Kawboy12R

Oh the fearmongers and those who're making the situation out to be something it's not... It is one guy talking about flashing one camera with firmware that is 99.9% likely to match the hardware inside the camera. That falls within the definition of fair use for many people and, therefore, falls both within Costco's return policy and the moral code of many people. Costco doesn't have a policy prohibiting the updating of software or firmware on hardware they sell. Neither does QSee. I also bet that many of the people complaining have flashed a few cameras in the past and have used their best judgement to match camera models, equipment requirements, and directions with the filename they downloaded from the net somewhere. I also bet that some have had flashes fail due to mistakes or circumstances beyond their control and returned them as defective because a new camera shouldn't fail when they did everything they knew to make things work properly. It is funny how some people see someone using their best judgement to improve their hardware as a disaster for other retailers. Would I return the cam myself to Costco if I bricked it without doing some due diligence? No. Would I do it if it happened after doing some major due diligence and there was a chance that it was either a defective cam that wouldn't take a flash or some other random legitimate reason for a flash to fail? Maybe, if there wasn't a "no flash" policy stated in the manual. Would I lose sleep over someone else with a few clues like Buellwinkle doing it after doing HIS due diligence, satisfying HIS moral watchdog, and the retailer's stated requirements? Nope, but it does cause me to question the motives of those who're complaining. This whole thing seems more like a few people worried about covering their own butts or about Dahua becoming mainstream and more flexible (at the possible expense of what they sell) rather than being perfect watchdogs of morality preventing people from flashing completely random binary files to trash cameras just for kicks. Either that or some folks just don't like Buellwinkle. I've got no dog in this fight at all. I don't sell cams or install them for anybody else besides myself. I don't know Buellwinkle. I'm also not a Dahua fanboy or someone who wants to see QSee or Costco lose money. I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

Looking more like trouble in the pair you used for video now. See above but check the video pair.

If it used to work and doesn't now, I'd start looking for wire problems. Weak crimps, loose corroded connections, a wire pinched, or whatever. Maybe you added another camera to the same power supply that dropped the voltage to the driveway cam by just enough to make it stop working?

Not at all. I'm not a malicious person. I've been a Costco member for years and buy a few thousand dollars a year from them. The only thing I've ever returned there so far was one flashlight that, ahem, "failed to flash" right out of the box. I simply see flashing firmware as a normal expected use of a product with upgradeable firmware. If it fails when someone does it then I see nothing wrong with returning the defective product as long as it wasn't done with the sole intention of bricking the camera to cause harm to Costco and/or QSee. The morality is in the intent to harm. Besides buellwinkle's sarcastic or satirical post about getting together with another member to brick some cameras, the only direct intent to harm evident in this thread was YOUR (hopefully tongue in cheek) thoroughly unprofessional attempt to find out if I had a webstore so that you could intentionally harm ME.

Different firmware for different distributors? Apparently. Different hardware for different distributors? Doubt it. Reasonable chance for success? Definitely. Abuse of the return policy if the person did it in good faith without malicious intent to destroy a product? No. Does it involve a small degree of experimentation with unofficially distributed firmware? Yes. Would I return a cam *I* had bricked? Depends on how sure I was that it should've worked. Would I condemn someone else for not throwing out a cam that they did their due diligence on and availed themselves of a retailer's return policy? Nope. All kinds of items get returned as unworking to box stores, department stores, etc. Many of these are simply because the people failed to read the directions or misunderstood what exactly the product does when purchasing it. This is part of their business model. Anybody who buys something has a right to try it out and see if it they like it. If it doesn't "click" for them, even if the item is changed or damaged in the course of them trying it out, they get to return it subject to the conditions in the store's return policy. Some even state that the item must be in mint condition and in its original packaging so they can resell it if the item functioned properly. Costco doesn't. Guess what? They're still making a killing.

That's the only legitimate potential problem that I see. Not doing it, not the intent, but either obtaining the firmware or getting someone authorized to have it do the flashing. I have no knowledge of what Dahua techs are allowed to do with their firmware or why it isn't available for download from Dahua. It might be because they're too cheap to pay the bandwidth or figure that some folks are too dumb to keep from flashing 2MP firmware to their 1.3MP cams. There might be no restrictions on flashing any Dahua-manufactured cam, regardless of whose sticker is on it in North America.

Precisely. He's advocating returning a product when it has a failure under normal use (consumers have been flashing their own firmware on many kinds of devices for over 30 years) when the product is under warranty to a store that prides itself on customer satisfaction. The guy isn't advocating flashing a Donkey Kong ROM image to the camera so he can watch gorillas on his monitor. There's an extremely reasonable expectation of success and no intention to harm Costco financially. It may even help Costco and QSee sell even more cameras or, if it fails through some unlikely difference between QSee-branded Dahuas and every other Dahua of the exact same model and the results are published, reduce the harm by keeping MORE people from bricking them needlessly. If Dahuas fail at an abnormally high rate when getting flashed then they'd better do something about it. IMHO, that would be a major weakness and a legit reason to either return a failed product or buy from another manufacturer.

