Hello.
My name is Robert and I am located about 90 miles NE of Seattle in the Cascade Mountains. I'm a southern boy that relocated to this area 18 years ago and have come to love it.
My background is IT starting in the late 70's. Cobol was the first language I learned. My first home computer was a CPM machine. My career was in retail IT and I retired 5 years ago. These days, I am a windows guy. The only mac product I own is an iPod.
I started getting into security systems 7 years ago when I needed a system for my remote home. Here we only have satellite for internet. I used to use HughesNet but they got really slow. Now I use Exede which is really pretty good in terms of speed and reliability. However, I have a 10GB monthly data cap. That means normal video based security systems were out of the question. I found no turnkey system that met my needs to I decided to put pieces and parts together to build what I needed. I decided on WebcamXP running on Windows XP. Later upgraded to Windows 7 and Webcam7. Migration was a snap. That system used analog cameras each wired with siamese cable which has coax and power. I had a bluecherry capture card that surfaced to Windows via WDM drivers. It worked well. About a month ago, my capture card went belly up and I decided it was a forcing factor to get me to upgrade the system.
I now have a nice new Windows 10 machine and wireless IP cameras. I first tried to get Webcam 7 up and running but it did not like wireless cameras that much. I then moved to Netcam Studio which is the follow on to Webcam7. It worked somewhat better with the cameras but not for all models. Also it was clunky and crashed/hung quite often. I decided to try BI and I have been pleased thus far but still have a few features to figure out how to implement in BI and some tuning to do. One challenge was how to power the new cameras. I liked the locations and there was power already there to power the analog cameras so I decided to use the power that was already there and use wireless. Some of the cameras work find but two on the outer edges only get about 25% signal so they won't stream. The connection is there, just no video. The reason is that I live in a log house built with big logs, most 18 inches in diameter. For those outer cameras, it means the wifi goes thru up to 54" of wood. I have a wifi repeater on order that I hope will solve that. If not, running new POE cables might be in my future.
On the BI site it directed me to here. I am a big fan of forums and have found most folks to be nice and helpful.
I won't ask any questions in this thread. Just wanted to introduce myself.
My name is Robert and I am located about 90 miles NE of Seattle in the Cascade Mountains. I'm a southern boy that relocated to this area 18 years ago and have come to love it.
My background is IT starting in the late 70's. Cobol was the first language I learned. My first home computer was a CPM machine. My career was in retail IT and I retired 5 years ago. These days, I am a windows guy. The only mac product I own is an iPod.
I started getting into security systems 7 years ago when I needed a system for my remote home. Here we only have satellite for internet. I used to use HughesNet but they got really slow. Now I use Exede which is really pretty good in terms of speed and reliability. However, I have a 10GB monthly data cap. That means normal video based security systems were out of the question. I found no turnkey system that met my needs to I decided to put pieces and parts together to build what I needed. I decided on WebcamXP running on Windows XP. Later upgraded to Windows 7 and Webcam7. Migration was a snap. That system used analog cameras each wired with siamese cable which has coax and power. I had a bluecherry capture card that surfaced to Windows via WDM drivers. It worked well. About a month ago, my capture card went belly up and I decided it was a forcing factor to get me to upgrade the system.
I now have a nice new Windows 10 machine and wireless IP cameras. I first tried to get Webcam 7 up and running but it did not like wireless cameras that much. I then moved to Netcam Studio which is the follow on to Webcam7. It worked somewhat better with the cameras but not for all models. Also it was clunky and crashed/hung quite often. I decided to try BI and I have been pleased thus far but still have a few features to figure out how to implement in BI and some tuning to do. One challenge was how to power the new cameras. I liked the locations and there was power already there to power the analog cameras so I decided to use the power that was already there and use wireless. Some of the cameras work find but two on the outer edges only get about 25% signal so they won't stream. The connection is there, just no video. The reason is that I live in a log house built with big logs, most 18 inches in diameter. For those outer cameras, it means the wifi goes thru up to 54" of wood. I have a wifi repeater on order that I hope will solve that. If not, running new POE cables might be in my future.
On the BI site it directed me to here. I am a big fan of forums and have found most folks to be nice and helpful.
I won't ask any questions in this thread. Just wanted to introduce myself.
