First woot, hope it's worth it!

billyush wrote:I am in the market for a surveillance system for my home...
prefer 8 cameras for OUTDOOR use...
also prefer a dedicated monitor for the system...
(COSTCO has what looks to be a nice system with a touch screen/etc....but, it's $900)

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Get Two?

lstaff wrote:What's really amazing about this video is the spider didn't even flinch.

Interesting point: Spiders LOVE these cameras. It is bad enough that the motion detection has to deal with trees and other moving shadows. Add to that that the IR seems to attract spiders and before you know it, you've got hours of footage of a industrious spider.

miketorres wrote:First woot, hope it's worth it!

It's worth it.. :]

Installation took a few hours though.. my suggestion is to stay as organized as possible or else you'd have pretty bad tangles.

I picked up 2 of these for $99 each last time they were on Woot. I had a few spare Sata2 hard drives that I put in them.

Woot does not state this clearly enought... hard drive is NOT Included. I knew this when I ordered them, but I don't believe it's posted clearly enough this time.

The main thing I found is that there is, at best, a 2 second lag between the time it detects motion, and when it actually starts recording the 'alarm' motion. Doesn't mater if it records continuisly with motion, or not. We keep missing the person thats been ringing our doorbell in the middle of the night! Got to be a neighbor kid. If i set all the settings to lowest resolutions, the lag actually gets worse... to about 5 seconds. The shortest lag is with D1 and highest resolution.

I would reccomend running the cables to were you want the cameras before you start drilling, to see if there is interference - these are NOT shielded cables. The one system i drilled and ran cables has a slight grainyness to it due to interference. I'll be rerunning the cables when it gets warmer.
I set the unit to record continuisly, and turned motion off. This way I get 24/7 recording,a dn if anything does happen, I will have to review the recordings. I also have these cameras setup on my pc with 'Active Webcam' with the motion enables - so I can get motion recordings, then use them to get the entire video without it being broken into segments... Recoding/Alarm/Recording/Alarm...

Another great webcam software that is free, is ContaCam. Wotrks great, but I havn;t found a way to add these cameras yet. I use two Logitech Orbit/AF's.

For my Android phone & tablet, i use 'IP Cam Veiwer' to view the cameras - works great.

The lenses are 6mm, wich is narrow. For covering a front door area, you'll find it's difficult to get everything. You may want cameras with a 3.5mm lens. 2.5mm would be ideal. A camera on teh front of the garage pointing at the driveway cannot get the entire driveway!

Also, the connecters are too close to the cameras. You don't want these exposed. the will collect mosture due to condensation eve if you wrap them. I'm planning on splicing the connectors to get a lead of about 20'. This will allow me to run the cable into the house, adn connect them inside - not outside.

The cameras will NOT work well looking thru a window at night due to the reflection of the IR. This is not the fault of Zmodo - all IR cameras will do this. If you want to have a camera inside looking out a window, disable the IR on these cameras by unscrewing the front of the camera, and unpluging the IR lead to disable the IR. I think you may have to unscrew the IR mount to get at it (I can't remember). Then, use an IR eluminator outside to wash the area in IR.

The unit works well, but with the lag, I'm unsure about purchasing a better unit. I'm plannig on removing the hard drives and formatting them again on the pc, tehn reinstalling them. Maybe somethings up with the way there formatted to begin with.

In for 2! One for the yarn shop we own (that's already been broken into) and one for the house so I can see what kind of party the Jack Russells are throwing while we're gone!

CowboyDann wrote:I can't promise this is the same set but this guy says he paid about 200 dollars for his zmodo camera set. Unfortunately the video doesn't capture the hit and run that happened, but you can hear the audio and get a decent feel for the night vision. These fall into about the same price range so I'm thinking you'll get same quality.



Edit: Of course if this was an episode of CSI all you would need to do is zoom in and the plate magically appear and be easy to read. (What am I trying to say? Keep your expectations realistic and you'll be Okay with this set)

These cameras i.e. the ones listed with this woot sell do NOT have any audio features. So obviously this is another system. You can buy another camera with audio feature.

I got one unit from last woot sell.

aftab7000 wrote:These cameras i.e. the ones listed with this woot sell do NOT have any audio features. So obviously this is another system. You can buy another camera with audio feature.

I got one unit from last woot sell.

Thanks, I have edited my original post. Would you say that the video quality is similar?

I bought this a few months ago and it gets the job done

Cons:

The image quality is good as long as there is light on the subject. If it is dark it is hard to make out faces or details. The images are shaky so if you are using the built in motion detector it records all the time. Buy aftermarket high quality cables with as short of runs as possible to avoid this. It will not accept an external hard drive. I had the idea of running a cable to somewhere in the attic to store the information so if someone sabataged the dvr I would still have the images. No dice.

