WARNING: NO HARD DRIVE INCLUDED! Make sure you take that into consideration.

The babysitter is going to hate me for this one...

Great! Now I can be like a certain News corporation executive and keep tabs on everyone who's right outside my door.

Am I that crazy? -Nah. (says my Woot Monkey from across the room)

Resolution is pretty crappy. My friend has this surveillance system installed at his auto shop and the quality is pretty much on par with standard definition. I had trouble making out people's faces and car's license plates during the daytime.

anyone know how far you can see clearly on the picture of this system.... hoping to hear good things.

Looks promising. Anyone have an experience with the company before?

I purchased a similar zmodo on ebay. The DVR works good, just like a NightOwl. The menu interfase is a little bit slow, but it works.

The zmodo camera quality was AWFUL! ... I plugged other camera brands and the quality was much better.

The remote view is good for iphone and blackberry. (havent tried android).

Its basically impossible to view from a mac, unless you have windows installed.

The netviewer software for windows is really laggy and the quality is not good at all.

Overall, its this is the cheapest surveillance system I found on the net, however i think its not intended for important surveillance. Works for me just to see whats going on.

Good luck buyers.

beware of your landlord buying this and then needing to do some maintenance in your apartment... ha ha

found it on the manufacturer's site:http://www.zmodo.com/complete-security-kits/4-channel-dvr-system/4-channel-h-264-real-time-surveillance-security-dvr-2.html

well, its the closest they have as this exact model seems to be discontinued.

These are a real pain in the ass to setup and once you do, the picture is awful anyways. Also theres no hard drive.

Is it possible to get a much longer cord, or extentions for the cameras?

DennisEChung wrote:Is it possible to get a much longer cord, or extentions for the cameras?

you can go on ebay or some other electronic sites to get extentions up to 100' I believe

bpeterson82 wrote:WARNING: NO HARD DRIVE INCLUDED! Make sure you take that into consideration.

Yes, my reading comprehension is decent, thank you Woot! Now, my taste in deal-a-day sites on the other hand...

Can you plug a few of these cameras into the next woot-off so I can see what items are coming up next?

ThunderThighs wrote:Awwwwwwwwwww.

couldn't resist!

Hey, its a starter kit to making your very own Truman show!

ThunderThighs wrote:THERE. ARE. FOUR. CORDS.

Extra points for Capt. Picard reference, Miss Thighs. +10

This is an excellent price if you're into this kind of thing. The DVR alone is $149.

Questions:
1) Can I view it in Zoneminder?
2) Is each camera individually addressable at the same time (aka, 4 independent, real-time streams), or is it like a combined 4-up or rotating?
3) If 1 is no (or unknown), but 2 is yes, will it work in the IP Cam Viewer app in android (independent of Zoneminder)? In other words, can I get a raw MJPEG stream for each camera?
EDIT:
4) Is it easy to run headless? I wouldn't keep a monitor connected past the setup phase.

Thanks for anyone who knows!

I always wanted something like this when I was a kid.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger. Figure it's plenty good for watching what's going on at a door, and hopefully it can see our tiny townhome back yard. Might even be able to keep an eye on the cars about 40 feet away.

joselama wrote:I purchased a similar zmodo on ebay. The DVR works good, just like a NightOwl. The menu interfase is a little bit slow, but it works.

The zmodo camera quality was AWFUL! ... I plugged other camera brands and the quality was much better.

The remote view is good for iphone and blackberry. (havent tried android).

Its basically impossible to view from a mac, unless you have windows installed.

The netviewer software for windows is really laggy and the quality is not good at all.

Overall, its this is the cheapest surveillance system I found on the net, however i think its not intended for important surveillance. Works for me just to see whats going on.

Good luck buyers.

While this may not be great for remote surveillance over the Internet, don't forget its other intended use: to record various spots. I can't imagine the cameras being any worse than the security cameras they have aimed at cash registers, entrances/exits, BlackJack tables, etc. And instead of time lapse photography or videos with low frame rates (i.e. 15fps), H.264 compression should allow for smooth videos (25-30fps?).

Is Zmodo a spin off of Gizmodo? kekekeks

Here is the manual for the DVR.

A few things I've discovered after setting up similar systems.

This one has pretty good instructions when compared to other similar systems and pages 17 to 20 talk about the network setup. I highly recommend you take advantage of an alternate web port other than default 80 (even though the instructions say it should be fine) so it doesn't interfere with another web service you may be running, I usually use port 8080.

You will have to configure your router to direct traffic to whatever static IP address you set your DVR up as on your LAN, I recommend using a static address unless you want to map your router to assign the same dhcp address to the DVR's MAC address.

Take advantage of the DynamicDNS (DDNS) option to get a friendly name and keep your WAN IP address updated, most routers let you do this too, don't set it up in both or DynDNS may ban the account for too many updates.

