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Yeah, I was thinking about upgrading a number of my Vivoteks, but this support issue has me backing away from Dahua for now. Whatever their other flaws are, Vivotek has strong, mature software and great download support. Dahua should be paying attention.

I have one in a setup similar to yours, and it's working well, and is a huge improvement over the analog dome I had there before. You can set a maximum exposure time to avoid motion blur, but they make you set it in ms, not in the standard 1/30, 1/15 sec type settings. So, if you want a maximum exposure of 1/30 sec, you'd need to set it to 0.03 ms (or whatever the closest setting is - I forget now). I have no idea what they're thinking here - it's like they don't actually use these cameras themselves. Also, the IR is quite strong, which is good news/bad news. Mine really lights up the dust in the air, so it looks a bit snowy, especially if there's any activity near them. Not a problem, but a bit distracting. It also washes out stuff that's near pretty badly, and is not very smart about choosing its exposure settings. The final problem is that it's very slow to respond to exposure changes (which makes the washing out from the strong IR even worse). Mine takes 5 seconds or so to adapt to a sudden change in light, and if it's enough light to change it from night to day mode, it takes even longer (some people report a 10-15 second exposure response time). This is mainly a problem if headlights point at the camera sometimes. Since yours is on the second floor, these problems may not be as bad, and the strong IR may be more of an asset than a liability. All this stuff can be fixed with software. I'm a bit concerned that they're going to move on to other camera models and stop software development for these while the software's still immature, but that's a risk with many overseas manufacturers. Only time will tell, but the low price and decent performance makes it a reasonable gamble.

My 1MP Vivoteks let you set both the resolution and the view area, so if you wanted to drop to (say) 640x480, you could choose either cropped or sub-sampled. My 5MP Areconts let you select half resolution, which gives the same field of view at half the resolution, and that's it. You can also send detailed command line settings to change image size to a variety of settings, and they crop instead of subsampling. The real weak spot with these Dahuas is the light-weight software. I like their image quality better than my Vivoteks and they cost less, but the software needs a good bit of maturing.

This is encouraging. All vendors need to have enough smarts in their firmware tools that they won't allow you to brick a camera with the wrong software. My YCams do the same thing, and it's pretty ancient at this point.

It's pretty easy, though you need to be familiar with Windows networking basics - IP addresses, port forwarding, etc. Lots of help here and around the internet on these topics. After that, it mostly depends on the cameras and NVR you choose. Some are painful to set up, others are a piece of cake, most are in between. For instance, the Dahua 1.3MP cams come with a fixed IP address, so you need to connect them one at a time and change the IP address before you connect the next one. I usually put a label on them to help me keep them straight. Others have DHCP and automatically get the IP address when first connected (this can be disabled once you've connected to them). If your router doesn't remember IP addresses, this can be a problem, as disconnecting and reconnecting a camera can change the IP address. My Uverse gateway remembers the MAC address and always gives the same IP address to a given device, but most of mine are fixed IP addresses anyway. Next is the NVR software. You might want to download a few demo versions and play with them to get a feel for it. I'm a fan of Blue Iris, which is inexpensive and powerful for a home or small business setup. It's not on the same level as the pro software many here run, but is quite good for the money, and well supported on their support forum. You'll also need to figure out how you'll power the cams - POE or power supplies. I like POE because it's a single network cable, but it's an added expense, depending on how many cams you'll be running.

Blue Iris will take snapshots at intervals. I don't have it in front of me, so can't say what the time lapse choices are, but you can download a 15 day demo version to see if it does what you need.

Some people use IR pass (white light blocking) filters as well. This helps avoid the washout due to the headlights, though the high shutter speed can be very effective at that once you get the settings tweaked.

I'm using a NV6240-16 on an i3-540 mini-ITX box running Win7 Embedded 32 bit, and it's working great on 16 channels. I'm using whatever the latest Aver software is at this date, and it's recording about 25 MP on 14 to 16 channels, depending on what I'm testing. I did have a blank screen problem until I updated my video drivers, and that went away as well. Whatever problems they had seem to be pretty well in control right now. Mine's robust and stable.

Hmm... I bought one not that long back, but looks like everyone's out of them. You can wire up your own pretty easily. The header for the card is 10 pins; 2 pins at one end enable the extra 4 channels with a jumper, and the other 4 pairs are signal and ground for the 4 channels. I forget which end is the enable, but it's easy enough to tell by looking at the card. Once you put a jumper on the right pins, restarting the Aver software should enable the next 4 channels (which are analog only, not IP). Let me know if you're not sure and I'll take a look at mine when I get a chance. You can then connect via standard 2 pin with BNC connectors at the other end. The main thing missing is the slot bracket that anchors the BNCs, but you could always make a bracket interface using, say, a DB9 connector.

I ran a mini-cam for a while in one location, and the low light performance was awful, as you'd expect from a tiny lens over a tiny sensor. My front door cam is about 10' away from the door, under the eaves. It's not noticeable at all from the street, and is obvious from the front door if you happen to look there, but I don't care about that.