Zmodo says to use a high dollar special av hard drive, but I bought a western digital blue series (desktop size) hard drive and it woks fine. Don't buy the green series. They are not fast enough. 7200 RPM seems to get the job done fine. 500gb will get you about 3 days worth of recording with all 4 cameras set up to record all the time before it starts to overwrite data. the hard drive is very easy to install. Be prepared to order or make your own cables if you plan on monitoring the images on your tv (which is nice, you can see who is at your door from bed) The BNC connectors aren't very common in the US and not usually found at best buy or other electronics stores. You can get adapters at radioshak, though. The user interface is intimidating at first but really easy to learn.

Overall I would recommend it. It is very affordable and does what it is supposed to do with few shortfalls.

How big of a hard drive would I need for this?

*EDIT*
Did not realize the post above, ^^^^^, gives a good idea.

mdwyerfoo wrote:Interesting point: Spiders LOVE these cameras. It is bad enough that the motion detection has to deal with trees and other moving shadows. Add to that that the IR seems to attract spiders and before you know it, you've got hours of footage of a industrious spider.

That was AMAZING!! (and that spider is quite the show-off). I would've loved to see it catch a bug in that web. Got a video for that?

I bought a 8 channel zmodo from woot about a year ago. It has been working great. I would recommend buying this if you only need 1 - 4 cameras.

If you think you may need a 5th, go ahead a buy the 16 cam on deals woot. Even if you don't use all 16 cams, you can set the DVR to a higher recording resolution. It's definitely worth it with a 1tb hd and all of the extra cameras and cables......

mikebwca wrote:I picked up 2 of these for $99 each last time they were on Woot. I had a few spare Sata2 hard drives that I put in them.

Woot does not state this clearly enought... hard drive is NOT Included. I knew this when I ordered them, but I don't believe it's posted clearly enough this time.

The main thing I found is that there is, at best, a 2 second lag between the time it detects motion, and when it actually starts recording the 'alarm' motion. Doesn't mater if it records continuisly with motion, or not. We keep missing the person thats been ringing our doorbell in the middle of the night! Got to be a neighbor kid. If i set all the settings to lowest resolutions, the lag actually gets worse... to about 5 seconds. The shortest lag is with D1 and highest resolution.

I would reccomend running the cables to were you want the cameras before you start drilling, to see if there is interference - these are NOT shielded cables. The one system i drilled and ran cables has a slight grainyness to it due to interference. I'll be rerunning the cables when it gets warmer.
I set the unit to record continuisly, and turned motion off. This way I get 24/7 recording,a dn if anything does happen, I will have to review the recordings. I also have these cameras setup on my pc with 'Active Webcam' with the motion enables - so I can get motion recordings, then use them to get the entire video without it being broken into segments... Recoding/Alarm/Recording/Alarm...

Another great webcam software that is free, is ContaCam. Wotrks great, but I havn;t found a way to add these cameras yet. I use two Logitech Orbit/AF's.

For my Android phone & tablet, i use 'IP Cam Veiwer' to view the cameras - works great.

The lenses are 6mm, wich is narrow. For covering a front door area, you'll find it's difficult to get everything. You may want cameras with a 3.5mm lens. 2.5mm would be ideal. A camera on teh front of the garage pointing at the driveway cannot get the entire driveway!

Also, the connecters are too close to the cameras. You don't want these exposed. the will collect mosture due to condensation eve if you wrap them. I'm planning on splicing the connectors to get a lead of about 20'. This will allow me to run the cable into the house, adn connect them inside - not outside.

The cameras will NOT work well looking thru a window at night due to the reflection of the IR. This is not the fault of Zmodo - all IR cameras will do this. If you want to have a camera inside looking out a window, disable the IR on these cameras by unscrewing the front of the camera, and unpluging the IR lead to disable the IR. I think you may have to unscrew the IR mount to get at it (I can't remember). Then, use an IR eluminator outside to wash the area in IR.

The unit works well, but with the lag, I'm unsure about purchasing a better unit. I'm plannig on removing the hard drives and formatting them again on the pc, tehn reinstalling them. Maybe somethings up with the way there formatted to begin with.

I had the same problem with the lag. In the advanced settings you can adjust the sensitivity of the motion detection. Set it to the lowest setting and it should fix it. It did for me. If that doesn't work try pointing the camera At a shallower angle, if you can, while still gettIng the doorway in the frame, allowing the camera more time to catch the movement. Be sure you're using 7200 RPM or better drives. Less will cause lag or missed images.

lstaff wrote:That was AMAZING!! (and that spider is quite the show-off). I would've loved to see it catch a bug in that web. Got a video for that?

