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Tell me about the RS232 cable. Does this go to the internal 4 pin socket in the camera? I don't see any traditional serial ports. If you have the pinout of the cable, that would be a time-saver.

The SD card refers to the on-board memory slot as a camera feature, I believe, not as an upgrade path. You can upgrade either through the web interface. These are both the PAL version - presumably that's what you want. Mine was completely washed out white when the upgrade was done, and I had a moment of panic thinking I had bricked it, but it set the exposure at a fixed setting that was letting in too much light. Re-check all your configurations after the upgrade. The date is in the file name; one is 20120724, one is 20120911, but the second one doesn't include a version number, while the first one does, so it's hard to draw conclusions. I only have experience with the 0724 NTSC version, which worked well for me. Dexterash, do you know if there's an official Dahua release newer than 20120724?

I'd ask about the cost, but the Avigilon Cone of Silence is hovering over my head...

No, I had a spare micro-ATX box with a nice PS, and wanted room for expansion cards and possible RAID, so I basically built a new system after throwing out the antique MB from the micro ATX. The AutoNVR will go back to the utility pool. I bought several of them, and have one running as a WHS2011 server, one as the garage PC, and one in a bigger case running my NV6240 system. You can put a new mini-ITX MB and CPU in there if you don't mind the space limitations. I really like the small size of these boxes.

Lol! FUD is alive and well! You may brick the NVR, but firmware updates destroying the MB sounds unlikely. You can recover from a bricked NVR with TFTP, if you have the correct files (not just the .bin file, you need armboot-x.bin.img and update.img, per their instructions) and a serial cable that works with the NVR, and either their TFTP server software or a generic one from the web. Here's Dahua's instructions on this: http://www.dahuasecurity.com/download/TFTP%20upgrade%20instructor.pdf I don't have a Dahua NVR and have never done this, but my Dell POE switch requires TFTP to upgrade the software, and it's pretty straightforward. Still, there's always a risk. If it gets messed up, you'd need to return it to the vendor to get straightened out, but the vendors use TFTP to fix these problems.

What this boils down to is pixels per inch (PPI). This is a combination of how much you can zoom and how many pixels you have across the width of the view. If you want to read a watch or newspaper, you're going to need enough PPI to resolve the letters and numbers with no confusion. I'd guess you'd need at least 50-60 PPI to read a newspaper, maybe more. Takes a lot of zoom or a lot of MP (or a combination of the two).

You should be able to access a different port through the browser by appending the port number to the IP address, like so: 192.168.1.100:88

Yeah, those 2-3MP cams, and the ones at 30 fps, will definitely bog down that box. I looked into the CPU upgrade a lot, and my MB (Intel DH57JG, in an old GVI AutoNVR box) will accept an i5-660 or 661, both of which have on-chip video. According to the benchmarks, the 661 will give a roughly 20% improvement in performance, and tends to run $150 or more. Based on this, I upgraded my MB and CPU both, and reused the RAM from the old box. It cost a bit over 2x the chip cost, but gives me a whole lot more upgrade room for the cameras, and definitely seemed like the mid-term value path. The new box has much better on-chip video, faster I/O, better HD subsystem, etc. I'm running both in parallel for now, but will probably switch off the old box this weekend.

It will depend on the level of customization that the re-brander had done on the firmware. For instance, QSee uses port 85, not port 80, on their 1.3MP bullets, according to reports. This means your Dahua cam will change to use port 85, like a QSee cam. I don't believe this is adjustable on the QSee, but I don't have one.

I think the question is whether the camera should remember its settings after a power cycle. My Vivoteks work the way I'd expect most cameras to work. After a reset or power cycle, they remember the previous settings. If I have IR off, it's still off after a reset. One of mine is set to be in night mode full time (IR on, cut filter out, greyscale) due to problems with the cut filter, and it remembers this after a power cycle. My Dahuas don't do this, as their IR isn't controlled by software, just by the light sensor on the board, but they also remember their settings after a power cycle. Now, a full reset to default settings will obviously reset to whatever the factory settings are, but a power cycle shouldn't cause the camera to forget the configuration I've set.

Can't help with the NUUO, but the Aver NV6480 card is a robust 16 channel hybrid solution, and you can run 2 in a box for 32 channels. I'm running a single card, and there's a 40MP limit, which may be the same whether there's 1 or 2 cards, so you'd have to check that. The software is solid and reliable, with lots of features, if a bit old-school. The cards are expensive if you buy them new. My CPU load depends on how many cams I'm displaying at once, not how many I'm recording. With a 9 cam display on an i3-540 box, I run around 50% CPU while recording 20 or so MP. If I bump up to the full 16 cam display, my CPU jumps a good bit. A newer, more modern CPU would probably handle a pair of these cards without much trouble.

You might want to try an older version of BI. It's updated quite frequently, and sometimes bugs slip in when other bugs are fixed. When I find a stable version, I keep that on my primary system and avoid upgrades until I've had a chance to test them on another box (or check the cam-it posts for issues).

This is how the Dahua cams work with resolution. Smaller resolution settings than the full sensor crop the pixels to that resolution. Most cams do that, it turns out. The Vivotek 1MP cams are an exception. There may be others. http://www.q-see.com/files/firmware/QCN8001D-FW20120928.zip Presumably this will set the port to 85, since that's how the QSee cams come, correct? Any other differences between Dahua and QSee that anyone's aware of?

