grege

I went with ACTi and a local dealer for them that is a customer of ours ordered mine in. I decided I would rather go with a guy I know and pay a little more. Where are you located?

My network guy laughed at me when I said I was going to use a Dell PowerEdge server at my lake house to monitor my cameras. He recommended buying a new PC because he said not only would the PowerEdge use a lot of electricity but that things in it would start failing. I've got an old PC there that I put a 1TB drive in and will just continue to use it. YMMV

As long as you plan on doing POE then you will be good.

What brand of RJ45 male connectors are you buying for CAT6 cable? I've got my cameras on order and my POE switch should arrive tomorrow. I have CAT6 cable that I am going to run for my cameras and figured it would be best to terminate those wires with plugs so I can plug right into the camera. I've found Platinum Tools has some where the conductors feed right thru to make it easy to terminate but wondered what others find to work well.

I sell the Platinum Tools connectors but they wouldn't send me a pack as samples so I just bought the Monoprice ones, a crimper, and a tester. I wanted them for this weekend since I am going to the lake house so didn't want to wait on a boat from China. Hopefully the cameras show up in time. If not I will just run some wire until the next trip.

Definitely scratch off Foscam. I bought some of those to start with and I'm working on replacing them now.

I googled your firmware version and it appears to be an Everpro DVR. You might want to contact them. http://www.everpro.biz/down/html/?46.html I also found this thread. http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=33769

ZyXEL ES1100-16P Unmanaged 10/100Mbps 16-port PoE Switch http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833181164 This is back in stock at Newegg if anybody is interested. I received an email this afternoon and ordered mine.

ZyXEL ES1100-16P Unmanaged 10/100Mbps 16-port PoE Switch http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833181164 Thanks. The ACTi E42 will work with it? Newegg is currently out of stock so I will have to wait a bit.

What's the model number of your Zyxel switch buellwinkle?

I have a lake house and currently have a Foscam looking at the driveway but I didn't do enough research and their cameras are horrible. I would probably want to go with a 8 channel NVR with 4 cameras to start with but that would give me the ability of adding cameras later. I currently use Blue Iris to monitor the Foscam. Here is a overhead view from Bing Maps so not the clearest. I put red lines around the house and the detached garage. The other house is my sister's. And the green lines are approximately what I would be looking at. My thought is one camera on the garage pointing at the house. One on the front left corner pointing up the driveway. One camera in the back pointing towards the dock. Not sure where to put the 4th camera yet. I thought about one on a tree pointing at the dock. I would have to run a cable to the tree. There is no networking cables going to the garage yet but it is doable since I have a retaining wall and can run it below that. I walked it off and the run would be between 150' and 200'. Is that okay? Any suggestions? I've been looking at Dahua but they seem very hard to get in the USA.

Sounds like a plan. I have an older PC running at the lake house but we are upgrading a server at work this week and I think I will move the one we are replacing down to the lake house. I'll compare specs first but I think the server will probably have better components. It pays off being the IT guy and owner of the business.

Buell, I think I am leaning towards the ACTi cameras. Mainly because of the mounting and the way the cable comes out with the flexible conduit. I already have a weatherproof box mounted on my garage and thinking about the other mounting places I plan on using I think that would work out better for me. Going with that plan, which ACTi bullet camera should I look at? I was thinking D42 because it is 3M and has the vari-focal lens but then I saw the E42 that added WDR and didn't know if that would be good to have. Also, I saw on one of your reviews where you said that with all ACTi cameras you are entitled to use their software. I already have Blue Iris so would you recommend Blue Iris, the ACTi software, or buying an ACTi NVR to record video and send out emails? Thanks for your help!!!

Good to know. It's really hard to tell that from the pictures I see on the internet.

So with that Dahua mount, could you put in on the side of a house and have the camera 90 degrees to the base? Does that make sense? That ACTi mount you can spin the camera in any direction just wondered if you can do that with the Dahua mount.

Sounds good. I was looking at WrightwoodSurveillance.com and comparing the ACTi cameras mounting to the Dahua cameras mounting. The ACTi has more of the mount I am familiar with where I could mount it on the side of a house and point it in any direction. Is that possible with the Dahua? The mount comes out of the back of the camera so it's hard to see how you can adjust it. I do like on the ACTi how you can replace their pigtail with a Ethernet cable and run it thru a flexible conduit to a weatherproof enclosure or right inside your house. How does ACTi compare to Dahua? I'll do some searching on that too.

I actually sent an email to WrightwoodSurveillance.com yesterday and received an email last night saying they were currently out of the office but would get back to me this morning. Not sure where they are located but it's afternoon for me already and nothing yet. I'd love to see the link. The IPC-HFW3200C was the camera I was looking at for that exact reason. As for the NVR I was thinking of the NVR5208P. I have Blue Iris but thought a dedicated NVR might be a better idea. What are you recording to?

That looks real nice. Can you IM me and let me know what a system like that costs with installation? Why did you choose the 3204 over the 5208? Just because you only needed 4 channels?

Hey all, New to the forum here and was looking for some advice. Here is some background. I have a lake house and would like to set up a system to monitor it. I jumped in a while back and bought some Foscam cameras. Boy was that a mistake. You definitely get what you pay for. I have one indoor PT camera and one fixed outdoor camera. Blue Iris software is monitoring both of them and sending emails to me. I get quite a few false positives because of the camera flickering. I was in Costco the other day and saw where they had some systems and that got me looking on the internet which led me to this forum. I would like to replace the Foscam cameras and go with something better but don't know where to begin. I can either use the Blue Iris software or get a dedicated box to do the monitoring of them. I don't currently use POE but that seems like a good way to go. One of the Costco systems I saw had POE as part of the NVR. That seemed like a good way to go since I don't have a POE switch but I can get one if necessary. Soooooo. Should I look for a system (and where) and what brand should I look at? I'm thinking maybe 2 cameras out front and 2 cameras out back would be a good start. Thanks Greg

Is this the Swann one? http://www.costco.com/Swann-8-Channel-HD-NVR-Security-System-with-2TB-Hard-Drive-and-4-1080p-IP-Cameras.product.100027599.html#BVRRWidgetID