I would try and return the leaking camera to the original seller under warranty first. It's quite possible that the replacement won't leak. I haven't bought a camera on EBay for a while so I can't recommend a seller. Shockwave199 on here has a Youtube channel where he reviews some cameras similar to the one you have and has video of how they perform. Cams aren't all created equal even though they look the same. His videos show pretty good night performance compared to many other inexpensive analog IR cameras and he mentions where he got them. See if you like them compared to the one you've got. They certainly perform better than any I've used with less overexposed faces at night when a person gets close enough that you should be able to see facial detail.

Your cam has a leak problem. It might be as simple as not having a drip loop on the wires going in but might be a bad housing or seal in the housing somewhere. Not much sense in the long term fixing the LEDs if water will wreck the new ones, too. Did you take a tape measure to the front of your camera? The replacement LEDs you're looking at mention a diameter. Is that the same outside diameter of the LEDs in your camera? If so, you might be able to make them fit. Maybe. No guarantees that the mounts will be the same on the replacement ring. Is it a fairly new camera? Might still be under warranty if it is. If not and you want a hobby with no guarantee of getting it working properly even for a short while, then buy the cheap replacement ring. It might work well, provided you can find where the cam is leaking and fix the leak and you get lucky and there are no other corrosion issues inside the camera that will drastically shorten its life. It might work poorly with excess light bouncing around inside the housing and blinding the sensor from reflections because it didn't mount perfectly. The new LED ring might even have the same diameter and mounting holes as the old one but thicker LEDs so it won't go on the cam with the waterproof lens in place. The best place to guarantee the fit of a replacement LED ring is the store you bought it from rather than a different online store. If it were me, I'd save my effort and buy another cam for that location from a company with a known good reputation and maybe use that one in a dry place in the hopes that I got at least a few more months out of it before corrosion killed it. Anything more than that is a bonus.

No, no conspiracy, just mainly things getting blown a bit out of proportion combined with a lack of empathy for the customer. Then, of course, comes the hyperbole, lazy snide remarks, and the people pretending to be the morality police threatening malicious acts. Pretty common forum activity on the whole, but a bit surprising coming from people who are trying to present themselves in a good light to promote their businesses.

I was thinking that myself. Done. http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=32824

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You're welcome. I would've put one in the front entranceway, one by the rearmost light beside your garage door looking towards the street, one on your back deck looking towards the garage, one under the deck close to the garage looking the other way, one on the front left of the house looking towards the driveway, and another one on the side of the house opposite the driveway to view intruders there. Not sure if I'd have it at the back pointing frontwards or front point to the back yard though. Probably back looking front because the under-deck cam would be pointing to that side and back a bit and the two front cams would have a blind spot on that side. 1.3MP 3.6mm should be good for most, with maybe 2mp or better for the garage and under-deck cameras as budget allows for detail on the wider area to cover. Maybe a dedicated WDR cam for plates coming in your driveway. Zoom it in aimed at the end of the driveway. That one would catch anything that the wideangle garagecam misses. Where did you stick them and what cameras did you use?

Can you angle it a bit to maybe catch sight of your mailbox or mail slot? I make sure my mailbox is in view of my front door cam even though it costs me some street coverage.

Looks good to me- good door and walkway coverage plus you see lots of what is going on in the street. Unless you want to give up street coverage for more coverage of the sidewalk and front of your house. Got any more cams covering the rest of the front of your house?

It is a bakery. If a pie is unsatisfactory you may have another. Same goes for the second. If you keep eating pies and they are always unsatisfactory you may feel free to buy elsewhere. Same goes for flashing firmware. Brick one and it might be assumed to be normal use, depending on circumstances. Two? Mayyyybe. Three is either malicious or gross stupidity and obviously indefensible and not what we are discussing.

To me, updating firmware is a reasonable use for a product. Using firmware that you're quite sure is a correct if slightly different version of the same installed firmware falls within reasonable use, especially if it's easily possible that it bricked when it shouldn't have. Personally, if I did something intentionally that I was pretty sure wouldn't work and it failed I'd throw it out. If I did some research and I believe it SHOULD'VE worked, I could go either way without losing sleep. If the manual stated "Do not update firmware", "Firmware not updateable" or something similar and I read it and knew it? Garbage. I've lost a lot more than a $150 camera to moral decisions before. I also don't think I'd lose sleep if someone else made a return decision based on arguably reasonable use.

