4-channel DVR

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soulman

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I've looked all over and can't find any local suppliers of a 4 channel DVR to record CCTV footage from 4 cameras onto a hard drive (preferably supporting SATA).

Anyone know where I can source one of these DVRs at a reasonable price?

Some of these use ATA drives, are those still available?
 
I just bought a gadget from Makro that allows you to connect 4 channels to a USB port, and to record them on a computer hard disk. It comes with software.

I plan to use an old notebook as a 4 channel DVR - you can get 1TB SATA hard disks for these netbooks, but I will start with a 160GB and see how it goes. The software supports a number of recording modes, including recording on movement.

What is nice about the netbook is that it has a monitor built-in, and has a fairly low power consumption.

Makro also had 4-channel DVR's (but only in a kit with 4 cameras), if you want to go that route.
 
Jola said:
I just bought a gadget from Makro that allows you to connect 4 channels to a USB port, and to record them on a computer hard disk. It comes with software.

I plan to use an old notebook as a 4 channel DVR - you can get 1TB SATA hard disks for these netbooks, but I will start with a 160GB and see how it goes. The software supports a number of recording modes, including recording on movement.

What is nice about the netbook is that it has a monitor built-in, and has a fairly low power consumption.

Makro also had 4-channel DVR's (but only in a kit with 4 cameras), if you want to go that route.
Click to expand...

You'll probably end up frying the CPU, motherboard, HD, power supply, or all of these, and lose all the video data. Get a proper server, or at least a decent desktop machine. Laptops weren't made to be running constantly 24/7 recording video. You'll also want your video data stored on a redundant RAID array. All that constant writing is sure to wear out hard disks...

There are several companies that will setup your whole CCTV infrastructure, including cameras, cabling, electrical, battery backup, and a server with RAID and the monitoring software, for a fixed monthly rental fee. This includes maintenance and other costs. It might be worth it to go this route instead. You can also set up monitoring of your CCTV system on your cellphone - get live video feeds.
 
Jola said:
If it's only recording movement it won't be working hard at all.
Click to expand...

uh it will be working very hard as the processor will need to anylise the pixels constantly to monitor if there is motion or not. It will be more efficient on your HDD but not on the rest of the hardware. You mentioned "old laptop" so this is definatley not a good idea.

If it is a simple application the looked at an embedded DVR that will make use of a SATA drive. Decent ones will have network connectivuty for viewing cams via LAN/WAN. Price range R2500 - R8000. PM if you want to buy

Cheers
 
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