YellowYoYo

Thanks for the info. I was just about to buy the 5MP E73 when I saw the E77. I'd love to save money if possible, so would would the low fps be an issue for daytime surveillance? At 6 fps, is that good enough to capture someone's face walking briskly up my driveway? My Blue Iris zones are set from sidewalk inward so I don't think I'll be needing to worry about moving cars.

Anyone care to share their opinions on the Acti E77 or other 10MP cameras with similar specs? I see it's less than $300 in some places, I guess as a promo price. Is it something I should jump on if I'm looking to buy a new camera for my front yard in the next week? http://www.acti.com/product/detail/Dome_Camera/E77

I can't seem to get the email notifications for the camera to work. I've tried SMPT settings for both Yahoo and Gmail accounts, but neither works. Or is this something to do with the motion detection not working? (I have it set to "on")

I bought the Swann 1080p 2-pack from Costco and everything seems to work on my local network. However, I'm having trouble with port forwarding so I can access the cameras externally. I've tried setting my cameras to various different http ports and setup forwarding with my router to the camera's static ip address, but my attempts at external connections time out. I've also tried canyouseeme.org and it also times out with any of the ports I've tried. Any help?

Thanks for the info. I'd ideally want a setup that doesn't use a whole bunch of electricity, so I guess I don't want to have a dedicated recording server on 24/7. I think I'd prefer to set the cameras to only record when triggered by motion so I save storage space and electricity. Is there a way to set the cameras to record to the SD card and then sync with my computer when I decide to turn it on? I was hoping to get some Dahua cameras and only turn my computer on when I want to view live camera feeds or manage the stored video on the SD card.

I'm new to cctv stuff and hope someone could explain in a little more detail about how to set up a surveillance system for a small residential home. I'm hoping to get a couple megapixel IP cameras and connect them to a poe switch. I would have the switch and my pc connected to my home router. Is that a viable setup for equipment? My idea was to have my computer act as my recorder to store my video feeds to its hard drive. That's where I'm confused as to what I need to make that work. If I'm using IP cameras, I don't need an internal dvr card and instead use some kind of camera management software, right? What kinds of activities are done by my computer+software and what is handled by the embedded systems of the cameras themselves? How powerful of a computer will I need?