Cost and planning
Why does the labor on a Hudson Valley camera job come to more than the cameras themselves?
Because the camera is the easy part. AVYCON's own FAQ says a camera plugged into the PoE port on the back of the recorder appears on screen after about a minute. Everything else is the work: getting a cable from the recorder to the camera through a stone wall, an attic, a cellar or a trench to the barn; sealing each hole against water; fitting and tightening the waterproof cable fitting AVYCON's quick start guide insists on; fixing the bracket into something solid; testing the cable; aiming the camera; setting detection zones; sizing the battery backup; and setting up the app. On a suburban house with an open attic, that work is modest. On a colonial stone house in Hurley or a farm with three outbuildings, it is most of the job. Our county price pages break the labor and equipment into separate lines so you can see where the money goes.
Do you really cover the far ends of the region, like a farm road in northern Dutchess or a cabin in the Ulster hills?
Yes, all six counties: Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster. Our crews are dispatched from our Bronx office at 460 East Fordham Road and travel the I-87, Taconic and I-84 corridors. Distance does affect the plan. A property two hours from the office is scheduled so the crew arrives early and finishes in a day where possible, and we ask for more photos up front so we arrive with the right cable lengths, switches and brackets rather than making a second trip. Each county has its own price page because travel and labor differ, and the quote follows your county.
How do you decide how many AVYCON cameras a property needs?
From the walk, not from a package. We follow the route a visitor would take and put a camera wherever a recording would need to show something specific: a face at the front door, a vehicle at the end of the drive, a person at the barn door or the back gate. Then we look for gaps, such as a side yard that leads to a cellar door. A Westchester colonial often lands at four to eight cameras; a farm can need far more. Our own Hudson Valley NVR page describes 8- and 16-channel systems for houses and 32-channel builds for horse farms and warehouses, and we size the recorder with a few spare channels so you can add cameras later without replacing it.
Licensing and the law
Does the person putting in our AVYCON system need a state license?
In most cases, yes. New York's licensing rule, 19 NYCRR 195.2(b), as Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum explain it, covers a closed-circuit television system used full-time or part-time to detect or monitor intrusion, break-in, theft, movement, sound or fire. A home or business camera system recorded and watched for exactly those reasons falls inside it. The Department of State licenses installers under Article 6-D, and its application notes that even electricians who want to do this work must file. A trade association warns that unlicensed installers can face fines it puts at up to ten thousand dollars. We install under NYS license #12000287431 and will show it on request.
We own a shop in Poughkeepsie. What do we have to tell staff before the cameras go on?
Two things matter most. Under Civil Rights Law §52-c, employers must post notice of electronic monitoring in a conspicuous place visible to employees, and the law that took effect in 2022 also requires written notice to employees when they are hired. Under Labor Law §203-c, cameras in restrooms and locker rooms are prohibited no matter what the employer's policy says. We plan camera positions with both rules in mind, point corridor cameras away from restroom doors, and remind you to post the notice before the system goes live. For your exact obligations, check with your own lawyer; this is a summary, not legal advice.
Our house is inside the Kingston Stockade. Can we put cameras on the outside at all?
Very likely yes, but plan for review. The City of Kingston's guidelines say exterior work visible from the public right-of-way is subject to review by the Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission before a building permit is issued, and the Stockade's protections, per the district's rules, cover buildings, walls, fences and steps across its eight blocks bounded by Clinton Avenue, Main Street, Green Street and North Front Street. We found no rule that says whether a small camera alone triggers review, so we check with the HLPC first. We bring the camera's cut sheet, propose positions under eaves or on rear walls where they are least visible, keep cable inside the house, and, where any line must run outside, plan to paint it to match the facade as the HLPC asked in a 2025 approval.
Outages and internet
If the internet goes out at our place in the country, does the AVYCON recorder keep saving footage?
