Soundy

See if the cameras have a connector labeled "serial", "RS-232", "RS-485", or maybe RX+ and RX-. If so, you can control them via the serial port(s) on your DVR, no special card necessary. The cameras will very likely support Pelco P and/or Pelco D protocols, in addition to what other manufacturer-specific protocols they may have.

You typically need a PTZ (pan tilt zoom) type camera if you want to remotely alter the zoom and focus of the lens. Auto-iris means the camera can automatically adjust the iris opening of the lens depending on the brightness of what it's viewing, but that's all. I've used a couple cheapie cameras that have a built-in lens with remote-controllable zoom and focus controls, but they just use relay inputs to control them, rather than any standard PTZ control protocols.

Niguel, I don't think that manual Scorpion is providing is the proper one for your DVR. I googled "nubix 16 ch mpeg4 dvr" and came up with several pictures, many of which look very different from the unit in Scorpion's link. This site lists FOUR different 16-channel MPEG4 DVRs under the Nubix name: http://www.stardvr.com/NUBIXSERIES.html. I found another hit here that actually lists it under the Eclipse name, and it also looks very different from the one in Scorpion's link: http://www.cctvoutlet.com/SPEC%20SHEETS/nubix16_07.pdf We really need more details on the exact DVR you have - a "part number", or model sub-identifier perhaps (that first link shows a 16, 16LT, 16LD and 16DX variations)... even a photo of your DVR. Or look at the photos in the first link and see if it looks like any of those.

I was looking at that, plus the OP's link to the panel documentation, when I made my original post in this thread. Based on those two documents, pins 13 and 25 of the DB25 connect to an input zone on the panel - if one was to use zone 7, that would be terminals 8 and 10. Which is exactly what I said before, and what you've said as well. If that doesn't work, then that is probably the wrong manual. The OP refers to "R1, R1, R2, R2, etc." outputs on the back panel, which don't appear in that manual.

In a room that small, I doubt you'd notice a significant difference between the 24 or 36.

Do you really need to see things in the dark in this small room? If not, don't bother with the IRs. You'd probably get better results anyway with a normal camera by adding a motion detector switch to the room lighting. Your other question then becomes whether the dome or lipstick style suits your aesthetic needs better.

I use an Adaptec GameBridgeTV USB adapter to capture video and audio into my laptop... cost me about $30. Works great. But Rory has the best idea - a basic DVR card, and most included software will include its own webserver support, so you just stream the video straight from the local computer. Put together a cheap $300 PC to put it in and upgrade the guy to all-digital recording already.

Just FYI, your DVR's memory (ie. RAM) has no bearing on it. Rather than constant recording, consider motion-triggered recording. Most systems will pre-buffer and post-record so you don't miss the few seconds surrounding the event. Most allow you to set the sensitivity of the motion detection so you don't miss smaller events. The ability to NOT record when there's nothing happening will usually save you TONS of space. Consider too, that 30fps is almost NEVER necessary. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference at even 15fps, and 7.5-10fps will still give you reasonably smooth motion. At 7.5fps, you've just reduced your storage needs to 25% of that for 30fps (or quadrupled your retention time, depending on how you look at it).

Well, that depends on your ISP... with mine (Shaw Cable), if I change the MAC address of my router or a directly-attached computer, I then have to cycle the power on my cable modem for it to pick up the new MAC and allow it access. That can take two or three minutes in itself - not a big deal for a one-time thing, but if you're having to do it every few minutes of war-dialing, it could really slow you down. Our local telco's DSL service is even tougher - a new MAC address on the system has to be registered with their back-end. You plug in a new router or computer to your DSL modem, it gets a 10.* address on their internal network; you then log in to the customer-service page that's accessible from there and register the MAC under your account. Most are limited to something like 5 MACs as well, so after a little while you have to start deleting the old ones if you want to add new ones. Changing the MAC is a handy idea for getting around IP bans on gaming servers and stuff, but I suspect with most broadband providers, not all that efficient for brute-force hacking. It would have to be someone you REALLY REALLY want to hack...

I really don't deal with standalone systems, so I can't help you there... the only time we've used them is for extreme-low-budget, just-gotta-have-something-in-there situations so they've tended to be really low-end junk. Aside from the Digital Watchdog, I wouldn't recommend any of them to my worst enemy We mostly deal with Vigil PC-based DVRs from Camacc/3xlogic, and yes, they do reverse playback very well You can also do masked motion searches on the already-recorded video, so you can go with a more sensitive trigger and refine the search later when you need to find something. 30 days' recording is a snap - the benefit with a PC-based system is that it's really easy to add storage later, even just in the form of an external USB, firewire, or NAS drive. They have systems that will do anything from 60fps total across 16 cameras, to 30fps *each* on 32 cameras (960fps total). Those would fall into your "top-end" category though; their machines *start* at somewhere around $3k (I don't do the purchasing, so I can't tell you exactly).

The only real drawback to motion detection is if the movement is too subtle to trigger recording when it needs to, and you end up missing things. You can work around that by increasing the sensitivity, but then you get all sorts of things setting off recordings, which makes it harder to search for incidents. Depending on the circumstances, it can take a fair bit of fine-tuning. Sometimes it's a big deal, sometimes not. As for 30fps, don't even bother. Most cases, you'd be hard pressed to even tell the difference from 15fps, and even 7.5-10fps will give you pretty smooth motion. Remember that you're not making a movie here; you're recording video that may need to be viewed at some later time to see what happened... for most incidents, realtime video is extreme overkill. We do systems for two major oil companies in Canada, and for both of them, the corporate spec is a whopping 1fps.

