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Yeah, this is how you learn. I struggled with IR haze on an analog dome for days before I figured out it was reflecting off a wall. Now, it's obvious when it happens.

Did you check to see if it reset the IP address, assuming you had changed it to something different than the default 192.168.1.108? I've never used the reset button on mine, but many cams do a full factory reset if you hold the reset button down. My POE switch does a pretty standard dance when the camera is powered up. Once the POE is plugged in, the port lights up (both network and POE light), then the network LED starts blinking occasionally as it talks to the cam. After about 1 minute, it's online and the network LED is blinking constantly.

The 802.3af POE spec is 15W, so you definitely don't need 18W. None of my newer IP cams use more than 8W, even with IR on, but you can't know for sure until you measure it, and it may still be too much for your 6W POE splitter. Best bet is to see if the vendor can tell you what the camera actually uses with the IR LEDs on. Many managed POE switches will tell you the power draw on each port, but unmanaged don't. There are other ways to tell, like inserting a resistor inline or measuring switch power with a wattmeter, but these get more complicated.

One thing to consider is that most cameras are less sensitive to 940nm than they are to 850nm, so you'll need more IR power to get the same illumination. This can be tricky to figure, as there's no industry standard definition of IR power for these devices. Most specs call out the number of LEDs, and some include the actual power the LED consumes, but neither of these translates directly into the IR illuminance that the illuminator gives off. The benefit of 940 is that it's much less visible, while 850 overlaps into the visible area more and gives off a red glow. Here's a chart of the typical spectral response of a CCTV sensor. The details will vary from sensor to sensor, but the general response curve is similar for all of them. From http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page5973.asp:

They should work on the 2100, but the standards are much looser on M12 lenses than on CS and C mount lenses, and lots of people have issues, generally with the no-name lenses. I'd expect the Axis lenses to have good quality control, and would expect them to be relatively pricey as well. You would need a 1/3" lens for the 2100. These lenses wouldn't work on the 2MP and 3MP Dahua bullets, though.

Most people who want to change the lens want a different field of view. The camera is available with 2.8mm, 3.6mm, 6mm, and 8mm, and often someone wants it different than what it came with.

If you can post a screenshot of what it looks like, we can help diagnose better. Here's what my 2100 looks like at night:

I had one of my Bosch analog indoor dome cams under the eaves for many years with no issues. It was on a home-brew PVC pendant hanging about 1.5' down to clear the roof overhang. This is in Silicon Valley, with mild weather, and in a pretty protected location, not pointed towards the sun. No problems with bugs, water, spider webs, etc. The only time I ever had to mess with it at all was when the exterior of the house was painted and I had to re-aim it. Aside from that, I literally didn't touch it for years except to wipe the dome about once a year.

Yeah, CS and C mount lenses have always been more expensive. $30 is pretty cheap, though it would be expensive for an M12 lens. I don't trust low list price Chinese optics, for a variety of reasons, but I'm sure there are some good values out there. Traditionally, lenses are one of the places you don't want to skimp, but it may be worth a try, as all these Chinese MP cams are coming with the equivalent of the $30 lenses on them. The real problem is you don't know if you got a good value or a junker until you try it, and if the image is soft, you won't know if it's the lens or the camera unless you try a better lens. This is why I usually go for brand names with a reputation for quality. I've always bought used, and you can often get expensive lenses used for under $50 if you watch ebay, figure out the right search terms, and take a few chances. This isn't always practical, of course, especially if you need one quickly. As an example - Not long before I retired my analog cams, I bought a used Computar TG3Z0312FCS-MPIR lens on ebay for about $50 (discontinued now, but still available online for $110 or so new). It's auto-iris, and my CS mount IP cams are manual iris, so I put it onto one of my better analog cams, replacing an inexpensive Rainbow L308VDC4P lens that was probably $30 new 10 years ago. The image was quite a bit brighter and sharper, and it was a good upgrade for the money. In general, anything under $100 for a good quality MPIR CS mount lens is a good deal.

MP rated lenses are better, as they have crisper, sharper images. Non-MP lenses give softer images. The no-name lenses are generally going to be riskier than the name brands. I'd recommend sticking with quality brands to get the most from your 3MP sensor. You'll want a 1/3" lens for this camera. 1/2" will work too, but are less common, and you get a smaller field of view for the same size lens in different sensor sizes. You'll also want an IR corrected lens, if you're going to be using IR illumination at all, or the focal point changes between IR and white light, causing one or the other to be fuzzy. You can find a variety of decent brand lenses by searching ebay for MPIR, computar megapixel, fujinon megapixel, etc.

