I purchased this system at a local retail store. It came with 4 cameras. I have to say the system is very easy to install and easy to use. I installed the system myself. If you can run wires across an attic and use a power drill you should not have any problems with the DIY.
The DVR is great and remote control clicks me to whatever hour, day or camera I wish to view. I love that I can view my house on my iphone. To set up the web and smart phone view may be challenging for the non-tech savvy. The instructions failed to mention that you need to forward the port used to view the cameras on the smart phone. A little trial and error, however, and I got it working. The smartphone app is adequate you have a live view of the camera but can not see past recordings
In addition to viewing your cameras on your smartphone, you can also view via the web (IE only) but this was a little finicky because you need to install a third party control that may not be permitted depending on your browser security. The web view does have more features than the smartphone app though.
There is also a feature on the DVR to send email alerts but i have not set this up so can not give a review of the email functionality.
The camera's are not so great. They are of minimal quality and are my biggest complaint with this system. No wide angle view and the night IR is very very grainy. My second biggest complaint is that each camera came with 60 feet of cable. This is okay for a small apartment or one room schoolhouse but 100 feet of cable per camera should be the standard in my opinion.
I priced out the individual components separately. The DVR, 4 cables at 100 feet, camera power supply, and 4 better cameras could be purchased for 415.00. If I had to do it again, this is what I would do. I do not regret my purchase but I will be swapping out the poor quality cameras for better ones.
Remote viewing with iphone, ipod, android.
Standard in/out allows connection with other Brands.
4 in 1 power cord consolidators will connect near the outlet.
10 years ago I installed the X10 wireless camera system around my house. This was nice because I didn't need to have wires running around the house. It worked well for the first 5 years, then started to depreciate in quality as the years passed. Lately in this wireless world, there is so much interference that the camera's could no longer receive it good quality picture so I had to search for a new option.
I chose the NightOwl 8 camera system with DVR recorder because I've seen them sold at Fry's and other outlets. I don't know a whole lot about CCTV systems, but Nightowl seems to be around the same level as Swann, Q-see, and Videosecu in my opinion.
I have a 2 story house and wanted to run wires through the attic. This proved to be too hard a task so I created a new solution to use electrical plastic tubing to run the wires from the front of the house, to the back where the DVR would be located. I ran 5 BNC/power cables through 5/8 inch tubes that ran about 60 feet from front to back. On completion, I painted the tubes the same color as the exterior of the house and it blends in perfectly. Looks very nice and it's much easier to maintain if I ever need to get to the wires again. All the tubing and accessories ran about $25 total at the local big box hardware store. I think this is a much better solution than going through an attic. Just cost me a few screw holes into my stucco exterior wall.
The BNC/power cables included with the kit is good quality. I ran all the wires to the DVR, and from there you will use the included transformer with 4 inputs to connect 4 power connections into an outlet. 2 included transformers allows for 8 power connects for the 8 cameras in the kit. This means you DO NOT need power (outlet) at the camera locations. If a cable is not long enough, you could piggy back 2 cables and make 1 long cable. Each end of the cable is different being 1 end male and the other female for the electrical connection. Doing this will of course give you 1 less cable for the other camera's. I had to do this for 2 camera's so I purchased additional cables that included an audio cable for $20 for $100 feet.
After all camera's were setup, plugged into the DVR, I was ready to view my CCTV system. Everything turned on easy and a quick setup completed and I was up and running monitoring all cameras. The DVR is OK. I have nothing to compare it to so I only know what I would have wished for. The motion detection works good and will go to the camera that has motion. After 2 minutes, it will go back to the default, which is the 9 camera view. I don't like this view because the pics are too small to see anything on my 20 inch monitor from afar. I would like if they allow the ability to pick a default view. Maybe the 4 camera screen. Best would have been to go to a camera of my choice. There's also an option to run through each camera for a set amount of time. The bad here again is I can't skip the 4 and 9 camera screens. It would have been nice to be able to have a camera skip option here so it can cycle through only the camera's that I wanted to see. The recording feature is up and running with no setup needed. I have it set to record when motion is detected and this saves alot of space and time if I need to go back to a previous time and search. it takes about 15 minutes at the highest speed to go through about 8 hrs of recording for 1 camera.
The camera's, as in other systems I assume, will be the regular standard focus lens. Where the camera is mounted, you will not see about the first 10 feet, and only about 45 degrees from side to side. These nightowl camera's are also not the best quality. The color is off making my green grass look pink'ish. There is a hue control, but no adjustment fixes the color perfectly. Also, 1 of 8 camera's had an issue. It worked, but for some reason had really bad scrolling lines when veiwed so I switched it with another and it was resolved.
