JoeyJoey

That is a tiny fan

That Lorex supplies PoE power over those 8 Ethernet ports, that could be about 80 Watts right? Small power cables there in the picture.

You can make your own cables to the length you need, means you need smaller holes in the walls, easier to feed through places. Or buy different lengths here: http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10208#1020814

Yes, that is correct. Here's the setup process: [attachment=0]ExtNetwork2.PNG[/attachment] You still have to set the IP of the camera manually via it's webpage. Since it doesn't default to DHCP it takes a bit more to access it's webpage though. This is described on other posts. great, thanks

So the Lorex NVR could be configured to use the Lorex cameras on your local network manually? And they don't have to be configured/connected exclusively on the NVR's own PoE network?

I use Zyxel PoE switches.

The qsee can use cameras on the lan, as well as the camera network. I asked Lorex, they said I can't do the same with theirs.

Thanks! Very helpful. Is anyone else concerned that someone could make off with the whole NVR unit and you'd be SOL? I'm curious, can you hook up two NVRs to single cameras? So that the motion alarm is captured by both of them? Right now we can do that by having the camera upload to a 2nd NAS device via FTP.

Thanks, yes. I think with Qsee, they don't do their own software, so any fixes would take along time to get fixed, if ever.

Does Lorex actually update their devices or is it another company like Qsee does with the oem company supplier?

Is the Lorex hardware made by the same people that make the Qsee hardware? I'm also curious about the camera installation on the LAN instead of the private PoE network.

I would look at the power requirements first, see how much power they use per day. Then look at the solar power capabilities of systems available. Let us know what you decide to do.

I'd look at getting several trail cams with batteries that last 6 months to a year. http://www.trailcampro.com/ Also look into one or two lead acid batteries charged or topped by solar. http://www.trailcampro.com/uwayum562review.aspx , look for covart ones too.

In the day time it can capture motion quite well, sharp enough to read number plates, if they're moving slow enough I guess. I have the stream set to CBR, 720p, 30 fps, 8Mbps. At night, it captures moth after moth after moth after moth. Each time the camera goes from day colour to night b&W, a motion video is recorded. Buggy camera firmware. The video can be downloaded from the NVR in ASF format, using the web UI in IE, which my PC doesn't like at all. I can use VLC to playback and convert to mp4 if needed. I wish I could ftp into the NVR, would make it easier.

Detect settings for one channel. Clicking the refresh will pull the settings from the camera, as these settings can be configured directly in the IP camera. When setting the region, the blue squares are where the camera will look for motion, I saved and then did a refresh to verify that it downloaded to the camera.

Enable MD in the schedule. It is convoluted to achieve such a simple operation. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

To enable playback retrieval of motion alarms on both the web UI and the Android UI, enable the schedule as shown in the pictures here.

I have a couple of QNAP NAS devices, I have used the built in surveillance station application. It used to be included in the cost of the device, but then they started charging a $55 per camera software license. As NAS devices they work well, but their surveillance station is lacking features, its an activex for IE, pretty buggy. I just got the QSee, that works better.

If you're in the web administration (using internet explorer), you can go to config -> advanced -> record and make sure both main and extra stream is set to "schedule." This should ensure the alternate stream is being recorded. Is the substream actually recorded? In the manual it says "Remember that changes made in the Extra Stream section do not effect how your NVR records to its own drive." When I had the device continually recorded, I could use the QSee android client to playback the recorded video. Now that I have configured the NVR to only record motion triggered videos, no videos are listed to be played back on the Android application. A short review and my findings. I have my cameras on my LAN, not on the NVR PoE's own network. I configured the cameras to have reserved IP addresses in my PfSense router, using their MAC addresses. e.g: 192.168.1.101-102-103-104, with .100 the NVR. I use a mixture a PoE Zyxel switches and 12 V DC power supplies. There are quite a few issues with this system, but it seems to work ok, as long as you know the quirky menu systems. I don't like how I have to use Internet Explorer and ActiveX, but that seems to be an issue with most IP cameras. One bug I have ran into is the password length. On the local UI, it limits me to using 6 characters. Where as on the remote UI (via IE), I can set it to another length. If I set it to 10 characters, I can no longer login to the local UI, until I change it back to only 6 characters long. I contacted QSee support, but all they want me to do it call Costco support. I reported the bug to them, don't need help. It seems that there Qsee has a list of backdoor passwords that are available to you, if you contact them and say that you lost your password. I do not like this at all. I don't want extra passwords that I do not know about. This is pretty bad security. I have found the sensitivity setting to be way way way too sensitive. I have it set to '1', but I get dozens of false motion alarms each day. Maybe the setting is reversed, I haven't tried that yet. I have verified the settings I update in the Remote UI actually get downloaded to each network camera. You can change the settings in either place, either directly in the camera or in the remote NVR UI itself. I do like the motion alarm region checkerboard settings, to select the squares to watch for motion. I haven't seen if this is actually being used though. I feel that the whole screen is being used, not just the blue squares I select. There is a NAS option in the remote UI config, I haven't quite figured out what that is for. I think it is for the NVR to upload snapshot still photos to an external NAS. I will test this. The local UI and the remote UI have different names for some config options, so its not always clear what a setting does. There needs to be uniformity. In the local UI, I disabled Upnp, as by default the system is being advertised to the outside world with the default passwords. This can not be changed on the remote UI. I found that the only way to change the name of the camera that is displayed in the lower left is by logging into the camera directly and setting it there. I couldn't get the video in the camera UI to be displayed if I logged in directly to the camera, several ActiveX objects did load, haven't figured that out yet. I find the UI on both the local and remote to be cumbersome and poorly designed. By default out of the box, the HDMI output is not usable. I could not hook it up to my HD tv, until I first hooked it up a VGA monitor and changed the display resolution to 1080x1920. I thought this was very strange, as I almost returned the unit, I thought it was broken. The two AAA batteries included were already leaking, a bit poor for them to do that, junk. The system is not great, but for the money its ok.