Kawboy12R

The best explanation I can think of is that their "tip" wasn't solid enough even though it ended up being right. Another story I heard from the same guy was that they weren't allowed to have CCTV cameras in the apartment hallways. Some of the wives found them to be an invasion of their privacy when their hubbies were shown who was visiting their wives while they were out working. Whatever the legal or moral reason, the owner yanked the cameras after protest. Only cameras in the entranceway after that.

Groucho, you're using the same Cat5e cable for video over a balun and another pair of wires in the same cable for 12v?

How well lit is the van at night? Streetlights, motion activated lights, or pitch black? Makes a big difference on what kind of camera to use.

Here's a pic of a car passing by my KT&C B&W EXView .0003 lux camera with a single streetlight to the left of the driveway for light plus a dim porchlight about 40 feet away one story up from the camera. The detail is lost in the recording from my Lorex DVR though. Watching the camera live is a whole different picture as far as clarity and detail goes. The plate on my grey car is very clearly readable whether or not the porchlight is lighting the front of the car. It's in shadow from the streetlight when the porchlight is off. I know I said that there wasn't a point in comparing detail between this and the CNB, but I'll try and attach a CNB pic of the same scene with my wife's black Escape as well. The lighting level difference is extremely obvious even though you''ll have to take my word for the plate detail and sharper pictures. The CNB shows a plate clearly in the day but not in the live view at night. CNB is VERY grainy and struggling at this light level. Oh, 7fps in the KT&C vid of the car passing by but 14fps in the CNB pic of my neighbour walking back from work. I robbed framerate from the 4 cameras I wasn't using on my Lorex 8ch ECO dvr after finding that it improved recorded quality a bit, so the CNB has a bit of an advantage. edit: the car is zipping by fairly quickly and isn't blurred much at all, so the exposure is fairly quick. The camera isn't benefiting from a long exposure.

A pinhole 4.3mm b&w exview won't give you faces at 50' but it is a good choice for a clandestine non-IR night vision camera chipset. I've never seen a digital IP version though, so you'll need either an analog DVR or IP encoder to go with your NVR. Two cameras would be better. A 4.3mm pinhole for a wide view of what's going on and maybe a 12 or 16 peeking out of a birdhouse to help with ID. It sounds like you want something invisible from the street. They generally aren't high-detail cameras though. If you've got good lighting at night, a 1.3 or 2MP IP camera with wide dynamic range would give you much better detail while zoomed back. The B&W exview will perform in extremely low light levels though.

Throw your breaker or power bar off and then on to find out.

OK, I've got a question for a couple of Albertans (or however many others are reading this). I was talking to someone a little while ago who was a maintenance man for a building in Fort McMoney. He got a call in the middle of the night to go in and open up the building. 30+ cops there in the foyer when he arrived waiting for him to show up and unlock it. There'd been a shooting inside and they apparently weren't allowed to go in without permission. He opened up and there was a dead guy in the stairwell to the basement. Does this make sense at all? If that were the case, anybody would be able to do whatever they wanted in their homes and just tell the police not to come in if they heard gunshots or screams, smelled marijuana growing, or whatever.

Pesach is a Jewish holiday when they eat matzo.

Is it pesach already ? My how time flies when yer having fun! ?????? Oy vey!

I've got an 8 channel Lorex ECO DVR. Recorded video quality sucks. I have some better-than-Lorex cameras on the system as well as the stock ones and it doesn't matter how good your cameras are. The recorded video sucks. No good for ID with 8 cameras sharing the bandwidth. Recorded quality is a bit better if you just use 4 channels to bump up the framerate but still not good. I wouldn't recommend one except it you just want to use it to see what's going on while you're watching the screen or to keep tabs on people you already know. Don't expect to identify strangers beyond a general description or plates under 90% of conditions. It also seems to skip motion events sometimes when fast forwarding through recorded video.

Does this help?

I just bought a couple of CNBs MonaLisa chipset vandalproof domes (VCM-24VF). They feel very sturdy but I'm at a bit of a loss about how to install the wires and keep the housing waterproof. There are two screw-type knockouts for the wires to enter but no waterproof way to close the holes after the wires are in. I'd expect an included rubberized screw-tight strain relief gizmo like 120v electrical boxes for wet locations have or something else for securing the wires. My first installation is going to be under a deck attached to the underside of a horizontal 2x10 with the wires entering from the hole in the side of the dome. There's a 1" or so hole after the screw plug is removed but no way to secure the dome after the wires are in. It seems strange that they'd supply o-rings for the screws to mount the housing to the "ceiling" but not have a way to run the wires in without closing the hole. I can maybe see them assuming that the wires will be run down through a hole in a ceiling of some sort and directly into the top of the housing, but why include a screw-out access port in the rounded side of the housing where it couldn't be mounted securely to a side wall? How do YOU mount them outside without water getting in them?

surveillance dash video dot com. They showed up as the lowest price at the time on PriceGrabber. $135 each. The guy on the phone was a bit different at times and it sounded like he got bugged by his wife as he took my order but the order went out quickly and he kept in touch quickly with any questions.

