Kawboy12R

Works fine, or did as of recently. Currently decommissioned. I'm in the middle of moving and work is very busy so not much time for cctv fiddling. Not sure if it'll be used at my new home but if not I'll move it down to a spot at work where the distances can be long in a larger lot. My biggest issue was washout at shorter ranges. I think I'd get a less powerful one next time for around the house.

I know I'm human, I'm just not sure that some of THEM aren't aliens. No sense of haha about some things...

I saw an indoor eyeball dome the other day that had glowing LEDs during the day that were a dim WHITE. Very similar to the brightness level of an IR dome with poor low-light performance in a room lit with lightbulbs but they weren't red. It looked like it might have been a Galaxy cam but it was just out of range of where I could read the writing. I tried taking a picture of it but guess what? The DMV seems to take a very dim view of people who are taking pictures of their security systems. Who knew, eh? They definitely weren't bright enough to be built-in floodlights, especially when they were turned on in the day in a room fairly well lit with fluorescent lights, so does anybody have any experience with what appears to be these new IR bulbs?? A quick search didn't find me any info, but maybe I'm not looking for the right thing.

I would base my choice on the scene the camera is viewing. Some situations you will want a widescreen view and others you will want 4:3. I don't consider 30 fps necessary and 15fps plenty. Bandwidth and storage limitations, in my eyes, will dictate fps more than evidence quality for 99.9% of situations.

I think that turning your fan on is somehow creating enough electronic "noise" to cause your HDMI to shut down (corrupt digital packets) from interference. The noise filters in your TV might be poor, the fan motor itself might be noisier than it should, or you might have arcing in the AC going to the fan somehow. If you have another HDMI tv, try plugging it into the same place as the one with the problem. You might be able to solve it by replacing the TV with one with better noise rejection and moving the one with the problem away from the fan. You might avoid swapping the TV by putting it on a UPS or a power bar with an EMI filter to help clean up the "dirty" power going into it. Also, you can get arcing in the electrical connections at the fan in the junction box where the wires are screwed in. These aren't always visible, so unscrewing the wire connections and inspecting for burns will show the problem. Tightening the screws onto the wires a bit more will help, but cutting off the damaged part of the wire, stripping a new bare end, and retightening is best. Also check your electrical panel for the same problems. A bad connection in the panel box (sometimes invisible under a tight screw) can cause noise as well, even in a ground wire. I think I'd put money on there being TWO problems though. You've proven that there is noise being generated by the fan somehow (bad motor or bad wiring) because you can see it on the top left corner of the monitor when the fan is turned on. That shouldn't happen. The HDMI TV should also probably handle noise better than that though, so I'd almost bet that trying another TV in the same spot won't have the same HDMI problem even though the noise is still there. Adding a good UPS or EMI-filtering power bar may allow you to keep that TV there without swapping. It's also possible that you have a problem in the shielding of the HDMI cable going to the TV that is allowing too much noise into the signal.

Anybody got a Dahua lens they could send them? I bet they could match it up if they had a sample.

We could help you but then we'd have to kill you. Seriously, you basically have to get lucky and catch someone reading your questions when they have time to answer them. I read on my phone a lot this time of year (busy time for me) and am lucky to be able to do a short post quickly. If I read something that I'm interested in but don't have time then it disappears later because I just browse via the unread posts button.

Variable speed and dimmer switches are common noise sources.

If it were me I'd replace the fan switch first, and then suspect HDMI wiring shielding problems. A UPS on the TV might help as well. A new wall switch is cheap and easy, and the other two take time and/or money to fix, although you might have a UPS around for your computer to use. If you have to buy one and a UPS DOESN'T fix it, then you WILL have one for your computer or dvr. All three are semi-educated guesses. I'm guessing that fan noise is sneaking into the HDMI circuit of the TV and eliminating culprits.

Get a pair of Swann or Lorex (rebranded Hikvision) bullets ($300-$350/pair) from someplace like Costco or "real" Hiks from Wrightwood Surveillance and run them with Blue Iris ($50) on your existing computer. edit- plus a PoE switch or maybe a couple of PoE injectors and a switch (or injectors and plug 'em into your router if you've got two free ports and don't want to buy a switch).

My guess is that it toggles the visibility of the mouse pointer on his DVR. Seems to me there was another post on here a while back asking about a similar problem.

This is more of an electrical question than CCTV, but what fan are you turning up and down? Ceiling fan? Box fan? What kind of switch are you using if it's a ceiling fan? Just pulling the cord or is it on a dimmer switch as well?

I didn't see anything that said "true day/night" (TDN) or mentioned a removable mechanical IR cut filter (ICR) so it's hard to tell if the cams have a real removable filter. The few reviews on there aren't bad but I have no experience with those cams. Newegg does have a decent return policy, so you could probably get it, try it out, and return it if you aren't satisfied. They sometimes have different return policies on different items though, so read the small print before ordering. Hard to beat Costco for a good return policy though.