I had the spider problem with my cameras too. Some really good bug spray did the trick. I haven't recorded a spider in some time now. I did manage to catch my neighbors dog pooping in my yard.

LINUX USERS BEWARE!!!

My Zmodo only works with internet explorer. Does NOT work in mozilla or chrome. I have some windows PC so it wasn't a huge deal but it really did (and still does) bum me out I couldn't pull up the cams on my Linux machine.

Even if you don't have anything to steal, they are still good for spying in general.

Anyway, I have a similar brand that doesn't have Internet access but I use WebCam 7 or WebCamXP with a capture card to put the combined 4 camera view on the Internet. Works great in Chrome, Firefox and IE. It even works on my Android phone using TinyCam Monitor or the IPcamViewer.

There are also 4in1 capture cards for around $30 that will allow for all 4 inputs (using BNC to RCA adapters) giving you individual camera viewing, but that would require the paid version of the software.

That setup will also give you the ability to record the video or pictures of the alerts directly to your computer eliminating the need to purchase and install a hard drive for the system. Making for easy backups, also.

nicklcarey wrote:LINUX USERS BEWARE!!!

My Zmodo only works with internet explorer. Does NOT work in mozilla or chrome. I have some windows PC so it wasn't a huge deal but it really did (and still does) bum me out I couldn't pull up the cams on my Linux machine.

That's weird I believe the Unit uses Linux for its OS so you'd think they would think of that.

This video is a little old but it explains how to setup your dvr for remote viewing. It is a little complicated if you have never gotten friendly with your router.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks8RH8RjwI

I should also mention that the DNS service that it was integrated with no longer offers free DNS service. There are still a few out there so give google a try..... and good luck.

schulerr wrote:That's weird I believe the Unit uses Linux for its OS so you'd think they would think of that.

That's what I assumed as well. It is linux based but it doesn't play nice with linux browsers. The viewer software uses active X which is only available on windows...


It says it plain as day on the specs page...

Remote Access: Internet Explorer or Netviewer Software

Things to keep in mind:

These are black and white cameras during the day, with a greenish tint at night.

Think carefully about the work involved installing these things. Long cable runs that really need to be inaccessible to anyone with a mind to circumvent your efforts can be daunting.

Newegg and Tigerdirect are great places to pick up good hard drives for good prices.

The "hooded" design is a long time design feature that protects the cameras remarkably well.

X-10 sells wireless systems that I usually recommend.

I use the ip cam viewer app on my android phone. It works really well. I've used this on a honeycomb tablet and it also seemed to work great. It doesn't show constant live video on the app. It will display a snapshot that is updated about every second.

I actually set this app up and used it to help me with my camera placement so I didn't have to climb off the ladder to check the placement inside on the DVR.

For some reason, I can't get the app to work on my logitech revue (google TV). If anyone can figure that out I will give you 1,000 internet points.

According to the product description, they're color cameras, not black and white.

xmBill wrote:Even if you don't have anything to steal, they are still good for spying in general.

These actually help deter criminals. Any tweakers out there considering breaking in will see the little red glow these cams put off and will be too paranoid to rob you. Instead, they will rob the guy down the street.

ceejatec wrote:According to the product description, they're color cameras, not black and white.

They are color but at night they are black and white. Once it gets dark the infrared lights kick on and the cam goes into black and white mode. These cameras see much better with a light source of some kind. They can't see CRAP in pitch black.

hotrod40rl wrote:Anyone know how these cameras fair sitting in super hot outdoor weather long term?

These are good in rain, ice, and some down hot southern weather....

ceejatec wrote:According to the product description, they're color cameras, not black and white.

They are color, however it is very poor. You can tell what color someone is wearing but don't expect to distinguish lavender from purple. At night they are black and white.

nicklcarey wrote:That's what I assumed as well. It is linux based but it doesn't play nice with linux browsers. The viewer software uses active X which is only available on windows...


It says it plain as day on the specs page...

Remote Access: Internet Explorer or Netviewer Software

The notes say this is the first DVR to support MacOS. (10.7.x and 10.6.x) I wonder if they loosened up on the ActiveX controls or did they just make Netviewer Mac-compatible?

