ZOSI 3K Lite 8 Channel Home Security Camera System with Audio, AI Human/Vehicle Detection, Night Vision - H.265+ CCTV DVR with 1TB HDD & 8pcs 1920TVL Indoor Outdoor Surveillance Cameras for 24/7 Recording - Perfect for Home, Business, and Property Security Monitoring

The I purchased this system, was someone broke into my son's new/used car 2 weeks after he bought it, stealing over $500 in electronics; GPS, Radar Detector, and Dash Camera, add in the cost to replace the broken window, and it's a no brainier to figure out I need a camera DVR.First off the instructions to place the DVR on the Internet are nonexistent, however, a duckduckgo.com search will return more then enought help for you. The short answer is you have to open port (37777) on your firewall to allow the DVR to be seen via your cellphone or remote PC. The DVR presets allow for recording out of the box, and its internet settings are set to DHCP by default, so networking is pretty simple, its dealing with your Cable Modem or DSL modem that's hard; more on that later.The camera's have a nice clean, clear picture, and during low light automatically turn on the IR LEDs and the camera switches to Black and White mode; there isn't anyway to see other then B/W using IR illumination, that's just the way the world is. If you try and use a camera at night pointing outside through a window, the IR LEDs will cause the window to act like a mirror and you won't see anything.The cables that come with the unit are 18.3 meters or 60 feet for the rest of us in the free world. They sell additional cables at a very inexpensive price, so there's no need to make your own. The ends on the cables prevent you from plugging into the cameras wrong, so even with the addition of extra cables it's a simple installation; you will have to buy some female to female BNC barrels to use with the extensions.There's a selection under "Networking" that is labeled "WiFi", however, it only works with a WiFi USB adapter sold buy some other vendor. There's 2 USB ports on the back of the DVR, the top port is marked "USB 2.0", I assume for a thumb drive for backing up recorded data, and the bottom is is labeled "USB Mouse", which was included; the optical mouse worked in both ports, so I'm thinking the DVR doesn't support a Keyboard. There is very little need for a keyboard since all the information to be entered is easily accomplished via a mouse and the only time I wanted a keyboard was to enter in the password.There's a setting for allowing the DVR to obtain time off the internet using NTP, however, I still had to manually set the time the very first time, there's support for DST, however, you have to tell the DVR which days to start and stop DST.Power for the DVR comes from a small wall wart, however, there are terminal connections to allow for the use of 2 wires to supply power, the cameras are supplied from a separate power supply, one power supply can support 8 cameras, and an octopus cable is supplied for this.Another nice design feature ZOSI did, was adding a slot in the side of the bottom bracket of the camera. The slot is to allow the cables to be run outside of the mounting plate in the case you're not able to drill a hole behind the mounting plate. If you do drill a hole behind the mounting plate, all your wires will be hidden from view and you'll have a very clean installation.I used the HDMI connection to connect to my TV for use as a display, there's also a VGA port that could be used, however, at the cost of HDMI TV's it's probably the connection most users will use. The display allows you to see up to 9 cameras at once realtime, and double clicking on any one picture will expand it to full screen. I only own a 740p TV, however the cameras output 1080p to it without any problem.Getting on to the internet : after reading the online documentation for getting the DVR to be seen from a device on the internet I found that I had to add a Port Forwarding rule to allow port 37777 to the DVR. This will require you to hard code an IP address into the DVR, which is very easy, its figuring out how to add the Port Forwarding to your DSL/Cable modem that may give you problems. If your modem supports adding a DMZ, you could also add the DVR to the DMZ and not bother with Port Forwarding. Each modem is different so once again duckduckgo.com may be need to find help on this. You'll need to remember to turn WiFi off on your cellphone when trying to test the remote viewing application, since when your cellphone is on the same network as the DVR the firewall rules don't apply.The Android ZOSI viewing application isn't as easy to navigate as I'd expect, I don't own an iPhone so I can't speak to that application. One thing I DID NOT like about the ZOSI's Android application, is it requires you to give it an unreasonable amount of access to your phone's resources; why do they need access to your camera, contacts, and a host of other items? ZOSI, fix this, or at least explain why you need all of this access. The remote display is downgraded to prevent over use of your network data plan on your cell phone, I've played with it a bit, however, I can't say if this is a setting that can be changed. I did figure out that you can remotely capture video from a camera onto your cell phone, and also play back video as well.As I learn more about the system I may post more.I've yet to try and add a WiFi camera to the system, as I still have to install all 8 cameras, but I'll try that next and post the results.