Kawboy12R

I ripped this from the Vivotek site- "ST7501 is a free standard video management software working seamlessly with all VIVOTEK network cameras and video servers."

The cellular bills would be a killer over time though. Just Google "3g mobile dvr" or "3g mobile nvr" and you'll find a lot of hits. If you get a wifi one with 3G failover, you might be able to set up a directional wifi antenna at your apartment and point it in the direction you usually park your car to save on wireless bills. It'd probably take 4 cameras to cover the perimeter of your car properly though. If you want to get creative mount a 360 degree fisheye camera upside down on the hood of your car. Seriously though, there are versions that take lots of alarm inputs, so I'm sure there's a way that one could be set up to email you if it gets a shock alarm while motionless. That way if it's recording 24/7 you'd always have a record of what was going on and still connect via 3g to see what's going on now without having to watch a monitor all the time and pay hideous cell bills.

I'm with Tom on this one. Running 220v outside to a button that's not getting any younger and expecting it to never shock someone with wet shoes and fingers is asking a bit much. Not a bad time to change and kill two birds with one stone.

Currently I use my iPad but leave it turned off. If I want to see the cams when I'm not around a computer I grab it and turn it on, find IP Cam Viewer, and run it. Takes more than a couple of seconds but I don't want to repurpose it as the main front door viewer (too expensive and removes my use of it for other things). I'm thinking of using an Android tablet like you are for the 24/7 front door monitor but haven't done it yet (still have my analog dvr monitor there). I've got wired internet at the front door so wireless isn't needed, just an Android tablet with usb port and Ethernet option in the settings (Nexus 7 among others). Add a usb to ethernet adapter and you're set. Cheap insurance so you don't slow down your home wireless if you use it as a constant-on monitor. Even with a separate wireless router dedicated to the tablet, if you stream video over wireless constantly you'll slow down the wireless of the other main router. That gives you two wires plus the adapter dongle going to your tablet in the kitchen though. Only you can balance ease of installation with how much you use use wireless for other things. If you don't currently have a high-end router that gets really good reviews I think I'd start there first. Read the reviews on the one I use, and it's a lot better than any of the $50-$100 cheapo routers I've used before- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320091 I'd prefer to leave my tablet running with the live view displayed. Takes too long to walk over to it every time, power it up, and run the app. With it always on, it'll be used a lot more and be much handier than something powered off most of the time. I can't count the number of times I notice something of interest just by glancing at the always-on dvr monitor by my front door. Mounting is a bit tricky. Best selection of tablet mounts I've seen is on GPSCity.com if the RAM mounts match your style. Tilt, swivel, etc, they'll do it but leave wires exposed. If adjustment isn't needed, you could even just mount a three-sided frame on the wall and slide it in from the top. Wires out the bottom hidden with wire sheathing of some form. Hiding wires will be a lot trickier with power plus the ethernet adapter hanging out of the usb slot. Depending on the kitchen, you might even not mind modifying a cabinet door and running the wires inside. That's a lot of frigging to speed up your wireless though. You might want to try just putting it on a tablet stand on the counter with the power wire running to an outlet. If it causes you enough grief to justify running ethernet and hiding the extra wires and adapter.

If you're only allowed $200 then it is what it is. Anything is better than nothing, but just don't expect to be able to ID people you don't know except at very close range without spending more on cameras and matching lenses carefully for the distance needed. ID is different from being able to recognize people you know or can find like people known to be working in your area though. On the good side (sort of), is that just about anything you buy is likely to be at least a bit better in some areas than the included ZModo cameras. Dennis gave some good advice though- whatever you install first, put them up temporarily (say with one or two screws and run the wires out the front door or a window) to give you a good idea of what you'll be able to see (the field of view) after they're mounted permanently. For a two cam setup, experiment with one to the left of the garage door looking slightly towards the front door and one to the garage side of your front door and also going to the picture window. That should cover the drive, visitors to the front door, and if I understand the location of your mailbox, a view of it if that tree isn't in the way (although it'll be too far away to see much). Better coverage of the mailboxes will require something with a much longer lens than 3.anything and should probably be mounted on the rightmost corner of the pic. You might even be lucky enough to be able to take one of those ZModo cams apart, unscrew the lens, and stick in another longer one. That's a bit of a long shot for super cheap cams (probably glued in and unchangeable even if the housing comes apart and has room for a longer lens) and the longer lens will most likely far outreach the IR for night work. You might get a $3 lens upgrade for daytime distance shots if you don't mind fiddling though.