Internet explorer is picky and requires you to put the http:// in the url when you append a port to the ip address, for instance "76.150.15.30:8080" would not work, but "http://76.150.15.30:8080" does. Other browsers don't seem to care. Also, a lot of these use interfaces that only work with internet explorer, I'm not sure about this one however but if its not working in Mozilla, Chrome, etc, try IE.

Here is a link to the playback software.
Here is a link to the Mobile Playback Software.

sdc100 wrote:While this may not be great for remote surveillance over the Internet, don't forget its other intended use: to record various spots. I can't imagine the cameras being any worse than the security cameras they have aimed at cash registers, entrances/exits, BlackJack tables, etc. And instead of time lapse photography or videos with low frame rates (i.e. 15fps), H.264 compression should allow for smooth videos (25-30fps?).

Trust me. The zmodo cameras (at least all 4 i got) are BAD!!! Its just too blury, colors mix and sometimes you get static. Its not the connection.. Just the cameras.

Of course, you can go ahead and buy some really cheap cameras that will work much better than these. Anyways, its a great price for a DVR

Various YouTube videos on Zmodo surveillance systems.

joselama wrote:Trust me. The zmodo cameras (at least all 4 i got) are BAD!!! Its just too blury, colors mix and sometimes you get static. Its not the connection.. Just the cameras.

Of course, you can go ahead and buy some really cheap cameras that will work much better than these. Anyways, its a great price for a DVR

I've also found that units like these use very cheap RCA cables and pick up interference easily. Make sure to route them away from electrical outlets, radios, etc.

theguruguys wrote: Also, a lot of these use interfaces that only work with internet explorer, I'm not sure about this one however but if its not working in Mozilla, Chrome, etc, try IE.

Or, if you ever have something that requires IE, try IE Tab in Chrome (I think there is a Firefox one too).

texanfromin wrote:Or, if you ever have something that requires IE, try IE Tab in Chrome (I think there is a Firefox one too).

Yeah, it does use ActiveX, so maybe with some tinkering it whould work in IE Tab in chrome, I don't think FireFox has any type of ActiveX support but I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong.

DennisEChung wrote:Is it possible to get a much longer cord, or extentions for the cameras?

It's just a regular BNC cable which you can get extensions for on ebay/the internet for cheap.

ThunderThighs wrote:THERE. ARE. FOUR. CORDS.

Thank you for the laugh, Number One!

^^X^^

Does it record each camera in 640x480 or equivalent, or in the "QVGA" 352x240?

It's not clear from the manual or description. It seems that when the monitor is showing all 4 cameras at once each camera is displayed there as 352x240 according to the manual (or would it be 320x240), but if you click on one camera does it display as a TRUE 640x480 AND is it recording each camera at a true 640x480? Or is it recording only at 352x240 for each camera?

If you take the hard drive out and connect it to a Windows computer, are the files playable?

Can the DVR be used for viewing on a regular TV?

To those of you who watch too much CSI...

A lot of my customers call me up when they have something stolen or need to replay video on their surveillance DVR and they don't know how. When I get there I am told they need to read a license plate and want me to 'zoom in on it' when I find it...

Unless the object is VERY close to the camera and still for a bit you will not be able to read license plate numbers and things like that with these types of cameras. There is no CSI, movie 'enhance' type magic with these.

Thinking about one for the house (very long driveway) but wonder if we will be able to monitor it indoors. Could we see who was at the gate of the driveway in live time on the computer monitor or it is something that we'd have to record and watch later?

sdc100 wrote:While this may not be great for remote surveillance over the Internet, don't forget its other intended use: to record various spots. I can't imagine the cameras being any worse than the security cameras they have aimed at cash registers, entrances/exits, BlackJack tables, etc. And instead of time lapse photography or videos with low frame rates (i.e. 15fps), H.264 compression should allow for smooth videos (25-30fps?).

according to the specs of the recorder, it will record half-resolution imagery (CIF, 352 x 240) at 25fps. this is also half the resolution of typical casino surveillance recording systems

that being said, it's not a bad deal. these sorts of DVR-and-cameras-in-a-box things are usually $300-400 for entry level stuff. temper your expectations and you won't be disappointed.

I've been playing with similar camera systems at work for the past few months. Some notes:

Pentaplex is a good thing. It allows for it to record while you are viewing, searching etc.

Most systems won't catch a license plate well, if at all. They are just not high enough res, and the lighting outside varies so much.

Having a Q-See and a Lorex, I can say using them from an Android phone rocks the house. Neither of my systems use the same cam viewer software, but from screen shots, it looks good.

The IR illumination is kind of a toss up. I think it only really works well if the target area is about 15 - 20 ft away. Closer and it is over illuminated, further away and it just isn't quite enough. Better than dark, though.

Get a 500GB drive, and you should easily get a month or more of recording time with 4 cameras... unless you don't tune settings and live on a busy street or have a ton of leaf movement.

Just my few cents.