dzlux wrote:Because the cameras are infrared sensitive (no IR filter) they are sensitive to a wider range of light, which tends to result in some loss of colors. My yard appears gray instead of green in daylight without an IR filter.

Perhaps you should have bought a sprinkler system instead.

velcrofog wrote:I don't know about a time-stamp, but I am a defense attorney. I think I'd have a hard time persuading a judge or a jury that each frame with the perp's face in it might have been Photoshopped, or that the defendant should be exonerated because the DA failed to prove that the defendant broke in on Wednesday rather than last Saturday, for example. If that's my defendant's defense, I start talking plea deal.

If anyone does have a break-in, I'd suggest getting the security unit in the hands of the police asap, because they have "chain of custody" procedures that will help in court.

At least in Georgia, these questions would go to the weight of the evidence rather than the admissibility so othe video would come in, subject to whatever the defense attorney may do to discredit it. Laying the foundation for the video is a relatively simple matter as well. With burglary, a majority of them are committed by repeat felons or in a spree, so a properly motivated police force can generally make a good use of the video. In many cases, they already have a suspect in mind and video can confirm that.

EvilBill wrote:I believe the remote viewing is IE only, no firefox nor linux. And the one I have does not even play well with IE8.

I have successfully used IETab to get it to work with Chrome (and much faster actually than using IE, go figure) so it might work that way. Also, there is a standalone client you can download albeit it is a windows program.

russela wrote:Thinking about it. Got some bored punks in the neighborhood ringing my doorbell at all hours. Either this or the Mossberg?

We have a neighbor who recently had a TV stolen off their front porch in broad daylight, right after fedex delivery. Good thing is they had a similar surveillance system. Caught the whole thing on video. Sad thing is resolution is so bad I can't come close to identifying the person, or their car when driving by.

Moral of the story is to make sure your video resolution is good enough to actually identify someone walking by, unless your planning to be watching constantly, ready to spring into action immediately.

I have this system, and I also have "professional grade" systems. I bought this on fleabay for about the same price. Here's my take:

Pros:
1. Video is fluid, not jumpy, and records plenty of hours on a 500GB (it depends on quality/camera count/motion detect setting how long it will record)
2. Its small, and comes with evertying you need to set up, packed with features.

Cons:
1. Picture quality is garbage. Think your lawn is green? think again, probably will show up red. Invest in better cameras. Unless the cam is about 10 feet from the face of your subject. Don't plan on ID'ing that lawn-gnome theif with this. Also the IR is pretty weak, and shows up at night when somone looks at your camera as a big red circle... creepy really.
2. Interface, manual and network connectivity are not exactly the best (think "chingrish").

All in all, I'd buy this again for the price and check ebay for some used pro-qualtiy camers which can be had for about $10 a piece. Yay woot.

tejash55 wrote:anyone know if i can hook that DVR up to a computer monitor? or how i would be able to view the video?

It has a VGA port showing on one of the pictures so you could hook up a computer monitor yes

russela wrote:Thinking about it. Got some bored punks in the neighborhood ringing my doorbell at all hours. Either this or the Mossberg?

Go with the Mossberg!!!

why are they selling the same item on sellout woot for 189.99??

I bought this one last time without a hard drive. And recommend it for the price if you are good at figuring things out. You can put up to 2tb in it. Cameras are sturdy. Night vision ir is about 10th feet wide at 20 feet out. Cables are very thin but long and work ok. Keep away from emit like motors and lights. Use fiberglass poles for long attic runs. A slight snag of BNC will break wire. The company has a great USA customer service which replaced broken cable with a shorter one on my request, (thanks Stephani). Quality is good. Couldn't fine better in three times the price. Menus and manual can be confusing. Allows you to configure everything independant for each camera but you have to remember to copy config to others. When selecting motion area the red portion that is almost blacked out is the area it scans. 15 Fps recording is default, 30 looks much better. It gets a solid month of recording per tb. With motion alarm recording that could be a year. I wish they made an hd version.

