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Well, I have in writing from the seller that there is a one year warranty from him. I guess if it makes it through without "sticking" until next July 31 I can expect that it's fixed, and if it happens again in the next year, even once, I'll plan on sending it back. By the way, the Amazon seller, DSC Technology, has been good to work with and I would certainly not hesitate to purchase from them again based on this experience. Eric

So, tonight, following the seller's suggestions I unscrewed the camera from where I had it mounted, unplugged it, brought it into the garage and hammered a nail through one of the mounting holes. I hooked it up with a 1ft CAT-6 patch cord to a different port in the POE switch. When the sun set, my garage was fully visible on the camera, and a license plate on the far wall was glowing brightly. I doubted that the problem was the wire, so I moved it back to the back yard and hooked it up. Well, all the movement must have unstuck something, because now the night-vision works great. I can switch back and forth between day and night mode, so (as far as I can tell) the IR filter isn't just stuck "off" now. So here's the $168 question: now that it's working, will it continue to work? I.e., was the stuck IR filter a problem just because it was new, and now it'll be fine indefinitely? Can those of you who succeeded with the bashing, magnetizing, and shaking confirm that your camera is still working? Oh, here's a picture of the backyard now. Looks like I may need to clean the front after all the handling today:

To be fair to the seller, I'm as interested in sending the camera back as he is - i.e. not very - so I offered to try some troubleshooting before I did that. The problem is I cannot do much troubleshooting as I have no other POE supplies to swap, nor any other POE cameras to test on my switch. Too few data points. I will try a shorter cord tonight and if that doesn't help, we'll have to swap it. I wonder what percentage of 2100s have this problem.

Well, shaking and magnets didn't help. I emailed the seller - this is still new - and he asked me to try a shorter cable from my POE switch, and to try a power adapter instead of POE. So I'll see tonight if I can find a matching power adapter in my big box o' old transformers. Has anyone run into trouble with underpowered POE?

I finally got my first IP camera installed yesterday, mounted on my garage facing my backyard. It's a Dahua IPC-HFW2100. Here's a picture from just now: And here's an image from last night: They advertise 20m night vision. It's 45 feet from my garage to the fence, so maybe 60 feet on the diagonal where I've aimed the camera. But I did expect to be able to see the toy in the foreground. Playing with a tablet out in the yard I was able to see myself illuminated if I stood in front of the camera, and the IR LEDs are glowing red, so they're on. Is this night-time performance "normal" or should I expect better? (I hit the "default" button on the web interface but I won't be able to see if that changes anything until tonight.) Thanks, Eric

Does anyone know how to get at the multicast stream on Dahua cameras? (I have a IPC-HFW2100, the "mini-bullet") The normal tcp stream is at something like: rtsp://server:port/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0 The above url isn't documented anywhere, so I'm guessing maybe the multicast url also exists, undocumented. Anyone know it? I'm not an expert on multicast but it sounds like it could be useful if monitoring any given camera from more than one location. Thanks, Eric

That's pretty cool - can I get one without a camera? Kawboy12R - I like the way you're thinking. But I think the button triggers a sort of alarm/doorbell on the base unit on most of these, in addition to opening the channel for audio.

Sorry that my first post here is, really, completely off topic. But this forum seems like the crowd that is most likely to have an answer for me. I've just purchased a wired ip cam to keep an eye on my backyard, where the kids play, from in the house. Now that I've got the camera in hand, my wife has asked if I can hook up an audio monitor so she can listen in to what the kids are doing, and talk to them if necessary. So my criteria are these: -"always on" one-way audio monitor i.e. not push to talk from the back yard -full duplex -hooks to ethernet with POE. -weather resistant housing. Also it would be nice if it was usable from andoid or PC, but a dedicated intercom might be OK, I guess. Some cheap IP cams come with this functionality built in, so I figured that surely someone made a little audio box I could mount somewhere. Like a audio-enabled-ip-cam-without-the-cam. But I haven't been able to find one! I figure this should cost around $100 based on the price of the IP cameras, and (video-enabled) baby monitors that do basically what I want. But all I can find is really expensive systems made for apartment buildings and university call boxes, and doorbell systems (which won't do what I want, since they only work once the button is pressed). Does anyone have a lead on some product that matches my criteria? Worst case is that I move the camera I bought somewhere else and buy an audio-ip-cam to put in its place, so it's not a huge deal, but I thought I'd at least check. Thanks all, Eric