ak_camguy

I just purchased a 2 pack of the Swann 1080p cameras from costco and they should be here soon. My question was how does lighting affect the cameras at night? I am looking to place my camera by my door entryway and currently there is lighting illuminating that area. I was wanting to know if I should turn off my lights at night, or should I keep them on. I also plan to monitor my driveway, but have the opposite issue. There is no lighting at all in my driveway. Should I place a motion sensor light over my garage and the camera right above that? Basically looking for placement and ideal lighting. Setup http://www.costco.com/Swann-1080p-2-Pack-HD-NVR-IP-Bullet-Cameras.product.100039914.html Blue Iris Software running on dedicated PC NAS storage backup device 2TB, 10mbit connection to dedicated PC 1 CCTV Camera - 1 to monitor backyard 2 IP Cameras - 1 in entry, 1 to monitor driveway 1 8 port 10/100 POE Switch If I need additional lighting etc, I want to make sure I get that done prior to installing the cameras. Thanks!

Yes... Look into no-ip.com Basically any PC behind your router will work. They have a client, it installs on your PC's machine and talks to their servers so you always keep the DNS updated.

I downloaded a clip from the camera web interface, it says it is MP4, but I am unable to play the file with Quicktime or Windows Media Player... Any ideas why? Is this a proprietary encoding? Edit: I don't want to use VSPlayer. IE, upload to youtube, send to an email address so I can view etc. I tried this link, but I can't download the file... It's like their server isn't hosting it anymore. http://www.hikvision.com/En/download_more.asp?id=38 I am using the Camera to NAS backup solution if that helps. Found a link that worked.... http://www.hikvision.com/en/us/download_more.asp?id=1119 Mods, please delete.

Ok, I had a spare laptop with 500GB available. I was able to get the cams working using this software... http://www.hanewin.net/nfs-e.htm This is an example of how I built my Exports file. #Export Example c:\cctv\driveway -public -name:driveway c:\cctv\door -public -name:door I then mapped them accordingly within the camera software under storage. IE: (Computer running software is using 192.168.1.10 and I want to mount driveway it would look like this.) 192.168.1.10 /driveway This software is an excellent way for people with a windows box to get NFS working and backing up right away. I can't stress enough, you have to have your Storage device on the same network segment for this to work. I have mine plugged into the same switch as my cameras at 100Mb/sec and it still took a good 20min per camera.

Update: There is a setting under audio/video called IFRAME. One of my camera's was set to 100 somehow. I changed it to 5 and my network/cameras are back to normal. Amazing how one setting can cause lots of pain.

I have an isolated network for my camera system and this is my current configuration. Ken with Blue Iris software has been a great help! He even answers on the weekends which is rather surprising. I noticed if I dropped my camera setting from auto negotiate to 100/Full the connection seemed a little more stable, but the cameras still drop out about every 10-15 seconds for a period of about 5 seconds and then re-acquire a signal. I really don't want to spend $200 on a POE switch where I only need 4 ports... Any suggestions? If the camera's weren't already wired in place I would just plug them into a regular switch that I have here and run separate power to identify the problem. But since it's snowing and I really don't feel like doing that... Any other suggestions? Will something like this work? http://www.amazon.com/WS-POE-8-48v60w-passive-Ethernet-Injector-cameras/dp/B0086SQDMM/ref=cm_cr_dp_asin_lnk

Drop's off when using the camera's browser window as well.... I managed to use a tool called "wireshark" to capture the data... It looks like when the camera drops off its due to at least one TCP segment being lost. There are a bunch of TCP Dup ACK in a big block in the capture file... So looks to be network related. I am betting its the switch at this point. The cables are factory cables, 60' long. I purchased the SWANN 2 pack of HD camera's and the cables came with the package. I have tried unplugging one camera to see if it improves, it doesn't. And since it happening on both camera's my money is on the switch at this point.

I am using a debian system as well, I am having the same issue. I have opened a case with SWANN and talked to a level 1, a level 2, and I talk with a level 3 tomorrow..... I am thinking its a firmware issue? Mine actually creates all the folders, copies the data, and stops after copying data into the folder called datadir0. I am in the process of uploading my video to Youtube so you can see exactly what happens. *Edit* Here is the youtube video of what mine does. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u6ZEEDYwqU

I use this switch.... Granted I don't have as many cameras, but still... much cheaper even if you had to buy two. http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SF1008P-100Mbps-Desktop-802-3af/dp/B003CFATT2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383991845&sr=8-2&keywords=poe+switch

So my question, how do you get your camera to record to your NFS volume? Mine starts the process, gets to about 48% and fails. It does write the folders to the NAS, so I know its working.... Could it possibly be a speed issue?

I received my two cameras last night and played with them little. They are excellent cameras. Hotspot can be resolved by adjusting the brightness and contrast within the camera software. The time issue can be resolved by either checking the box to synch with your PC, or using a NTP server. These cameras are great, the motion issue must be the NVR software you are using. I am using Blue Iris and I have a ton of adjustability within the software to get the motion detection how I like. Overall very satisfied for the price of the two cameras!