I know the BI developer recommends i7, but I don't know of anyone who's tested similarly clocked i5 vs i7 of the same generation, and nobody's said whether BI will use more than 4 threads. The main differences are more cache, hyperthreading, and (sometimes) better video on the i7. The i5 3570k already has 4 cores, 6MB cache, and HD4000 graphics, so what the i7-3770k buys you is a bit more MHz, 2MB more cache, and hyperthreading (which only matters for apps using more than 4 threads). As for power use, a Mini won't have any great advantage over a similarly configured PC, I believe. The main power use is the CPU, MB, and hard drive (assuming no external video card), and the only one specific to the Mini is the MB. A given CPU model running at a given % utilization will consume the same power in any system; same for a given hard drive. My homebuilt i5 3570k box runs about 85W at 60% CPU, which is where it normally sits recording my 8 cams. This is with a WD Black 2TB drive, which runs about 10W. A green drive will cut that in half, though some people report issues streaming lots of video to green drives. Likewise, I use the on-chip video; an external card with substantially more horsepower than the HD4000 will add at least 50W to the usage, and will go up quickly for serious graphics power. ETA: Took a look at the Mac Mini specs, and they don't specify the actual i5 and i7 used, but they're definitely less powerful than the i5-3570k and i7-3770k, so you'd want to compare the specs they actually use, not the ones I list above. The i5 is a 2.5GHz dual core, which I don't even see in the Ivy Bridge lineup - is this Sandy Bridge? ETA again - The i5 they use is a mobile device, so it's lower power, lower performance, and not upgradeable. It benches at about half the i5-2500 or i5-3570, so if low power use is more important than future expansion, it's certainly usable. They also have a 500GB drive in the i5, and 1TB in the i7, so you might want to throw in the cost of an upgrade or an external drive. The price/performance isn't looking too good for the Mini, so far. You could build a lot more power for $600...

Here's an earlier post that has a link to Mouser electronics for the connectors: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=30046 A search for lens auto-iris female connector turns up many sources, mostly Chinese export companies like this: http://www.taiwantrade.com.tw/eyung/products-category-list/en_US/112835/10/1/IRIS_Jack_%26_Plug

Yeah, it's pretty sensitive to outside light in mode switching, and there's no adjustment for that, as far as I know. The IR LEDs operate completely separately from the day/night mode and IR filter switching. They're only controlled by the sensor on the board, not by the software at all. You can make them switch as soon as power is applied, long before the software has booted.

The problem with black looking purple in the daytime usually means you don't have a movable IR cut filter, or it's not working right. If there's no IR filter in place in the daytime, the ambient IR messes up all the colors, especially grass and black items. You'll need to check if there's a menu for the camera settings. If there is, check to see if the IR settings are correct. It sounds like the IR LEDs and the IR filter (if it's there) are in night mode all the time, even though the sensor processing is switching to day mode. Generally, the DVR won't control camera settings on analog cams, and any changes need to be made on the cameras themselves. If you post the model numbers of the cams, or a web link, it may shed some light on this.

Yeah, their online support forums are amusing. I like to read through them now and again, because they accidentally let useful information slip out sometimes, but it's not exactly high-power support.

Dahua doesn't make firmware available to lowly end users. The official answer is to get it from your distributor; if that's not feasible (like if you bought a camera used or from someone who had extras), you ask on forums. Same for finding out what the latest firmware is.

Yeah, that looks like Dahua firmware, tweaked for ICR (based on the SN). Presumably the line before (Device Type) calls it by the ICRealtime model number, not the Dahua model number. Upgrading to non-ICR firmware is a gamble - it may succeed, it may fail with an error message and not do anything bad, or it could brick the cam. They should have the newer version available - 2012-07-24 has been out for some time now, and there's a newer version that hasn't really hit the streets yet.

Heh! Now I see what you mean about spamming!

Yeah, this is what inexpensive D1 analog looks like. By the time you buy good enough cameras and a better quality DVR, you might as well have bought a 720p Dahua system, with far better quality. Quality will depend on the weakest link, of course, so if the lenses are cheap or the camera's mediocre, increasing the quality on the DVR encoding won't help.

2 main reasons, already touched on: - Analog is cheaper, up to a certain point, if price is more important than quality. You can get an 8 camera D1 analog system far cheaper than a 4 camera 720p IP system. Yes, quality is much worse, but there's always a market for cheap. - Ease of use. With analog cams, you plug the output into the input. It doesn't matter who made your camera or DVR (with a few proprietary exceptions), and you don't have to fool around with a bunch of network settings and performance tweaks. Sure, it's very limited, but likwise, there's always a market for extremely simple. Simple and cheap? People will buy it. Many of them will then upgrade to IP cams when they figure out they've wasted their money, but that's the free market.

You might want to ask this in the IP cam forum. There's more activity there...

Here's a recent article that discusses this from a home user's perspective, but the concepts are the same: http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=1290

Any i5 should handle those cams on Blue Iris with no problem, depending on frame rate and pre-trigger frames. Later-gen i5s are better, of course - not sure which i5 you've got. I'm just retiring an i3-540 that I've been running BI on for some time. It handles 6 cams, 6MP total, 10 fps, 25 pre-trigger frames, but won't handle another 1MP cam without choking when multiple cams are recording. My new i5-3570k handles double the MP with room to spare. If you're not already there, you should check out www.cam-it.org, which is the Blue Iris community support forum. Lots of good info there, and many helpful users. One suggestion - once you've got a BI version working the way you want it, don't upgrade to every new version that comes out, as bugs sometimes sneak in. I maintain a stable install until there's a compelling reason to upgrade to avoid unexpected problems.

Can you post what the firmware reports for the model number and software versions? I'd be interested in seeing that.

As Lesst pointed out, this is a common issue in X10 designs: http://kbase.x10.com/wiki/Phase_Coupling http://www.x10.com/support/x10trou.htm There is a variety of solutions, and I'd second the recommendation for an electrician if you're not a serious electrical person.