rak313

I currently have an Arecont Vision 1.3 MP camera with Luxriot that I have had since 2009 running on a Core duo circa 2007 PC. I am planning a surveillance system with 4-8 cameras. I want t use a newer PC based recorder (that I will assemble) and am thinking of BI for the software. Prior to buying all of the parts for the new PC, I plan on using my old PC and 1 or 2 cameras (Hikvision?) to verify the correct camera choice and software. The question I want to know is: If I buy BI and load it to the old PC, will I be able to transfer it to the new PC. That is, remove the software from the old PC and re-install it on the new one (without buying a second license)? If not then I will need to build the new PC first. This will be a distraction as I have not yet decided n what cameras to use. Thanks

Thank you for the information. BTW - where did you find this information? Is it in the user manual? Thanks again.

Yes, there is no exact size for a 1/3" class sensor, but it will be less than 5 mm - or they would be claiming 1/2.5" sensor. I believe that the specified FOV and/or lens focal length is not accurate. If you are getting 77 deg FOV with the 4 mm lens, this implies a 6.4 mm wide sensor - which would clearly be a 1/2" class sensor. FOV=2*atan((sensor_width/2)/focal_length). I doubt they would have a 1/2" sensor and not hype it, since it's twice the area of a 1/3" sensor. Now if it were the 2.8mm focal length, with a 4.4 mm sensor width: FOV=2*atan((4.4/2)/2.8 ) = 76.3 deg, which is pretty close to the claimed 75.8 deg FOV. If you are saying that the image is cropped differently in 1080p vs the full 3 MP, so the FOV is corresponding different in the 2 resolutions - that makes sense. I don't follow about different 4 mm lenses have different images circles (I certainly believe not all 4mm FL lenses are 4mm FL). Not even sure what you mean, but if 2 lens are both 4mm focal length, then the angle spanned by a given sensor size will be the same for both lenses. Maybe you are saying one lens can't image the entire sensor area. Even if that is true you are going in the wrong direction here. In order to get 76 degree FOV, you either need a much smaller focal length than 4 mm or a much larger sensor width than 4.4 mm. I'm not doubting your measurements, I'm just trying to figure out whether to get the 4mm or 6mm camera. Thanks for the data.

No. About 10 ft up from the ground looking slightly down, and about 25 deg to the right. Thanks to all that responded.

How does it do that (drop down to basic)? Does that mean the software communicates back to a server via the internet? I was not planning an internet connection after I set it up. Thanks for the cam-it link.

what (low cost or free) vms software is compatible with this Swann camera (using ONVIF)?

I'm having trouble getting faster that about 8 frames/sec with the Arecont Vision AV3105. From their web site they claim for the AV3105, up to: • 15fps @ 2048x1536 • 20fps @ 1920x1200 • 22fps @ 1920X1080 • 24fps @ 1600x1200 • 32fps @ 1280x1024 Of course I wonder what "up to" means (it did it once). So I'm wondering what is limiting the frame rate: I have the AV3105 connected to a Netgear F108 with POE switch, an intel core2 processor at 1.86GHz, 4 GB ram. ASUS motherboard with built in gigabyte ethernet port connected to the Netgear switch, Nvidia GEForce 8600GT, running Windows XP. I've tried the arecont vision software (no licence yet), and Luxriot. From the Arecont Vision software, the frame rate does not seem to change with changing resolution, and appears to be around 5 fps. (The software reports as high as 14, but judging from the picture I see, it looks more like 5). Luxriot reports around 8, and it looks faster than when using the arecont vision software. Is this a CPU issue on my PC, a problem with the switch, operator error, or just a false claim, (like their Lux sensitivity claims)? Thanks in advance Rick

What resolution is that ? (maybe 720x480?) Yes .... at that resolution you should get close to 60fps I set to BW mode, using arecont vision software res = half (640 x 512) and got 33 fps (TFTP ). Not sure where the limit is but I'm guessing my PCs NIC is slow in responding with the acc, but again not sure. I think (but can't remember) that I tried this without the netgear POE switch, directly to the PC via crossover cable and external 13.8V PS to the camera and got similar speeds. So If you are getting near 60 fps, then i'm guessing it's my pc (which is pretty good, 1.87 GHz core2 dual core 6300 with 4 Gbyte ram and Nvidia GT 8600. Motherboard is ASUS P5B delux (intel 965chipset) with onboard dual gigEthernet NIC.

