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I end up using a little of a hodge podge to get cameras adjusted. My shop has a cheap mini monitor with a TFT LCD screen that's tough to see in bright daylight. Plus the connections are a little shot but it works enough. I usually do the jacket thing too. For ip, I use a combination of a tablet sometimes and sometimes my laptop. I can't for the life of me, figure out why my boss bought me a $1300 laptop when I'm typically hanging off the side of a ladder or lift with it in order to adjust cameras. I also use the remote view apps for the different systems when doing a final tweak. Alot of times at schools and what not, I'll just remote into the nvr server from out at the camera.

On most of the jobs I do, the cameras are their own network with their own switches. I static ip all of them and my server has 2 nics. One to the cameras, one to the facilities LAN. I have a couple of jobs where the cameras are on the facilities LAN on a vlan. and these are plenty beefy lans so its not like the cameras are bogging things down but it makes it harder to work and troubleshoot sometimes. Cameras have ended up on different vlans due to mistakes by the administrators and it holds me up from getting things done.

I don't rely see why you'd need shielded. First off, I'll say, I have never used direct burial cat 5 before but I don't see why burying it means a need for shield. Unless if course, you're going to bury it close to underground power cables. Shielding is to block emi from nearby equipment. Keep your runs clear and you should be good. Have you thought about how you're going to deal with the longer run?

Yeah, I'd agree that if its sold in a place like Costco, Walmart or even Home Depot, it's far far from the best. The guy you work with obviously is not in the know on cctv. You'd be better off to steer clear of those package systems and look at some of the other systems mentioned here on the forums such as Dahua, Hikvision or Geo vision. There are lots more but many are not in the budget range that a DIY person may want.

I agree with the others. Keep the cameras that are already in place, while maybe swapping out some of them as needed. Add in the ip cameras and nvr or possibly a hybrid nvr/dvr and make it work. I find it real funny when business owners expect dirt cheap bargain prices but if you dare ask them to reduce their price, well that's a different story. I was at a local liqueur store last year and the owner asked me for a price to install an 8 camera cctv setup. Right there she wanted a round about price which I shot out a quick number (though I hate to do that). She said, that's too high. I never went back to try and make the sale because I can already tell it would not have been worth it. They don't discount my wine.

Cat 6 still has the same 328 feet rule as cat 5e. Remember too that measurement includes any patch cables within that run. I have had jobs where the run was right up to the limit using cat 6 and had Poe issues but these were domes with fans. You can purchase repeaters and mid span power injectors.

Just to be clear. When you first took your voltage measurement and measured 6 VDC, were the cameras still connected to the power box. And when you just measured again and got 12vdc, were they not connected?

I 4th that idea. Go with a second 8 port Poe switch. It'll most likely be cheaper to just get a second 8 port and reliability will be better for the reason already said. One switch takes a dump, you don't lose all of your cameras.

Then you charge for a visit to fix it. She'll learn or go without. People need to have some kind of access to their cctv. They do need to see the images one way or another, whether its through remote access or through a monitor right off the dvr/nvr. My thinking is don't give them so much that they will be messing with things they need not mess with but at the end of the day, they own it.

I second that recommendation. I've done it using to link units before, though not quite as far and they have been working great for 2 years now

All that info should be in the manual for your camera.

Yes depending on the camera you buy. Try a Bosch dual or tri tech. You will also have to power it with 12 volts.

Ok, I think I have it confused then. I understand fov and all the stuff like a 3.6 mm compared to a 12mm lense but the thing that has me confused is just recently I was setting up some Brickcom cameras and the shot has more in it when set to 3MP as opposed to 2MP. First instance I have cameras in the stair wells and I aimed them while setup for 3MP. I saw the whole stair landing. At some point they got set to 2 MP and I didn't see all the way to the side or top as before. Maybe it's an aspect ratio thing? Anyway sorry for misinformation.

