shinyboat

I have a Lorex LDH818 from Costco purchased in February. It came with a LHV1000 DVR and 8 infared 720P BNC cameras. I installed everything and it worked (less all the quirks of a complex system) for a month or so without issues when one day all the images went out. I unplugged the cameras power supply and replugged it and it got them up and working. It happened again so I reset. Then it turned into an every other week activity or less upon which I couldn't get the image to work. Sometimes I would have to unplug and replug the dvr and cameras to get everything to reset. The DVR power supply and the cameras are both 12V one at 2amps and the other 2.5 amps. The cameras pull up to 180ma and I have 6 cameras installed so this seemed fine. I swapped the power supplies and immediately the cameras started working...and the DVR worked just fine on the power supply under question. This worked well for a few weeks until the cameras went out again. I did the routine and got it working again. Now its happening more frequently again. Tonight I was playing with another incident and noticed I got them to come back on when it everything was fully plugged in but I slowly disconnected the power supply to cameras connection at 1/3 undone and bam they came on. I pushed it back together and it went off. I tried again and it stayed off. This was weird. I have also tried running on a different circuit in the house but that didnt seem to be any better. Times it went out 6/20 5:49AM (full daylight) I have no idea what is going on. I could see this being one of a few issues: 1. one or more cameras pulls too much and does something to the power supply. The problem with this statement is that the red infareds come on even when the images go out. 2. there is a problem with the dvr. 3. power supplies are insufficient. 4. something other wild event. I've called Lorex for help twice and they weren't any help. Any ideas?

The power cables have the one piece dc connectors with inner and outer rings. I've got a rollaway toolbox and great at mechanical stuff but I'm not much of an electrician and I can't figure out how to separate the + and - to get a current reading. Do you have any good ideas how I might do that or possible measure it in another fashion?