Installation and Setup
The first thing we need to do is select a place for our DVR unit and mount our cameras to the walls or ceilings around the place to secure. For this review, I won’t drill three holes for each camera and instead use locations where there are nails or screws present that I can use to mount them. This will result in the cameras not being placed as optimal as you would place them yourself, but for a temporary test such as a review is, it’s a lot to drill holes in all my walls.
Once we have mounted our cameras, we can connect them to the DVR unit and connect the unit to our network, monitor, and mouse.
With all that done, we can power the unit on and get started with the initialization
Initialization
The first thing we’re asked for in the setup guide is to enter a password for our admin user.
There is no need for an additional keyboard or another input device as the system features an on-screen keyboard which we can use with the included mouse.
Next up is the general configuration of the unit with settings such as the language, video format, and time zone. We can also change the video output resolution to full HD, which you most likely will want to do.
We can configure the the DVR with an email account to which will be used to send alarms.
Two steps left and the device is ready to be used. Having the correct time stamp on the videos can be important in order to identify when something happened and the Swann DVR8-4550 can update both time and date from NTP servers automatically.
Daylight Savings Time can also be configured manually to match your actual location and setup.
And that was all. Our system is now running and recording on the available channels, activated by motion.