I wanted 1 good quality camera for the main view in front of my driveway to see as much as possible. I purchase the Videosecu dome wide angle camera for $40. This provided about an 80 degree view from side to side, and the view started close to where the camera was installed. I recommend the black one vs the white model which I purchase and ended up painting black. The white gloss paint reflected a glare back into the lens at nights causing a halo that blinded the view at dusk. After I painted it mat black, the camera is perfect. The color on this camera is also perfect, unlike the nightowl camera's.
If you want sound, don't look for a camera that has a mic. They cost too much, and you may never find 1 that has a wide angle lens. Instead, buy a standalone mic made from Videosecu (again). I plugged this into the audio cable of the additional 100 foot cable that I purchased. At the DVR end, I plugged the audio cable into a usb speaker, and I have sound from my driveway. This helps alot cause when you hear something, you will look up. You don't want to stare at your monitor every minute. Sound matters alot.
Now for the hardest part of the setup, remote viewing.
I researched long and hard and read through nightowls manual but still couldn't understand the concept of setting up the remote viewing. I will tell you what I did but it may or may not work for you depending on your home setup.
I have an Internet DSL connection that comes straight in via Fiber. No extra modem needed.
This connection goes straight into my DLINK basic cheapy router.
I plug the DVR network port with included cable into my router's wired port.
All the configuration was done via my router's administration page. Except 1 configuration in the DVR for the external IP address.
The the concept is this.
Choose an internal IP address for your nightowl DVR.
On router set Port forwarding of external IP address to the interal IP address above
Use NightOwl DDNS free service to maintain your dynamic external IP address with a DNS name
My router now knows that BobsHouse.nightowldvr.com maintains my dynamic IP address.
Whenever my dynamic IP addresses changes, I don't care cause I keep using BobsHouse.nightowldvr.com which always points to the latest IP address assigned to me.
On the nightowl DVR network configuration page I entered an internal IP address example 192.168.0.143.
On my router, I setup to tell the router to forward any request for BobsHouse.nightowldvr.com on port 9000 to actually go to 192.168.0.143, which is the DVR.
On my IPOD Touch, I purchased an App called IP Cam Viewer for $5. I enter BobsHouse.nightowldvr.com and port 9000. I also need to enter the camera I want to view. I do this 8 times for 8 cameras. When I view the App, I see all 8 cameras at once, or tap the 1 I want to see a larger view of just that 1 camera.
On our 2 week vacation, I monitored the house daily and it was such a relief to know that everything was fine. I could even see if our neighbors help bring out our garbage can or not. Amazing and well worth it!
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System is decent enough for the price. DVR records, cameras show an image, can log in remotely 95% of all systems regardless of price can do these things adequately.
DIYers BE FORWARNED.... if you place these cameras under your soffits and out of the weather, the cheap cameras will "think" it's nighttime & switch internally to infared 24/7. You will be left with an image that's "different" grass and folliage looks like it has snow on it and the images will be yellowed. According to NightOwl's helpdesk this is called "the woods effect". The only fix is to move / reconfigure / re-mount your cameras to a location that's not under the eaves. Since I've already installed the cameras, this "fix" would require extensive repair of my soffits to fix holes drilled for the wires and camera mounts not to mention having to expose the cameras to the weather. FYI...One of my cameras is a dome I purchased elsewhere at the front door mounted under the soffit and doesn't experience this "woods effect" issue.
I rate this system only 1 star as it would have been nice if NightOwl would have simply FORWARNED DIYers in the manual regarding this issue with their included cameras. Instead the helpdesk's response was "that's why we included a installcard.com card in the box, an installer would've known about this issue and probably not mounted these cameras where you did" FYI....there will most likely be a cost per camera install fee using the included install card. The card covers ONLY labor to mount cameras, run cables, aim, focus and adjust cameras sounds pretty good. But & I quote from the card "Pricing is determined by the accuracy of the answers provided during the activation process, additional charges from inaccurate answers or on-site quotes should be paid directly to the installer" What's the chances you'll be stung with "additional charges"?