Keep in mind, when using the motion sensors attached to alarm inputs of a camera. The camera is not off until the alarm contacts are activated. The camera would be on and you'd be able to remote in to see what's going on. The alarm input activation just act as an event that you can schedule your recording around. For instance, you can set the camera to record only when the alarm input is active or you can set the cameras to always record at a low setting and then record at HD when the alarm input is active.

It may sound silly but make sure you don't have a conflict with two devices at the same ip.

Yes taking a 3 MP camera and setting it to 1920 x 1080 will crop the image but either way you will still get more in the shot when set at 3MP (2048 x 1536)

As already said above, use cameras with alarm inputs tied to motiin detectors with pet imunity like this http://www.homesecuritystore.com/tri-ed-isc-bdl2-wp6 You can find ip cameras with onboard sd card slots that will take care of all the recording and notifications and what not. The whole arming, disarming thing is strange but it can be done a few different ways I guess. Most simple way off the top of my head would seem to be breaking camera power with a relay contact. This would be done with using the cameras seperate power feed, not poe. So if the camera takes 12 volt dc, you could break that with either a key switch http://www.aap.co.nz/shop/Alarm+Systems/Accessories/KEYSWITCH+PLATE.html Or a keypad http://www.gokeyless.com/product/267/iei-212i-indoor-security-keypad So basically through that you'd power them up when leaving and drop power when back home. For cameras, look at Hikvision, Vivitek, Acti or Geo Vision Geo vision has a nice little cube camera line with models that include a pir motion sensor as well as a bright visible led for lighting upon activation and they run on 5 volts dc. They also have built in two audio.

True the viewing angle changes with the lense but you are still getting more in your shot with higher mp.

I think Dahua also makes qvis but I'm not sure. There is onvif compliance with ip cameras but I don't think that all works the same when it comes to embedded nvrs.

Yes 3MP will cover more than 2MP. More MP will equal a larger view. My thinking is always that I might as well set the camera for it full potential, pixel wise. Of course in setting your nvr, you will want to make the right setup decisions to keep bandwidth down and get optimal performance. Stick with h.264 compression and a lower framerate (8-15fps)

I put my tin foil hat on but I still can't figure out the make and model of your NVR. SO THAT I COULD PULL UP THE MANUAL! At least on this forum, it could be narrowed down to one of the 4: Hikvision Lorex Swann Dahua

Well its an upgrade in that it is a 9 channel as opposed to the 8 channel one you originally had. But I'd say you're right, it looks like the 9 channel may be older. That 8 channel shows on their website but the 9 channel doesn't. I also saw one web site that listed the both of them and the 8 channel spec showed a sata2 HDD but the 9 channel only showed a sata HDD. Not sure about the tru blue thing. Seems like marketing garbage.

Networks can be segmented to control traffic and what not. I believe a vlan would be one example. Your question was vague and didn't give the context but I'm assuming maybe you're reference is to maybe a camera finder utility that can search across the segments of the network. Here's some more info on network segments. http://www.linfo.org/network_segment.html

Problem is with most embedded NVRs is that they are compatible only with the same manufacturers cameras or a limited amount of others. The poe wouldn't be theissue here. Its probsbly just a case of hikvisions not be supported by the icrealtime nvr. If you do choose to use cameras other than icrealtime, I would think that Dahua cameras would work because they are the manufacturer of icrealtime cameras

Yeah, true. I wasn't really thinking about that. Though with some DVRs, you can easily remote into right away. For instance, if I have a Honeywell dvr freshly installed and I have Honeywells Multisite software on my laptop. I can easily scan the network using a simple app or through the routers browser and find out the ip assigned to the dvr. But it is simple enough to keep a cheap monitor on hand for basic setup then. We have a couple in our shop and just grab them when needed. It's not like the days of crts at least. Another somewhat silly work around is if you have an analog to ip cctv encoder. As long as the dvr has a BNC output, you can view it that way.