gmcraib

Logic wise its fairly simple if you understand 'relay logic'. You can get GSM diallers that work with alarm systems and they have a simple contact trigger. I think you can get both N/O and N/C inputs on them and you can connect depending on output from DVR. But even if you have non-straightforward connections you can work around with an interposing relay. Problem is, if you are wanting to signal on loss of power how can you be sure the signal will work? ie if output from DVR is high on alarm you will not get a power loss signal as there will be no power to drive the signal. If its low on alarm or 'volt free' (ie switch only) then you are ok. The interposing relay can be used to switch the logic if needed (like a NOT gate in electronics) ie a coil energised with a N/O switch can have N/O and N/C switches, so using a N/C inverts the logic. Say for your system the output from DVR goes low (or opens) to the interposing relay coil when in alarm. You have connected the interposing relay N/O output to GSM dialler so upon loss of volts the contact is closed and the GSM sees a signal even though the DVR is dead. This obviously needs a power supply to relay but so will GSM dialler and I'm assuming that is in the house. If not you may be able to get a small 12V battery to power the relay and dialler and this can be recharged by the same power supply to DVR. Many ways to skin a cat, like the previous poster said it depends on what you have but nothing is impossible when it comes to relays and logic!! Another problem you may want to avoid - particularly if your relay and GSM are not in the field is voltage drop on the cables. Long/thin cables drop the volts, possibly to the point where an energised coil and N/C contact appears to be open because the volts have dropped below a threshold or the coil itself cannot energise because of the same reason (prob 80% of coil voltage)

Last weekend I installed a CCTV system using this DVR and 3 IR camera's. The system works well apart from connectivity issues. Can connect to DVR via LAN and WAN, but cannot view the video. Can only view the video on LAN when Kapersky is disabled. Have used the video viewer software and find the same issues, although haven't been able to connect via WAN. Also the remote desktop feature seems to be temperamental and only working occasionally. I get the message "check server resource failed!!" and can see the video but no control. There was control before but it stopped after adjusting camera's. I wonder if I disabled it by mistake. Using Kapersky Pure on Windows 7, IE10. (Kapersky beta patch to work with IE10) Have played with security settings in IE and settings in Kapersky but no success. DVR is on port 80 and router has port forwarding to DVR.

I'm on the Kapersky forum getting help for anti-virus settings and network config. If you want to follow the troubleshooting the thread is here: http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=268636&st=0&gopid=2065393entry2065393 I'll see how this gets on and will revert here, as I think I may still need some help on the DVR itself once I can get it to work properly over LAN and then WAN. Might end up with a complete troubleshooting guide!

I have everything switched on apart from File Anti Virus and Web Anti Virus functions. Still getting the message Check Server Resource Failed when trying to access via remote desktop. (minimum working configuration seems to be File & Web Anti Virus and System Watcher switched off) sometimes IE crashes, so I copied this crash log: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: IEXPLORE.EXE Application Version: 10.0.9200.16635 Application Timestamp: 51b7a921 Fault Module Name: unknown Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0 Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000 Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 0929273e OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48 Locale ID: 2057 I'll look a bit more into IE settings, maybe something there that is clashing with Kapersky and forcing a crash. This version of kapersky is a beta, as the release version doesn't work with IE10. And I couldn't get IE9 to work with DVR!

Update. Have managed to get some progress by switching all functions off in kapersky, then on one by one to find the culprit. Its web anti virus function, which scans network traffic. So I added the URL of the DVR to the trusted list and then was able to view the images on DVR with all the other functions switched back on in kapersky. Still can't control via the web interface, not sure why. Remote desktop also unusuable, working out what may be the problem there. Remote desktop seems to fail under application control (possibly amongst other things) but I'm not sure what applications should be trusted. For example viewing via browser, IE is trusted. So is video viewer and Simulation1.exe, which I believe is launched for remote desktop. Open to any further ideas!

Actually, don't think it is the router. Only just realised but I can access the DVR, view video and control with no ports open on the router. Was playing about opening ports and opening all ports and nothing changed so I thought see if it works when no ports opened. It did work but only because kapersky was disabled. So I'm pretty sure its something in kapersky, but not sure what. I've tried disabling individual components of kapersky but the only thing that seems to work is to disable it all.

Thanks for the reply. I did wonder if there might be more than one port to open, but haven't seen anything on the instructions. Do you have any inkling what the port might be? Is there any way to find out? ie from network traffic? Sounds daft but I hadn't actually tried disabling router firewall, just the software firewall. Will try that straight away.