Wireless Security Cameras System, Firstrend 5MP Continuous Recording Ultra HD 8 Camera for Home Surveillance with 8CH NVR 3TB Hard Drive Night Vision Motion Detection App for Indoor Outdoor Business

After a 4:am visit from LVMPD regarding suspicious activity on my street and neighborhood, I spent several hours researching security camera surveillance systems. After determining my needs and many other factors including NOT needing fancy bells and whistles. Just a solid, reliable, functional, simple and affordable security camera system and the fact that it came with a 2T hard drive didn't hurt my feelings. Most of the others were 1T for about the same price. It came down to three candidates. I'm so glad I chose the "Firstrend 8CHL Wireless NVR System". Mainly because the cameras are factory linked to the NVR before they're shipped. Truly is Plug & Play! You'll definitely need an HDMI Monitor or TV to get started. I just happened to have an old 2008 21" 1080i TV that I could use as a monitor. (See Pics). I spread everything out in my home office, plugged everything in, followed a few simple instructions and BAM! there it was. 4 very clear images on the monitor! Couldn't have been happier! Now the real work begins. These are powered, hard wired cameras. 110vac power supply to each camera is needed. The cameras themselves were very simple to mount but It will take some thought, enginuity and a bit of craftyness if you are like me and didn't have a power supply anywhere near where I wanted to mount the cameras. As you can see by the pics, I managed to get power to all of them. Just took a couple days of climbing through the garage attic, pulling wire and mounting elec. boxes etc... but it was truly worth the work! Once everything was installed and powered up I turned on the monitor and BAM! once again the images just lit up. The daytime images are clear and crisp, the night images (although black and white) are also very clear as well. A little adjusting on the camera angles and my setup was perfect! Now it was time to download the software to my desktop. Windows 10, no problem. Mac desktop. still can't get the software to download, Stupid Apple thing I guess. Proprietorial POS won't accept dmg files without dropbox or something like that. I do have a call into tech and will let my wife handle that. It's her crApple. The apps on our phones were a snap and simple to use. My android and her iphone came right up no problemo! Still learning the ins and outs of setting up and using the many fine intricacies of the software. I decided to leave it hooked to its own monitor. Just simpler to manage the system from there rather than from downloaded software. I was lucky, I had a monitor to start with. You will need one too. Even if you use your big screen HDMI input. Or, Walmart has a great 22" HDMI 1080P monitor for under $100. You won't be able to use your laptop to set up the system either. It's not a monitor. Now, to make a long story even longer, (but this is the sweet part and hence the Headline) System installed complete on sunday. The following tuesday early morning, there was a thief prowling the neighborhood and he was caught on our new system! Our next door neighbor is an LVMPD lieutenant and the punk was caught on our system getting into his car, then moving on to my house and checking the locked doors on my truck using a flashlight to look inside, then moved on across the street where he successfully got into my neighbors truck. Must have seen something he liked cause he jimmied the locked door and spent several minutes in there. then went on to two other neighbors homes checking gates and vehicles before moving out of sight. LVMPD came to our home at 7:30am this morning (yes, I'm writing this review just 12 hrs later) and asked if they could review our video from early this morning. Of course we let them in. The detective was able to pull up a fairly clear image of this punks face, downloaded 30 seconds of the video we had and took it with him. On his way out, he sincerely expressed his gratitude for people like us who take an interest in the security of our homes and neighborhoods. It made his job much more successful. He said with his equipment he would be able to clearly enhance the image and catch this Punk SOB. He would let us know when they do.Bottom Line: Money well spent on a great security camera system. Thank You Firstrend!Now if we could only get it to work on the Mac :) hmmmm

I purchased a model #FTUS-WNK84102T-JG SC-4PCS 1080P Camera-2TB HDD-1 8CH NVR 3.6MM. I purchased 2 additional Firstrend 1080P cameras to fully cover the outside of my home for $65 each. Firstrend also recommended a Wifi Signal Booster 2.4 Ghz 4W 802.11 Signal Extender for $30.99 to extend the range on the antenna that I was having problems with intermittent signal coverage.The paperwork initially provided was too little and very confusing. I had a few calls with Daisy and she was wonderful, helped greatly, and was very pleasant. Recently, Daisy sent me a newly published User Manual (User Manual Of Firstrend Wireless Camera System-888-806-1588.pdf) which is written in much better English, covered more topics, and solved the overall issue that so many buyers complained about in earlier reviews.The hardware seems to be made really well and sturdy. I had an issue with the antenna connection on one of the cameras and Daisy replaced the camera quickly and the new unit worked great. I read in the original instructions that you needed to tighten the antenna down tight – just don’t tighten it too tightly or you may strip the treads - this may have been partly my fault do to the way the instructions were written.The picture quality is very good in both the day and at night. The power cord on the camera is roughly 9’ in length and depending on placement getting electrical outlets to the cameras can be challenging depending on your experience level. If you use a booster to improve the Wifi signal, the cord on the booster is only a little over 3’ so when I ran electric to for those units I put in a double box with an exterior bubble cover. I also used the same 2-gang weatherproof box when I put 2 cameras in close proximity to each other. Firstrend advises to put cameras at least 5’ from each other.Make sure that the cameras are all connected and working before you install them outside on your house. Adding a camera or two isn’t difficult as long as you have the channels on the NVR to support them. Daisy indicated that the 2 Terabyte hard drive in the NVR that I purchased would record up to 8 Channels/Cameras for 2 weeks automatically and then overwrite the disk starting from the oldest files.Wifi connectivity is absolutely critical. It took me awhile to get workable locations determined on a couple of cameras so that signal issue was consistently strong. What I found was that moving the camera to the end of a gutter or on the other camera to the top of a 7’ fence away from the house itself provided a strong signal without a booster. A good strong signal was obtained on the other camera that would go on and off at times by using the recommended booster.I've attached a few photos that I took during the installation. The TV screen shot shows a typical view while monitoring the cameras and was taken at night while it was raining.Bottom line – I didn’t find it extremely simple to install but if you take your time and do it right it is not a difficult system to install and you will have a first class camera system that will protect you and your home which is what all purchasers are striving for. I strongly recommend this product.

The cameras are a better quality than the one that I used to have but their customer services very bad as they only have one person in the Philippines I called couple times and he’s the only one who answers and he have to send in an email and wait for them to respond And by the time they respond to me, I’ve already fixed the issue by using Google or ChatGPT also the app on the phone is not a good app. It’s slow and old and has ads.