Soundy

A Pelco in the $400-$600 range?? Last time I dealt with a Pelco DVR, it was a DX8100, and if memory serves, it ran around $5000.

A number of 12VDC power cans include a facility for using and charging an internal 12V gel-cell battery (although they're more likely sold as being for access controls, like this one: http://www.enforcer.com.tw/EnforcerVideo/MODEL1_2.htm)

Nice top... Should send her picture in to the papers. Little public humiliation will do wonders to shut down copycat offenders.

3xLogic makes a "micro" version of their Vigil systems as well: http://www.3xlogic.com/prod/983/mvr-series-micro-video-recorder

Yeah, if you're not viewing regularly, then something with onboard storage might be a good option... or perhaps a small DVR designed for mobile, so it will run off 12V and not require a lot of power. What exactly is this customer watching for? What sort of environment? Something that can record on motion and be fine-tuned for triggered recording, possibly something with built-in analytics, could greatly reduce the storage space needed, so you could potentially get days or weeks out of a flash-memory card. I just did a search on "portable" and "solar" and got some threads that should be useful for you: search.php?keywords=portable+solar&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search You might see if a small generator on the site would be an option as well...

"PoE" or "Power over Ethernet" is generally described by the standard IEEE 802.3af; if a device states that it supports 802.3af, then it should work with any 802.3af source, be it a switch or injector. In theory, if it states PoE, that SHOULD refer to 802.3af as well (although some cheaper off-shore manufacturers may fudge this a bit). The other requirements, I don't know... some networks storage devices include NVR functionality and will support a number of cameras, whether those cameras specifically support writing to a network drive or not.

Welcome aboard! I'm you and survtech will have lots to talk about, he deals largely with casino systems. As far a labeler, I'd love to have a good one to work with, but the boss doesn't believe it's worth the investment. I've played a bit with the Rhino systems and they seem to work really well... they do have heat-shrink tube labels that would be ideal for this purpose. http://www.rhinolabeling.com/

This is your problem: *.255 addresses are reserved for broadcast packets and should never be used for a device address. Also, your IP must match the subnet used by the rest of your network. If your network is using 192.168.1.* addresses, for example (default for Linksys, Belkin, and several other brands of routers), then your DVR must have a 192.168.1.* address range as well. *.0 is also generally not used, and *.1 is typically used for a subnet's gateway. That leaves you numbers from 2 to 254. You also have to ensure you don't use an IP that's already in use on your network. The best bet is to enable DHCP, if the machine supports it, and let your router provide it with a valid IP. Forget about the MAC address; in this case, it's not relevant.

Geovision's page states specifically that it supports PoE: http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/Prod_GVIPCAMVD120D.asp Most domes - including this one - can be mounted directly to a wall, or hung from the wall with a pendant mount.

None will do them within a single window - they'll run each remote as a separate instance on the desktop. You can move them around, stretch them, shrink them, whatever you can do with any other windows on the desktop.

This has actually been discussed here regularly - there are several threads with good information. You can actually do WLAN with the proper hardware - purpose-build wireless systems with high-gain directional antennas. The catch is that it does have to be line-of-sight between the camera location and the DVR location (although the antennas or access points don't necessarily have to be directly beside the camera or DVR), but you can get systems that will cover several kilometers. Ubiquiti is popular for these types of installations (http://www.ubnt.com/). There are also GSM/3G/HSPA interfaces that let you stream a camera over wireless networks, but the data will add up fast and could get very expensive, especially if he's watching it a lot. Solar-charged battery power systems are not uncommon either - there are others here with plenty of experience, and again, several other threads covering the topic.

Remote Administrator and TeamViewer support "address books" of a sort... VNC and Remote Desktop will both let you save connections (with relevant info like screen size, color depth, etc.) as links. If you're planning to watch video through this method, I would suggest using UltraVNC (www.uvnc.com) along with its "Monitor Driver" feature (there's an option to download and install it during installation).

You could probably do that as well, but that will ONLY let you view the remote machines, not control them... and again, the screens will be scaled down, since analog video supports a maximum of 704x480 pixels (imagine running each computer in 640x480 VGA mode). Most remote apps will let you either create an "address book" of your other systems, or create desktop links for them, so you don't have to type in the address every time... and will let you open a separate instance for each remote system, so you could have them all tiled or cascaded in their own windows on your desktop.

