WRS_Mark

Just out of curiosity, does everyone who is supplying this Dahua equipment disclose to the customer that factory tech support goes on holidays one month out of the year?

Noticed this suspicious individual wandering around on my street the other day: Avigilon 3MP IR Bullet. Only complaint is the snow creates too much glare for the camera to properly compensate and illuminate my truck. Will look better when the grass appears. Love the adaptive IR and the way it keeps illumination to a minimum until motion is detected.

Exposure is 1/30s and max gain is 10db. Truth be told, I haven't had the time to really tune the camera for the best night time shot possible. I just made an arbitrary decision, based on experience on other sites with the H3 gen cameras, to go with that number.

3MP Avigilon WDR Dome in -22c weather. Luminance is from a street light ~30' south of the pickup.

I rather like "dunny camera" instead. Dunny being Aussie slang for outhouse. Call it the "Sh****r Cam"

I know this is an indoor setting with the sun shining in through the door window, but the same rings true if it is someone walking up in front of headlights in an outdoor setting.

Wireless, as a rule, is always the last resort. I do a lot of wireless and it takes far more planning and troubleshooting to get it done, rather than just to drill a few holes, run some conduit and fish lines up walls. A little over a year ago, I had a customer who insisted I mount up wireless cameras at his business because he didn't want to see those "ugly" Cat5 cables. I went over, did a spectrum analysis and found close to 70 wireless AP's with my net book alone (wireless B & G). The system got hard wired. You may get lucky once in a while in urban areas, but be prepared for phone calls when connectivity is lost due to someone setting up another AP on the same channel.

That was my first thought when I read the post, but it's more fun watching kids dig a 500' trench.

You wouldn't believe how many people use it. It's crazy. PITA to pull through and it loves to bend.

Thanks tweak'e. I'll try it your way next time. What I ended up doing was installing it back in the DVR the drive came out of and just transferred the files I needed to flash. Your way makes sense, however, and I will definately try it that way next time (with antivirus off).

Just wondering if anyone has successfully attempted doing a Hard Drive backup using AverMedia's USB Playback Console? I installed the drive in my PC, assigned a drive letter to it, but when I open the Playback Console then try to find the drive using the "Open File" selection, nothing can be located under "Disc Select". Tried it on both a Win 7 box and XP with no luck. Any ideas?

I know what you mean. This one monster who I do the occasional install for always supplies me with that stuff. I hate it! I think he just does it because A) He gets it cheap and B) He likes to see me angry. For RG6 Siamese, I like to use these guys:http://www.cctvwholesalers.com/product_p/spool-rg6%201000.htm They aren't cheap, but their cable is top notch (far better than that flotsam I get from the aforementioned individual).

Here's the problem with buying no name hardware off of consumer sites: Let's say you save $1,300.00 on a $2,500.00 system. That sounds pretty good. But then something happens and that $25,000.00 whateverthehellitisthatyou'retryingtokeepaneyeon is jacked and your playback/video quality/whatever shows unusable garbage or nothing at all... How far ahead are you?

By the time I pay for shipping, I'm not so far ahead of you either. I have found cheaper deals than what I pay, but the cable I buy is pretty high quality. The way I look at it is if I have to go back and rewire everything even once, that $0.10 -$0.15/ft savings isn't going to mean a whole heck of a lot.

It does. I always tell the customer to call me if they are not happy. But I know the business and where the price needs to be, roughly, that is. So if someone comes in 25-50% less, I know I am going to get that call when something goes down and the recorded video looks like an '80's video game as far as picture quality goes. And that is when the customer unfortunately pays twice.