What resolution is that ? (maybe 720x480?)

I spent the last 2 weeks with zoneminder (ZM). I used the same hardware as I use with LuxRiot (LR), just different Hard drive. Unplug one HDD with windows, plug in another will Linux. Makes comparison more fair (I was not writing to disk for most of my comparisons). After nearly succeeding with ZM (frame rate too low 1/2 what I was getting with LR), I decided to go with LR (placed order today). My main complaint with LR was slow frame rate and somewhat variable record rate (plus I don't like $300 for 4 cameras when I'll likely only have 2). After using wireshark on both windows and Linux with both the 3130's built in web page using firefox, and LR on windows, and ZM on linux, I've concluded a number of things. The 3130 uses TCP for communication, which means its speed is a function of how fast the destination gets back to it with acknowledgments. The fastest rate I could get for 1 image fetch (using HTTP/1.1) was about 28 Mbps, which is a long way from the advertised "up to 55 Mbps". Yet this may be the fault of either my switch as "thewireguys" suggests, my motherboards Ethernet NIC, or the underlying TCP stack. Using firefox on both linux and windows, I noticed vastly different performance. On windows, with a frame rate set to just 1 fps, and using wireshark, you could see all of the data was there for a 1280x1024 BW frame (130kbytes using the settings I had), in 45 milliseconds(~22 fps). But on linux, while it took the same time for most the data, the last acknowledge from the host to the camera took an additional 20-40 ms. I blame this on the TCP stack, but it might be something else. The same was true when using LR and ZM. The HTTP commands to the 3130 were identical. The data transfer times were very similar except for the last acknowledgement from the host (on linux with ZM an additional 20-40 ms). This meant I could get around 24 fps using LR on a BW frame at 1280x1024. But only around 5 fps with ZM. At any rate, I've ordered LR and will see it I can live with that. My reason for high frame rates is actually gone (I bought an IR led, so can use short exposure high SNR captures), so I will likely end up with about 5-10. I just want 1/60 sec shutter speed. Now for the rant: I do not believe TCP should be used for IP cameras. Rather, extremely simple UDP, with a fixed (programmable) frame rate. Power up the camera, program the IP address of the host, port number, frame rate, other parameters, save them on camera NVM. Then on power up, the camera and the camera spits out constant UDP datagrams with no user programming. They fall on the floor if you have no program listening. (Just like a traditional camera's video, if you don't plug it in). User program simply opens a socket and starts reading. Header in UDP datagrams says what's in each datagram. (e.g. could define each UDP datagram to be 1 line of image (up to 20 kpixels/line of 3 byte each). Header would include camera settings, # rows, # cols, shutter speed, time tag, line number. If your software could not keep up, just lower fps. You will not drop data on a small network (with proper network settings). End of rant I would like to see the results if you where using Areconts software. Tried it tonight, it uses TFTP with the host acknowledging each packet, and the results were: with a 1280 by 1024 BW frame, with 43 by 2, 1486 packets =128 k bytes in 0.02803 seconds or 36 Mbits/sec (timing first packet to last ack, not time between frame requests). Funny thing was, the sequence was full frame, half frame, full frame ... being transfered. I don't know what that was about. I had the recording disabled. I like what your doing. I have seen my frame rates on the 3105 to 13/14 at full res. Try setting the camera to D1 res and see how much bandwidth it uses. Could you help me with Wireshark and I can run the same test on my Linksys switch. See if we can duplicate your results. Sure! You get wireshark from wireshark.org (Edit: fix link) After install on windows: 1) double click on wireshark icon 2) hit "capture" (on top menu line) --> Interfaces (select the ip address of your host that is connected to the camera). 3) Select start. Now with luxriot running (or a browser, or anything) you will be capturing all of the traffic on that interface. After some period, hit Capture --> stop Then you will have a window that shows one line for each message. Each line has: line number, time (seconds), Source IP, Destination IP, protocol (e.g TCP), message summary. Clicking on a line reveals what data was in the message. Thats about all I know. You can set filters to only look for certain traffic, etc. But that is more than I usually do. This tool is very good for debugging why a device does not seem to work, as you can see if anything is comming back from a request to the device.