Here you go: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5RXJz1sMJ9VNmNJU1VRck91MG8/edit?usp=sharing It's a 220MB executable called 2.2.0.11_AutoIPClientInstall.exe. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

The item you have in your link is a passive injector. That is, you connect a power supply to one end, and you get the same thing out from the other end - 12Vdc, 24Vac, whatever. This is handy for non-POE cameras, but will not provide you the 48Vdc that IEEE 802.3af POE uses, unless you connect a 48Vdc supply to the source end. If your D12 runs on a separate PS, this will work by giving you that output at the end of the cable. If you want 802.3af compatible POE, this isn't it. This item - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=33-997-219 - is a true POE injector, for powering 802.3af compliant devices when you don't have a POE switch. This converts your normal network connection into a POE connection. If you're going to ever get more POE devices, you're better off with an inexpensive POE switch, as buellwinkle suggests, since 2 of these will cost nearly as much as a Zyxel POE switch.

You have several options: Internal recording: - Install an SD card in the camera and record to that. The space is limited so you can't record many hours, but it should work once you've got it formatted correctly. You might also have a bad card; that can be tested in a PC. Buellwinkle, are yours FAT32 or what? External recording: - Standalone network HD: You need a NAS (network attached storage, or network hard drive) that will record IP cams. There are a variety that do this. Not all network drives will record cameras. - NVR software on a PC: There are lots of network video recorder programs that run on all kinds of PCs, from free to thousands of dollars, depending on what you want to do. - Standalone NVR: A dedicated box that records your cameras. There are lots of these, too, but only limited ones support Dahua. Dahua makes some affordable ones that work well with their cameras.

It would be simpler if Dahua made their software available to the owners of their equipment, like all the other name brands do. It would sure eliminate the guesswork. So, the file listed above contains, among other things, this firmware: Upall_IPC-HX3XXX.20120911.bin This is the generic firmware for the cameras matching that name template, which would include OP's cam, IPC-HDB3200C, however, the original zip file name usually specifies PAL vs NTSC. The web site says the VP-130N is PAL, so make sure that matches your camera. The internal file folder name looks like Vietnamese to me; it includes "nhận thẻ nhớ", which refers to the memory card. The most recent version I've seen before this was 20120724, version 2.103.0000.0.R, so this one appears more recent, but sometimes Dahua messes up the date and version number, especially for branded cams. I upgraded my HFW-3300C NTSC with the 20120724 firmware from the link in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=53&t=31849&p=198994&hilit=20120724#p198994 and it worked fine, giving nice features like WDR. Definitely let us know how this works out for you!

I have a Razberi, and I'm sure I had the client sw installed at one point, but I haven't run it for some time. I'll check tonight to see what I've got.

3 options: - Flip the image using the camera settings, if it has them - Flip the image using the DVR settings, if it has them - Physically flip the camera. If these are domes, it may not be possible, but they should have a setting for flipping the image.

Yep, this is lens flare. I get that on some of my cams that see traffic at night - there are a few ghost orbs that are flare from headlights that travel the opposite direction from the headlights.

Most modern 720p cams will run a full 30fps, though most people agree you don't need that for security recordings. I prefer 15 fps if I can get it without bogging down the system, but most of my cams run at 10 fps. This is pretty important if you want longer record times. The record time will depend on your resolution, your fps, the recording format and quality, and whether you record full time or motion detect (how much motion gets detected and for how long). Recording full time on 6 720p cams at 10 fps would probably give you a few days max at 720p. Using motion recording, I get well over a month on 6 1MP cams recording at 10 fps to a 2TB drive. Some of them see a lot of motion, others don't see much. It totally depends. The Dahua HFW2100 cams are good budget IP outdoor bullet cams. I don't have any experience with their dome cams, but they're presumably also good starter cams. With these, you could run their 8 channel recorder, after making sure it supports your resolution and frame rates. Others with more experience can chime in on this.

Agreed, the SSD shouldn't contribute to the issue, but if the PC's giving the external drive a command and waiting for it to spin up, it may be what's holding up the system. If this were the case, though, saving another video right after the one with freezing would be successful. I see this sometimes when I do random stuff that doesn't affect my external HD, but the system decided to check in with it and everything hangs for a few seconds while I hear it spin up. You could check a couple of ways - set the external HD to not sleep, or hang a spare internal HD on one of the ports, set it to be always on, and archiving to that to see if it makes any difference.

Not sure which camera you have, but this is the same version I have on my HFW3300C, and it's generic for the Hx3xxx cams. If there's a newer version, I can't find anything about it, thanks to Dahua's awful firmware support.

They're definitely available and common. My experience is that ebay and dealextreme lenses that don't specify the size are 1/4", and are usually slightly cheaper than 1/3" lenses. They usually specify if it's larger. I have a small bag of them as recent proof. It does make a difference, as a 1/3" lens with a 1/4" sensor doesn't give the same field of view as it would with a 1/3" sensor, since some of the light falls outside of the sensor. That is, if you put a 3mm 1/3" lens on a 1/4" sensor, you'll get a smaller field of view than if you put it on a 1/3" sensor. The quality will often be better, since most lenses have reduced quality at the edges, but you need to calculate the correct size lens if you're not matching it to the sensor size, and that requires knowing your sensor dimensions.

It's possible to do it yourself if you have the correct NVR software package and it includes the full set of files. TFTP is done over a serial cable, using a TFTP server on a PC, like the freeware tftpd32. I don't know if the 3216 has a standard serial port for this; the Dahua cams need a special cable as there's no DB9 connector. This is not for the technically timid. If none of this makes sense to you, you should contact your distributor for help.