Shark Man

I'm getting a bit annoyed at oiks hovering round my place on their way to/from the new off license (amazing how many dodgy looking people these places attract).

So, with my car being relogated from the garage (too big), I want to setup something for the ineveitable. I also want to setup somthing sinilar at the works property ( may as well, while I'm at it, no it has nothing to do with expenses, cough )

So the spec:

Home: PC based interface card with four inputs and recording software with motion sensing and e-mail alerts (already have a spare PC - may as well use it for somthing useful).

4 cameras, 3 outdoor and weather proof, 1 preferably high-res colour. And 1 indoor high-res colour. All must have good night-vision (I want to see their faces in the dark ).


Work: Standalone HD based DVR unit (somthing like this: Compact 4-Channel Digital Video Recorder (DVR) ). With motion detection, and preferably with some method of off-loading video to a PC, so it can be burnt to DVD or e-mailed, etc (swappable caddys is suitable as well as USB/ethernet access, so long as the data can be read and is in a mainstream format like Mpeg etc. ).

And with the same camera setup as for home.

So far looked at the stuff in Maplin, but I don't think the cameras look all that up to outdoor use and specs night vision and res seem very vaigue. Also looked at some other sites found on google, where I seem to having difficulty finding any specific info and specs on DVRs - especially concerning data acess via PC.

So could do with other sources to look at and some advice of what is more suitable for my needs. With regard to whats the best DVR to use and suitable cameras.

And of course, on a budget as usual, so I want cheapy cheap cheap, but as good a qulaity as possible, looking at spoending about £500 to £600 in total (or £300 each ).

Any positive help is appeciated. Cheers

MJW

We got a 4-channel 120Gb DVR for about £300 from ebay, have a look on there, might be worth a look for cameras on there too

The Chief

be very careful at what you buy off fleabay and make sure the cams are of top quality.

i sorted a system out recently for a Smacs member which consisted of a DVR, Quad, a vandal proof dome and a infrared cam.

any one who thinks they can get a decent setup cheap are buying crap.

make sure your cams are digitally processed 1/3 inch with preferebly a Sony CCD with around 480tv lines and a low light level.

The Chief

BTW you should be able to get a half decent setup for 600 quid.

Shark Man

I'm already very wary of e-bay and avoid it as much as I can (once bitten... ). Plus its nausiating sifting through the listings to find a good retailer selling what you want thats based in the UK with a listing thats not vaigue or in unreadable brightly coloured block capitals.

So, I guess you deal in the suff Cheif. I've got an idea what CCD to look out for, but how about the DVR anything in particular I should be looking at that foots the bill.

I suppose I should ask the same for the PCi card as they range from £15 to £150, is 25fps acceptable or should I look at somthing that captures more than this?

Cheers

The Chief

You should be able to change your FPS on your DVR and yes i'd say 25 is ok.

The more FPS the less recording time the less FPS the longer your DVR will record before looping back.

StickyMicky

got all my stuff from ebay

its fine during the day but the nightvision stuff was poor, so when the cameras broke one by one i changed them for models without nightvision.


4 cameras, 2 in cheap black domes, one "bare" in the office and one up a big pole outside in a proper heated houseing covering the full site


i think the DVR card was about £15 but i suspect i was lucky, as most people have problems with cheap dvr cards.

the only problem i ever have is sometimes i cant login in over the internet to view the cameras at home, restarting the software fixes this.


have a look at mine online if you like

http://www.washcam.gotdns.org

username : guest
password : view

as i said its the cheapest of the cheap, and mainly used to help with the knobbers who claim "your lad scratched my car etc etc

and i can spy on them when i`m not at work

i did have a nice expensive panasonic camera outside up the pole but it blew up and was replaced for a cheap ebay ccd model, the picture is the same!!! although i did use the lens from the panasonic model on the cheaper camera.


keep meaning to upgrade the card to a 8 channel model and fit a few more cams

supernick

My old DVR just broke and i have just bought a new one from CCTV cameras - it is a lot better than the old one. Model No. AVerDiGi EB 1304 NET

supernick

Agree with above quote as my cameras are all night vision and pretty poor at night.

