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Been down that road, bought the wrong lens more than once, and I still do it now and again. Happy to help!

Are you still running the little AutoNVR PC? If so, it's got a slot on the motherboard, but there's no room in the case for a card. I had to move the motherboards in a couple of mine to new boxes to get room for a card or for more drives.

It's compatible, but not optimal. Here are the issues: - The HFW3500 has auto-iris, and the lens is manual iris. It'll work on the camera, but you lose the auto-iris advantages, which are mostly getting sharper pics in bright light with better depth of field due to the iris closing down, as well as giving you a broader range of lighting flexibility. Still, this isn't a big deal, and many people run this way. - The HFW3500 has a 1/2.5" sensor, and that lens is for a 1/2" sensor. The good thing is that the center is generally better quality than the edges of a lens, so you'll get improved image quality. The downside is that you'll only be capturing part of the image, so you won't get the full benefit of the 1.4 f-stop, and your focal length will be equivalently longer than the same focal length in a 1/3" lens. That is, at 4mm on this lens, your sensor will only capture the middle part of the image, so will act more like a 6mm lens (for example). Figuring out the exact scaling factor depends on the actual dimensions of your sensor. - The HFW3500 can use a C or CS mount lens, and this is a C mount lens. It'll work, but you'll need a CS mount adapter, which adds some length so it'll focus on the sensor correctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_mount Ideally, a good quality 1/3" auto-iris lens of the appropriate length will do the job. The good news is that these are easier to find and less expensive than 1/2" lenses, though picking the right one can be tricky. Good brands are Fujinon, Computar, CBC, and others. You'll also want an IR corrected lens if you'll be using IR illumination, and a 5MP rated lens to get the best quality. If you go to ebay and search on mpir, you'll see some reasonably priced lenses, though I don't think they're 5MP - you'd have to check the vendor's specs to see for sure.

I've got an IQ832N cam that I ran briefly and am getting ready to set up again. I had it working on Blue Iris with no problems.

Yeah, this is like buying a PC because it's got Intel Inside - it means something, but not a lot. Everyone using the chips will have their own issues and design compromises, especially in the budget range, plus you have to trust the vendor to be telling the truth. A camera's TVL rating depends on the lens, sensor, chipset, and processing software, and the weakest link will limit your total TVL. A 700TVL sensor with a junk lens won't give you good resolution. Best bet is to find reviews of specific cams, and see what people say about them. Amazon's a pretty good place for that. This lets out a lot of no-name ebay cams, since there's no way to tell who made it or which model it is.

There have been a few cases of lenses that were soft in one area, looking much like yours. Someone here had that problem, swapped out the lens (I think), and the problem went away. My Dahuas are soft in shadows when there's bright light - the grass can be sharp in the sunlight, but a foot away in shadow, it's really soft. This appears to be part of their processing algorithm, as others have complained about. As for the night shots, I haven't seen them yet, but my Dahuas all over-sharpen in medium low light (like just before and just after the mode changes), causing a lot of noise that looks like rectangular pixels. When the light drops more, it gets better. Dahua really needs to add a sharpening adjustment to these cams.

Isnt it a board lens with inbuit IR's - pretty sure that would be hard to replace, if at all, not all board lenses have the same thread length - this could risk over or under tigtening withc will usually mark or crack the CCD These are pretty straightforward to replace. As you say, some M12 lenses have too-long shafts, and won't even focus on some cams. Actual lens size is another issue, as a poster mentioned recently in another thread. In any case, lots of people have changed the lenses on the Dahua/QSee cameras, and there are some posts about it here, with recommendations on what to buy. This is some of the community support I referred to. Please tell me you are joking, I have not been in this forum for years - I certainly hope this is not the case - I was a founding membber back when we only had a few guys...our aim - Was to weed out the cheap Chinese Garbage and provide info to the end user so that they could be eductaed about cheap inferior products, and yet, all I see through this forum - is sprouting of very cheap Chinese Junk...whats going on here There was drama around a few members, having to do with the board rules, and the admin wielded the banhammer. It wasn't about product quality, but shilling and recommendations. Currrently, the best value cameras are Chinese, as well as the worst value cameras. There's not much else in the under $300 range for those of us using home systems on budgets. I cant say I agree with the above statement - while generally correct, it is not technically correct... a PTZ or a very large MP camera is a single camera - also a camera with just optical Zoom, is still a single camera, and for illuminination that would depend on the lux rating at the location....if you stear away from cheap jumk, you can get some very low lux cameras that are not rated with silly 50IRE ratings or fake F Stop values - so in short even though the distance is a long way, if you have light at the scene you may be ok with a proper analogue PTZ with IR cut filter - but the poster is partly correct, zooming in will close the iris. Due to cost constraints, I believe the OP isn't looking for a PTZ or a very large MP camera with good low-light performance. PTZ requires either manual intervention or automation to zoom on areas of interest. While both are done routinely, they're not something I'd recommend to a first-time user looking to get their feet wet on security cams. Likewise, cams that are good with very low light without IR are going to be out of his price range. The advice is to help calibrate OP's expectations of what he can get in his stated price range. An Avigilon 29MP would certainly do the trick for him if he had unlimited budget, but he's there in the mid-price home user range, like many of us. It could be worse - he could be asking about Foscam.

