SectorSecurity

This is a common statement I hear from my customers, we have a crap system and want to go a little better. This is when I usually suggest upgrading to a more superior system which will meet their needs and cost slightly more instead of just upgrading slightly. I am usually shot down and end up doing the slight upgrade. 9 times out of 10 I am back within 6 months to a year replacing the system with what was originally suggested by me. I would say if money is an issue start piecing together a much better system. As for slightly better what are you looking to spend? There is a lot on the market that is slightly better then Q-See, but this depends on what you have access to. Give me a budget and I will throw some names around.

I have used the Ganz DVR's in the past, they are not the best but they are good if you are on a budget and looking for a lot of channels for a low cost. I would say check out Digimerge, they have a great line of DVR's. I do have to agree, pick each component when you get a bundle you become limited by what came in the bundle, this is the problem I see when someone calls me to install a system they already bought at a big box store, they are disappointed to find out all the cameras are the same and usually limited in there ability and usually end up buying new cameras. If you have the money I would say go the IP camera route, you could use a computer as the NVR.

Can you not just move the window to the second monitor like you would any other open program you want on your second monitor? If this is not the case you may need some third party software which would allow you to specify which monitor the program runs on.

I should have mentioned however the latency time on the packets will be really high, and the upload speed likely very low, probably in around 64kb which means you will have a very hard time viewing any streaming video. When you make your inquiries be sure to inquire about the uplink speed and try to get one as fast as possible as this will be a big factor in determining the quality of the video stream.

Yes you can get satellite uplinks which are for civilian use. Many people living out in the country use satellite links to get their internet. I don't know where you are so I cant suggest any companies but I would suggest calling some of your internet service providers in your area and see if any offer internet via satellite links.

I have never seen this in all my years working with computers and CCTV equipment, would have been cool to see a picture.

I wouldn't bother, you want see any improvement, and if you decide to go IP you can always use a media converter and go IP over coax.

I think what you mean is cable length max is 100M or about 328FT. I have seen ethernet streched out to close to 500FT and still work, you have to remember the ethernet standard was developed a long time ago and since then both cabling and devices have gotten better. I don't see why Gigabit speeds would be a problem over 10/100 speeds, I am not aware of any further limitations when using gigabit, beyond the fact CAT5e does not support gigabit speeds.

Chances are the system you are using does not support D1 at a full 30FPS, this means you have 2 options, select a lower frame rate or go with a lower resolution such as CIF. As for connecting the camera to a TV you need to get a BNC to RCA converter then just plug it into the yellow AV jack on the TV.

This is how that conversation would go with most of my customers: Me: I have found the problem and put a temporary fix in place to keep you up and running and will be back to rerun the cable when I can fit you in. Customer: is it working like it was before? Me: Yes the repair will keep it working until the cable can be replaced. Customer: We don't want to spend anymore, just leave the repair and we will call you if we start to have problems again.

Not sure if you are willing to consider an IP camera solution but this is what Axis has to offer: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_p1214e/ Even has edge storage.

Be sure to make your customers aware that a UPS is meant to give you a short period of time on battery power, this is usually used to either power down the equipment safely or provide enough time for diesel generators to kick in. A UPS isn't meant to take you through an entire blackout period. If this is what they are looking for they were need a generator of some kind combined with the UPS.

I can buy 10 straight from China and remove the middle man Let me know how these work and I may consider it, I get a lot of request for people wanting simple motion only and install would be a breeze.

MindTwist is right, it looks like you have the type of router where you specify an IP address and setup a profile for it but just make sure you have correctly set your router to forward the ports to your DVR. I would check your gateway usually by default routers are something like 192.168.1.0 or 192.168.1.1 but there is no reason it cant be .254 it will not hurt anything. Just remember if you want to access it without creating a socket (ip address:portnumber) change the http port to port 80, but only do this if you never plan to host a web server on your network as only 1 system can use port 80. Let us know if you get it.

Your post would seem to imply that you were able to reset an admin password on a computer by removing the cmos battery, this is the name for the battery you are removing. This would not be true as the password would be written to the hard disk which is non-volatile memory and would not lose data during power outages. In a computer the cmos battery provides enough power to keep the clock going. You could try reloading the firmware but this might require you to login first.

They most likely have a dynamic external IP address, and this has most likely changed, you need to connect to their network and visit a site such as whats my ip and this will give you the external IP address. Then I would suggest you look into a DDNS service, this will keep track of the changing external IP address and map it to a domain name such as www.mydvr.com so all you would have to type is www.mydvr.com and not an IP address. And as a sidenote the IP address:Port is what we call a socket. Just a bit of networking info there.

Now go to an external internet source such as your local McDonals and connect to their wifi, once connected enter xxx.xxx.55.134:8080 dont know what the first two octets of your external IP are. If you just enter xxx.xxx.55.134 you will get a timeout unless you change your DVR settings in the http port to run on port 80 then you can simply enter xxx.xxx.55.134. You should also get a DDNS account as your external IP is likely to be dynamic and will change

there is no problem with using cat5 from IP camera to network point why do you need gigabyte I guess you are correct, but on the backbone link between switch and NVR you are best to have gigabit lan and CAT6.

Hate to revive old threads but, I think this forum is still great, even if it represents a shift in the industry to lower end systems. I don't like this shift personally, but I will install a Q-See system for a customer just the same as I would a Digital Watchdog system. As long as I get paid at the end I don't care. I have to say what I do hate is the hostility some members bring when they don't get the answer they want, or get it in the time they want. As has been stated many of us do this as a living and when we get home we don't always feel like typing away answers to questions, specially when we usually get paid to answer these questions or do this work for our customers.

Should have mentioned if you want to due away with the DVR just get an IP cam with edge recording to an SD card.

In that price range about all you are going to get is cheap stuff rebranded out of china. Chances are the units are going to be hit and miss with quality. This is about what I would expect when dealing with ebay. I don't really deal with low end units, however I would suggest maybe a Q-See or Night-Owl system, you can usually find them pretty cheap. As for the system crashing I wouldn't go as far as to say any unit with a reset has this problem. It is likely due to badly coded software in use on the DVR. Again this is a prime example of you will get what you pay for, and if all you want to pay is about 80$ then you will have to live with these minor defects.

I will look up who I went with for insruance, I believe it was actually underwritten by a marine insurance company. I would for sure write something into your contract surrounding failure to perform. Not only can this help protect you it can help keep you from having customers that expect their system to work for a lifetime without error.

I would not recommend letting someone on the internet remote into your computer, this is just a bad idea in general. Pay someone to finish the setup of your DVR, it should only cost about 50$. Where are you located?

The router will facilitate the connection between the cameras and the NVR

Digimerge software was very easy to use, and there CMS software was awesome in my opinion, only thing to watch out for is the enter button is not in the center of the arrow keys on their remote its on the top left. Let me know how you like it.