KyleK29

So I've been having this issue as of late. One camera does it inside, when the lights are on. It's picking up a trace of the light and causing the strobe effect. I played with an idea (the shroud idea may work, but I don't want to unmount/disassemble if I don't have to) on using window tint over the cell on the glass. It should reduce the sensitivity enough to still be "daylight" sensitive but not low-light sensitive (which is what they truly are). Depending the tint %, I might be able to fine tune. Just as a quick test, I held a sunglass lense over the cell and it stopped flickering (IR full on). Shining a flashlight near the lens turned the IR to off. I'll post back if I find something that works. An obvious and simple fix would be to allow the firmware to control the IR lights by the day/light mode. That way we could at least do it manually with a schedule.

Since POE switches cost about $59+, I ended up putting an old switch I had on one of the NVR POE ports (plugged one of the cameras in to the wall). Whenever I need to change a setting, I just plug my laptop into that switch and set it to 10.1.1.* (the NVR doesn't do DHCP, it sets the IP#'s via ARP/Ping .. from what I can tell). That allowed me the backdoor I needed. 802.3af standards are supposed to force the power off if a POE device is not detected - I haven't had any issues with blowing a port. If you want full-time access and can sacrifice one port (plug a camera in locally), you can put an old router on there and portforward to the cameras individually. That'll get the permanent bridge between home and nvr networks. The NVR will respond to a shell prompt on 10.1.1.1 - but none of my passwords worked. I tried the default admin/admin and had no luck. I'm sure there's a way to enable more cameras via software, it's just finding someone who knows how to do it With that in mind, I wouldn't doubt if it isn't just a software lock. When Costco was first selling the QC804, some people got upgraded to the QC808 for free. The only practical reason for Q-See to do that is if their cost was insignificant.

Doing the switch to main network and change settings, switch back, and test is a tad bit annoying. But it's all I have at the moment. For the record, there's no ability to turn off the internal DHCP for the POE ports on the NVR. I'm guessing that they did this because these are aimed more at consumers, so they want them to be as plug & play as possible. With this way (compared to being just a switch), you don't have the cameras getting a new IP# every time the router resets and you don't have DHCP conflicts. I'm still surprised there isn't even a forwarded port for each camera's interface (ie: port 192.168.0.3:8502 goes to camera 10.1.1.20:85, 192.168.0.3:8503 goes to camera 10.1.1.30:85, etc). It'd still be nice to have the ability to turn it off or at the very least, tunnel through to get to the camera settings that are missing. As for my neighbors light. It was causing the camera to not switch to B/W. But I got it sorted. If you happen to figure out how to lift the 4 camera limit, definitely update. It's possible the only hardware change is the POE switch (I assume the QC808 have 8 POE ports and so fourth).

Hmm, found your thread because I have a similar issue with the QC804. One of my cameras is picking up a neighbors light so it won't switch to night-vision. I believe you can set a manual time for the camera to switch the IR-filter off and turn on the IR lights .. but you can't seem to access those camera settings from the NVR software. The NVR does have it's own DHCP and it does put the cameras on a 10.1.1. IP# set. It's incredibly silly that you can't manually set that to match your network. Besides going to an external POE switch, did you find (or does anyone know) a way to manually set the internet network IP?

Just used a screwdriver with a hex bit. No issues with three of the ones I did.

Out of curiousity, what is the minimum post count here to become "established"? I've checked both posting guidelines and can't seem to find it.

I wouldn't expect the RJ45 to be waterproof, I think if you're mounting the connector outside of the wall it should probably be in some form of enclosure or electrical box.

That is a very impressive camera. Thanks for the photos.

Got my 4.2mm's from M12lenses last week and installed them. Work great. They actually turned out better than the 3.6mm for my application, as I didn't need quite as wide as the 3.6 angle. I'll post pictures once I get them mounted.

Anyone see any technical problems with the 4.2mm lenses (from M12) and these cameras? The FOV difference between the 3.6mm (85deg) and the 4.2mm (71deg) isn't that big.

M12lenses said they'll get the 3.6mm ones in stock around early January.

Does it have to be IR light? I bought a 3200 for my driveway for a few reasons - A) it's good looking/very-small (no HOA issues), B) high resolution vs. cost. The areahas minimal (porch) lighting. I then bought a "Mr. Beam" CREE LED Motion-Activated spotlight off of Amazon for $18. It's basically a high-powered flashlight with large batteries. Works excellent. Unless you're expecting ninja's that don't set off motion sensors, it might serve your purpose. The Mr.Beam runs on 4.5v (3 "D" Batteries) and mounts to the wall. I jerry-rigged mine with a 4v relay and power adapter so that it will run off of house mains via the 4.5v AC Adapter, once that loses power the relay will trip (go to off) and switch to the batteries. The batteries supposedly last about 8-12months. If you wanted to get really creative, you could tap into the POE power (depending your POE output) and voltage regulate the 12v down to 4.5v for the LED. *edit* There's a few of them sold by Amazon now, I bought this one: http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Beams-Wireless-Spotlight-Photocell/dp/B002P6EQPW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355885538&sr=8-1&keywords=Mr.+Beam

