proton32176

I have a Hikvision 16 POE NVR I bought seven years ago that is attached to 11 Hikvision 4P EXIR Dome Cameras. I bought the unit from Nellies so they rebranded it so I don't know the model number. It is in our condo and we work out of town so we use it to keep an eye on things when we are away. Here is my problem: It has been working fine for years until this week. When I tried to log into the system it would not come up with the app. I also couldn't even get the Log in page to come up in a Web Browser. When I got home tonight I looked at the system through my TV which is connected to the NVR's HDMI output. All the menus come up but there is no Live View from any of the cameras. I checked the Camera Menu and according to it all the cameras are online and working with no errors for any of the cameras. The problem is there is no Live View or Playback of past events possible with the unit with any camera. Also, on every POE input on the back of the NVR, every input with a camera attached has the amber light flashing. No settings were changed and nothing was messed with prior to it doing this. It just messed up all on its own. I even tried a Factory reset on the unit but it made no difference. All the amber lights on the POE inputs with cameras attached were still flashing and still no video from any of the cameras. My question is does this sound like a configuration issue or does it sound more like a dead NVR? If it sounds like I need to replace the NVR I need some advice. I looked on Ebay and I can buy a new Hikvision 4k 16 POE NVR for around $300.00. But there is also another guy selling a refurbished one exactly like mine for $600.00. My question is would a new 4k unit work as well as the older one did and be compatible with my older cameras or would I be better off paying twice as much for an old one identical to the one I already have? I can't figure out why this guy is trying to sell a 7 year old unit for twice the price of a new one unless he either thinks he can get it or he knows a newer NVR wouldn't work with older cameras. And I don't know enough about this equipment to know if there is a reason to spend twice as much for what I already have or if a new one would work just fine. I would really appreciate some advice with this. I know how to set a NVR up but I have no idea about compatibility issues between older cameras hooked to newer NVR's. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

I have a question for you guys and I did search the forums but could not really find anything relating to this. I have a Hikvision Camera System in my house and need to put one in my office as well. The one at my office would consist of external cameras covering all sides under the soffit. The building itself is around 1000 sq ft. The camera system would be a Hikvision 16 POE NVR with the Hikvision EXIR Bullet Cameras. What I want is the ability to speak through a loudspeaker at the office if anyone comes up to the building. Essentially: I see someone suspicious approaching my building through the Hikvision internet software and speak into a microphone either on my iphone or home computer and ask them what they are doing. I have the Hikvision Box camera with speaker and microphone in my house but through the NVR only the microphone works. Also, it is not really meant to be outside. I just need something, (even if it is separate software and hardware) that would work while the Hikvision software is running to allow me to question someone or warn them off remotely. If it was possible to have a microphone as well that would be great. But the ability to let someone know they are being watched while they are approaching my building would be enough if that was my only option. I guess what I am really after is a two-way intercom that will operate through the internet while the Hikvision software is running as well. Does anyone know of a way to do that and if so, tell me specific hardware and software that would do it?

Tried lowering monitor resolution and it made no difference. But going to Internet Explorer did help some. Had a similar problem last week but this time the whole system became inaccessible. We have had a LOT of rain in Florida for the past 6 weeks and that may be what is causing this problem where it works great one minute and can't keep up the next minute. Either way I do appreciate your help and have decided to use IE to view the system from now on rather than Firefox. Thanks

Thanks Guys My office is out of town so won't be able to try your suggestions until Monday morning. Will try your suggestions and report back. Thanks for your help.

I doubt if it is the Computer: Specs: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz ( overclocked to 4.66 Ghz) ASRock Fatal1ty P67 PROFESSIONAL (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 Motherboard G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8 GB (4x2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB (overclocked edition) Video Card SanDisk Extreme PRO 240GB SSD CORSAIR 750W Power Supply WD- Velicoraptor 300Gb Hard Drive-Secondary SATA DVD Burner Is there a way to cut the Sub-stream bandwidth on the Thumbnails while leaving max view and recording quality intact?