I spent the last 2 weeks with zoneminder (ZM). I used the same hardware as I use with LuxRiot (LR), just different Hard drive. Unplug one HDD with windows, plug in another will Linux. Makes comparison more fair (I was not writing to disk for most of my comparisons). After nearly succeeding with ZM (frame rate too low 1/2 what I was getting with LR), I decided to go with LR (placed order today). My main complaint with LR was slow frame rate and somewhat variable record rate (plus I don't like $300 for 4 cameras when I'll likely only have 2). After using wireshark on both windows and Linux with both the 3130's built in web page using firefox, and LR on windows, and ZM on linux, I've concluded a number of things. The 3130 uses TCP for communication, which means its speed is a function of how fast the destination gets back to it with acknowledgments. The fastest rate I could get for 1 image fetch (using HTTP/1.1) was about 28 Mbps, which is a long way from the advertised "up to 55 Mbps". Yet this may be the fault of either my switch as "thewireguys" suggests, my motherboards Ethernet NIC, or the underlying TCP stack. Using firefox on both linux and windows, I noticed vastly different performance. On windows, with a frame rate set to just 1 fps, and using wireshark, you could see all of the data was there for a 1280x1024 BW frame (130kbytes using the settings I had), in 45 milliseconds(~22 fps). But on linux, while it took the same time for most the data, the last acknowledge from the host to the camera took an additional 20-40 ms. I blame this on the TCP stack, but it might be something else. The same was true when using LR and ZM. The HTTP commands to the 3130 were identical. The data transfer times were very similar except for the last acknowledgement from the host (on linux with ZM an additional 20-40 ms). This meant I could get around 24 fps using LR on a BW frame at 1280x1024. But only around 5 fps with ZM. At any rate, I've ordered LR and will see it I can live with that. My reason for high frame rates is actually gone (I bought an IR led, so can use short exposure high SNR captures), so I will likely end up with about 5-10. I just want 1/60 sec shutter speed. Now for the rant: I do not believe TCP should be used for IP cameras. Rather, extremely simple UDP, with a fixed (programmable) frame rate. Power up the camera, program the IP address of the host, port number, frame rate, other parameters, save them on camera NVM. Then on power up, the camera and the camera spits out constant UDP datagrams with no user programming. They fall on the floor if you have no program listening. (Just like a traditional camera's video, if you don't plug it in). User program simply opens a socket and starts reading. Header in UDP datagrams says what's in each datagram. (e.g. could define each UDP datagram to be 1 line of image (up to 20 kpixels/line of 3 byte each). Header would include camera settings, # rows, # cols, shutter speed, time tag, line number. If your software could not keep up, just lower fps. You will not drop data on a small network (with proper network settings). End of rant I would like to see the results if you where using Areconts software. Tried it tonight, it uses TFTP with the host acknowledging each packet, and the results were: with a 1280 by 1024 BW frame, with 43 by 2, 1486 packets =128 k bytes in 0.02803 seconds or 36 Mbits/sec (timing first packet to last ack, not time between frame requests). Funny thing was, the sequence was full frame, half frame, full frame ... being transfered. I don't know what that was about. I had the recording disabled.

I spent the last 2 weeks with zoneminder (ZM). I used the same hardware as I use with LuxRiot (LR), just different Hard drive. Unplug one HDD with windows, plug in another will Linux. Makes comparison more fair (I was not writing to disk for most of my comparisons). After nearly succeeding with ZM (frame rate too low 1/2 what I was getting with LR), I decided to go with LR (placed order today). My main complaint with LR was slow frame rate and somewhat variable record rate (plus I don't like $300 for 4 cameras when I'll likely only have 2). After using wireshark on both windows and Linux with both the 3130's built in web page using firefox, and LR on windows, and ZM on linux, I've concluded a number of things. The 3130 uses TCP for communication, which means its speed is a function of how fast the destination gets back to it with acknowledgments. The fastest rate I could get for 1 image fetch (using HTTP/1.1) was about 28 Mbps, which is a long way from the advertised "up to 55 Mbps". Yet this may be the fault of either my switch as "thewireguys" suggests, my motherboards Ethernet NIC, or the underlying TCP stack. Using firefox on both linux and windows, I noticed vastly different performance. On windows, with a frame rate set to just 1 fps, and using wireshark, you could see all of the data was there for a 1280x1024 BW frame (130kbytes using the settings I had), in 45 milliseconds(~22 fps). But on linux, while it took the same time for most the data, the last acknowledge from the host to the camera took an additional 20-40 ms. I blame this on the TCP stack, but it might be something else. The same was true when using LR and ZM. The HTTP commands to the 3130 were identical. The data transfer times were very similar except for the last acknowledgement from the host (on linux with ZM an additional 20-40 ms). This meant I could get around 24 fps using LR on a BW frame at 1280x1024. But only around 5 fps with ZM. At any rate, I've ordered LR and will see it I can live with that. My reason for high frame rates is actually gone (I bought an IR led, so can use short exposure high SNR captures), so I will likely end up with about 5-10. I just want 1/60 sec shutter speed. Now for the rant: I do not believe TCP should be used for IP cameras. Rather, extremely simple UDP, with a fixed (programmable) frame rate. Power up the camera, program the IP address of the host, port number, frame rate, other parameters, save them on camera NVM. Then on power up, the camera and the camera spits out constant UDP datagrams with no user programming. They fall on the floor if you have no program listening. (Just like a traditional camera's video, if you don't plug it in). User program simply opens a socket and starts reading. Header in UDP datagrams says what's in each datagram. (e.g. could define each UDP datagram to be 1 line of image (up to 20 kpixels/line of 3 byte each). Header would include camera settings, # rows, # cols, shutter speed, time tag, line number. If your software could not keep up, just lower fps. You will not drop data on a small network (with proper network settings). End of rant