I own one of these devices and the Mifi is basically an access point with one Ethernet port. The ideal solution is to plug that Ethernet port into a switch and allow all your wired devices to use that access through the switch. Then attach a wireless access bridge to the same switch to extend the network wirelessly. He isn't doing that by his setup. I have used the same method he is describing and it works, but it's not ideal. Basically he could have just changed his gateway and DNS addresses to 192.168.1.1 and it would have worked, but double nat usually always causes problems. Hence why I suggested he get everything on the same network segment.

To access the router you need to type in the new address.... Router: http://192.168.1.2 Also, try rebooting your PC, it may need to obtain a new DHCP address.... If it doesn't obtain an address do the following... START>Control Panel>Networking>Local Area Connection Right click Local Area Connection and go to Properties. Click on TCP/IP V4, then Properties Click the dial that says use the following IP address: IP Address: 192.168.1.100 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Gateway: 192.168.1.1 Use the Following DNS Servers: 192.168.1.1 Hit OK/OK and then try and go to the website above. On your camera, you will need to change the DNS Server to 192.168.1.1 as well as your gateway. They should look like the images below.

Basically you are double natting.... So thats why its not working. Your Wifi is setup to use 192.168.1.1 (This i assume provides your internet) Your router (Which allows multiple devices to be connected to it is using a 192.168.50.x range.) This needs to be changed to match the same network as your Mifi. Do this... Mifi -(DO NOT CHANGE) 192.168.1.1 Router (192.168.1.2) Camera (192.168.1.3) Enable DMZ for 192.168.1.3 (Disable Port Forwarding) Let me know if your camera now works using your Static IP that Verizon provided. It would be http://staticipfromverizon:8090 if 8090 is the port that your camera uses.

Ah, the problem is your networking setup on the camera. It is on a 192.168.1.x address range and your router is setup as a 192.168.50.x range. Change either the router to 192.168.1.1 or the camera to 192.168.50.2 They have to both be on the same network.... IE: Router: 192.168.50.1 Camera: 192.168.50.2 Router: 192.168.2.1 Camera: 192.168.2.2 Hopefully that makes sense.

Sounds like you need to open some ports through the router externally so you can view the feed remotely. IE: Internal IP of cam equals 192.168.0.100 Then you need to port forward whatever port the cam is setup on (normally 80) on the router to 192.168.0.100 Look for something that says DMZ within the router, and put in the IP of the camera in the router and apply. See if you can then view the camera remotely. That will tell us if its a port forwarding issue.

Crystal DiskInfo is a free utility and may help determine disk errors etc, if you don't have a utility already.

Let me be really clear.... I am not bashing EMC!! However, EMC is known for its bad disk latency issues. We use EMC where I work and it's a great product for certain applications/use. However, when you hammer the disk array I/O the controllers just can't keep up. At least from my experience. The only thing we have found to help was.... Make sure the disk is dedicated storage and not shared. We run about 500 VM's on our storage controller but we use dedicated disk and have switched from EMC to Netapp filers using NFS. With de-duplication on Netapp we haven't had a hiccup in 7 years. Our other facility in Seattle uses EMC and runs into disk I/O issues all the time. They have just recently purchased a SSD storage array due to a similiar problem you are having. It isn't cheap but it is a big improvement.

Yeah, I guess I assumed with technology today most people understood how to plug in a network cable and type in an IP address to get to a camera and from there figure out the rest. I am a Server Engineer, so its obviously the only route to go for a techie. But seriously, a 16yr old kid could figure it out. Especially with google available these days, I don't see the excuse not to own one unless you already own an analog system and are waiting for the rate of return on your analog system before purchasing digital. Especially considering you can add as many camera's as you wish with Blue Iris and a NAS device. It becomes really affordable for the quality you get and the expand-ability further down the road. I own 1 analog camera and I immediately purchased 2 digital IP camera's after seeing the quality of the POS analog feed. I see many more digital camera's in my future.

I just purchased 2 1080p bullet cams from costco (Swan version). They should be here in a week, I can report back later. I will be using Blue Iris for my NVR software though.

Are you sure its only 230Mbps? That's not very fast and even a 7200rpm sata 6GB/sec drive should be able to do that... Simple math.... 230Mbps/sec = 28.75 MB/sec.... Your drive should easily be able to handle that transfer speed. I would check your network as the bottle neck. I do around 5MB/sec transfers to my NAS over wireless using N150. You should be able to write easily at 20MB/sec if you have a gig port on your NAS/SAN. Oh, does your array/server/nas/SAN device have dual gig ports? If it supports link aggregation, I would look into configuring that. Should help with network speeds.

I have the single camera version (better known as the VCR to Digital version) of the Easycap and I can verify it works fine with Blue Iris. I am currently using it now. The problem with the 4 channel device is that you can only use one channel at a time. So I honestly don't know why they even make it or it is marketed as a 4 channel device. Basically the bottom line is you can only run 1 camera off the usb device at one time due to the way the modulation method works. Hopefully that makes sense.