I need some help from you guys. I have a Hikvision system consisting of the 16 Camera/ 16 poe NVR and 10 of the Hikvision Exir 2CD2332-I 3 MP and one of the Hikvision 2CD2432F-IW 3MP Cameras. The Internet Speeds are 10 up/ 6 dwn at the NVR and 6 dwn / 2 up at the location I am using to monitor. I am using Hikvisions Browser Plugin with Firefox to monitor. Here’s my problem. Up until last week I could monitor all 11 cameras at the same time without hiccups. I just used the 16 camera grid to monitor and if something of interest was noticed I would maximize that camera. It is now no longer to do that as I get constant hiccups and stuttering even in the Grid View. The only thing that has changed is I went from a 1024x 768 monitor to a 1080p monitor. I don’t see how that should make a difference but it has- either that or my internet speed has been lagging for the last two weeks. But either way now the internet connection can’t keep up using the 16 grid setup even when I maximize to one camera. However using the four camera grid the live view can keep up just fine. You guys know more about this than I do but it appears that with the 16 grid it is pulling bandwidth from all 11 cameras even when only one is maximized. However in the 4 grid setup it seems to only pull from four cameras at the time. And under those circumstances the internet connection can still keep up. Like I said- until two weeks ago getting a Thumbnail Live View from all 11 cameras was not a problem but now it is hard to maximize any of the cameras without stuttering. And in the 16 grid now even the thumbnails stutter as well. It seems that I am now pulling more bandwidth than I did before and the internet connection just can’t keep up. But like I said- the only thing that changed is the monitor I am using at the remote location- no settings were changed in the NVR or cameras at all. I am assuming the thumbnail views in the grid are the sub-stream and when you maximize you are tapping the main video stream. Is that true? If that is true is there a way to cut the sub-stream quality while not affecting the maximized view or Recording quality? If it is possible where is it configured, through the individual camera interfaces or in the NVR’s configuration menu? The Thumbnails don’t have to be high quality and they could drop quite a bit and still be useful but I do need at least 720p when maximizing. To answer the most obvious question someone is going to ask: I am monitoring from my office so this is a business phone account. I checked into increasing the office bandwidth and the amount they want ( because it is a business) is absolutely ridiculous. Try going from $75.00/ mo for the 6 up/2 dwn to $175.00/mo for 10 up/5 dwn. If there is a way to fix this by cutting the sub-streams bandwidth without affecting the maximized cameras quality I would appreciate knowing how. Most of what I see in the NVR configuration menus applies to cutting the main-streams quality, FPS, or max kbps but nothing about the sub-stream. I am out of town right now and can not access the individual cameras interfaces until I get home later in the week so I figured I would ask now. Any help would be appreciated and just out of curiosity – is it possible for a higher resolution monitor to pull more bandwidth than a lower resolution monitor when none of the systems settings have changed?