I'm a Linux user as well and for years had a Sony surveillance cam which was web-based, but only with ActiveX controls. It was annoying keeping a spare machine around just to check in on that. I suppose a virtual machine could work these days, but still. An embedded Linux OS running ActiveX exclusively on the web server? Tsk tsk!

jay415 wrote:The notes say this is the first DVR to support MacOS. (10.7.x and 10.6.x) I wonder if they loosened up on the ActiveX controls or did they just make Netviewer Mac-compatible?

I'm a Linux user as well and for years had a Sony surveillance cam which was web-based, but only with ActiveX controls. It was annoying keeping a spare machine around just to check in on that. I suppose a virtual machine could work these days, but still. An embedded Linux OS running ActiveX exclusively on the web server? Tsk tsk!

It was a real bummer for me. I was actually wanting to build a web server that I could check on my phone or remote pc that would show all my cameras and info on my alarm system. The whole active x thing killed it..... It works okay independently though. for the money, I would do it all again.

AlienZulu wrote:when are they going to fix the description on these things?


"Everything you need to have your surveillance system up and running in your home or business quickly and easily"

"(hard drive not included)"

Hard drive only needed if you want to record. Not needed for straight surveillance.

schulerr wrote:They are color, however it is very poor. You can tell what color someone is wearing but don't expect to distinguish lavender from purple. At night they are black and white.

Don't worry....if a guy is wearing Lavender, he will only be coming to Redecorate your house, not Rob it!

^^X^^

CowboyDann wrote:Thanks, I have edited my original post. Would you say that the video quality is similar?

I am afraid the quality is not the same BUT pretty good for a $100 complete set( except hdd). You can add camera that is good. I use two old security lab ccd camera without IR. Besides the cameras it is indeed good a good system.

Would this be good for catching my FedEx guy throwing my stuff over my gate?

I am in charge of the operations side of a Loss Prevention Department for a retail chain of 200+ stores and design the CCTV layout for every store in the company. My thoughts before I head out to work:

1. Resolution is adequate on these for home use but I would question the lens; a sub-par lens will kill video quality. Personally at this resolution I feel details will be lacking, but I use this resolution myself to save storage space on the HDD for areas that I just need an overview of without a lot of detail.

2. Putting these outside; it reads as if you can turn the IR off but please don't in colder areas. The IR generates enough heat to keep these working.

3. These are not vandal proof, a hit with a bat and you lost video.

4. At this resolution getting a good face shot is not easy.

5. These cameras do not have appear to have back light compensation; video quality will not look good if the Sun is shinning directly on it even with the hood these have. Keep that in mind when placing them; Nothing pointed due East or West; go for angles that keep the Sun out or keep it under overhangs; Even with back light compensation I have had to have installers build overhangs in areas that the Sun just overwhelmed a camera.


$100 for a 4 camera system? It is a toy that can work. Good cheap indoor cameras I usually spend $130 each on, $180 for outside and double that for very good quality units.

Use this system to see if you want a better CCTV system or as a visual deterrent, you really get what you pay for when it comes to CCTV and DVRs but at this price you got a great learning tool and it might make someone think twice if they see it before keying a car or approaching your house.

All 4 cameras powered by a single power adapter. That means that these four cameras cannot be far apart. can they ?

Bought this system last time. Had trouble installing HD. I called ZMODO and found out I needed a minimum 500gb HD my 320gb would not work. I didn't find anything about this listed anywhere. FYI

AlienZulu wrote:when are they going to fix the description on these things?


"Everything you need to have your surveillance system up and running in your home or business quickly and easily"

"(hard drive not included)"

You can use it for surveillance without the HD.

It's probably worth mentioning that these don't have any alarm inputs on the back, so you can't, say, manually trigger recording if someone opens a door or something (or if you have an external motion detector).

If you really only get 3 days worth of recording on 500GB, though, that's pretty terrible. I'd honestly just leave the thing set to only record on motion and hope for the best.

All 4 cameras powered by a single power adapter. That means that these four cameras cannot be far apart. can they ?

It looks like these are just standard security cameras, so AC adapters aren't really hard to find.

I bought this Z-junk a few months ago from Woot and they are total JUNK. The picture flickers most of the time, I guess the cables are bad and the hard drive fails after running a few hours, tried two diff drives and I even put a separate power supply on the hard drive....Woot will not really help with warranty issues... you have to deal with Zmodo in china and they make you jump through hoops till you finally give up and put it on the shelf.... wish I had the $100 I wasted on this Woot back! I suggest you hook it up and let it run for a few weeks before you put time into installing everything.

Is this will deliver to UAE?

ghamphy wrote:All 4 cameras powered by a single power adapter. That means that these four cameras cannot be far apart. can they ?

power adapter is at the unit. All cables go to that anyway. each cable is 60' so if you put unit in the center you could have them 120' apart.