OK, I'm a hardware hacker from way back, and have spent many, many hours fiddling with analog and IP cams over the past few decades, including more than a few Franken-cams. Unless you have way more time than money, or the satisfaction of hacking this solution is the most important thing, I'd absolutely recommend getting a decent quality outdoor cam for this application. It'll take much less time to implement, will already have software optimized for CCTV functions, and will result in dramatically less hair-pulling. At the risk of sounding like a shill, the Dahua 1.3MP bullet would be a plug'n'play outdoor solution at the same price as the no-name ebay cam you linked to. The only thing missing is the zoom lens. However, there are many, many cams that would work fine. One more suggestion - if you do go IP cam, choose a known name brand. No-names are another recipe for hair-pulling.

This can use quite a lot of bandwidth, depending on the streams, and may hit your bandwidth cap depending on what your service is set up for. The best bet would be to record a hi res stream locally, and use a lower res stream to go over the internet, so you'd want cameras with flexible dual streams. Alternately, you could have it send out alerts or snapshots every x amount of time, then log in remotely if you want to see more. Motion detect alerts work well indoors when no one's home, though changing light can cause false alarms. Outdoors cams tend to generate a lot of motion alerts. NVRs can either be computers running NVR software, or stand-alone devices that are only NVRs. Each has benefits and drawbacks. I've found stand-alone units to be the most reliable for running months at a time, while PCs are much more flexible. For either, it's not a bad idea to have a remote reboot capability, in case something crashes. Any device will require you to forward ports so you can connect to it over the internet. With PCs, you can log in remotely with VPN or a remote program, like LogMeIn or UltraVNC. With a dedicated device you'd connect to its interface, which can vary quite a bit depending on the vendor. Some NVR software requires per-cam licenses, usually starting around $50/camera, sometimes less, sometimes a good bit more; you get them from the software vendor. Others, like Blue Iris or the Aver software for their hybrid cards, are license free - as long as it supports the cam, you can add as many as your hardware and network supports. I like no-license software, because I can change cameras without having to transfer licenses, which some software requires, but I fiddle with a lot of cameras. There are a variety of Dynamic DDNS (DDNS) services that provide you with a fixed IP address that tracks your home IP address, like http://www.no-ip.com and freedns.afraid.org . You can also pay your service provider for a fixed IP address. Some home IP addresses are virtually fixed - mine hasn't changed in 2 years, but they could change it any day now. PCs are very flexible this way, while dedicated devices sometimes have a fixed selection of DDNS services you can choose from. Google free ddns, and you'll see a lot of results. We were all there once! Lots to learn here.

Viewing from smart phones and tablets depends on a few things - does the vendor supply an app, is it supported by standard apps like IP Cam Viewer, which runs on both Android and iOS, or will it show up in the browser the device uses. Browsers usually have the worst support, in my experience, especially for cams that require ActiveX. Vendor apps run the range from quite good to awful. If your devices can run IP Cam Viewer, I'd look for a camera supported by it (and it supports quite a lot of them). It's a robust, simple, inexpensive app, and can even record to your device, though time is limited by memory available. Here's a link to the Pro Android version; there's also a free Lite version that I haven't run. You can find the iPhone version by googling IP Cam Viewer Pro. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rcreations.WebCamViewerPaid&hl=en

I'd recommend against reducing resolution for more long term storage, unless you don't care about details, in which case you might as well run all VGA anyway. Lower FPS and higher resolution gives more useful data, in my opinion, but it depends on your goals. I'm running 4 1MP Vivoteks ( 3 x IP8332 and 1 x FD8164) and have recently added a 1.3MP Dahua, and the Dahua's image quality is much better than the Vivoteks, especially at night or in low light. The Vivotek's software is better, especially the data stream management and exposure control, but the Dahua costs substantially less. If I were buying new today, I'd go for the Dahuas with little hesitation. I record these 5 cams, a 2MP Messoa, and a VGA Y-cam on a little mini-ITX box running an i3-640 and a 2TB drive, and it draws about 85W, not counting the POE switch. All of these are running at 10 FPS except the Dahua, which I'm testing at 15 FPS, and all are recording on motion detect. It's maxed out with these cameras, but replacing the MB and CPU with a newer gen i5 would draw about the same power and allow a lot more MPs. Likewise, going to an Atom would reduce what you could record, but draw less power. I care more about having a comprehensive, high-res record of events than reducing power draw. YMMV, as always!

The Vivotek IP8332 does this as well. There's an RJ45 jack inside the camera, so you can run the cable straight in, put in a longer cable to a junction box, or whatever. This seems to be going away, though, and more cameras have big, bulky pigtails with short cables, so that you need a junction box 6 or 8 inches away from the camera. Very annoying!