Yes. An AVYCON NVR records to its own hard drive inside the building, so footage keeps saving whether or not the internet is up. What you lose during an internet outage is the ability to watch live or receive alerts on your phone. When the connection returns, the recordings from the gap are on the drive and you can play them back in the app. That is the difference from cloud-only cameras, which, as one consumer guide puts it, cannot save new footage without an internet connection even when the power is fine. For properties in the parts of Ulster, Putnam, Dutchess and Orange still waiting on fiber, that difference is the whole reason to choose a recorder-based system.
What happens to the system during a Central Hudson or NYSEG outage, and is a battery backup worth it?
Without backup, the recorder and cameras stop when the power does, and they restart when it returns. With a battery backup on the recorder, the PoE switch and the router, the system keeps recording through short outages, and the recorder shuts down cleanly rather than losing power mid-write if the battery runs low. Outages here are not rare: the Daily Freeman reported nearly 50,000 Central Hudson customers out after storms in July 2026. A battery sized for a few hours covers most summer storms. For outages that last days, the answer is a generator circuit that carries the camera equipment. We size the battery for your utility and your house, and test it by switching the power off before we leave.
Compatibility and existing equipment
We already have a few cameras from another brand. Can a new AVYCON recorder use them?
Often, yes. AVYCON's support FAQ says that if a third-party camera supports the ONVIF standard, you can add it to an AVYCON NVR using the ONVIF protocol. We check each camera's model and settings before relying on it, because ONVIF support varies by model and firmware, and some features, such as a camera's own smart detection, may not carry over. Keeping a working camera that is already well placed on a stone wall saves drilling a new hole, and that matters in a historic house. Older analog cameras on coax are a different case; AVYCON's app also works with its hybrid DVRs, which can be an option where coax is already in the walls.
Our AVYCON recorder has two network ports. How are cameras added to a dual-port model?
AVYCON's support FAQ lists this as a separate question, because dual-port recorders let the cameras sit on their own network, separate from the house or office network the recorder uses to reach the internet. In practice we connect the cameras, or the PoE switch that feeds them, to the camera-side port, set the addressing so the recorder finds them, and connect the other port to your router. Keeping cameras on their own network is good practice on a business system, because it keeps camera traffic off the office network and keeps the cameras themselves away from the internet. We set it up and label which port is which so nobody swaps them later.
Are AVYCON products NDAA-compliant, and when does that matter for a school, a town contractor or a business?
AVYCON publishes an NDAA statement saying its listed products avoid critical components and systems-on-a-chip from the vendors the law targets, which it names as Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua, and that those products were made and substantially transformed in the United States, South Korea and/or Vietnam. It also publishes a list of NDAA-compliant models, and not every AVYCON product is on it, so we check the specific models against that list. It matters most for buyers who must meet federal procurement rules, such as some schools, contractors working for government and businesses with federal contracts, and for owners who simply prefer to avoid those brands. If NDAA matters to you, tell us and we will choose only listed models.
Weather and wildlife
Will AVYCON cameras hold up through a Catskills winter?
The cameras are rated for it, and the install decides whether they last. AVYCON's Diversity IP quick start guide gives an operating range of minus 30 to 60 degrees Celsius, which covers the coldest nights the valley normally sees. The same guide stresses that the cable waterproof fitting must be installed and tightened, and that is where winter failures usually start: water gets into an unsealed connection, freezes, and corrodes it. We fit and tighten every fitting, drip-loop the cable below the camera so water runs off, seal every wall penetration, and mount cameras under eaves where they can to keep snow and ice off the lens. We also keep the recorder indoors in a heated space, since the recorder is not rated for an unheated barn.
Bears and deer set off our motion alerts all night. Can an AVYCON system tell them apart from people?
Mostly, yes. The AVYCON ONE app sorts alerts into Event, AI and Abnormal categories and supports people and vehicle detection, so we set your phone alerts to people and vehicles at the doors and the drive and let the recorder simply record everything else. NYS DEC says bird feeders are the most common bear attractant and that the southern range reaches southern Orange and Rockland, and Teatown reports bear sightings in Westchester rising in recent years, so this is not an imaginary problem. We draw detection zones along paths people use rather than across the lawn or the woods, and we check them again if you tell us the alerts are still too noisy.