Any feedback after adding IR illuminator? Did motion blur disappeared? I bought a axis IR light T90A21 IR-LED 50-100 DEG (Edit: rebadged raymax 50). Works great, extremely powerful - like a 500 W flood light, only 20Watts, cost $500. But: 1) focus is different than white light (I'm using 2 computar 8 mm 2/3 in lenses on the av3130). This is not really an issue as there are 2 imagers, so one can be focused for IR. 2) (really big issue) My wife won't let me install the IR light outside on the house. It's pretty small, and I'll eventually wear her down, but for now, I'm just experimenting.

As posted earlier by "Roman", if you are using LR 1.7.1.x, try using TFTP instead of HTTP. I can confirm that using HTTP protocol in LR 1.7.1.x does up to 20 fps on the AV3130 night sensor @ full res, and TFTP (used in LR 1.6.x) does up to 32 fps in full res. Contact LuxRiot support for info on enabling TFTP option in LR 1.7.1... it's just a matter of adding one registry key value and re-doing the definition of the camera using TFTP. I was confused by this. I was not sure how to do it in Roman's post. It sound like what you are saying, is there is a setting in windows registry I need to set. Well at this point, I have not yet decided whether to buy LR yet, so I don't think calling support seems fair.

I'll try a direct connect (crossover cable) later, but I need to find a power source. Personally I have a hard time thinking this is it, as the data rate (in arecont vision software) says only a paultry 3-10 mbps. I did a thruput test between my acer-one netboot and this PC (direct connect via crossover) and got around 11 MBytes/sec, which is full 100 mbps wire speed. So I know the PC side can handle it. I will try the same test via the switch and see what that gives. Just tried ftping a file from my acer aspire-one (wimpy netbook) to my PC through the Netgear switch. Transfered a 300 Mbyte file in 27 seconds (11 Mbyte/sec). This is essentially full wire speed. so I don't blame the switch. ----------------------------------------------------------------- You probably know this but decide to mention anyway make sure that AV100 soft and Luxriot don't run together and AV100 win service is off u don't want 2 software fighting for the same stream No, I'm not that smart, I did get caught on this. I had the LR server running while running the aV100 software. I just got the camera last week and am very new to this. Update: I set the LR video resolution to "half" and now get ~14 fps (1024 x 768). Still a far cry from 32 but much higher. I then removed the Netgear switch, powered the av3105 from a 13.8V supply, and used a crossover cable to go to directly to my PC. I get the same rate ~14-14.5 fps with 135 kbytes/frame. Also, you might ask "why do I want such a high frame rate"?, Well it all has to do with seeing at night. I plan on sending back the 3105 in favor of the 3130. I only have about 0.5 LUX in the intended area I'm trying to cover. (I expect I can't solve this and will need external IR lighting). The pixels of the 3130 (mono) are 2.6x the area of those on the 3105. Also the mono sensor does not have color filters (3x sensitivity). So in theory, I should get 8x increase in sensitivity at night with the 3130. Finally, assume you need < 1/30 sec exposure to freeze motion. and you only recorded at 5 fps. You are throwing away 5/6 of the available light. No big deal in the daytime, but at night could mean the difference in being able to identify or not. (each frame is still low quality, but when played at speed, your brain will integrate). I have a backup camera on my car that works quite well in the same light. I'm guessing its 30 fps. Thanks again for all you help. One final thought, I haven't noticed a play @2x speed or 5x speed on the LR. Seems pretty basic and simple. Am I missing it? Rick I have tested and installed the AV5105 and the 3130. You are going from a 5 megapixel image to a 1.3 megapixel image so you will see a big difference in image quality between the two. I know when I use Arecont cameras