Sounds like it's reflecting from the wall back to the outside of the dome, and there's not a lot to be done about that except maybe disabling the onboard IR and using a separate IR illuminator that points away from the wall. Another option would be to disable the IR and use motion detector white lights, though this can have downsides too. If you're a hardware hacker, you could look at cutting a hole in the dome for the lens and sealing it to keep moisture from inside the camera. That could be tricky, though, and if you're exposed to the weather much, you might end up with dust and water spots on the lens.

Thanks, that gives me something to work from. I'll update if I get it going over the weekend. Some folks have found the Dahua domes soften the image a good bit, especially near the edges. You might want to try taking the dome off to see if it makes the image crisper.

Sorry, don't know Nuuo. I run Blue Iris, which supports lower MP Dahuas well, and Aver NV6240, which needed a little fiddling, but is working fine now.

Yeah, that Optiplex 320 is a bit of a dinosaur. I haven't been able to run many MP cams with software NVRs on PCs that age. A 2nd or 3rd gen i5 is definitely the place to start. I had good luck running a P4 3.0GHz with an Aver NV5000 card, with about 5MP of IP cams and a few analog cams, and my i3-540 runs an Aver NV6240-16 with 25MP of IP cams with no problems. The same hardware running Blue Iris maxes out at about 6-8MP. The Aver cards require a lot less CPU than software-only NVRs, for whatever reason. The main thing that increases CPU is showing more on-screen cams; it'll record 16 cams without breaking a sweat, but displaying all 16 at once takes it to about 80% cpu vs maybe 5% for a single display.

You'll want to mount it off to the side, since mounting above the door will give you the tops of their heads when they're up close. This will also avoid pointing it at the sun, which will wash it out. Also, I'd avoid wireless if you can - you need wiring anyway for power, so might as well go for the reliability and speed of a wired network connection. I don't use wireless on any of mine, so if that's a must-have, you'll need someone else's suggestions. So, if this were my setup, I'd mount the camera above the window, or maybe all the way to the end of the porch, depending on your lens and resolution. You'll be pointing at the porch light, which will wash out the view more as the camera gets closer to it. Further away helps keep the light from dominating the view and gives you a wider field of view. WDR will help with the light, but you're looking at more expensive cameras then. I'd use a Dahua HFW2100 1.3MP mini-bullet or equivalent. It's $185, and can run either from POE power using a single network cable or from a power supply. If you don't need IR, because of the porch light, a mini-dome without IR will be cheaper. There are lots of less expensive cameras - Foscam, Wansview, etc. Many of these have wireless. I don't know much about these, though.

They're about 1/2 to 2/3 the price of Vivotek, depending. The HFW2100 1.3MP mini-bullet is $185 on ebay, and compares well to the $300 IP8332; the HFW3200 2MP bullet is $325. The Dahuas really shine in low light performance compared to the Vivoteks (speaking only for the 1.0/1.3MP cams; I don't have the 2MP cams yet). I'm a big fan of solid, robust software, and the Vivotek is far better there, but the nighttime image quality of the Dahuas is pretty compelling for the money. Here's a comparison between the IP8332 and the HFW2100. I'll be posting these pics on this board as soon as I get the time: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=3217.0

Can you post the settings you used? I couldn't get the NV6240 to connect via ONVIF, but I've never set up the Avers for ONVIF before. I posted some comparisons between the Vivotek IP8332 and the Dahua HFW2100 here: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=3217.0 I'll post those on this forum as soon as I get a chance.

I'm a fan of using larger lenses than the sensor, since lens quality is poorer at the edges than at the center in all but the most expensive lenses, and a 1/4" sensor in the projected view from a 1/3" lens is a lot more in the sweet spot. It complicates things, though, and I believe it would reduce your f-stop equivalent some as well, since a lot of the light misses the sensor, but I haven't worked through the details on that. Here's a link to a PDF that gives a general guideline to putting a larger lens on a smaller sensor. Not all sensors are the same size as they use in their matrix, but it's a good guideline. Look at the Sensor Size section. http://www.ptgrey.com/support/downloads/documents/TAN2010002_Selecting_Lens.pdf I haven't found any lens calculators that cover the field of view changes for using, say, a 1/3" lens with a 1/4" sensor. If anyone knows of any, I'd love to see the links.

Buellwinkle has a review of the 2MP Dahua at his website, and it looks much nicer than any Vivotek I've seen, especially at night. http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=764 I have 4 1MP Vivoteks and just got the 1.3MP Dahua mini-bullet, and the Dahua beats the Vivotek in picture quality across the board. The software's not as flexible or mature as the Vivoteks, and I don't care much for the built-in mount, but it's a pretty good looking camera for the money. The 2MP demos look even better than the 1.3MP. I have a couple of 5MP Areconts AV51XX series, and the software is pretty awful. They're hard to get the spec FPS out of, as well - I'm usually getting 5 fps max, and mine are speced at 9 fps. They've been nothing but trouble, though I do like the CS lens mounts.

Good to know - I may pick up a set of these this weekend!