yakky

How would the DVR do any better than your computer at resolving what your observed to be a network bandwidth problem?

What is your budget? You also need to change your method of thinking, to do what you want, you are going to need a DVR with alarm inputs. Most of the budget ones don't have that feature.

Are you having a hard time finding one with a name brand or something?

I've searched high and low and haven't seen any snapshot stream, jpeg or otherwise, at least available via a plain URL. A work around is using the NAS feature with P-enable (picture). Then in the snapshot configuration section set it to interval. You'll get CIF jpges streamed to your FTP server almost realtime.

I don't think there is an all around better. Cat5 is much more flexible in terms of configurations, you can run power, alarm in/outs, and audio/video all at the same time. Coax is more limiting but some argue that it is more immune to interference.

Ahhh, a fine H.264... some of the finest features are: -uses electricity -empties wallet -takes up space -may or may not record or playback video I don't understand why people keep messing with these no name piles of crap. A name brand DVR is what 10-25% more? Who are you going to call if you need help, H.264?

A cheapo circular polarizer is $20. That's throwing more money in the trash. Cameras behind glass have all sorts of issues. I'm sure OP is going to find the camera isn't that great, even when he gets it outside.

Home Depot sells 500ft spools for $55 and 1000ft for $80 in the store. Its made in USA and real copper. Who knows whats in the other cheapo stuff.

I have the same issue with my Dahua. I'm guessing its a bug. Looking in the snapshot config section there is snapshot_timing and snapshot_trigger, but I can't get mine to actually save snapshot trigger. I too am getting directories full of snapshots, one each second.

How good is your Chinese?

First is to install the DVR in a hard to reach location and in a fortified box (with appropriate cooling). It doesn't have to be extreme, but something that will make them move on rather than spend the time breaking in while law enforcement is on the way. Not sure of the particular unit, but many have RTSP streaming available and you can use a second computer to record those.

You could just pick up a simple TV tuner card for your computer or if you want to use a dedicated DVR, you could get a set top tuner/converter box that has analog video outputs and connect those to the dvr.

Ditto on the shotgun but I'm guessing he's in the UK. I'd keep recording and when you don't feel safe, call the police, everytime.

Take the second router out of the equation, plug the dvr directly into the xfinity router. Note the new ip address of the router and then setup port forwarding. Once you have that running, you can work on getting it working with the second router, keep it simple at till you get it working.

So does the xfinity modem also have a built in router and wifi? Also can you connect locally (meaning inside the house)?

http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Remote-Control-Extender/dp/B000C1Z0HA You replace one of the batteries in the remote and the remote is converted from IR to RF. I have one and it works very well, range is whole house.

If you want to be extra slick, you can use a video modulator and insert the signal on an open cable channel so they can watch on any tv in the house.

You'll need a pair of wires for each camera. There is no way to increase this with analog cameras. If you go IP you can install a switch.

Good salesmanship fellas.... check the OP's posting date!

What for cameras were you running when you had ZM set up? I was doing 1280x800 @ 10 FPS (two of them) and it was pushing my quad core box pretty hard. I was able to run Motion with ease on a Raspberry Pi... something that I wouldn't even bother attempting with ZM, despite it sounding like it can operate on an Atom. My bigger issue with ZM was the fact that my cameras would just stop working and syslog would be littered with hundreds of lines of jibberish, which didn't really churn up any ideas via ZM forums, Google, etc. The only real suggestion was to increase the shared memory, which I did several times, but it changed nothing. That's when I switched to Motion, which despite the fact it's MJPG only and has no real GUI frontend, it's completely rock solid with reliability. It's so stable I just flat out don't even give it a second thought. I still frequent the ZM IRC channel though. There's a few guys in there who are discussing forking the code, simply because the main dev has been MIA for quite a long time. It sounds like ZM is far from dead, but also not quite fully resurrected yet. The only thing I really miss from ZM to Motion is having a montage layout of all of the cameras, but if you're not afraid of a little HTML/CSS coding you can slap together your own personal HTML page pulling in the MJPG streams relatively easily. I actually posted this on the Motion FAQ... My cams support multiple streams (4 total), so they're saving to the file server with H264 @ 20 FPS on one stream, meanwhile another stream is running MJPG @ 1 FPS... which is what the home made web page utilizes as well as Motion. That way I can pull up that web page on my 2nd monitor and keep an eye on things while I'm doing work on the main monitor. I know that dedicated DVR systems certainly have their benefits. In my case I already had a server running all the time, so having a second box running was kind of meh to me. For quite a while I was shopping around for DVR's and came within a single click of ordering a Dahua, but without a guarantee on whether or not my cameras would work with it, coupled with the no return policy, I bailed on that one pretty quick. Plus, with me being the nerd I am, I have my server configs backing up nightly. So if my server self destructs, I can simply dump the config files (which aren't even 1 MB if I recall) onto the new Linux box and be back and running in no time. Different strokes. I was running 2 Panasonic 640x480s and a pair of Foscams at 640x480, best I could do was 10fps per cam without bogging the box down. I hear you on the having a server, being able to tweak, etc, that's why I went with ZM. I hit a fork in the road where I needed more cameras with decent night vision, bought a TFT based Night Owl, was very disappointed with some aspects, but it too had amazing motion detection. No SDK and an interface that stunk had me to more research and I ended up with a Dahua. I too wanted a consolidated web page view but Rory Knowles makes a nice app called dhsview that does a 9 camera mosaic view, loads super fast and actually works better than a web page.

Yeah, motion is ok for stuff, I use it at work with a webcam. And FWIW, I ran ZM and 4 camera on a dual core Atom 330. ZMA and ZMC seemed to chew up about a 1/2 a cpu per camera, but it still chugged away. I really am so happy I moved away from that stuff though, having a real DVR is much less work and the results are much better. Only thing i miss was being able to use any browser for access, but now that I have Dahua and Rory's stuff running in wine, its all good.

What are you using for motion detection? Your symptoms remind me of my first recording CCTV system a few years back, Zoneminder. While it was flexible, the motion detection sucked monkey balls. I could never find a good balance. The current Dahua box I have is nothing short of amazing. It actually picks up a black cat walking in very dark condtions. I'm constantly amazed by the little "real" stuff it is able to capture. Even my blinking Christmas lights didn't seem to trigger it. The only false positives I can't seem to work out a bushes swaying form the wind.

Actually if the product is used by the government, military, or financial industry this will not fly, and they do pretty exhaustive testing for this kind of thing. We actually have had to do firmware updates for fairly old devices to switch them away from having static passwords, in order to pass govt/military JITC tests. Personally I would not deploy a device with a static (and known) root password in my wife's small dental practice, let alone a larger business. I also agree that the thread is poorly titled. This is not an ONVIF security issue, this is an issue with low end manufacturers equipment. If they have a default static password that you can change, that is fine. If you can reset the camera with a physical button, that's fine too.... but having a hard-coded firmware level backdoor password that can't be disabled or changed is a big no-no. Having the port open and telnet running is the first bad idea. Its obvious there are all sorts of security simple security issues with Dahuas stuff. I'm sure the API and web interface is riddled with them as well.

Some DVRs allow you to upload motion based events via FTP, that is my approach combined with a monitored alarm system all boxed up somewhere that would make it very difficult to break in, get to and smash or steal all the equipment.

Qvis domes don't have any room behind them for the wires, so you will need to mount them somewhere where there is room behind. Eaves work well or you can use a junction box like is used for outdoor lights.