What cameras did you replace them with? Colour or B&W as the night vision on 1 of mine has stopped working and am looking to replace it.

StickyMicky

not sure if you can view the DVR system i posted above, i can see loads of people trying with the server software but it never tells me how many are connected

but the "prewash pad cam" and "wash exit cam"

have been replaced with these




i had a cheap micromark B&W camera and the night vision on that model was superb but the camera houseing started to rust and the cam broke down about 2 years back.

StickyMicky

the "office cam" is one of these



as above the night vision is crap, but it works ok in poor light, i used to run these all round but found that i had to tape over the IR led`s other wise the IR light would bounce back of the housing lens and affect the picture

the one up the pole outside was a panasonic ccd jobbie, approx £80 second hand at the time, lasted about 2 years, this blew so was replaced with a wired metal spy cam but that only lasted a few months, probably due to the extreme weather it gets up there so i replaced it with one of these

eBay.co.uk: 1/4 CCD CCTV Security Color Camera *Free Lens included* (item 150126528238 end time 31-May-07 14:40:33 BST)

although as i said i changed the supplied lens for a decent one and had to fiddle a little to get a half decent picture.

Simon 69

Ali, Maplin have a £300 quad-capable digital recorder on offer currently for about £120, all it needs is a fixed disk.

Simon

Shark Man

Cheers sticky, I tried logging on, but my browser keeps booting me out; security settings and rejecting plug-ins guess, will have a play when I get home.

Looks like some good stuff on there, teh DVRs are cheaper than many I have seen with the right spec

What do you think the link in my first post was to? The problem is Maplin don't state the manufacturer so I can't do any in-depth checking of the specs (I guess its made by Swan, but it doesn't say ) Thanks anyway...I have the same flyer on my desk

I take it the main factor in most of this is making sure I get camera that work well in the dark, as at least 4 of the outdoor cameras will have very little in the way of supplementary lighting (i.e no floodlights etc) when ideally they need to be at their most efffective, so would investing in supplementary IR lighting be of benefit? I'm somewhat new to all these required Lux levels and stuff.

Ta

StickyMicky

gatesy does not like DVR cards


the plugin gets blocked 99% of the time, although once its installed i have never had a problem since, if you get it running later you will see how crap they are in the dark

not sure if the cheap nightvision cameras would work any better with a big IR floodlight, i suspect they would, but i dont really need my setup for night use, in the winter i have plenty of floodlights all around the site so its fine while everything is powered up, if your going to rob me knock out the power first LOL

boomer

Have a peek at RF Concepts - i bought a basic 4 channel DVR a few years ago which will record getting on for two weeks worth of footage at full speed/resolution.

However, now i have broadband i fancy a networkable one so i can look in from anywhere on the interweb. They also have motion sensing which will massively increase the "recording" time, and multi-audio - 'cos it does make a difference if you can hear what they are doing!

Prior to my DVR, i used an bog-standard VCR in long-play mode, which did it's job back in 2004

mb

StickyMicky

yea the motion detect features do help with recording times quite a bit

i think i get about about 1 months worth of recording with 4 cams

IIRC the cctv pc at work has a 120 gig drive, and maybe a cheap 20gig drive that i used for the windows installation/browsing SN when i`m bored etc etc

Shark Man

Yeah, thats my main reason for wanting something with motion sensing, I very much doubt I could bear sifting though hours of non-events to find what I'm looking for should I ever need to.

Sticky; Looks like the plugin for your webcams doesn't like vista 64bit either

shooter007

search google for cctv loads out there but you get what you pay for

Shark Man

Thats as about as helpful as telling me how to wipe my own ****.

Without being nasty as to stress the point: I could google forever and still not be able to find a retailer selling what I want and end up baraged with info overload that leaves more confused than when I started; Can't see the wood for all the trees.


I.e Have you bought any CCTV equipment, what model, and was it anygood, who did you buy it from and were they any good?