codyormoe

I’m in the northeast of the US. It is for a business. Ty

We’ve had a 9 camera NVR system for years, all POE. Looking to upgrade to better cameras and compatible NVR. Remote viewing is a must, alerts would be helpful also. All wiring is already in place, just looking to swap out to new cameras and new NVR. Since it’s been so long since we’ve bought any I am not up on what brands are best now. Looking for high quality cameras, with night vision, audio would be a plus. Our current system has 12TB in space, w/ 4 WD purple 3TB drives. Hoping we can swap those to new system so must be able to take 4 HD’s. Looking for 16 channel system in case we want to add additional cameras. We currently use a switch for some of the cameras. Anyways, would appreciate any recommendations. Thanks in advance.

That looks like the same design as the qc8023Bb that we have. I know it can all come apart but I can't remember exactly which parts are permanently attatched to each other. I'm sure if you're remotely handy that what you want to do is possible. I stripped one camera down completely when we first got them, I just like to know how things come apart, go back together, what's inside, etc. I actually ended up soldering about 5' of cat6 to the mb's of a few since the pigtail coming out just wasn't long enough for where I wanted to mount them. Good luck.

We bought a Q-see ip system from Costco a few months ago. I had read that Q-see was rebranded Dahua, so I figured I'd take a chance, especially with Costcos great return policy. There's been a couple issues I needed clarification on, mostly with the networking. I emailed their support, I had read the same reviews you probably did and didn't hold out much hope of a reply, let alone a speedy one. I was pleasantly shocked to find a very swift reply, maybe an hour later, and this was on a Saturday. I understand how hard it is to diagnose any sort of pc/network issue when you're not right there, able to poke through things yourself. None the less, this tech was pretty helpful, and after a few exchanges I found the problem(my router/cable company). It never crossed my mind to reply again, figuring they'd just move on. To my utter amazement, the tech actually called me just to make sure everything was all set and I didn't have any more questions. The next time I needed to contact support was just as speedy and helpful. Slight issue with hd errors in the log on the NVR, it didn't affect it's performance that I could find, but I wanted to nip it in the bud before it did. Got another speedy reply with a link to the upgraded firmware download that addressed this specific issue along with extremely detailed instructions on how to do it. Everything went smooth, no more errors. As for the quality of the actual cameras, I love them. The picture is crystal clear, setup was a snap. The night vision is pretty amazing. The NVR interface is pretty straight forward. Had an issue with one camera fogging up a bit, took the front off and found the seal was a bit off, reseated it, put it back together and haven't had a problem with it since. The specific cameras that came with our bundle(QCN8023B), are rated to -4 degrees and it's hit below that quite a few times and it hasn't phased their operation at all. I might be the exception, but I found their support to be fantastic. And I have nothing but good things to say about the quality of the cameras and NVR. On a side note, I looked up the mac addresses to check the manufacturer and they are indeed Dahua.

The NVR interface itself doesn't have the settings for scheduling the ir's on and off on our Q-See system. I actually found it by mistake when I was messing around on SmartPSS from home. I clicked on "Web" in Device CFG. It brought up the web interface, basically it's http://ip-of-nvr:85/, it has way more options and settings than either the nvr interface or SmartPSS. I've read that Q-See is just rebranded Dahua so maybe try using the web interface and see if it's in there. Web interface, setup, remote, image, pick your channel, change from normal/day/night(whichever yours is set to) to "switch by period". That's where I could put in sunrise/sunset times.

We had a similar problem with a Q-see cam, swapped it to another location as a trouble shooting move and it stopped doing it but the one we swapped into it's place started. It ended up being the ir lights kicking on, reflecting off the white siding and tricking the cam into thinking it's day, then going off, then cam thinks it dark and the whole process repeats. Before I had time to do any trouble shooting I just set that one cam on a day/night schedule, set sunrise and sunset times and the nvr told the cam when to kick the ir's on and off. Since the mounting location couldn't really be moved, very tight area, next to an industrial garage door, in a corner at the ell of the building the only solution was to change the cam angle a bit. It didn't take much, just a little to the left and no more flashing. Made up for the slight loss of visible area by tweaking the other cams going around the building a bit.

Yes, the NVR is at the shop, 1 cam at home(15mi away), 6 at the shop, only 2 are directly plugged into the NVR. The NVR records all 7 on the schedules I set for each one(or you can set one schedule for all cams). I can also change recording schedules, playback video from any channel, or watch live feed from all/any cam from my iPad, iPhone, or web browser from anywhere. It is pretty cool. Also comes in real handy when we're home and can't remember if we turned off the lights or turned down the heat at the shop.

We recently bought a Q-see system from Costco. 16 channel, nine 3mp cams, 1080p, 3TB hd. So far it's been great, easy to setup, great picture quality and reliable. The only issues I've had so far were with the remote viewing and were the fault of the modem/router the cable company makes us use(not a fan of Charter business). Once we sorted that out everything's been fine. We have 3 cams outside the shop, 3 inside, only 2 plugged directly into the nvr, 4 on a poe switch, and yesterday I put 1 up at our house(about 15mi away), and I could not believe how easy it was to add it to the system. Even remotely accessing the nvr has been a breeze. The manual said only ie would work for web viewing but my son uses chrome and had it working in about 5 minutes. Personally I use iDMSS on my ipad and iphone, both work great. I know many people have had issues with Q-see but so far it's been nothing but great for us. Personally, I thought the manuals made everything sound more complicated than it really was.