I have never done this before but a few obvious problems come to mind. First- one of the reasons this country is in the mess it is due in no small part to outsourcing. A simple question is regardless of the business you are in- what would the effect be if your customers ( whether individuals or businesses) had their livelihood outsourced? How well would your business do if your customers income was either directly or indirectly shipped overseas where they could no longer afford to use your business? Granted you are only talking three guys but this is why the country is in trouble because this scenario has played out millions of times over the last few decades. Eventually you could get to a point where all the income that used to stay in this country and used to buy other American businesses products and services will be in China and India so who are American businesses going to sell to? If Americans no longer have the money because it is now going overseas then who is going to be left to do business with an American company? Also, one problem with Message Boards is you can read "what" a person says but not "how" they said it. My comment was in no way meant to be snippy or condescending. I am in business as well and things aren't real great for us either. But we are now feeling the direct consequences of outsourcing. Many of our customers are no longer able to to do business with us because their jobs or their entire company was moved overseas. As we watch our income continue to drop as a direct result of outsourcing what will be the result when we have no customers left because the money that used to be in their pockets is now in the pockets of Indians and Chinese? The only option left would be to "go out of business" or move our business overseas since that is where all the money went. Unfortunately in our case- that option isn't practical. On a more practical note: Right now you have people monitoring a closed circuit system which is reliable to the point of being virtually unbreakable as long as the system has power. No outages or camera drop outs and in the unlikely event it did occur you have people on site to " go look for themselves" if necessary. Your remote monitoring will take place through the internet and be transmitted to the other side of the world. Have you ever had your internet connection slow down to a point that pages take forever to load? How about the connection going out entirely? Camera systems require a generous amount of bandwidth in order to make monitoring real time events practical. And the more cameras you have and the more detail you need to see the higher the bandwidth has to be. If your internet connection slows down or drops out completely then real time monitoring becomes impossible. Most systems do have hard drive backup but if something is missed entirely due to a poor connection and enough time transpires then what you are looking for may have been overwritten with more current trivial events by the time you go looking for it. So you are making your camera system vulnerable to the whims and idiosyncrasies of an internet connection. If what you are monitoring is not that critical where if it goes out for awhile its "no big deal" you may get away with it. But if you need to see what's going on every second and without interruption it is unlikely an internet connection will be able to provide that. Especially half a world away.

You already have this giant battery you are referring to- Your car battery. Automobile batteries store an incredible amount of power considering their size. A "giant battery with a plug" would be a 12 volt battery hooked to an inverter which converts 12 VDC to 120 VAC. I had one years ago that plugged into my car cigarette lighter and powered my Laptop for my wife to use on long trips. That is how your UPS works but none of them are designed to power anything all night. They are designed to allow all files to be saved and closed and the computer powered off in a short period of time. What kind of battery you need and even if it is practical depends on the current draw of the equipment you plan to install. If it is too great then they will run the battery down depending on its capacity. My guess is equipment intended to run off house current may not be designed to minimize power usage as would be the case for things designed and intended to be used in an automobile. Also- this giant battery you are referring to would be difficult and awkward to move in and out of the car on a daily basis. Plus the daily grind of recharging it, assuming the equipment you were using was even efficient enough not to completely discharge the battery during the time frame you want to use it. My advice is first get a system designed specifically for use with an automobiles 12 VDC system. Converting 12 VDC to 120 VAC requires a given amount of "overhead" in the conversion process which would accelerate the discharge of the battery. Second- get a 12 volt charger designed to tinkle charge your car battery. Some are made where they are permanently attached to the car and you merely have to " plug the car in" at night. This would be a much more practical solution and as long as your chargers output met or exceeded the current draw of the car and your installed equipment then you would never have a dead battery to contend with. You would just unplug the car in the morning and plug it back in at night when you got home. This would be a much simpler and reliable approach than trying to use equipment designed for home use and then trying to convert 12 VDC to 120 VAC with an inverter.

I have a question for you guys. I am putting cameras in our condo and am currently running wires. Explaining the layout would not serve much purpose just trust this camera placement would be best if we can get away with it. The question is if we have two infrared camera’s pointing at each other ( ceiling mounted) at either end of a 25 foot hallway will they blind each other? I can’t actually test this myself as I have not bought the cameras and the DVR as yet. The reason is due the construction of the building. It is not a question of how many cameras I would like but rather how many cameras can we actually run wires to. Once I find out then I order the appropriate amount of cameras and the DVR. So I am wondering what would happen if you point two IR’s at each other. Do they merely light up the scene more or do they blind each other where neither can see anything. There is one other possibility if IR cameras can adjust for exposure in infrared mode. It would involve placing two cameras at the same corner of an 18' x 20' room spaced about 3 feet apart and each mounted at the same height. Each would be covering the same room at different angles so neither would be shining their infrared's into each others lens. They would however illuminate the room with twice as much light as each camera was expecting since both IR's would be shining on the same room. Could they compensate for having twice as much light by changing their exposure or would it overexpose the scene washing out most of the details and contrast? Thanks for the help.