Black cameras will stick out like a sore thumb with your colour scheme. A white or cream wold be much better. Also, most cheap IR cameras make it almost impossible to see a face at night. Once you walk up close enough to get enough detail to see the face the IR has completely whited out the face. For instance, one of mine had a sweet spot between 20-25 feet where any closer had facial detail like Caspar the ghost and farther away was too far for any useful detail and that one had a 6mm lens. Intelligent or adaptive IR is better, but best is a camera good enough to not need IR if there's any white light available. Look at the CNB I mentioned or some of the inexpensive IR Gadspots that shockwave uses. I went through a bunch of cheap (but not Videosecu) and not so cheap IR cams before learning some of these lessons. Buying only on price before a proper evaluation of video quality at night in a situation close to my own ended up costing more time and money than doing a bit of research and spending just a bit more the first time. I did end up adding some network cameras though, so that's why I recommended running cat 5 the first time.

The power video baluns I use have bnc and the power barrel connector on one side and a female rj45 in the box part. Just plug in an rj45 male from the cat 5 and you're up and running. No other frigging and you can use store-bought network cables if you want. You just need a weatherproof place to store them near the camera. Junction box or up in the soffitt.

At my home I don't worry too much about cams being out of reach, just mostly about them being accidentally adjusted. Domes fix that (but can introduce some problems of their own like IR reflections if they're IR domes). Most casual intruders won't case your place, map out camera locations, and sneak in out of the field of view to knock your cams out of the way. I'd much rather get a good face shot from head height than go out of my way to put a cam up high so it can be blocked by a hoodie or ball cap. For you front yard, if it were my place, I think I'd have three cams. One for the driveway, one for the front door, and one for the mailbox. I've got three covering the front of my place- one wideangle around 3mm for the front door (good for closeup faces and an overview), one in the driveway at 6mm for plates and faces of driveway "visitors" at a bit of a distance, and another for cars farther in the side driveway. The 3.6mm cams that came with your kit are fine for a doorway cam and probably the driveway, but getting a good shot of someone out as far as the road, especially at night, isn't going to happen. 3.6mm isn't going to cut it. 10mm would probably be a minimum. If you've got a streetlight near the mailbox then something like a CNB VCM-24VF would be a good "cheap" colour low-light cam without IR. They can be had for $135 without too much effort and are very versatile because of their varifocal lens that goes to 10.5mm. You might even want two- one for the driveway set to a wider angle and one zoomed in on the mailbox. Put one of the bullets near the front door to get faces of visitors and that leaves three to cover the back door and yard decently. Without IR, the CNBs won't alarm your neighbours at night like three bullets with infrared glowing away at them when they're out for a walk. You'll probably find that domes blend in and look less aggressive than bullets in the daytime, too. Also, I'd recommend running cat 5e ethernet wire to the cameras and use proper baluns to connect them to the dvr. That way you'll be able to easily upgrade to IP cameras in the future without having to run new wire, which is probably the most time-consuming part of installing a system. Once you do it right with one kind of cable you won't want to switch.

I hear you on the cheapo non-true day night camera thing, but what's the green dot down low amongst the LEDs on the left-hand camera and the reflective red flare on the right-hand camera? Light sensors on cams with no IR cut filter?

Game cams are simple, motion activated, battery powered, weatherproof, and can be bought with locks to attach them to trees. Might not hurt to get one with 3G to send pics via cell technology in case they want to destroy the game cams as well. Maybe one on a tree viewing the roadway into the apiary wouldn't hurt. Some of these cellular options might work, and some like the homebrew Cradlepoint option at the end will allow you to run a cam with a long lens to locate it far away from the hives. And if you're looking into game cams, look for ones with black flash or invisible flash options that won't draw attention to themselves at night. http://www.wildhoghunters.com/general-discussion/1014-camera-review-covert-special-ops-code-black.html http://www.eyespypro.com/products/5-Megapixel-CDMA-Snapshot-Camera.html http://www.eyespypro.com/products/EyeSpyPro-3G-Solar-Powered-Remote-Location-Weatherproof-Camera-With-IR.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5772777_build-camera-live-video-stream.html Got any neighbours with kids or spouses that're allergic to bees? That might give you a starting point to look for culprits. Oh, and just out of curiosity, how do you know they were sprayed with insecticide? Just a bunch of dead bees in the hive or were there other hints? All of the hives hit or just some?