While this should have been exceedingly easy, it was not, thanks to Charter. We have Charter business at the shop for internet and they won't allow any customer owned modems, you must use their managed modem/router(hereby refered to as m/r). They also would not just put the m/r into bridge mode, basically turning off the router function and use the m/r as just a modem so we could use a router of our choice. They then cripple the m/r by locking you out of most settings that actually do anything, if you want to set up port forwarding, you have to call them, if you want to disable wifi, call, want to disable upnp, call, etc. I finally managed to reset the m/r to factory default(which is still semi-crippled with the Charter firmware) but if you have the Charter admin login info(google is a magical thing) you can at least make some changes that were unavailable before. I got things setup the way I want, with everything working with both LAN and WAN. But in the process one of the cameras got stuck with an ip that the m/r didn't like once reset, it refused to pick it up through the switch, even the NVR refused to see it when it was plugged directly into it. I did finally manage to reset it(would have been nice if the camera just had a damn reset button) by plugging the cam straight into the m/r, powering it with a universal adjustable ac adapter I had laying around, then using configtool to go in and reset the dhcp setting. If there were any other cable providers I could use I would switch in a heartbeat, Charter is very frustrating, at least their business division is. We have Comcast at home(who were more than happy to put the m/r they supplied us into bridge mode so we could use our own router).

Thanks! I love it when things are actually as easy as they should be.

I'm not sure I'm putting this in the right sub-forum, so feel free to move it if it's belongs elsewhere. First my specs and layout. Q-See 16 Channel POE NVR w/ 3MP bullet cams(9 total, 4 in use at this time) Q-see NVR - QC8116 Cameras - QCN8023B POE Switch - Eagle Eye 9 port 10/100, 8POE ports, 1 uplink(Model SW09i) Netgear modem/router combo provided by cable company(Charter Business), I'm not at the shop at the moment so I'm not sure the exact model#. I have the NVR connected to the router/modem. Two cams directly connected to NVR's poe ports and 2 cams connected to the poe switch, then the poe switch connected to the router. All cameras are working fine, remote viewing is all good. Basically, as of right now, everything is working perfect. So, being human, I'm feeling the need to mess with it. I'm only using a switch because the building is sort of separated into 2 sides and the nvr and router are located at the far end of one side, so instead of running 4 or 5 long lengths of cat6(solid copper core, UTP, riser rated, 23AWG) to each camera on the far side, I just ran one line to the poe switch which I wall mounted about mid building, have 2 cams connected to it right now. Longest run from a cam to switch is about 50'. Straight line between router and switch is about 75', but with the up and down and through one wall, it's about a 110' run of cable. All runs on the system are the cat6 listed above, even the 10' Ethernet from nvr to router. Like I said, everything is running fine now, but I'm a "what if" type of person, so before it becomes an issue, I want to give the nvr a static ip. Power outages up here are pretty frequent and I don't want to lose my remote viewing ability. I'm confident in my ability to deal with the NVR static ip set up with out much issue. My question is this... Do I need to assign static ip's to the cams connected through the switch in order for the nvr to automatically reconnect to them after an outage? If yes, I'm assuming I would first get the nvr static ip set up, then assign the switch cams their static ip's through the router interface and then configure them in the nvr, is that correct? If I'm missing anything or you have some advise to make things go smoother, please enlighten me. I'd rather admit I don't know and have someone teach me than try to figure it out myself and end up frustrated with a fubared system. Especially since when I get extremely frustrated and don't walk away soon enough my go to tool is the biggest hammer I can find, and there is a no shortage of really, really big hammers at the shop. Thanks in advance for any help.

Pretty sure you mean NTSC, not NTSB(National Transportation Safety Board).

I'm too new to post links but if you go to costco.com, look up item #916876, that system uses the QCN8012b, then go to the bottom of the page it has the manual for your camera as a pdf. It's pretty extensive, should be able to find what you need in there. Good luck.

Hi, First I want to say thanks for all the great info here. We've been thinking about putting up some sort of system for quite a while and finally decided to pull the trigger recently. We didn't need a mega-system, just a few cameras in key places to see how our tools and equipment keep managing to walk out the door by themselves. We ended up buying a system from Costco. I know, low end, but also low cost, especially with the sale they were having, which was a huge factor for us being a small shop. But after reading and rereading, and then more reading, and since I believe in thorough research, even more reading, I think I did ok. I can't seem to post links, but if you go to Costco.com and look at item #846996, you can see what I got. Paid a little over $1000 after sale price and coupon code I found. While we don't really need 9 cameras, I figured it couldn't hurt to have a few spares in case we wanted to add more or some die. I did hook everything up asap just to test and get a feel for the software and just because it was fun. I don't really trust the pre-made cat5e that came with it, so I'm going to run my own cat6(23AWG solid UTP). Since I don't have to worry about tight spots or acute angles(the shop is mostly wide open), the stiffness shouldn't be an issue. Anyways, I really want to thank everyone here for sharing their knowledge, it made it so much easier to know what to look for and what to avoid, not to mention all the tips and tricks I've already read that will hopefully make the install go smoothly.