Thanks for the pics Jack. I just got my DX Lenses (the 3.6mm ones) and noticed the black ring, so naturally I hopped on here before swapping any more. Glad I did, the $14 looks much better. Does M12lenses ship from US? Or is it going to be another 4 week wait-on-China thing? I need three of the 3.6mm's. One thing I've noticed is that the higher quality (read: not $3) lenses tend to take the time to etch the sizing on the side of the lense. I might even try a 4.2mm to see how that looks. I know everyone says the wide-angle lense isn't good for facial recognition, but if you put the sweetspot of the camera in a smart place where they have to pass their face in front of it, I think it'll do fine. I'm mounting one angled at the front door, it's the only stairway to the house, so unless they scale the side of the building they have to walk up towards it. The extra field of view is nice because I can see the kitchen and living room too.

Yeah, I'm still waiting on my DX lenses. Ordered about two to three weeks ago.

Define low-end .. are these rebranded IPC-HFW2100's or lower? The 2100's I like for simple home use. At $150/ea with 100ft of cable, that's not a bad deal IMHO. You can import the 2100's for about $128/ea (cheapest I've found), and the 3200's for $280/ea. Not a big enough price difference (IMHO) to warrant ordering overseas.

Be sure to read the specs on the Dahua you're looking at. I've seen some that drop to 4channel mode once it goes to 1080p, even if you buy the 8ch or 16ch.

You're just recording the stream, so any PC will work. But with that many cameras and the megapixels you want, you're going to want to go with a decent performer. You can probably build a nice machine for about $300-$500 (either a quad-core Intel or six-core AMD).

Do these things have a default IP# if you're trying to view them without the NVR? I've tried port scanning the network and can't find this dang thing. Searched Dahua for a configtool, no luck. n/m There was a CD under one of the box flaps. Doh.

Size an absolute priority? If not, you can find older PCs on Ebay/CL for super cheap. If it's an issue, then what software are you going to use? Avigilon has these requirements: http://avigilon.com/#/products/avigilon-control-center/system-requirements/ .. not sure if those are for just the software or what. Based on that, this might fit the bill: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157247 The AMD 350 APU beats an Intel Core Duo 2ghz. It also has a built in AMD graphics processor (AMD's good at marrying all of their components for encoding/etc) and a 1000Mbps network adapter. Slap on some ram, find a nice case, and a hard-drive. There's some new half-sized ITX boards coming, but I'm not sure when. Been a while since I read that article.

Drill a hole that will fit the plug, plug in your your wires (cat5, etc), and then drop/push it through that hole (wall/ceiling/etc.). A 3/4" or 1" will probably suffice. Then mount over that hole. You want to avoid exposed wires. With regards to the Q-See camera IR issue .. may have been suggested. Have you tried adding a foam donut to the IR sensor? I've seen this in other cameras with surface-mounted IR sensors. Just a piece of foam with a cone shape (small end over sensor, large end touches glass). This should be effective in stopping the cycle. =========== <--- Glass \fff\____/fff/ ------xx----- ---- = PCB xx = light sensor fff = foam

Ok, I ordered some of the $2.70 3.6mm ones on DealExtreme. I'll post back with the results and camera model when I get/test them.

It'd be nice to have a sticky or a spreadsheet or something that listed the retailers which supply known compatible models.

online only in the ny area... costco has the 4ch. with two cams. for 599 http://www.costco.com/Q-See-4-Channel-HD-Digital-NVR-with-1TB-Hard-Drive-and-2-HD-720p-IP-Cameras.product.11767205.html?catalogId=10701&keyword=nvr&langId=-1&storeId=10301 Saw it, not nearly as good of a deal. The 2 pack of cams is $299. So you're basically paying $300 for the NVR.

Sold out on the 4pack+DVR ($699). I'd be willing to dump my analog DVR+cameras for this as a straight upgrade. You're essentially paying for the cameras and getting the 1TB NVR for $99. Was it ever available in the stores or just strictly website?

I bought some "700TVL" Sony Effio-E cameras on AliExpress for $49/shipped (each). I confirmed they were Sony chips (compared with a retail). They blew away the Swann (cheap company, but widely available in stores) that was three to four times as much. For the cost, they're great little cameras. I'm not sure what the policy is about posting links, but I can PM it to you. As far as the IP camera. I'd like to know as well. I've had a third vehicle break in. So I'm looking at adding a high resolution camera that can watch that area. Anyone got any suggestions? I found the IPOB-EL1MPIR50, which looks promising at about $210. The Vivotek IP8332 has some excellent videos at $300 (Amazon) and gets good reviews.