Don Stephens

Someone will have to back me up on this, but I'm fairly certain Qvis was all re-branded Dahua. You may want to try and figure out what Dahua's model number is for that DVR based on the specs. Sometimes a firmware update can help. Was there a specific reason your client formatted the drive? I've seen malfunctioning drives cause all sorts of unpredictable and explainable issues with Dahua DVRs. You may want to just disconnect the drive from the board and power the unit back on to see what happens. Hand to God, this solves my "head scratchers" nine out of ten times.

Unless someone else on here has spent some time experimenting with lenses from other cameras, I don't think you have any options for swapping the lens. Short of replacing the camera or adding another, I don't think you're going to get what you want.

Check the status of the hard drive. I'm just guessing...but it probably says "error."

Are you positive about those numbers? That looked funny to me so I checked Hikvision's site and it seems to contradict that (I could be wrong).

I'm not really sure how B connectors come into this for a patch cable. Are you talking about splicing into the DVRs power supply in order to increase the length of the cable?

Do you have any screen shots you can show us; both with and without the IR illuminators.

H.264 is a video compression rate. Virtually every DVR on the market records in H.264. Is there a brand/model number or anything else you can provide us with? Can you take a screen shot of how you have that port forwarded? Ports 80, 81, 8080, and 9000 are also very frequently blocked by ISPs, so you may want to try change the port you're using to see if it clears up the issue (if it's a possibility for you).

Most of what I see on that site is re-branded Dahua. That's definitely not going to be within budget. How are you even supposed to buy from these people?

My experience with Blue Iris is limited but it only seems to be the larger systems that eat up a good deal of resources; smaller systems never caused me any issues.

I may have the wrong idea of what you're trying to do but... You generally can't use your "public IP" to access local devices.

Instead of mounting the camera directly to the banister, try and think of something to go between the two; preferably something that will give you a flat surface to attach the camera to and will be easier to mount to the banister. I find that blocks of wood or small junction boxes are always easy to work with.

If you're talking about using BNC T-Connectors, I couldn't get HDCVI to work with them; even with sections of cable measuring less than a foot. I think at best you can hope for is to get it to work with some video degradation, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Our company hasn't had a single failure (factory defects included) with a Dahua HDCVI camera in the five months we've been selling them and only a single failure in total from any manufacturer we go through. I would say Dahua has been pretty solid so far. It may not be as pretty as IP, but when most of these people are upgrading from standard definition analog systems or just purchasing their first system, HDCVI is pretty damn good for the money.

You normally can't just pull a hard drive out of a DVR and throw it into a computer to back up the video. You already see the problem with that. Manufacturers usually have specific back up tools required if you choose to go this route. Once the back up tool has been installed on your PC, you should be able to do exactly what you want. The problem is that they are almost never a user friendly thing to use so expect to need to be coached through it from the same people you get it from. I've also had very mixed luck with manufacturers. Some don't posses a tool that can manage this task, and some give you tools that just don't work. I would think that backing up your video to an external HDD right from your DVR would make life much easier for you.

The only thing you can do is what you already know; angle the camera away from that lighting. There's really no way to fix what's not manufactured to work in those conditions. They've got a nice picture during the day but you'll have to make some adjustments to the angle to get your picture back at night.

Cheap sensor. Bad lux rating. As far as "NO ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING IS PRESENT" is concerned, that lighting you have across the street is enough to screw up a camera with a poor lux rating. The evidence of that lies in the fact that the camera image returns to normal when it's pointed down.

PM sent I don't want to spam the forum with links.

Can you give us a link to the product(s) that you have here? Can you also provide a daytime picture where the image is clear? Cameras that work great during the day but fall apart at night are normally a result of a power issue. The problem show itself at night because the camera draws more power at that time (IR board). Can you tell us the specifics on how you're powering the camera as well as the cable type and distance?

We put a video and basic write-up together for cable testing HDCVI that I linked to in another post: http://goo.gl/WlVsmQ The video is basically going to show that network cable will work, but you can get more out of HDCVI than network cable can offer you. I never messed with cable testing HDSDI because we honestly never found a camera from any manufacturer to function/work consistently.

The cameras only have a 40% angle of view because they have a 8mm lens. If you want a wider angle, 3.6mm is much more common for a fixed lens camera and general provides a 70-80 degree angle of view. A manually adjustable lens is an obvious option here too. If you don't know what lens you really need, go with someone more universal like a 2.8mm-12mm lens.

What is the amperage of the 12V power supply and how far all of your cable runs?

All PoE injectors are 24VDC, just as all PoE ports on network switches typically output 24VDC (input may be 48VDC). The DC terminal on your IP cameras works differently that the network port that you're injecting power through. As long as your camera is actually a PoE capable camera, this injector is perfectly fine to use even if the 24V and 12V thing is throwing you off.

This came from another forum: Sec. 8.06. ENTRAPMENT. (a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor engaged in the conduct charged because he was induced to do so by a law enforcement agent using persuasion or other means likely to cause persons to commit the offense. Conduct merely affording a person an opportunity to commit an offense does not constitute entrapment. While nothing you may be thinking of is technically entrapment, there are certain situations where it might just be a sh**ty thing to do. For instance, the above statement was posted in reference to "bait cars."

A basic access point will do. Just configure it to your wireless router and you're done.

Most DVRs encode the video to the drive specifically so that you can't just throw it into a computer like you're doing. It usually requires a special tool from the manufacturer and I've found that they usually don't work anyway.