I checked and the basic version of Avigilon does do custom "zoom" cuts to enlarge portions of the megapixel images in the live view. The largest view is close to a D1 cut from the main 1.3mp view from my front door (lower right frame which is originally 1280x960 for pixel estimation). The image was edited to cut out my plates and the cam is focused on the deck so the distance image is probably a hair fuzzy. It's just a cut and paste of the "Recorded" screen done with the Windows snipping tool as well. You'll notice two live screens from one camera, too. One difference you'll probably notice between cutting a piece of a megapixel camera's image and a PTZ D1 zoom at night will be lighting if your PTZ has a strong IR source. Advantage to the analog PTZ there. I'd fiddle with Blue Iris and NVR+ but my BI trial version ran out and NVR+ would never read anything but CIF from my cameras for some reason.

Nice to know that it was wind instead of dirty hobos sneaking a bath...

Do you want to catch them stealing or prevent future thefts? Something big and obvious would help prevent future theft if someone is thinking about starting. If you've got a problem now and want to prosecute, think of sticking one of the Axis P1214 pinhole cams in the ceiling. Skip to 1:25 of this video to see actual footage from the pinhole camera in action at a cash register.

Good luck. If you get one I'd be interested in hearing how it worked. A cheap AMD box with a card that cheap in it would be a good alternative to a DVR if the capture quality was any good.

http://www.securitycamera2000.com/products/8CH-D1-Record-H.264-PCI%252dE-DVR-Card-Mobile-Phone-View-Win7-64bit.html If it is crap you aren't out much but at least they claim it works on modern OSes and AMD chips. Specs don't look too bad either. I've never used one though, that's just a Google nugget.

I've got the browsers on computers in the house set up with buttons for quick one-click access to the internal IP feeds and IP Cam Viewer running on the IPads for reasonably quick cam access if I want it. My cams are plugged into a PoE switch that's plugged into my router so they're available for remote viewing 24/7 as well. I've got IP Cam Viewer on my phone and can fire it up and view them remotely in seconds. When I'm at work like I am now, I've got buttons on my browser configured with my external home IP and the forwarded ports for each cam, so clicking on the FrontDoor button shows me my overview cam. My driveway cam is a zoomed in (6mm) subset of what my front door cam (about 3mm and angled differently from up high) shows me to give me plates and a better facial ID of folks poking around my vehicles after dark. Each internal cam address (192.168.1.254:80 as an example in my case) gets forwarded to a different port on my router, so each cam is accessible on, say, 123.123.123.123:xxxxx, so I just plug 123.123.123.123:54321 into IP Cam Viewer for one cam, and 123.123.123.123:12345 in for the other cam. I haven't got things split in the house for viewing on the TVs yet, so unless you go with an Android hdmi plugin gizmo you'd probably have to have a dedicated NVR or PC to split the video from. I haven't been able to find an IP cam viewer app for my Samsung SmartTV, although that seems like it'd be an extremely obvious addition to their app store. As for drilling in for "closer" live viewing on a megapixel camera, I really haven't found a need for it yet so I haven't played with it besides making something fullscreen. Things are sharp enough that I can tell what's going on at a reasonable distance and who is doing it quite easily. I know Avigilon's Core software has a nice zoom feature for when reviewing video and more detail is needed in a larger format. I can't remember if it can do the same thing while watching live though. As for if drilling in is better than D1, well, you can do the math for D1 vs the resolution of the megapixel cam you're using and work in that the video at an equal resolution is probably going to be better than the equivalent analog picture as well. Well, at least it's better "live" than the analog gear I'm used to working with (decent low end gear like CNB's VCM-24VF) when displayed on a digital monitor. 1.3mp is almost 4x the detail of D1 so it's kind of like a 4x D1 zoom for detail but with 4x the screen area and the saved image is just as good as the live image, which isn't the case with analog.

