Summer is Here!

Summer has FINALLY arrived here in Ohio. Most of the spring and summer so far has been cool and very wet (so much for global warming). I've taken several days off lately and haven't gotten a lot of work done in the rental business. I did work a little on Tuesday, mainly working on the new surveillance system. The surveillance system at my new apartment building has worked very well since initial installation. However, what has been a challenge is the "remote viewing" capability, which allows me to view the cameras from any computer. This is an important feature as I want to be able to periodically monitor things from home. The system initially was up and running a week ago Monday, including the remote viewing feature. However, last Friday, the remote view system stopped working and was out all weekend. I thought that the problem was the DSL line.

So this past Monday morning, I called the phone company to report the problem I was having with the DSL line. They came out yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) and checked out the line. Their opinion was that the DSL line was working properly and that the router was the problem. So, I called the router company yesterday and they assured me that the problem was with the phone company or the maker of the camera system. You see how this is going. Unfortunately, I'm not a computer expert and I had to rapidly become educated enough on these issues so that I could decide what was happening. After talking to each company's tech support and a friend of mine at the phone company, it became apparent that the router had changed the IP address of the DVR and that was the cause of the remote viewing feature not working. By the time I figured all of this out, the tech support at the camera company was already closed for the evening.

This morning I called tech support at Luxor (the camera company). After a half-hour of working on the issue, we finally got it resolved. They assigned the DVR a permanent IP address and taught me how to find the address if the IP address ever gets screwed up again.

The other thing I did today was install 3 more cameras (for a total of 7). After evaluating the original 4 cameras I bought, this time I bought 3 longer range cameras that I will be using to monitor my apartment building next door. I was amazed at the quality of picture that these longer range cameras provide. The picture is almost good enough to read the license plate on cars about 80 feet away and the face detail of people walking by is excellent. That was about it for today.

Tomorrow, I will do a little work and then we're off for a 4 day camping trip!