So, it sounds like if you upgrade the cameras you'll have a decent system on the cheap. What do you have to look for in a decent camera and can you mix camera types/brands?

http://deals.woot.com/sellout has a 4 channel version for $189.99.

durrock wrote:So, it sounds like if you upgrade the cameras you'll have a decent system on the cheap. What do you have to look for in a decent camera and can you mix camera types/brands?

Yes, you can mix cameras. It comes with 12V cameras, and most larger pro-grade ones are 24 volt, so you need the power supply for that. Ebay is a great place to find used ones... I got a whole box of used (probably at a target/walmart) ones for 10 per cam. Even got some outside housings which have fans / heaters. the picture is WAY better. I have a Pelco brand DVR, and it cost a fortune... this thing does everything just as well, the interface is just much more wonky.

UTSAFTW wrote:I did an install of a similar system this past weekend for a customer last week when it was over 100 F outside, but I was inside their well insulated attic. It was a fun challenge, but then again, so was trying to avoid contact with fiberglass.

Along with my boss, we set up this system:
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11613604

The moral of my story is that either be prepared to climb around in super hot attics for several hours or be prepared to part with an addition $150-$250 for having people come out and professionally install it. Still, the added awareness and the ability to record it all is rather amazing, albeit a bit creepy the first few times I saw it in action. If I had the money currently, I'd be tempted to get this item from Woot.

%150-$250? Talk about a deal. At best, I would charge a full 8 hour day at a rate of $120/hr to install a CCTV system. You would be at just under $1000. And even that is a deal compared to my competitors. If you find someone that actually knows what they are doing to install it for anywhere close to $250, JUMP ON IT.

EvilBill wrote:I believe the remote viewing is IE only, no firefox nor linux. And the one I have does not even play well with IE8.

For Firefox, download the IE Tab Plus add on, and you can use these sorts of things without problems.

We have a similar Q-See system, which already caught an illegal stealing our firewood (looking straight at the camera), multiple times. Video went to the police and they had arrested him within the hour. There's a warrant out for his arrest, but I bet he skipped back to his home country of Mexico.

Also caught someone casing my car. Video went off to the police department so they can keep an eye on that guy.

My feeling is that these are a deterrent and by having them you hopefully would never end up in a position having to use it in court.

Make sure you post a sign (with a picture of a camera for those who can't read English).

Pointed a camera at the Station fire a couple of years ago and gave the directions for viewing to my parents so they could see that our house was not in any danger of burning down.

Lots of uses.

ajbalch wrote:Yes, you can mix cameras. It comes with 12V cameras, and most larger pro-grade ones are 24 volt, so you need the power supply for that. Ebay is a great place to find used ones... I got a whole box of used (probably at a target/walmart) ones for 10 per cam. Even got some outside housings which have fans / heaters. the picture is WAY better. I have a Pelco brand DVR, and it cost a fortune... this thing does everything just as well, the interface is just much more wonky.

Thanks for the QUALITY POST ajbalch, I'm in for one.

If you were to place these in a circle, all facing inwards, could you ultimately film some Matrix-style fight scenes with them?

rom wrote:would this work on 220v?

The actual power to the DVR is via a DC power supply.. not a wall-wart type, but one where a PC-type power cord connects to an AC to DC power supply. SO.. presumably, you could use the included DC supply with a 220 to 110 converter, or just find a similar DC supply with 220 input. I'm not sure if the included supply can accept 220.. I can check when I get home but it might be too late..

russela wrote:Thinking about it. Got some bored punks in the neighborhood ringing my doorbell at all hours. Either this or the Mossberg?

I say Mossberg. More reliable. No electricity needed (No carbon footprint left, just the carbon from the shot you put in their arse!!!)

ElanorRigby wrote:I'm tempted to buy this just to find out what my cats do outside all day to wear themselves out. They always show up in the evening, strewn about on my back porch, bonelessly posed like there has been a particularly violent mass murder of adorable cats. Then they wake up.

They are annoying your neighbors. Trust me.

If I were a MAJOR supplier of items that are not allowed to be sold because of some silly laws, this would be a great item to add in and around my house!

CrazyLemming wrote:Ah, so they can just shoot each other then. Brilliant.
Does he also have some ribbon and tape around to put a bow around the whole thing when the officers show up to investigate the scene?

