Kawboy12R

Who says that we aren't helpful?

Gotta love video evidence, and most especially seeing someone in time to have the cops catch them.

You need to wear a REALLY sparkly tiara. The glitter will blind it. Especially if you're wearing lipstick. Clothes are optional as well. Walking on tiptoe helps even more.

It's more important to pick a good camera than a good sensor. Or a high TV line rating. Or whatever. No matter what is on paper it is possible that the camera sucks anyway. Not sure what that camera is like but the CNB Mona Lisa domes are very good in their price range. I like outboard IR so I bought a couple of VCM-24VF vandal domes. If you want built-in IR then you might prefer the LDM-24VF.

You tried swapping out the camera power supplies? Installed ground loop isolators? Flicked the site lighting off to see if something that turned on only at night was causing interference? Locating outside trouble might only give you the REASON you have to install isolators rather than giving you something to fix though.

True... Not sure what the odds are, but it's possible. Heck, for that matter, who said that they specced the cam for continuous use? Or even the power wires?

Should be simple to rewire the cam for continuous power.

It also exposes your email address complete with password if you have entered it into the box for notifications. Fun fun, especially with an easy way to identify tens of thousands of the devices on the net.

I don't see much excitement for higher end analog stuff. If it isn't dirt cheap then more people are looking for megapixel network cameras. At a guess it'll probably have to be pretty cheap to go quickly. Getting a good dvr is key for a quality analog recording though.

The 7811 won't even come close at 100 feet for facial ID. I'm not aware of a dome outside of a PTZ that has enough zoom to get a good facial ID at night at 100+ feet. To get a feel for the resolution and zoom needed, play with the Axis product selection tool. You can even filter by products with "Lightfinder", day/night, outdoor, etc. 60 or 75 ppf might make you happy to recognize someone if you don't know them. Select 75 ppf under "specify resolution" and drag the distance tool outwards towards 100 feet. Then click on the few cameras that remain and check out their specs. 12mm varifocal megapixel domes drop out waaay before 100 feet. http://www.axis.com/products/video/selector/index.php

In analog you'd probably want something in a PT or preferably PTZ to be able to adjust it from the DVR. PTZs are the ultimate adjust on the fly cams. I've never had a need that seemed to justify the cost for my applications so I've never bought any or really researched them. I'm interested in your experiences with the LPR cam you got. It's got a good zoom on it which is important. Everything else it says doesn't really mean a thing until you try it out.

That's what I figure. If the firmware of whatever it goes into makes incorrect assumptions about drive performance or availability then it is kinda sorta a dvr "problem", but not really. It might not even be a firmware problem exactly but a lack of enough cache or other memory buffer in the dvr to allow it to wait in the short term for the drive to catch up in the longer term. Hard to say except that using a drive recommended by the dvr manufacturer is better than one that "should" work. If one doesn't have or doesn't check the list then trial and error can cost time and money.

Well, Western Digital manufactures those hard drives, and not NewEgg, and I am quite sure WD would not approve that description. You sure about that? Their literature specifically mentions that it is approved for use in DVR/PVRs and video surveillance applications. http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701250.pdf If they commonly don't work with lots of DVRs then it seems like the recorders aren't playing nicely with a drive that is designed for them. That makes is a doubly good idea to doublecheck with the DVR manufacturer about which drives are supported. The "best" or obvious choices might not work.

Ripped from NewEgg's details on that exact drive number- "These drives are designed to last in high temperature always-on streaming digital audio/video environments such as PVR/DVR, DVR recorders and surveillance video recorders."

If that's all you see then you aren't blind. For me, "Edit signature" is right between "Edit profile" and "Edit avatar". Maybe you have to be a member longer and have more posts before the "Edit signature" feature comes available??

To the left of that stuff you'll see a link that says Edit Signature in the Options box.

How does this one look? http://www.cnbusa.com/en/html/product/product.php?inc=spe&seqx_prod=1081#p_v1

The switch ports are IN and OUT, if you know what I mean, so if you want 8 cameras running over PoE you'll need a switch with 9 or more ports, but only the 8 camera ports need to be PoE. You're covered with that ZyXel. Just plug the 8 cameras into the 8 PoE ports and the router into one of the others and you're good to go. The video quality of the cams will be whatever you set them to be (probably the max they're capable of). Personally I wouldn't run them at 30fps just for storage reasons. 15fps cctv video looks smooth to me, and even 7fps isn't toooo bad. You'll get 4 times the storage time at 7fps from your hard drives than you would at 30fps, or looking at it another way you'll need to buy 4 times the storage space for very little practical benefit. The cops won't care what your framerate is as long as you get one clear face shot of the jerk that keyed your car (or did whatever). Hard to calculate how much you'll need exactly for, say, a month of backups because of motion detection, video compression, etc. It'll vary, possibly by a LOT if your cameras are outdoors. Completely cloudy or sunny days with no wind and little motion won't take up much storage. Windy or foggy nights with lots of bugs will eat up a lot of storage. Continuous recording will make the calculations easier, but to give you an idea of the variability even on continuous recording, when I run Axis' storage calculation tool for my Axis P3364VE, depending on the motion in the scene and the light level, the bitrate can vary by at least 9 times. Motionless scenes with lots of light compress VERY well. Scenes with lots of motion (grainy video in the dark and/or lots of trees, people, or shadows) take up a lot more space. You can make it more predictable by specifying a constant bitrate rather than variable bit rate (it should be in the camera settings somewhere) but then you lose some of the storage and bandwidth benefits of the h.264 compression. With a very high constant bitrate set, picture quality will be a bit better at the very start of high motion events after a motionless period than if the cam has to ramp up the variable bitrate. Shouldn't be a big deal unless either your cam is very bad at it or you're trying to catch plates on speeding cars or something. NVRs are low maintenance (no regular windows updates, etc), reliable, cheaper to run (use less power), small, and tuned and dedicated to the job.

Good idea to have a representative verify that the cams actually are looking at what they want monitored. Beats redoing it for free when the boss doesn't like it.

If the computer isn't just a dedicated NVR with no net access, the pic should probably be cams to switch, switch to router, then computer to router and cablemodem to WAN port on router. I wouldn't bother with another NIC at first. If it ain't broke don't fix it. If you have troubles under heavy use then consider it. Stress the network by recording all cams continuous with lots of motion (bandwidth varies with motion), surf the net, do some large file copies over your network, stream some hidef to a smart tv, or whatever. If everything's stable then don't worry about it but keep it in mind if you run into problems or slowdowns.

In UCP under options click profile. Then you'll see it.

Another nic wouldn't hurt if that computer runs a lot of other network traffic but you'd be better off running a dedicated computer for your surveillance system. Basically you'd just need the PoE switch, software, and lots of HD space.

For my money I think I'd rather have cameras with zoom lenses trained on each feeder. Then you'd get every feeder all the time and not miss any closeups.

Haven't found a toolbox yet that held a 2nd man. They are handy though.

Not that I know of, or at least not with the Costco exchange policy and QSee technical support. Dahua cameras and NVRs are readily available under different names on EBay and websites ranging from the US and Canada through to China. The best prices are direct from China of course but you still might be hard pressed to find 4 cams, an NVR with HD installed , and wiring for $700. It might make sense to buy one of the Costco kits for 4ch and then if you need 5 or more channels later then buy a higher-end Dahua NVR to replace the 4ch one and then add a PoE switch and few more cameras. Either that or get two kits and run two separate systems. Maybe swap out lenses or buy other Dahua cams if the 6mm lenses from Costco don't work in the roles you want them to do.