I suspect the problem is more with your cameras than with the card or the PSU. The first issue is more common with software-compression systems, but not uncommon with hardware DSP either - your cameras switch to B&W at night, but the card is still processing the picture as a color signal; the colored spots are the compression artifacts of that processing. The more noise there is in the signal, the worse they get. The lines COULD be poorly-filtered power, especially since cheaper cameras won't have any kind of power filtering of their own, but they could also be caused by ground loops. Without more information, it's hard to pinpoint the issue - what make and model are the cameras? How are they connected?

Wow, reading completely pwns these guys. Check this: Buddy of mine had a dead GV DVR out of a customer's site... he posted the card on eBay to sell it off (had no need of it)... GV flagged it as counterfeit (it IS legit!) and had the ad pulled and the account suspended. So he emailed them the serial number and a photo of the card with a request to straighten the matter out... their response: Umm... what? Does anyone at GV comprehend English?

True, but it can be used with many third party single cam surveillance packages on the market. It's definately not in GV's range, but it is a dvr solution that doesn't get pirated. Easy: there's no profit in it. The cards are cheap, the software is limited, and next to nobody actually uses it for this purpose. It's not worth the effort.

I agree, there really isn't enough information provided. OP, Sean asked for a photo of the label, not a listing of what's on it. Ayalas asked for a photo of the inside of the camera to help identify it. People are willing to help you, but you have to help us by providing the information we ask for - all we see of the camera so far is a big white housing, and that tells us absolutely nothing.

I've seen 32-way (well, 36 - 6x6 matrix) on a Vigil system and even that is getting close to being too small per-camera.

I have three All-in-Wonder cards... it doesn't really count as a "DVR" card (by our definition of "DVR", relative to this forum), because it's not designed for surveillance use. The bundled PVR software is intended to record TV shows and the like; it's not designed for surveillance-type recording, nor does it have most the "required" features or functions.

Well then the "what size monitor" question becomes moot... the question then is, how many monitors?

That's insane, the images would be tiny. Keep in mind that even the biggest monitor will still have limited resolution (1080p is still only 1920x1080), so you'll still have limited res per-picture, they'll just all be really big and blocky. I mean, let's do the math: a 12x12 grid would be 144 separate images... each one could be a maximum of 160x90 pixels, if divided evenly across a single entire monitor. You'd need a multiple-monitor setup for this to be viable.

Shouldn't be an issue. One of the biggest limitations of your cheap cameras in this situation is probably the lack of auto-iris lens; with AI, the camera has a lot more latitude in adjusting to varying light levels. Of course, proper position is a big part of it as well - cameras facing the glass will have all sorts of backlight issues and unless you want to sit and change the camera settings twice a day, you're not going to handle it without a very expensive camera (like the Panasonic SuperDynamic models - retailing at around $800-$1000 each). Instead, putting the cameras above the window looking in will not just avoid backlighting problems, it will allow their picture to benefit from any light coming in the window. Realistically, most of the time, these camera settings are something you'll adjust MAYBE two times after initial setup... after that, you'll probably never find the need to touch them again. Do the initial setup under the most extreme conditions you expect, let them run a couple days, look back at the recordings, see how it handles things... and if necessary, go up and adjust them once. Of course, you could also go with IP cameras, which can be adjusted through their web interface... but that will cost a lot more too.

It's not usually the fault of the camera so much as the recorder - along with cheap cameras, typically go cheap recorders that record at far lower resolution than your pocket camcorder. Saving storage space is usually a consideration as well, so lower framerates and higher levels of compression are also common, whereas camcorders, regardless of the format used, typically run at the highest level of quality settings possible without worrying about the storage space (as an example, one hour of MiniDV video, at "SP" quality, takes about 25GB for space, while one hour of surveillance video can take as little as 100MB).

There really should be little adjustment necessary... rarely anything that can't be done during initial installation. What do you expect to have to do?

It's possible, but you'll need something for each computer that will convert the VGA output to composite video. Your screen will be small and probably mostly unreadable at that point. What are you trying to accomplish with this, exactly? A remote-desktop solution, like RAdmin, VNC, TeamViewer, GoToMyPC, or even Windows Remote Desktop is generally a preferable way to view a remote computer.