I am certainly not an expert on this. In fact- I am a novice the Board helped last week. But I am sure a big factor in the determination would be what they are asking for the system.

buellwinkle, You are absolutely right about the Lorex system. The problem with this kind of stuff ( especially if you know nothing about it) is you see something like Lorex on the Costco site- look at the ratings- and buy. Only later do you realize ( as I did) that you bought Mickey Mouse stuff and far better equipment is available. As far as the condo- you obviously know first hand what I was up against. The advantage of ours is it is possible to run wires through the overhead to all the areas and rooms we needed cameras. It did involve tearing out sheetrock in different places but we were able to run all the wires to all the rooms. Fortunately, it is still torn up so pulling Network cable using the existing analogue wires I already ran will be very easy. I appreciate the advice regarding the cameras. After spending some time with a bitrate calculator it did appear I was buying more than my bandwidth could handle. I decided on the: Dahua ESIP-MP1-DM1(CP) 1 Mega Pixel IP IR Outdoor Dome Security Camera and the: Dahua ESDV-NVRX-16P 16 channel NVR with built in 16 Port POE Switch from Nelly's Security. I have read very good reviews about Nelly's Security and good things about Dahua. As I said, I won't place the order until Friday so if you feel I am making a bad choice I would appreciate your guidance. Thanks Again

Thanks Guys- I certainly will update when it is installed. I do have one more question if I may. I called Nelley's and got a price for ten 3Mp Hikvision Cameras and the DVR. The whole system is $2750.00. Before I spend this much money it may be wise to tell you what the system is really for. It is not a security system. We work out of town three days a week and it will let my wife check on our cats while we are gone. High Rise condos with all the doors, Common Area cameras, and residents roaming around are difficult to impossible to burglarize. For that reason it is unlikely we would ever look at recorded footage once we get back home. The system therefore will be used entirely for remote viewing. Its only purpose is for my wife to check on the cats from our office and if she can't find them on the live feeds- to rewind until she can see them. Our office is in a rural area and our bandwidth is 6Mbps Down and 1/2 Mbps up. At the condo where the system will be located the Speed is 5Mbps up and 12 Mbps down. I know upload speed on the DVR end and Download on the receiving end is the most critical. Do we have enough bandwidth at the two locations to take full advantage of the system? I have researched the question on this site and others and checked bandwidth calculators. From what I have gotten from the calculators if I am reading them right is the system needs more bandwidth than we have. Is that true? I need to know if the system is more than my internet can handle before I spend all this money. I know the DVR can record at the higher settings on all channels at the same time. But as I said- we would never have a reason to look at footage while we are home. You guys deal with this all the time so I am interested in real world results as opposed to what a calculator says. If I have to lower the resolution and/or frame rates dramatically to make it fit my bandwidth it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend almost $3000.00 on a 3-Mp system. Especially if I have to cut everything down to the equivalent of a 1MP system to fit my existing bandwidth.. At that point it would be wiser to just match a system to what my bandwidth can handle. So will these internet speeds allow us to take advantage of a 3MP system on remote viewing at reasonable resolutions and frame rates. And if not what system resolution would match our connection speed assuming at least 15 but preferably 30 FPS? By the way- raising the speed on the condo is not outrageous but raising the speed at the office can push the bill from $44/ month to well over a hundred. And no one uses it except my wife and I to read the news. For that reason it is not worth increasing the bill an extra $1000.00 a year to raise the office internet speed from where it is to 3Mbps up and 10Mbps down. I am not planning on buying a new system until this Friday so there is no rush on the reply. One final question and please forgive my ignorance. Can the live feed coming across the internet be buffered like Youtube? She doesn't need to see what they are doing the instance it happened. If it lags a little to display a higher resolution that would not be an issue. I really appreciate all your help and patience.