I'll side with Buellwinkle on this one. I've got a business that includes a retail side. If a customer is unhappy with the product for whatever reason, they get a refund or an exchange, no questions asked. If someone repeatedly takes advantage of the exchange policy for their own benefit (nobody has so far), then I'd make an exception and cut them off. It'd have to be fairly obvious and egregious though. In the Buellwinkle/Costco example, it'd be nice if someone would experiment on their own dime and throw out a camera that they'd bricked by their own mistake but the line here is a bit grey. Firmware is meant to be updated, IMHO, and it's reasonably logical to assume that a Dahua camera would take Dahua firmware. If *I* had done it and then posted online to tell other people NOT to do it, Costco is better off because I may have saved them a hundred returned bricked cameras because a ton of people were reading about the speculation and wanted to try it. I might not've saved them that cost if I hadn't known about their generous return policy in advance and used it to take the chance. Then again, I might've just thrown the thing out and posted that it didn't work anyway. Some folks cross the line at Costco though. I've heard of people buying a snowblower, using it for three months, and taking it back "unsatisfied" after the worst part of winter is over. No maintenance, no fancy storage needed to keep it nice, nothing. Costco takes it all back. I hear that they also keep notes on people as well and might make individual exceptions but I haven't heard of any verified examples. If Costco Canada had that QSee 4 cam system for $699 like Costco US I'd have already returned my $499 Lorex ECO system for it in a heartbeat. I'm not satisfied with too much about it except the live view when the lighting isn't too difficult. They want $999 for it on their website though and I really need more than 4 cameras.

How about future 8ch and 16ch NVR availability?

Oh, and as vector18 so helpfully pointed out, any home install that isn't done using junction boxes and conduit with no exposed wiring is total crap.

Find a local electronics or computer supply place that does cctv as well. Take one of your cameras and talk to the tech there and ask if you can see it hooked up on their system (they WILL have something to test it on). When it looks crappy on their system too, check out one of their recommended cams and buy at least one. When you install it at home, evaluate the saved video recording of your DVR by comparing it with the live view. You might want to pitch the whole system if you can't identify faces where and when you need to.

I've used a few kinds of bits. If you're running multiple wires through one hole to the outside and splitting the direction from there (what I did for my house), a long spade bit or a short one with extension makes a big hole for not much money. A set of normal spade bits and an extension gives you lots of hole sizes and depths for not much money. Ship's auger works well too. Always drill the hole a bit bigger than you think you need it (easy future expansion is always nice and 4 cams won't cover a house and driveway well), and drilling a 2x4 first and testing the cables you want to pass through the hole first is a good idea. Spade bits and augers need their pilot hole to work properly. That means that making the hole slightly larger afterwards isn't just a matter of picking the next size up. Cat 5 runs and hides nicely under vinyl siding if that's what you've got. Don't drill your studs if you can help it. They're the structure and strength of your home. Sealant? Paintable caulking should be fine but is semi-permanent. I used tinfoil at first on mine for ease of changing/adding wires while still keeping the bugs out. Expanding foam in the hole when you're done wouldn't hurt especially if you're in a cold climate. Warm moist air from inside meeting cold air from outside means condensation inside your wall. I like drilling from the finished side on both sides if possible. Bits cut neater entering material than exiting. If you can do this you probably won't need a really long bit. A short one from both sides works fine. I'd also spend some time thinking about wire routing and especially camera and dvr placement before drilling.

Some nights moths will keep my porch light on all night and it's located a couple of feet in front of the front doorway cam. The porch light draws MORE moths. Even without triggering the porch light, moths and spiders glow nicely in the camera IR and set the MD off. My light is set on sensitive for the convenience of folks on foot and to give a bit more light faster for the cameras but it has its drawbacks. There are most likely better lights with fewer false positives than mine. It was chosen mostly because it was a ceiling mount that had 360 degree detection in a downwards direction for mounting at the top of a long stairway. I'm also in a residential area of a small city so there's not a lot of ambient light and lots of insect and animal life around.

System restore to a point before you started having the problem? Try bringing in a laptop and viewing it from another computer?

I like motion lights for visiting people, but moths, wind, etc give many false motion events which gives you lots of extra recordings to watch that take up valuable time. I look for snoopers that DON'T do anything, because most of the problem around here involves unlocked cars (mine are almost always locked). I still want to know how often we have trespassers. Built-in IR gives lots of false positives due to moths, spiders, webs, fog, rain, you name it. Either a web or fog can make a cam record ALL night. We've got lots of spiders and lots of fog. True day/night cameras with external IR in combination with motion sensing white lights with the sensitivity turned lowish for visitors (legit ones) to be able to see seems like a good compromise "here".