51cent

With a lens calculator. http://polarisusa.com/lens-calculator You can google for more to help you decide.

If your bullet camera has IR lighting, the spiders building webs will drive you crazy. A turret or eyeball camera will be much better.

A turret is regarded as being better than a dome many posters. Domes seem to have ir bleed problems. For Hikvision, look for the Ultra Lowlight models, they have excellent night vision for the price. Dahua Starlight models are also good low light cameras. Buying from B&H is more expensive, but you get a good warranty. Buying from ebay or aliexpress is cheaper, but you may not get any warranty.

You can use a software named Blue Iris installed on a touch screen computer for that purpose. I believe it has a trial version to test. Blur iris supports many cameras.

Milestone has a free version of its software for up to 8 cameras.

Here is a Dahua from B&H for about $170. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/search?Ntt=N24BG53&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search= You can find them at Ali express for about $120-130, BUT YOU MAY NOT GET ANY SUPPORT. B&H offers 3 year warranty.

It probably depends where you live, but in the US it should be okay to view whatever the public can see. Dahua Starlight and Hikvision Ultra Low light cameras are affordable with good night vision. You get what you pay for, don't buy cheap stuff. How many cameras do you want? You will want cameras and a dvr or computer running software like Milestone or Blue Iris.

Google the term Longse junk and see what you get. Stick with reputable brands. Do you want your company name to be associated with unreliablity? I read somewhere Dahua offers 5 year warranty to their dealers.

Staying with one brand of dvr and cameras is the best way. There may be limited functions with different brands of camera/dvr.

Zoneminder is one for linux for your computer. You will probably need to dedicate one camera for LPR. Google the term LPR walk through. For good affordable night vision look for Dahua Starlight or Hikvision Ultra Low Light cameras.

Looks like good choices to me. B&H is an authorized dealer and you will get an actual warranty if needed. With IR lighting using 940nm you will need roughly twice the wattage of 850nm for the same amount of lighting.

I can answer a few questions. Dahua Starlight cameras are popular affordable cameras with good night vision. Hikvision also has their Ultra low light cameras. As long as the cameras support ONVIF it should work with a different maker of NVR, but some features might not be available. It is always best to stick with the same brand if possible. Dahua can be setup to move a PTZ to a preset being triggered by another camera. https://dahuawiki.com/IPPTZ I would assume Hikvision has similar.

I would stay away from that camera. The software on those cameras will frustrate you from day 1. If the add is confusing, it is probably deliberate. Be aware that buying from China means you probably have no warranty, and if there is a warranty, it will cost a lot to send it back if you have problems.

Motorized zoom is also called motorizedvarifocal. It is meant to adjust camera field of view and works very slow. Look here for a good example https://www.securitycamera2000.com/tools/comparethefieldofviewfordifferentsecuritycameralenses What you want is a PT or PTZ camera, pan/tilt or pan/tilt/zoom. Dahua makes Starlight ptz's, not sure on Hikvision.

You may want to look at the Starlight Dahua cameras or the Hikvision Ultra low light cameras. They have very good night vision and are affordable. Blue Iris is a good choice. Make sure your computer has enough oomph to run the cameras. An old dual core machine won't do it well.

IE Tab is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome[1] and SeaMonkey web browsers which allows users to view pages using the Internet Explorer (IE) layout engine. This can be used for viewing pages that only render properly, or work at all, in IE.

If the camera ip address is 192.168.1.... then your computer ip address should be the same subnet, 192.168.1.xxx. If your computer and router ip address is 192.168.0.xxx, for instance, it won't see the camera. You will need to use the specialized search tool the dealer recommended, or change the computer ip address to the same subnet as the camera, 192.168.1.xxx. Then plug the camera directly into the computer. log into camera and change the ip address to the same as the router/your system.

dave, homeplug will carry the data, but not the poe power.

Look at the Dahua Starlight cameras and Hikvision Ultra lowlight cameras. They have very good night vision for the price. Don't use wireless cameras if possible, they can fail from interference at any time, use your cat5 cable. Also study upon poe, power over ethernet. That way you run just one cat5 cable to your camera. You can find sample videos online. Here is a lens calclator to see what you might want for your field of view. https://www.pelco.com/partners/tools-calculators/camera-lens-field-of-view-calculator-fov

For chrome and firefox, look for IE tab and install and try those. For IE you might try internet options/security and adding the ip to trusted sites. Then, under security click on custom level and try changing the activex settings to allow or prompt, you choice. You will get a warning that IE will be unsecure.

The switch shouldn't matter, if the camera is ONVIF compliant the ONVIF device manager should see it if the router and camera are on the same subnet. If it were me, I would next try Advanced Ip Scanner or similar program to try and see your camera.

Maynard, if you are still around, first try a lens calculator to decide what view of that gate you want. http://polarisusa.com/lens-calculator

The general opinion I have seen is don't leave it on tour. It may depend on your camera model too. Allegedly Dahua lite series PTZ's use cheaper materials in their contsruction. On the Dahua Wiki, there is a way to trigger your PTZ to move to certain preset via Dahua nvr. https://dahuawiki.com/IPPTZ

Foxtrot, google for the ONVIF device manager from sourceforge, it may see your camera and let you configure it.

jimbo, as tom pointed out, you won't see much with a pinhole camera outside. One should be ok as a doorbell camera though. One of the problems with cheaper cameras is the software/firmware. It will frustrate the heck out of you. Axis and Hikvision are good brands. WIFI cameras need to connect to the router then to the dvr. To be reliable, a dvr and cameras should be of the same brand, and you really won't know if different brands will work together until you try them. Wifi is unreliable, there can be too much interference. One, maybe two cameras should function ok, but the more you use, the more problems you will have.And if you have other wifi devices on your router, the more potential problems you will have. Nothing connected to the internet is totally secure! The best way to connect to your system is through a VPN, opefully your router supports it. Why would you want to point an external ir light at what the camera won't see? Good luck