yakky

Why would you buy crappy cameras, then housings, then fab crap up? You'll spend more than a good camera wold have cost in the first place. Get some high quality IP-66 rated cameras with a genuine DSP. You say its bright as day out there, might be brighter than most but cameras will still struggle.

You need to setup port forwarding on your router, open up the firewall portion (if enabled) and figure out your remote IP or use a dynamic DNS service.

IMO, Dahua is the Toyota of the CCTV world. Reliable, gets the job done, nothing fancy, and a great value. Nothing flashy, no touchy feely sales or customer support, just a modest, reliable product. And since they are popular, there are lots of aftermarket apps for Dahua.

I agree with the toss. Just grab a Foscam and learn your lesson the hard way (Just like I did!).

^^^ What's that do?

I'm using MJPEG cams but if you look at either the motion or Zoneminder docs, they list supported cards, the range is pretty broad for both.

It sounds like you are asking about a single camera, correct? If so, you'll have to get lucky, that's a lot of area to cover, and at night facial recognition is tough, no matter how expensive the camera, you'd need to be lower and closer for a good id, unless its some kid in your neighborhood that you might recognize. I'd go with a two fold approach, a few cameras mounted around and then a camera in a car.

Sucks that you had so many issue with Zoneminder v1.24.2 for 2 years now. Zero issues with its reliablity, only complaint is the motion detection, but I believe that is more due to my craptastic cameras. That said, I got a real DVR and haven't looked back. Though I do miss the works with any browser aspect.

I agree, I wish the manufacturers would just drop the stupid BNC connector and have a terminal for UTP. Not gonna happen though.

Umm, no it won't. For certain it won't work with Firefox or Safari. The TFT based units do work with Safari, but the plugin is terrible and requires administrator permission on the mac.

You really need to do some troubleshooting on the DVR, make sure its actually connecting to the DDNS service. Maybe try another one. If that doesn't work out, just put a windows (or whatever) client on the clients PC.

Its just funny to me when someone saved $15 and the camera is pretty much useless at night.

Yeah, lots of people seem really happy with the $40 VideoSecu's from Amazon. I look at the night time shots and laugh.

Do you usually buy stuff with no name brand? I tend to shy away from it. If they don't put there name on it, what do they have to lose if its a total pile of crap? You can get name brand cameras for $15 more.

I'm not sure anyone is going to solve that anytime soon. Anyone with any sort of technical skill is going to know about a wireless broadband modem and be able to add a second route to their home network, which is what you should do if you want to make this happen over cellular data. Cell based Broadband modems sell for under $100. You can grab a pre-paid SIM and roll for a year for probably under $100 if you do your homework.

That one seemed to center around a windows 7 machine. Interesting though.

Have you considered their AV-GP series? They are meant for use in DVRs specifically. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783

A neighbors wifi is an appropriate backup & fail over? Sorry yakky, but I have to completely disagree with you on that one. You know, you do make a point, a lot of places still have 3rd world telephone service, stuff still on poles, etc. I still do think its a viable option if you live in an area with buried lines where someone is unlikely to dig up all 4 or 5 of your neighbors lines to make sure your alarm doesn't call anyone. I'm also a huge advocate of tamper alerts on your phone line. For businesses, a $40/mo backup can be justified, but for homeowners, that ~$500/year buys you additional protection.

TaniDvr doesn't work for me, tried on two machines, it connects but no video. You might want to try some of Rory's simple viewers. Google Bahama Security.

Dahua is the Toyota of the DVR world, inexpensive, reliable and a good value. Not the best by a long shot, but the best value. Anything cheaper is likely to have some real compromises. There is also a ton of 3rd party stuff for Dahua.

Motion detection alerts on exterior cameras are a bad idea in general. Even with PIR, big moths will set them off.

I ran a mini-cam for a while in one location, and the low light performance was awful, as you'd expect from a tiny lens over a tiny sensor. Yeah, I wish CNB would offer a TDN lipstick (or slightly bigger) 24VF based type camera with a fixed lens. No reason it can't be repackaged as such. Seems like the options are a big dome or a bullet with IR.

http://www.dvrmart.com/mrt-asp-dvr_cctv-cnb-mn1700-pid_104-ctt-product_detail.htm You connect them with standard BNC and power cables.

http://www.dvrmart.com/mrt-asp-dvr_cctv-cnb-mn1700-pid_104-ctt-product_detail.htm You connect them with standard BNC and power cables.

If you are concerned about alerts when your property is broken into, a CCTV system is a poor mechanism for that. Most of us have real security systems, with appropriate backups. I'd skip the cellular and ask a neighbor for WIFI access as a backup and fail over to that.