Sawbones

$50 per camera. Does that also apply to their Linux version, or that strictly a windows price?

In terms of pure bang-for-your-buck, you're probably looking at Luxriot, or Milestone Xprotect Essential. They roughly work out to 40-50$ per channel (though the 16-channel Luxriot is a significant bargain at about $5-600). It will be interesting to see what Exacqvision asks for their new licensing plan. I don't know too many people who are up for a $200/channel VMS, no matter how nice the software might be. Seems to me that's strictly for enterprise. Unfortunately, when it comes to performance-oriented residential systems, there's quite a gap between the usual analog system-in-a-box Qsee/Lorex/etc stuff, and an IP system with a $200-per-channel enterprise VMS suite. Luxriot and Milestone fit into that gap, but it would be nice to have a few more players.

See "Start VMS" at https://www.exacq.com/blog/2011/04/13/report-from-isc-west-2011/ Best, Christopher Exactly what I was looking for... thanks! ************ Edit ************ That might be worth it just for the mobile client. I'm using IPcam Viewer under Android right now... and it's pretty good... but it might be nice to have an enterprise-grade mobile client.

Axis Q7404 is $1099 the Axis 241Q is $799 new. I have a 241Q that has less then one hour on it that I will let go for $500 if your interested. There you have it... TWG just saved you $500, and that's not an unreasonable price for a practically-new encoder. You also get to avoid Ebay (I've dealt with TWG several times through here, and he's never failed to deliver). I'd be interested in hearing more about the new Exacq licensing and features... got a link?

Somebody already mentioned it, but the Axis 241Q servers are pretty good for putting analog cams on your network... 4-ports, and practically every software suite out there recognizes it. They go used on Ebay for about 400-450 bones, all day long. One of our members here was selling a few of those a couple of months ago in that same price range (think they all sold).

I know .. and a cop as well ..!! Hey! That was all a big misunderstanding... she swore she was 18 when we was at the bar...

Is that a NewEgg box?

I agree... the quality of those pictures was pretty bad. Standard low-res IR bullets?

Yep. At least you'd have DNA, and a blood trail to follow

The author of this thread needs to read the above post again. OP: I applaud your willingness to get involved, but you may not fully appreciate the kind of people you're dealing with here... people have been killed for less than what you're planning. I'd involve the police... and be especially careful if you have a family. I don't necessarily mind risking my own life (done it many times, in fact), but my family is another matter. If these drug dealers are the typical scum that does this kind of business, they'll have no qualms about targeting/retaliating against your wife/kids while you're at work.

Do you guys have machetes there, for weeding? If so, walk around your yard with it, do the odd fake weed, and then chap a tree or two, just look crazy enough to scare them away. If they were 18 I would say walk up the biggest meanest one of the lot and knock their clock off. Hey Rory, what's with the new avatar? That blinking light is pretty distracting

We had a rash of those one summer... I caught a perfect face-shot of one of the perps as he turned to run away from ringing my door. I recognized him... he lives around the other side of the block. He only did it once, so I let it go... if he'd made a habit of it, I would have had a rather pointed chat with his father... then with the lad himself if the "dad conference" didn't remedy matters.

That's going to be an absolutely ludicrous zoom lens.

I have some of the Ubiquiti gear deployed, and it's been quite solid so far. Their price-to-performance ratio is hard to beat.

Did that not make sense to anybody else?

Ghetto-fabulous is still fabulous!

That doesn't look like any standard pendant dome I've ever seen.

I would use UTP, rather than STP (shielded). Shielded is more expensive, and probably unnecessary, unless you're running it near a bunch of fluorescents or something that generates a lot of EMI. In the average house, you should be good with UTP. Also, I've used Cat5E connectors on Cat6 cable. It's a tighter fit than Cat5E, but you just need a little more force to get the cable end inside the RJ45 connector. I crimp them as usual (with a Paladin tool), and haven't had one fail yet.

Looks like some mighty old hardware.

I think you can make your point without bringing the Nazis into it. This thread has now officially been Godwin'd.

Lian Li are fantastic cases. I've owned a few of them (including one with built-in water-cooling), and they never fail to impress. Pricey, but absolutely top-notch.

Completely agree... unless the cameras require high-bandwidth, like some of the megapixel cams. If you put eight Acti megapixel cams on a 100-megabit network, you're going to eat up a lot of pipe. On the other hand, eight Mobotix cameras wouldn't eat up nearly as much of your network capacity (they're much thriftier about the bandwidth they require). Eight analog cameras on two Axis 241Q servers wouldnt even begin to push a 100-megabit network, unless it were already maxed-out.

I am with you Rory I do the same on my own comp have lots of tools to catch viruses,spyware and so on .... but technically he is right He is right. I don't know a single computer-security geek who advises a person to constantly operate with root privileges (or administrator in windows-space). In defense of the users who do so with Windows, it's rather a pain to constantly have to user-switch or log back in as Admin to do tasks... so I can understand why people do it. Hell... I've done it myself. Too bad windows XP doesn't do SUDO.

Most Jewelry stores go absolutly hog-wild with lights... including bright halogens on the display cases to make the stones sparkle... so I'm quite sure it's not a problem of ENOUGH light. I agree with the other posters... pics would be helpful.

Which again shows that you are not well versed in using Windows, or ever used it at all? Small example, all the software on my website is made for Windows, and its FREE! In fact, since its not open source some clown cant find a security exploit as easy as with all the open source rubbish. I don't know about the security-through-obscurity argument... and the flip side with closed source is that you have to wait for the author/developer to issue service-packs and bugfixes... no chance of patching it yourself without the source code. 's Advocate hat>