This is an excellent price if you’re into this kind of thing. The DVR alone is $149.
Questions:
- Can I view it in Zoneminder?
- 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?
- 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: - 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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s just a regular BNC cable which you can get extensions for on ebay/the internet for cheap.
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?
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.