Graphical User Interface - the screen that controls everything.

Expanding on what Kawboy said: When comparing video card chipset benchmarks, like Passmark, it's important to separate out the 2D and 3D scores, since most NVR software doesn't use the 3D part, and that's what many of the more powerful video cards are optimized for. The site typically only posts the aggregate score. On my new Blue Iris install, with the on-chip Intel HD4000 video, I tested it with an older high-end video card with 2x the benchmark of the HD4000 to see if it made a difference. There was very little change in CPU utilization, and no change in display quality. When I ran the benchmarks locally, it turned out the add-on card had almost identical 2D performance compared to the HD4000; it was the 3D performance that cranked up the aggregate benchmark score, s0 it didn't help me any. The main effect was to increase my power usage from 90W to 140W. That's still low power for the video card, since the 3D circuitry wasn't being used at all. It would have more than doubled power usage had the 3D been used.

The first 2 cams you list are the same camera (Dahua HFW2100), just from different vendors. Same with the camera with the link renaming problem. The Dahua's a great camera for getting started, and the ESC is getting good reviews too, though it's bigger than the Dahua. Yes, the lens may not be optimal for details at the longer range, but that's hard to say without trying it in place, and replacement lenses are inexpensive. Night vision distance claims are almost always overstated, typically by twice what's really usable. The HFW2100 won't give you usable details at 80' at night. Few 1.3MP cams will, unless you use a longer lens that will zoom you in to the end of the driveway. This will cut the field of view at the cars, but may not be an issue since they're close. A lens calculator can help figure this out. Also, depending on the camera height and the relative angles to the cars and driveway end, you may have to compromise between how well centered the driveway end view is compared to the cars. Onboard IR points to the same place as the center of the lens, so that will affect your IR effectiveness. External IR can help illuminate long views and give better detail, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish to deal with. To view cars at 20' and the driveway at 80' effectively would take 2 cams, and you'd still need some illumination at 80', since the on-cam IR really won't be too effective at that distance. The best way to learn is to pick something that looks like a good bet and jump on it. It's hard to go wrong with the Dahua 2100 in that price range, as there's lots of community support for them, and they're good cameras for the money, though not perfect. I've never used the Dahua software for recording, so you should get some feedback on whether their bundled software will do what you want. Otherwise, count on another $50 for Blue Iris, or try some of the free packages like Xprotect Go, and make sure you have enough CPU horsepower.

This is a problem with dome and bullet cams in general, especially compact ones. There's really no good way to tell if a lens will fit until you get it, unless there are accurate dimensions on the seller's site. I see one of these has user pics with measurements, so it looks like other people had the same problem.

You pretty much have to drop the pan/tilt to get decent quality in that price range. Pan/tilt cams under $400 are generally junk. The other issue is finding the SD card and audio in that price range. The HFW2100 is a decent cam, but no audio or SD card. There are probably no-name 720p cams out there with those features, but finding name brands from decent suppliers can be tricky.

Yeah, I saw those, and to my eyes, they look pretty similar, though the ESC doesn't appear to have the softness in daytime shadows that the Dahuas have. The night shots were different, and here's the feedback I posted on that: At this point, I'm watching the 2MP WDR cams to see what shakes out. I like the HFW3200/3300 ok, but they have trouble with Blue Iris, so I'm interested in how the Swann/Hikvision 2MP bullets look, and if they actually have WDR in the Swann version.

Interesting. The ESC does look very much like the Samsung, which costs quite a bit more. They even appear to use the exact same picture in some shots, and the ESC pic has a smudge right where the Samsung logo and model number used to be on the Samsung English datasheet... http://empiresecuritycameras.com/popup.aspx?src=images/product/large/70_1_.jpg http://www.samsungsecurity.com/product/product_view.asp?idx=6486#FL030000 I see a few differences in the specs, which makes me wonder how similar they are: - Different lens - 2.8-10mm (Samsung), 2.8-12mm (ESC) - WDR - SSDR (Samsung Super Dynamic Range), nothing listed (ESC) - 31 IR LEDs (Samsung), 42 LEDs (ESC) - POE standard (Samsung), POE optional in spec table, but listed as standard on main page (ESC) The ESC also lists a 5MP sensor, which doesn't make sense, though I've seen this on no-name ebay listings. Why would a manufacturer put a 5MP sensor on a 720p camera? Almost looks like the ESC is different internals in the same housing, but hard to say without having both in hand.

Another possible option is to set up each camera twice - once with the full stream, once with the low-bit-rate stream. Assuming you can choose which cameras to view remotely, this would let you stream the substream remotely while recording the main stream locally. If you can do this, it may require another license, depending on the limitations of Surveillance Station.

Jsurveillance is an IPS name, so it looks like IPS. Next you need to figure out what models they are; you can either compare at the IPS site, or get the firmware reports and google the version numbers to see if anything comes up.

The Zyxel units are among the most popular for inexpensive POE switches. If you ever plan on using the other 4 ports for anything besides cameras, gigabit will give you more flexibility there. I always get a gigabit uplink, at least.