I could but I have a Lorex dvr. Recorded video doesn't do half justice to the live view that shows what each camera is really doing. Thinking of ditching the Lorex dvr soon and getting a hybrid so I can mix and match cameras better for each job. I was too busy at work before to think of redoing my system so I decided to leave the Lorex up rather than have nothing. Things are slowing down a bit now so I can put more effort into finding something good, relatively cheap, and has some support if I need it.

Focker, if your place is like mine (50-60ft from the street with a streetlight not far from the foot of the driveway), two or three 3.6mm cams with either broad IR or decent low-light capability (the CNB Mona Lisa cams will do, plus give you colour information during the day) will give you a broad picture of WHAT is going on. A good specialty camera or two zoomed in on your cars will tell you WHO is doing it. Nothing budget will give you colour at night unless you've got LOTS of light, so .0003 lux B&W with enough zoom works there quite nicely. I'm not a pro though. There's probably something in your budget with interchangeable lenses that'll give good facial recognition with IR at the length of a typical city driveway. 6mm isn't enough zoom though. I'd say it'd be hard to beat a really sensitive bright motion light to help with night-time ID as well as maybe scaring the little buggers away BEFORE you lose the contents of your car. If it were me though, I'd probably put up a hidden stealth system so I could show Mommy and Daddy that their little darlings aren't as perfect as they think they are.

If stealthy low-light performance is what is needed, you can't beat a B&W Sony Exview-based camera at just over a hundred bucks. Their .0003 lux low-light performance will give MUCH better low-light pictures than the colour CNB XXX-24VF cameras without infrared. In my driveway with a streetlight in the background and the porch light on my CNB struggles and has very grainy pictures. My KT&C B&W bullet doesn't struggle at all and has almost no noise. It also easily reads plates with the porch light OFF and the streetlight in the background. My CNB won't read a plate at night even with the porch light ON to help light the plate. It works nicely through windowglass (no IR reflection to blind it) if you just want to put it up inside at night to really surprise the neighbourhood kids. Take it down in the morning so they can't see it in the window. Pick a decent zoom lens for a nice facial closeup where you always park your car. It ain't a 5mp IP camera if you know what I mean. I put a 5-50mm zoom on mine for versatility but it's not outdoor rated. Searching EBay listings (include description) for "EXView .0003" should pop up a few selections. 12mm lens might be enough for a close shot 35-40 feet away. Heck, throwing it into Google will bring up a bunch of hits as well.

Tom, I guess I'm confused now too. I think we all know that it's not the exact same unit in that previous thread but the general consensus seems to be that Qvis DVRs are re-branded Dahua DVRs, right? The one he picked out seems to me to have decent specs for the price and should run the free Dahua software, right? If not, then what specifically is wrong with what he and I understand about what he picked out for a DVR?

I'd be interested in which brand of 700 tvl camera you used as well.

What are you trying to do? Faces and plates for the whole lot? Just a broad overview for car insurance purposes? He'll be disappointed if he's trying to cover the whole lot in detail with just a few cheap cams.

Infrared cameras are blinded at night looking through a window. BTDT. I went with a KT&C EXView B&W bullet for that job. Excellent night vision (.0003 lux performance) without needing IR so it peers through glass nicely. It's not an IP camera though.

Figured out yet if this was, to at least a certain extent, a shill site?

I've got an 8 channel Lorex ECO system. I actually don't mind the Lorex cameras under most situations. The IR is bright in the center but the night detail outside of the IR dot is decent. Colours during the day are good, but they sometimes want to stay in night mode if part of the shot is well shaded and it's daytime out. That means the bright parts bleach out and the greens are yellow. I find that the recorded quality doesn't come close to live view quality though, and that's where I have the largest problem. Their compression algorithm seems to fall on its face at the default 7 fps for 8 cameras at D1 resolution. Large blocks are common when viewing at 7fps. Recorded quality improves (especially in complex lighting conditions) when I bump the frame rate of the included 4 cameras closer to 15 fps, but that uses up the bandwidth and turns it into more of a 4 camera system. I'd be happy with it if the recorded quality came close to the live quality but it doesn't. I've got no experience with the Swann system. A friend of mine is quite happy with his QSee DVR.

Try and recreate the event with someone else driving and you watching the dvr. Before doing that, go into and reread all of your settings for motion detection in the dvr to refresh your memory. It is most likely something set in a menu somewhere that isn't triggered in the other instances when you watched your recordings. Or something that happened before but you didn't NOTICE what was happening with the timestamps because it wasn't important. It should be easy to watch and figure out what's being recorded and why if your dvr shows on-screen that it is recording a motion event. To doublecheck that it IS recording everything, view someone recreating the vehicle's path in your driveway and review what was actually recorded. You should be able to figure it out. I doubt you've got black helicopters flying around and jamming your dvr at critical moments.

I'm looking into something that I can stick in a vehicle and have a record of what's happening. It seems like a reasonable addition to this website, no? I've seen a few advertised but it'd be nice to have some hands-on reviews posted to help separate the toys from the tools.

I've been trying to find the setting but can't for some reason. It must be sitting in a blind spot for me.