[Request] CCTV DVR

madrab

Hi

Does anyon know where i could get an affordable CCTV DVR? Looking for a standalone unit as i dont want to leave pc on all the time.

Thanks

Biglad

Hi madrab,

Are you in the trade or a so called end-user. One way or the other I should be able to help. Just drop me an e-mail with your details.

DurtyMurty

Maplin - http://www.maplin.co.uk/ usually have one on "special offer" - I have no personal experiece of it though, and many of their their "specials" usually translates to "what youl'd expect to pay for it normally" - especially as they do a bad £ to € rate. However, worth a look if you're stuck. The current one offers network connectivity as well

Handy to get to in Jervis St

Ronin247

Looking for the same myself.Nothing fancy just 3 exterior 1 interior cameras+ recording.Eastern electrical do home kits but I dont know enough about quality and what I should be looking for.

dfcelt

I've used this crowd at work lads, 4 external cameras with night vision hooked up to a dvd/r. Standalone unit, wiring etc. is easy enough if your decent at diy. Will definitely be putting one in new house. I notice they now do wireless systems too. I remember I called them to arrange delivery & got a nice discount off them. Highly recommended, good quality stuff.

http://www.y3k.com/acatalog/

Ronin247

thanx for that dfcelt.Looks like that is a good place to shop.I still have to learn exactly what I need but I know someone working for ADT who should guide me in the right direction.

dfcelt

No probs Ronin, I recall having a bit of bother setting up the DVD/r & when I contacted customer services they couldn't have been more helpful. Not a bad word to say about them really. I'm sure if you call them they'll let you know what would best suit.

LawnMower Man

Hi,

I have been into Dvr's for many years.

For pure ease of use and features if your prepared to use a decent PC with a Geovison card (Recommend for home use a GV800 4 channel real time card) you would want a couple of large hard drives 500 gigs to 1000 Gigs should do it so you can set it on maximum quality.

Personally for shopping for cameras etc henrys.co.uk have a large selection at pretty good prices, or theres another crowd here called rfconcepts up north I think that do cameras and dvrs as well.

Standalone Dvr's that I have came across generally do the job alright and might have realtime but features are minimal and working via a remote control is slow, if you have a spare Pentium 4 PC lying around get a geovision card from ebay or henrys.co.uk and slap in a couple of large hard drives.

When buying cameras make sure and look for day night cameras with a high resolution and low lux for night time surveillance.

T

deevey

Just a word of caution regards geovision cards from ebay or cheap as chips ... there are a huge number of knockoff cards doing the rounds which DO actually have an expiration on them, in otherwords usless after a year - dont expect a real geovision card to go for 40 bucks, expect about 250 - 400 odd for an authentic one + software.

But ... they are the dogs nuts !

If its out of budget a build a 4 port linux based card into somthing like an asus pundit case, you'll get the card quite cheap on ebay from china (40 bucksish) which will allow networking , remote access and alarm switches, i've seen a few in operation and they seem reliable enough despite the price.

LawnMower Man

Well, if shopping on Ebay make sure your buying from a reputable seller adn you should not go to far wrong.

You could buy a crap dvr for the price of the geovision card but the features on the geovision are great, sms messages or ringing your mobile on movement detection, see whats going on then at home with your 3g phone, they also offer free upgrades to the software as far as I remember.

Ronin247

got some details of the Eastern Electrical kit

4ch embedded DVR w/160 Gig HD
M-PEG4 compression
embedded high speed micro processor
audio/video synchronised recording
access via the internet

3 weatherproof long range IR colour cameras
1/3 sony sensor,built in mic,infrared night vision

1 indoor colour dome camera
3.6mm lens,1/3" sony sensor

There is a 14" colour monitor with PIP and 100 foot of cable per camera
The whole thing is from "Brandchain" which is just a retailers buying group so I know nothing about quality but they offer a "limited 3 year back to base" warranty.Whole thing is a ready to go kit with all fixings etc.

Price is E1100 +vat (which should be 13.5% or E148.5)

Does anyone know is this a good deal or not?

LawnMower Man

4Ch DVR w/160 Gig hard disk

Well you need to find out the max recording resolution and the recording frame rate of the DVR per channel.
You should be looking for 640x480 or DVD quality 720x576 , for live recording you will need 25 frames per second per camera 100 Frames in total for four cameras.

For cameras make sure they are CCD and not Cmos and look at the Lux level rating for Nighttime .01 or .001 would be good enough, forget about InfraRed, if you have a low enough lux level and have have starlight or an outside light of some sort it would be good enough, Infrared Leds that are built into cameras are not worth a toss and if you see a camera with this you know its amateur time.

1100 + vat is alot of cash spend it wisely

Ronin247

Thank you lawnmower.My head is going to pop now because I realise how little I do know.I will have to check further into the specs but I would be dubious because if the system had these features they would be mentioned.The camera thing, I think would be important to have some kind of light source because I live in the country and there is NO other light sources,so if LEDS are not the way is there some other method??

LawnMower Man

You would not need a major light source out side, check out Henrys.co.uk , it all depends and what you want to watch really, maybe ring them and have a chat.

Personally I would go for a system that has 720x576 recording resolution and 100 Frames a second recording (25 per channel) 30 Frames per channel is counter terrorism level, alot of casinos use 25 frames per channel. Most important is resolution so you can make out faces etc.

deevey

you could buy infra red floods if you dont want to stick a big ol' halogen outside, ebay is your friend here,actually most ccd cameras will pick up on the IR illuminiation (including bog standard handycams).

Lots of even the cheaper "eastern" systems have functions like Txt, email and alarm functions.. although geovison has a serious reputation.

25 IMHO fps is almost overkill for a budget system (TV quality though) , I would expect a minimum 25 - 40fps (split between 4 cams) for any kinda fluidity (hey of you can play quake at 15fps! .. be it badly)

30 Frames per channel is counter terrorism level

Yup, they are using NTSC