6mm lens is a bit long for me, and it doesn't appear to have WDR. I'm tempted to pick up a pair, but the lack of WDR really limits them for the spots I need.

You can't disable the IR on the Dahua 2100 without unplugging the IR board (which is easy to do), and their IR is pretty strong. I get a storm of dust motes after I walk by the camera at night, though my NVR motion detect is set to ignore them. Running external IR, even close to the camera, will give better results in terms of dust, fog, rain, spider webs, etc. They'll still be there, but the IR won't be lighting them up right in front of the camera.

Looks like the IR LED market is moving the same direction as white light LEDs, where you can get 300 lumens out of a single LED easily, if your heatsinking is good. Modern single LED flashlights are almost always far superior to inexpensive multi-LED flashlights, which are mostly junk these days. IR LED output is harder to compare - you can't use lumens, and few OEMs spec the actual radiated IR power or the LED part number. You pretty much have to do a side-by-side to get relative IR effectiveness.

Point Grey used to do Firewire cameras aimed toward the technical/scientific community, and were pretty well respected (and high priced). It'll be interesting to see how their IP cams pan out, and whether they're actively designing them or using Chinese OEM.

Just one. I have a rack with the Aver box, 2 Blue Iris boxes, and a WHS2011 box, and they all share a KVM setup. plug two monitors into your aver and it gives you much more options. Thanks - I'll give that a try and see how it works, though I'm a little cramped for space there and may not be able to leave 2 monitors in place. One of the things I like about the Aver box is that it requires very little attention - I check it a few times a week to make sure there are no issues, but it doesn't need much from me, despite being Windows based.

Looked into these Aver cards, the NV6240T, seems like a pretty powerful card that it can do 8 IP cameras with 80MP total. So with this card it would take a lot of load off the CPU since it seems its doing it all via hardware encoding at the card level and CPU would be just decoding side if you viewing it live on the computer (which for me probably wont happen as the computer if I go this route would be tucked away somewhere with no monitor hooked to it after its configured). Cant seem to find any detail on what the cpu/hardware requirements are for this or if it can be a very low end machine like sort of how you have just an i3 540 on a 16channel setup. EXR6004 Mini this seemed nice too except its only a 4camera one. Guess then we looking at 8 decent IP cameras that wont rip me a new one. At 200-300 a pop we at what $2400 on the high side, then the card at $390, then the cpu, so probably looking around 3000-3500 I guess. Then I guess we also need a 8port PoE hub and wiring which I can handle and take care of. That is a tad higher than I expected but if that means a nicer system I guess it is what it is. Really the camera cost is what is killing it I guess. Dixit When looking at the dedicated devices, it's critical to see what they max out at, as the specs aren't always clear. Some of the inexpensive Aver boxes like I used to run before switching to PC based had limitations on total MP, total resolution, total FPS, etc. I've never quite figured out how the NV6480 does so many MP at a light CPU load. It's a hybrid card, and I think a lot of the circuitry is for the analog channels, which I don't use. Their specs show it using software compression. It doesn't appear to consume a lot of power and doesn't run very hot, so it doesn't seem to be doing that much. I think it's essentially acting as a dongle for the software, but I could be wrong. Aver used to have a dongle-based software package, I think, but I haven't seen it on their website. I always thought the NV8416 was their hardware-accelerated board, but their comparison shows it using software compression too: http://www.averusa.com/surveillance/download/products/NVComp.pdf I double-checked mine last night, and when displaying 9 cams at 10-11MP, it runs 60% CPU. When I switch to the 16 cam view, it jumps to about 90%. It definitely scales up and down based on the rendering for display, not for capture or recording. I should probably leave it on 1 channel to drop the power use and heat, since this is a backup system and I don't pay much attention to it. This is running 8 cams, one set of channels doing motion detect, and another set of channels recording the same cams at 24x7, on an i3-540 box with 4G RAM and Win7 Embedded. It's not nearly as friendly or flexible as my Blue Iris boxes, but it's been very stable and reliable. I reboot occasionally to install Windows updates, and I can't remember the last time I had to reboot for any other reason. I get about 4-5 days on a 2G drive, mostly due to the 24x7 channels. The BI box, which is motion detect only, has many weeks of recordings. The 2 things that I don't care for in the Aver software are that the multi-screen display shows everything in 4:3 display ratio, and the pre-trigger capture is only 1 fps in the version I'm running. Since this is a backup system with 24x7 recording, neither is a showstopper. Blue Iris does both of these things better, but doesn't handle the MP load I'm running on this. Also, the Aver phone apps aren't super stable, but I use IP Cam Viewer Pro to watch the cameras directly, and just use the Aver app to verify the system's up and running now and then.

Just one. I have a rack with the Aver box, 2 Blue Iris boxes, and a WHS2011 box, and they all share a KVM setup.

I'm running a half-dozen Trendnet TEG-S80G switches around the house, installed when I converted everything to gigabit a year or so ago, and they've been great. Currently $35, regularly on sale for $25, very low power consumption, no problems so far. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156251 They have a 5 port version for $25, which is presumably similar, but I don't have any of them. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-156-250