Hardwire closed the momentary switch on a doorbell system?

Just about any cheap DVR kit system should work for that. Just make sure you order compatible microphones if the kit doesn't come with audio-capable cams. Recording "public" audio is illegal in some jurisdictions so it isn't a common basic option now, but most will allow you to add mics yourself.

ISPs should provide dyn-dns services for free with all accounts above the barebones level. It would only cost them a few cents per subscriber, give everybody the opportunity to use it, and help lock in the folks that DO us so it might even be a profitable option in the long term.

Possible? Maybe. But it is much more likely that you will waste lots of time and money buying lenses that won't fit and won't focus and/or will have screwed up colours. How are you going to get the cams to sense darkness and switch off the filter on your new lenses? They might also be too long and won't fit in the housing and remain waterproof. A lot of engineering went into making those cameras as cheap and crappy as they are. Sell them and put the money into cams that will do a better job. Remember TANSTAAFL- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You got your money's worth out of what you paid for those 8 cams- very little. One good name-brand camera costs more than that whole system. You bought a package that can't do what you want it to do. Spending a bit more money on a different package would have given you much better results.

Cams on that system are super cheap. Don't waste your time. Spend a few more dollars and get real cameras with proper filters that work.

Post pictures of the login screen, menus, and particularly the main video display screens on here. Someone may recognize that faster than the metal box. The guts and software may be the same as something else. Also a hires pic of the details on PC board inside may help.

Yes.

I find no use besides play for PTZ at my home. Alarm inputs are excellent if you're going to use them, especially if you're not happy with video motion detection false alerts. Do you think you'll use your alarm inputs and the extra utility will be worth the hassle of yanking all of the wires with your current system and re-running cables?

The looong answer is probably yes but the short answer is no with relatively cheap cameras with M12 lenses. You're much better off buying a proper camera with the IR cut filter in place and using the other one in a place where it is useful. If you're talking about a box camera with CS mount lens then life is much easier if the camera sensor is sensitive to IR.

It depends on what you need the system for. I'm assuming your home? Package systems tend to have cookie-cutter cameras with wide-angle lenses- good for overview and situational awareness uses, but not so good for clear ID of strangers 40' away. You're in the US and getting your feet wet, so why not start with a kit from Costco, set it up somewhere simple on a weekend, and run some wires out your windows and doors and hang the cams where you think you want them. Adjust the angles, check out the field of view with the cctv monitor on your coffee table (or wherever), and have someone start walking around outside where you want to be able to ID people. Do under different lighting conditions the first day or so- morning, afternoon, evening, and night. If it gives you what you want, then pay an electrician to run your cables after you decide where you want your DVR. You might want to get TWO systems (say an analog QSee package and one of the Swann, Lorex, or QSee network camera bundles with an NVR) to play with that first weekend or week and see if you're happy with the cheaper analog system or really fall in love with the hi-def picture of the IP camera setup. Take back the one you don't like or can't afford. Make sure you compare the saved video quality of the analog and IP systems. Most analog systems give acceptable live quality under most lighting conditions but lose a lot of detail when digitizing it and saving it to the HD, so the evidence isn't as good as live. The network stuff is as good saved as live. Analog systems are easier to add a different camera to if you want to, say, add a dome or camera with more zoom from a different manufacturer. A 10,000 word essay wouldn't begin to cover every strength and weakness, especially if you want to start talking about systems from scratch and mixing and matching cameras, but if you're a first-timer, I'll just say that I regret sinking money into analog when I could've started with IP cameras. At the very least, if your budget insists on analog at the start, get the electrician to run cat 5 cable to your camera locations and use baluns so you can easily remove the analog cams and baluns and just plug in network cams in the future. Re-running wires will make you a slave to your original system, especially if you have an easy return policy from Costco but find you can't take advantage of it because you invested a lot of money burying the kit wires in the wall.

I don't know what's available to you in Britain and I've got no experience with the gear you're looking at. That camera seems decent looking at that link, but lots of cams look good on paper but get crippled by something as dumb as the manufacturer saving 50 cents per camera on cheap lenses. QVIS seems to be a decent name from what I remember reading about them though.

Your cable tv DVR is no good for CCTV recording. You'll need one designed for CCTV. Why do you want wireless cameras? Common experience (mine included) with relatively inexpensive quality wireless analog cameras is that there seems to be no such thing. Much better to run wires, especially considering that you have to get a power wire to the cameras somehow. There are good reasons to go wireless between buildings, but you'd most likely be happier using wifi and network IP cameras than analog gear. As for smartphone viewing, just about every system nowadays supports Android phones.