The best part about playing with IP is that you can do it from the comfort of your easy chair with no additional hardware if you've got a laptop. The cam will come with viewer and camera management software, so all you have to do is load it on a laptop if you want. You're better off with a wired desktop running the software but I've run mine off a wireless laptop from my easy chair, the kitchen, and even the driveway when pointing the camera during installation. Zero additional expense. With my Axis cams, I can even unplug the laptop, take it to work, and have them record motion events all day onto SD cards in the camera or my NAS with no computers running and just run Axis Camera Companion when I get home to review footage. Plus, most NVR software comes with a free trial period, so you can try stuff like Blue Iris, NVR+, Avigilon, or whatever you like to see what you prefer after fiddling with the free software that comes with the camera if you don't like it. I don't have a dedicated server or NVR at home and I've still been recording sometimes two or three copies of IP video footage at the same time for a couple of months now. For redundancy in case of theft or vandalism, I can record to the SD card, NAS, plus a computer. If you wanted, you could even hide the NAS somewhere hard to find so it'd survive a break-in and theft.

Looks like you picked well. Covers as wide as you want to cover but if you want better ID of folks in the driveway then you can zoom it in some more by sacrificing lawn coverage. If you think you made the wrong choice I'll swap you a P3364VE 6mm for it. I want some more zoom for my driveway.

I spent some time and money on analog that I wish I could get back before moving some cams over to IP. I didn't spend the kind of money you probably did on that Bosch PTZ though. Nice toy. I'm not quite sure what kind of yard you'll be covering and the distance you want to reach out and ID people at, but even 1.3mp cams are much sharper capturing detail at a distance (given equal lens lengths) than anything analog, particularly in the daytime. If you don't want to jump all at once then why not get, say, a 2mp varifocal cam and set it up and see what you're happy with. Set it wide and see how far out you like the detail captured. Zoom it in and see how you like the distance performance. Run something like the Pelco Camera Tool on your house and see what FOV you need to cover everything if you want to get fixed lens cameras. Then pick a budget and a manufacturer from that budget. You're better off sticking to one maker because they've probably got free software that works with their cams (and only their cams). If you want to mix and match manufacturers, picking software or an NVR that supports the cams you want can become quite a bit trickier. I can't help with the PTZ route. I figured that my budget was better spent on more fixed cameras than PTZ. Wideangle cams for over doors for IDing people coming in plus giving the big picture of what is happening in the yard, plus some specialty cams for ID zoomed in on chokepoints and other areas of interest, like driveway entrances, gates, distant outbuildings, or whatever.

Maybe replace that floodlight bulb with, say, an LED bulb with built-in motion sensing? That should give you a good picture when needed and solve the bad picture problem without relocating the cam or replacing it with a bullet cam that has a proper visor on it. You'd be better off with motion lighting anyway, so why not try and kill two birds with one bulb?

Good to hear, thx. How did motion activated recording work?

There was a case here a little while ago about barking dogs. Seems one guy had a bunch of them that'd bark all the time when he was away for work. His neighbour was home all the time and had to listen to the dogs. Lots of knocking done, some swearing, etc with no luck. The annoyed neighbour ended up driving an old truck into the guy's driveway when he was sleeping, duct taped a 2x4 tightly over the horn, locked 'er up and walked away. At least it was easier on the dogs than antifreeze or gravy soaked sponges.

Assuming that the software you're currently using doesn't have a builtin snapshot capability and you don't want to change software, just hit the PrtSc (print screen) button on your keyboard (copies your current screen to the clipboard) and paste it into the Paint program that comes with Windows. To cut a small part of your screen or a specific window, you can use the Windows snipping tool (located in the Accessories section where you find Paint, Notepad, the calculator, etc) or download MWSnap.

and new thread posts automatically subscribe a person to that thread by default? It seems to me that autosubscribe is a must to help continue a discussion.

4 hours? With regular Avigilon pricing? "Major" centers (Vegas, NY, etc) only? You're going to get the John Deere Kool Aid drinkers jealous. And I'm not joking, well, except the John Deere part.