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I was like you. Just looking and questioning if it maybe is good enough and other are just down grading it because they expected something great for such a low price. It is not worth the time to install it if you got it for free. Well maybe if you only want to look down a hallway in daylight and in black and white. The view angle is very odd. You cannot see anything within about 10' from the camera. You can see images from 10-20' okay and even kind of ok from 20-30' away. I don't care how far away you are looking; you will not be able to make out a license plate. Not a chance. It is of much less quality than the cheap $30 digital cameras you buy kids. During the daylight, everything is very white and doesn't look very good at all. Green leaves and grass are white. My red Japanese maples are also white/light pink. You won't even be able to tell the police what color the shirt is during the day because it is that bad. It is like it wants to switch into night vision 90% of the time and that is even on a sunny day! It is 99% worthless at night. You cannot see 2' unless you have the porch lights on and that doesn't even help much. You can see some objects like tree leaves at about 10' due to the reflection of IR light but you cannot see a person standing in front of it. What does that mean? All you see is a bunch of black screens on your tv at night so you have no protection at all. It does give off a red ring of light around the camera at night which might help keep people away. The angle of the camera sucks badly. My house is 60' long in the front with my door in the center. I must have the cameras on the far side of the house just to see who is at the door, but that is only if they are less than 5' from the door with the camera 30' away. My den is 30'x28' and just for testing, I placed a camera 25' from a couch but could not see all of the 3 seats on the couch. It is a normal couch and room. You cannot put one on the porch to see who is at the door at all because it cannot see anything from 0-10' at all. It is very odd how it zooms past to about 7-10' and things from 10-30' seems squished together; the depth seems more like 6-8' not 10-30' deep. Think of looking through a fish bowl. Ha. As for the DVR, it is okay at best. It is much like a 90's computer. You can only do limited things slowly and it will make you mad that you cannot customize thing in a logical way that you want. For example, turn off the recording or scroll channel 3, 5, 7 &8 only. It will kinda do that but it also wants to show you the first 4 in split screen, then the second 4 then all 8, then 3,5,7,&8. The good news is the DVR is very easy to navigate through. It was a pain to setup the internet but that was due to my network setup. You may have better luck. I did not call support because I didn't want to try to explain how my network has multiple routers to the tech just so he could ask why and not know what to do because of that issue. Still it only took a few hours to overcome. It wires up fast. You only need a drill/screw gun, cock, time and to get into the attic to run the cables. I would suggest you buy a few extra 100' cables for the cameras that are far away and a long Ethernet cable (all cheap online $10 each). I used 3 100' camera cables and ran 2 of the extra 60' to two different TV to watch via RCA with 1 50' Ethernet cable. I had my DVR hidden where nobody could find it if they broke inside my house and take with them the only copy of the video. I also made a mount to hold the DVR down so it could not be easily removed even if found. The plan, maybe the HD will still be in place for the police even if the dvr gets damaged by them. The android app is ok but I expected much more. Another thing is I recall reading or being told it would text me a pic. That was a lie. It doesn't but if you have the mobile app on your phone and up and logged in to the network, then it will let you know. Who would do that 24/7 or would even have the battery on a cell phone to do that with. PC app is much better but still not all the features a person wants. It does email you and will email a few accounts if you wish. It is like they stopped midway on the design and said, "this is good enough, lets sell it."
Just to let you know, I am an Electrical Engineer and teach EE classes at a University, so I know a thing or two about electronics. Overall, I guess it is worth the cost to have a camera. People do see it and turn away. The view angle, color, image, android app, internet and DVR customization quality is poor but the DVR navigation, setup and installation is easy. I wish it had wireless or I could add a wireless dongle for the internet. I wish I could remote record from my android or even the PC but you can only back up the things that are already recorded or tell it to start recording. I'm not sure how or if a remote backup affects the recording. For example, you are looking at your phone watching someone in break into your home. It would be nice to remote record that on to your phone!!! How could they not have thought to design that into the DVR? I have not tried to back-up and convert the files for viewing on a pc. I just have not had the need. I'm going to order the $1400 2TB DVR with 16 dome cameras that have pan, tilt and zoom even through remote access.
PS. I was going to give 2 stars until I seen the quality at night. Worthless at night. My real score is 1/2 of a star but Amazon will only let me go down to 1 star! You are just as well off with the dummy cameras that cost $10-$20 each!
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The cameras do not have a wide video view, but as for that nice product. The support at Nightowl is very impressive. 24hrs a day and very nice and helpful when needed.
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Overall this is a nice product. There are somethings that will make you want to run to the nearest medicine cabinet and pull out the asprin but overall the DVR works as advertised.