Anyone not familiar with the Mossberg would probably not know to press the slide release, assuming it was stored in such a manner. However, I would not take that chance.

Also, though I know people are joking, recording 'sleepovers' without consent is pretty illegal in at least a few states.

acoustikarl wrote:So what kind of surface do I need to attach these to to keep someone with a portal gun from knocking them off the wall?

Portal jokes are getting as old as lolcats and references to a love for bacon. For the love of god, PORTAL IS NOT REAL.

ElanorRigby wrote:I'm tempted to buy this just to find out what my cats do outside all day to wear themselves out. They always show up in the evening, strewn about on my back porch, bonelessly posed like there has been a particularly violent mass murder of adorable cats. Then they wake up.

Great post, and you may already know this, but your cats are probably doing nothing to wear themselves out. Cats will sleep anywhere from 13 to 20 hours a day. What did they do all day.....probably sleep.

If it runs linux, and connects to the network (which it must if you can connect via smartphone), I assume you could use any number of linux scripts or routines to to copy the data to a remote location. sudo cp /dvrvideo/ /anotherplace/somewhereelse/. right?

tejash55 wrote:anyone know if i can hook that DVR up to a computer monitor? or how i would be able to view the video?

Quality post?
How do you get a quality post for not reading the product description???
This question is answered in 3 different places on the product page.

DrChops wrote:hyuk...I was just wondering the same thing about my cat - he does pretty much exactly the same thing - with added intermittent appearances to gorge himself on catfood. The strangest part about it is he actually seems to lose weight, even though he eats like 70% of his body-weight hyuk..

The only key difference is, I was planning on *strapping* the camera to my cat :D

They have catcams for that
http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/

I got the 4-channel model a while back. It's a nice system but the cameras are fairly poor for image quality. Upgrade a couple or three cameras where you need to and you should have a good system.
iPhone users, get the Asee+ app for remote viewing, the one Zmodo suggests blows.
Hold down the rewind button (I think) or press zero on the remote to allow the mouse to work.
Other tips from the discussion last time:
http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4522247

This was previously on Woot and the thread linked below has lots of good info.

http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=4522247

I own this system and am very happy with it.

russela wrote:Thinking about it. Got some bored punks in the neighborhood ringing my doorbell at all hours. Either this or the Mossberg?

Go with Mossberg!

Yes it is networkable(you can watch over the internet with RJ45 cable and some programming). Yes it records 240FPS which is 30 frames per sec per camera, which is real time movement view. Yes the cameras can be vandalized or reoriented like every other camera within a vandal's reach. Well installed, you wont stop the criminal but you will have some good video evidence to prosecute them!!

If this is a DVR - could it be used for recording tv shows - and - if so - is it a good enough deal with 500Gbs to actually consider doing it that way? Just throw away the cameras if they are no good!

all I need is a convenience store and I'd be set!

zoomtard wrote:Portal jokes are getting as old as lolcats and references to a love for bacon. For the love of god, PORTAL IS NOT REAL.

Portal is real to me

I just tried to purchase the Woot of the day, the survilance system. I went through the process of having it paid through my pay pal. I still don't see where the purchase went through.

Clayo wrote:If this is a DVR - could it be used for recording tv shows - and - if so - is it a good enough deal with 500Gbs to actually consider doing it that way? Just throw away the cameras if they are no good!

Use the cameras to record the TV playing the show just in case it doesnt work

michaelsperry2 wrote:Go with the Mossberg!!!

I'm a Remington man myself. Lock and load!!

juicius wrote:At least in Georgia, these questions would go to the weight of the evidence rather than the admissibility so othe video would come in, subject to whatever the defense attorney may do to discredit it. Laying the foundation for the video is a relatively simple matter as well. With burglary, a majority of them are committed by repeat felons or in a spree, so a properly motivated police force can generally make a good use of the video. In many cases, they already have a suspect in mind and video can confirm that.

Defense Attornys are the main reason to buy one of these things.

Is there any way to extend the 60ft. camera cable? If so, how far can you go?