Thanks Guys- I really appreciate all the input. I did take down all cameras and tried them on the floor and tried known "Good" cameras with the wiring that was already up. Bad Cameras were bad on the floor and Good Cameras were good with the wiring where the bad cameras were located. Like I said- they work great in Daylight conditions but in the dark when the IR's kick in the pictures scrambles and rolls. Since I have to return the system anyway I decided to opt for IP cameras instead of analogue in the belief there would be less chance of interference in this building full of metal. Would that be a correct assumption?

I need some advice on Camera Systems. To be brief: My wife and I live in a High Rise Condominium. Only half of the condo has a drop ceiling which in near impossible to access without tearing out ceilings and walls. The rest are concrete slab which means my ceiling is my neighbor’s floor. Wireless systems are not practical in buildings like this due to all the concrete and rebar. Example: The condo is roughly 100 feet in length and no wireless signal regardless of whether it is a telephone or Wi-Fi router will extend from one end of the condo to the other. For this reason a wired Camera System is the only option. I recently bought a Lorex System from Costco: http://www.costco.com/Lorex-16-Channel-Eco4-Stratus-960H-Security-System-with-2TB-HDD-and-16-700TVL-Cameras.product.100083122.html I have now done all the demolition required to run the wires so you might say I am now “committed” to doing something. We bought this system because Lorex got pretty good reviews and it had eight Dome Cameras. The Domes are the only option for us since they “blend in”. Bullets would make the place look like a Prison which we wanted to avoid. Here’s my problem: I now have a condo with large holes in the walls and ceilings and eight smaller ones for the cameras. Unfortunately after going through all this I discovered five of the eight Lorex Dome cameras don’t work. Well- they work during Daylight but when they switch to IR the LEDs come on but the picture cuts out into rolling static and the cameras buzz. When the lights come back on and the IR cuts out the cameras work fine again. What I need from you guys is to give me some advice on what to do. The whole system is going back to Costco but the question is do I take a chance and have them send me the same system again or go with something else. As should be obvious the cost of installation with repairing sheetrock and repainting can easily exceed what the system itself cost. What we need is a high quality commercial grade system that once installed and the condo repaired will be reliable and work for years to come. Having five defective cameras out of eight does not give me a great deal of confidence in Lorex. But reading reviews of Swann and Q-See and a few others- Lorex has better reviews than they do. Edited 5-25: I edited out the rest of the post regarding broad recommendations. I have read a lot of these posts since I initially posted. I have drawn some conclusions from reading through this forum and need to know if you guys feel this is a wise decision. First from reading through these posts it appears Nelley’s Security is a good company so I am leaning towards buying the system from them. Anybody had a bad experience with them? Are they willing to help troubleshoot problems after they sell the equipment? As far as the system- everything I have read on these forums seems to indicate Hikvision makes very good equipment. And as I said earlier, due to the expense of tearing out walls and ceilings I need a very reliable system. I am leaning towards the Hikvision DVR: Hikvision DS-7716NI-SP/16 16 Channel POE Plug N Play Hi Def NVR Recorder http://www.nellyssecurity.com/hikvision-ds-7716ni-sp-16-16-channel-poe-plug-n-play-hi-def-nvr-recorder.html And these Hikvision Cameras: Hikvision Exir DS-2CD2332-I 3 MP Weatherproof Turret Dome IP Camera 4mm http://www.nellyssecurity.com/hikvision-exir-ds-2cd2332-i-3-mp-turret-dome-ip-camera-4mm.html Do you guys agree this would be both a high quality and reliable system? Finally- we need to view from a PC and an Ipad at our office. Is the Hikvision a good choice to for these circumstances? If anyone has a better choice I would welcome the input. As far as the budget- we need a DVR and 9 cameras and probably don’t want to exceed $3500.00