I'm guessing this is some sort of cheap board or dome camera? It's near impossible for anyone to say for certain from the limited info you give (ie. the photo) but I'd say 95% chances are, the yellow is video, red is +12VDC, and the bare wire (spiral-wrapped shield around both?) is a common ground. It MIGHT help to know the make and model of the camera... would likely help even more to know what it's supposed to terminate to (one RCA, one barrel connector?), or to have a picture of where the wire connects to the camera board...

"REAL time" recording is pretty overrated for surveillance use - that's 30fps, where most of our sites (including fuel services) find 1fps is quite sufficient (in fact, 1fps is corporate standard for the two oil companies we support, although I usually step it up to 3-4 for paypoint and ID shots). You'll find 15fps is barely distinguishable from "live" for just about anything but auto racing, and even 7.5-10fps will look plenty smooth most times. Remember that PTZ, if you're running it on an auto-tour, will eat up a LOT of space, not just because it's recording constantly, but because the scene is always changing, it won't be nearly as compressible as a static image.

Ah, the problem is, almost all "good" software is tied to its own hardware. Video Insight and Vigil, for example, use essentially the same cards, but each has their firmware tweaked, and the software is written to check for that and only operate with the branded cards. (That said, I have got the Vigil server software to work with a Video Insight card before, although it's not supposed to).

How do you define "modular solution"? It doesn't get much more modular than a ready-to-go PC-based DVR/NVR, unless you want to build your own PC. The server license includes no limitations on clients (at least not that I'm aware of). I have no solid idea on VI cost or licensing, although I know there's not a separate per-client cost - you pay for the card and software, or a turnkey PC, and that's it for however many analog cameras the server is designed for (usually 16). IP cameras are handled by different software that can run on the same server, and those are licensed on a per-camera basis.

BTW, with the Video Insight, even if the network client doesn't do the trick for you, they do have a pretty good web client - just put a link to each site on the shortcut toolbar and you're good to go. As far as the spycams, I've used a number of different styles - built into a PIR (some with the PIR actually working, some just a dummy), or into a smoke detector. Can't recall the brand of the last ones I used, might have even been Honeywell. If all else fails, you can get cheap PIRs and mount board cameras inside of them yourself.

Ah, sorry... yes, that's Camacc's Vigil software (also at www.3xlogic.com). Catch is, I don't think they sell the software separately; AFAIK they only sell the complete systems. And they are a bit pricier than the DIY systems most people here deal with, but IMHO you really get what you pay for.

Vigil and Video Insight both have remote client software that will show multiple clients in one window. I can't say much about VI's because the last time I worked with it, it was intended strictly for LAN/intranet use and really didn't work well over an internet connection, but they may have improved on that by now. Vigil's remote client works great for multiple sites, though, and even lets you create "group" views of cameras from different sites. Here's an example, three sites for one client:

Interference won't be a problem as such, at least not in the same way as you're used to, because the signal is error-corrected, streamed digital video. EMI might cause brief signal drops if it's REALLY bad, but it doesn't put noise in the picture like with analog. As noted above, WiFi range is mostly affected by distance, which can be improved on with a better antenna and/or repeaters. Indoors, wall construction will be more of an issue than just distance - concrete or steel-stud walls will limit you moreso than woodframe, for example. If size is an issue, you may want to consider an IP camera, rather than an IP adapter for a standard camera. That way, the functions of the camera and the transmitter are all in one (relatively small) package. It also allows you to bypass one of analog cameras' main limitations: resolution. Analog video capture is generally limited to 740x480 or less, and using that adapter with an analog camera will impose that limitation. Because an IP camera doesn't go through that analog stage, resolutions of 1.3MP (1280x1024) and up are common.

It means this is four cameras in one enclosure.

What your potential is talking about is basically an IP network camera with built-in WiFi support. It's not like a regular unidirectional system where the camera transmits video and there's a box at the other end that receives it and spits out video. It connects to a WiFi router like any other WiFi device (laptop, game console, printer), and the DVR or NVR communicates with it through that network connection. At that point, any other computer attached to the network is able to communicate with the camera as well. scorpion's suggestion will work to adapt standard (existing?) analog cameras for wireless network connections. Keep in mind that WiFi is somewhat limited in distance, especially indoors. 802.11b/g is 30m line-of-sight, and considerably less if there are walls and floors between the devices. Going to an .11n router will get you about twice the range, even if the devices are only .11b or g. Any more than that, and you may have to look at adding repeaters or high-gain antennas.

Phone wire should work fine - I've done it over 200 ft. runs using two-pair un-twisted station wire... with the other pair running 24VAC for two cameras. It sounds ugly, but it worked great

Yes, Power over Ethernet in this instance would be used specifically for IP cameras. 10/100 ethernet uses only two of the four pairs of wire in an ethernet cable, so in its simplest form*, a PoE injector or PoE-capable switch would provide power over the two unused pairs to any receiving device that supports it (typically, cameras, access points, VoIP phones, etc.) In short: it still requires a wired connection, all it does is save the user from needing to run separate power and network lines. * The PoE spec also allows a method for "piggybacking" power on all four pairs, particularly for use with gigabit ethernet.