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Look at the Axis M10 series

Find the spec sheet for your cameras and find the POE class or total power consumption for each unit. Once you have that figure do the math. If it adds up to more than 72 watts then you need a different switch or you need to inject power to a few cameras from a midpsan.

Ok, first things first. Do you have rock solid line of sight? Bear in mind that LOS for this type of application is not just a straight line. The RF envelope is football shaped, and if you have any significant portion of that envelope obstructed, it will cause issues. Here is a picture to illustrate ideal LOS: Now, about antenna gain the higher the gain the more chance you have of picking up weak or less than ideal signals. With an omnidirecitonal antenna (like your rubber duck) the advantage of a low gain is the ability to adjust for antennas that are not at the same height. The antenna will broadcast in all directions and have a wide enough vertical beamwidth to talk with a distant end that might be at a higher or lower elevation. If you get a higher gain omni (above 6dBi) you will be able to go farther but it is much more critical that the antennas are at the same (or very close) elevation. With a Yagi antenna your gain affects the width of the signal both horizontally and vertically. If you are using a cable from the radio to the antenna it needs to be the largest most efficient cable you can deal with. I generally like to use a minimum of LMR-400 Utlra Flex. If it is farther than 5 feet, LMR-600 will help keep your signal going out the antenna instead of being wasted in the cable. Here is a rather detailed article that goes into a few more details in case I did not explain it very well: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless-mobility/wireless-lan-wlan/82068-omni-vs-direct.html

You can use a fuse if you wish, but those sensors draw such a small load it would be a very small fuse that would be effective.

You are correct on the power supply, and if you are not going more than about 50-75 feet you can use CAT-5 or CAT-6 to wire the sensor. We typically use 22/4, but don't worry about it unless you are putting it a long way off. Make sure you know if you need the normally open or normally closed contact for your DVR.

There is a tie for the biggest challenge in my opinion. 1st is the portability. If this were being setup for one vehicle with semi-permanent mounts it would be a bit easier. 2nd is the lenses required to get reasonable views of a subject at the distances you mentioned. The next challenge is battery life, how long do you want this to run on battery alone? Would you have remote start to give yourself some recharge ability? I know in some areas idling a car is illegal, but it is an option.

I recommend a program called SpinRite to analyze your drive. There is no finer piece of software to determine and repair issues with a drive. It is a bit old school, but trust me when I say it will do incredible things to repair a drive that no other software even bothers with.

A 4 Mb/s stream is a LOT of data. Unless you need the bitrate up that high you are just wasting resources. Most of my cameras are about half of that and the quality is great. I recommend you do some experimenting and find the middle ground that works. Find what looks good and what provides clear evidence that you can be confident will deliver results should you need it. Also, check your frame rate, there is really no need to go above 15-18 fps, most of my stuff and all of my client stuff runs at 10 or less. There are only a few exceptions to that rule, but the name of the game is quality video evidence. Just keep that in mind and play with the settings until you find what works. The hard drive quality does matter too!! Make sure you have at least an enterprise class hard drive, or something like the Western Digital purple line that is made specifically for video surveillance.

If your cable modem has those kinds of menus, it is more than just cable modem. It appears to me that your cable modem is also a router so that means you need to forward it twice. Once from the cable modem the the TP-Link router and then from the TP-Link to the camera. On the cable modem you point traffic to the IP address of the TP link router and on the TP-link you point to the IP address of the camera/ NVR. I have to do this at my office too, it is a pain.

I would also make sure it is being purchased from a legit Hikvision dealer, otherwise your warranty may be in question.

Yes that camera will work just fine.

Javik has is covered, you cannot have the same address for two devices. The DVR should be one address (like 111) and the access point should be something else (like 112). The gateway address is almost certainly your router IP address unless your internet provider required something specific.

Almost certainly an AcitveX issue. I would make sure you are using Internet Explorer (I would recommend version 10) and make sure to look for pop ups or notifications that there is an extension or plugin that needs to be installed.

Well, these cameras are not the cheapest but they are high quality and would suit your needs perfectly. I would choose between one of these two: http://www.axis.com/global/en/products/axis-p3365-v http://www.axis.com/global/en/products/axis-m3037-pve You are looking at roughly $800 per camera there, but there is free software that can handle viewing and recording can be handled on an SD card right at the camera if you need to record later on.

That looks like a compression issue to me.

If it is rated IP66 that will keep it dry. If you are concerned with the gears becoming frozen I strongly recommend doing two things. 1. Make sure the camera has a battery backup 2. Set a guard tour so that the gears are working regularly If you have even half decent equipment this should not be an issue, but the reason for the battery backup is to make sure that the camera can continue the guard tour. If it sits for a long time and then tries to move that is when you risk physical damage.

You should be able to use the Hikvision VMS to view all of those as one seamless package too. Their VMS is called iVMS-5200 http://overseas.hikvision.com/en/vmsproducts_531.html

First off I would use SpinRite to ensure the drive is good to go. I would then use some sort of partition manager to see if you can determine what type of formatting was used with it. Once you know that you should be able to find a way to mount the drive and gain access to the data. SpinRite can be found here... it is weird looking, but trust me it is the best hard drive analysis and recovery tool on the market. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

You need to setup port forwarding and I would also suggest using a dynamic DNS. Please use the search function because this is probably one of the most discussed topics on this forum so I am not going to repeat what has been said hundreds of times in the past.

Do you have specific areas in this room where the diamonds are handled/show/evaluated? Can you provide a basic sketch of the room layout? This problem needs more detail to provide a useful answer. Also, please send me your address and alarm codes so I can check it out for myself... (kidding!)

Forwarding port 80 is a terrible idea, change that port to something else on both the DVR and the router.

It should not be an issue, but I would at least go talk to the neighbor and let them know what is going on.

It means you did not setup port forwarding properly and the cameras are not accessible outside your home network.

If you wanted to avoid the costs of fiber it would require a few distribution amplifiers for those longer runs, but fiber is a great solution too. As for power, it sounds like you have the right idea to spread it out around the area.

Odds are that guy in California is some guy selling this crap out of a storage bin. It is all generic hardware from China, and the odds are that you will not find a firmware upgrade for it. Why do you want to upgrade?