PoorOwner

I used a 3/4" bit to drill through the siding of the house.. it's was big but required to fit the siamese + BNC. Now I was wondering if anyone has a favorite way to seal it back up? spray foam? foam rod + caulk? I do want to be able to remove it incase I need to change the camera.. (the BNC connection I shoved inside the attic).

Is this any good? (for the price?) It sure beats the 1/4" CCD "kit" camera that I have. http://cgi.ebay.com/1-3-SONY-540-LINE-COLOR-CCD-IR-CCTV-OUTDOOR-CAMERA_W0QQitemZ140302909285 What I don't know is if it turns black and white at night, how do you tell?

If I add a microphone to the cameras monitoring the entry door and driveway of my own home, is it breaking any regulation or laws?

I am using a DVR system with bullet cameras and it seems the cameras have the ability to adjust brightness on it's own. Each time it does I get a false motion detect.. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, maybe a cable problem? or is it just caught between the auto adjust sometimes. Another cause would be a cloudy day with the sun shine going on and off. I pulled back the shield for the camera since it is under a eave anyway seemed to help reduce / stabilize the auto adjusting. Thanks for any tips you may have..

Also, when adding the 12V plug to the end of the cable.. do you just use the soldering type like radio shack sells? Or do you get one with pigtail and solder the wires? Are there better options?

That's great, thanks for your help.. got another question though do you know how can the camera says 420TVL but transmit effective 640x480 pixels... that's just the pixels and not what the camera actually can see, it can only sense 420 lines (TVL) right? So I am missing out on at least 60 lines. Are pixel / resolution information being output by the camera, and the DVR will just take whatever it can from this image? whether it be 352x240, 704x240 etc from the camera. The DVR although will record 640x480, not sure they didn't just make it D1.. so until I get a 480TVL camera this will not be fully high res right? Would a 480TVL be better than 420TVL, by having 14% more lines and roughly 14% more claraity?

Thanks VST_Man, do you know what kind of quality am I missing when using the plug and play cable? Also even if I get the RG59, the camera has a 4 foot lead built in would this be the bottleneck as far as picture quality goes? I am leaning a bit towards running the RG59, because the length is customized when shorter than 50' and the quality would be even better just by doing that. You said about getting the stuff from the same source, I found this "datashark" brand at home depot, the compression tool was $20 and they have a BNC connector $2 each. I needed to wire some Coax for my TV anyway later so this will be good "investment". It's a economy compression tool not those $60+ ones, is that going to matter for me to do about a dozen or 2 dozen connections around the house? Do you know the difference between the expensive version vs regular version? Then I found siamese cable 500' on ebay which says 95% copper braid and copper core, this sounds like a good buy from my search here we want as much copper as possible for this application.

I am installing a 4 Ch DVR capable of recording 640x480, comes with 420TVL cameras but it comes with standard cheap cable, 28AWG, 60 ft, power and video in one cable. I was wondering if I am going to get much better quality for this length of cable if I replace it with siamese cable of RG59+18/2 AWG power. Is it worth the effort AND expense (I have no BNC crimping tool) 60 ft looks to be adequate for all camera locations. Thanks in advance

Thanks who sells the Geovision card locally?

I would like to get a capture card and just 1 camera to monitor my living room and my cats while I am gone, would like to log in and view via a web browser. Using my PC, 2.7 Ghz 512MB RAM, DSL connection. I do not have a static IP address, but computer will be on constantly. How to find a consistent address for my computer from the internet? Can anyone recommend a capture card that is off the shelf and what software to use? (complication: need to be a local brick and mortar store, as I am leaving in 1 week). 2nd camera would be an added bonus, if the hardware card supports it. Thanks

Ok. I could provide a picture later but the vent is one section of the wood that run horizontally along the eave, looks like a 2x4. Instead of the vent then maybe I will just drill through the wood? Good call on orgainizing the camera cables. I don't know if I need to spend extra on a box, my house is small enough (1000 ft 2 bedrooms) and single level probably if all the cables run to the closet it is not a big deal. BTW. if I want to buy say a camera from cctvimports.com, it says BNC/RCA? Do I just get however many extension/connection length that I need? Or do you guys crimp your own cables? I do not think the cameras come with cables.

Thanks, do you just drill through the wall and then use a grommet of some sort? My exterior walls are mostly stucco. I notice cable guys usually just drill a hole straight into the room, but mostly seen on wood sidings I have no idea if it apply to stucco.

Does it makes most sense to mount camera somewhere under the eave and run the cable into any vents along the eaves. They are going directly into the attic I believe. Then run the cables to a centralized location from there. The vent grill would need to be cut in order to fit the camera plug through it.

I am interested to setup a few cameras around my property, driveway, front door, front yard, backyard patio. Not all will areas will be lit except the driveway which will have motion sensor lights. Criteria: I figured 5 cameras total and maybe some could be I/R or B/W, or all the same model. I do think the day time security is more of an issue as most folks in the neighborhood went to work. I think wide angle would be useful as well. Maybe a more subtle style camera as I do not want to place to look like alcatraz. The budget would be $500, or within $100 each camera, there was a site I saw before you have to buy 5 minimum I think but I forgot the link.

My house is on a corner lot. One side is Garage and driveway and the other side, street side, is long enough to park a few cars. most of my doors and windows also facing this side. My front yard lawn spans between the sidewalk and the house. So I have my car parked on the side of my house.. technically you could say it is street in front of my house. I had my car window smashed in broad day light. Now I am looking into installing multiple cameras. Initially I only wanted cameras to monitor driveway and front door entrance, now I am also thinking of one to look at this sidewalk. Basically to look at the cars parked there. I want to know if there are any legal issues with this? I would consider it to monitor my front yard activity too I have a few valuable trees planted there also.