cameras are run over CAT5 with cheapo balck and green baluns. Power is also run over the wire. My biggest surprise, and hopefully, the biggest clue is they CNB has the worst rolling bars. I figured since it had a separate power supply, it would be doing the best. Any ideas?

Got it figured out.

I had a couple of the Foscams, there is an SDK document published by them, a bit hard to find on google but its out there. Short of it is: http://x.x.x.x/snapshot.cgi?user=&pwd http://x.x.x.x/videostream.cgi?user=&pwd=

also search the camera on youtube, lots of us have been posting videos. Daytime performance is pretty easy to get right, nighttime is where most of the cameras are junk.

Are you trying to access it using the internal ip address? You need to use telnet to try to see if each port is actually open from the outside world. http://kb.acronis.com/content/7503

Google is pretty good at finding you the best deals, however the service from some places stinks. I found what I thought was a deal on some Qvis Eye 35's from Security Hardware store... wow talk about a mess. I ended up receiving some Eye 600s instead (no DSP, and CMOS). I think I've seen others mention similar issues at Surveillance Video. It seems a lot of the price leaders are just drop shippers and have very little in the way of knowledge or support.

You are on the right track with the Dahua, a great value and lots of features for the $. Cameras are a bit more tough. Since you want to prevent, you're probably better off with some pretty obnoxious looking box cameras in large housings. A tracking PTZ is great too. While you can get away with a cheap DVR, cameras are where you want to spend the money. A few dummy cameras might be good as well. Night stuff gets really tricky and without a good illumination scheme, you'll get very little detail, just enough to let you see the action, not enough to ID someone. Your best bet is to cover your entrances and hope for a license plate at night.

Check out the Qvis Eye 34, its a nice camera, softball type dome, good day and night performance and its ~$75 a camera.

Thanks, some good tips.

You don't need IR for good performance. The CNB 24VF series cameras do well with ambient light.

Its sort of like unlimited with the cable and phone companies. They guarantee you 50 gigs dedicated just for backups. Not sure how they enforce it but I know I haven't been bugged. And you can get it for less than $8.95 if you look for coupons online.

Have you verified you can telnet to both ports from the remote network?

I've been buying a lot of cameras trying to figure out what is going to work best for me. I've quickly learned the no-name brand ones are sketchy at best. IMO one of the most important things to look for is the DSP. Sony Effio-E or Nexchip 2040 are pretty much bare minimum. I'd really stick with name brand, you'll save more in the end and can actually get warranty work done.

Wow, message one looks sort of spammy... but here is my recommendation... I've been using Dreamhost for 7 years now. You get a silly amount of storage space as well as shell access which is very rare these days. Its cheap too. They have a server "event" every year or two knocking things offline for a few hours, people get all sorts of upset about it, but I'm ok with that, I don't want to pay for nine-nine's reliability.

So they seem to have a great selection. But...how do you get detailed specs on each camera? Is there a dahua site you browse before hand?

I'm planning out my new house install, currently have a few cameras at the old house placed in rather hard to see locations. I'm going to be a bit more brash in the new house, cameras on each corner eave (2nd story). Just wondering if any of you guys have had issues with neighbors and visible cameras. If so, what sorts of issues?

Wow... a hamster cam... I have one of the Foscam Pan and Tilts. It does ok,more of a toy. I'd recommend going with one of the Panasonics. Much better image quality and software. The foscams can be viewed through various platforms and there is an SDK. Not sure about the others. Controlling the pan and zoom is going to be the most difficult part. Check zoneminder for support on the various cameras, then you can reverse engineer from there.

An Dahua (Dahua) is a good choice. TFT also makes ok stuff (Swann, Nightowl, etc). For cameras, I'd get the 24vf series from cnb, much better night vision compared to the 20s.

I think its a tossup these days. I agree with the above, that a well built windows box will run for quite a while, especially compared to a linux box. Older Sun or HPUX stuff was silly stable, I've had servers running for 3-4 years without reboots. There are so many security updates for linux distributions that its worse now than windows. The kernel ones sometimes don't play nice with whatever software you have and it turns into a big mess. Pick the app, then the OS.

Not sure where you've read that, most of the posts I've read seem to favor an appliance. A PC based solution will offer lots of customization options and easier access to recorded content. It will also need more expensive hardware and maintenance. Unless the PC isn't network connected, you can't just let it sit there. It needs care and feeding. An appliance just runs.

I'd check the settings to see if there is a DNR or noise reduction setting and put it all the way up. The low light performance, even if its very dark looks pretty miserable.

Get a DSLR camera with HDMI out. You will be able to get a quality lens that can do macro so they will be able to see stuff as small as an insect's antennas.