with cheap switches we have always got poor FPS so I am interested to see your results with the 3130. The 3130 will be alittle better at night but it will be a much smaller image. I didn't have a AV5105, rather the AV3105. (As I'm sure you know) the AV3130 has the same sensor as the AV3105 for day, and an additional (same size, but fewer pixels) monochrome sensor for night. While the AV5105 may be a lot higher resolution, it has tiny pixels, (2.2 micron vs 5.2 in the 3130 BW sensor, a 4x increase in sensitivity, plus 3x for not having color or 12x.) Also , you need a very expensive lens to resolve those small pixels. The newest Fujinon and Computar 1/2" lenses are only 3 megapixel. The 5 megapixel Fujinon (a 2/3" lens) is $300. Note: a 5 megapixel 2/3 in chip has the same size pixels as a 3 megapixel 1/2" chip (i.e. 3 micron). So I remain sceptical of getting a lens that can perform for that 5 megapixel 1/2.5" sensor. I just got the AV3130 today, and is is a lot more sensitive than the AV3105. With Low light setting on "high quality" you can see quite well with the 0.5 lux lighting I have. But this has 200 ms exposure, and any motion is blured. So I will be adding an IR source. Now once you do this, then the need for extremely low light sensitivity is gone, and the higher resolution makes a lot of sense. I've been torn and changed my mind 2 or 3 times between all 3 of these models. As for data rate, I was getting over 30 FPS reported in the screen footer with the AV3130 in LR but only with the video resolution setting at "half". The recorded rate was about 20FPS. My guess is I have some issue with my PC. To me it makes no sense. LR server is just receiving the frames and writing to disk. If is can read 30 FPS (about 4 megabyte/sec) over a 100 Mbps link, it surely should be able to write that rate to disk (I did a disk write thruput test and got about 25-30 Mbyte/sec ). Thanks for the input.

Got it, Thanks

I'll try a direct connect (crossover cable) later, but I need to find a power source. Personally I have a hard time thinking this is it, as the data rate (in arecont vision software) says only a paultry 3-10 mbps. I did a thruput test between my acer-one netboot and this PC (direct connect via crossover) and got around 11 MBytes/sec, which is full 100 mbps wire speed. So I know the PC side can handle it. I will try the same test via the switch and see what that gives. Just tried ftping a file from my acer aspire-one (wimpy netbook) to my PC through the Netgear switch. Transfered a 300 Mbyte file in 27 seconds (11 Mbyte/sec). This is essentially full wire speed. so I don't blame the switch. ----------------------------------------------------------------- You probably know this but decide to mention anyway make sure that AV100 soft and Luxriot don't run together and AV100 win service is off u don't want 2 software fighting for the same stream No, I'm not that smart, I did get caught on this. I had the LR server running while running the aV100 software. I just got the camera last week and am very new to this. Update: I set the LR video resolution to "half" and now get ~14 fps (1024 x 768). Still a far cry from 32 but much higher. I then removed the Netgear switch, powered the av3105 from a 13.8V supply, and used a crossover cable to go to directly to my PC. I get the same rate ~14-14.5 fps with 135 kbytes/frame. Also, you might ask "why do I want such a high frame rate"?, Well it all has to do with seeing at night. I plan on sending back the 3105 in favor of the 3130. I only have about 0.5 LUX in the intended area I'm trying to cover. (I expect I can't solve this and will need external IR lighting). The pixels of the 3130 (mono) are 2.6x the area of those on the 3105. Also the mono sensor does not have color filters (3x sensitivity). So in theory, I should get 8x increase in sensitivity at night with the 3130. Finally, assume you need < 1/30 sec exposure to freeze motion. and you only recorded at 5 fps. You are throwing away 5/6 of the available light. No big deal in the daytime, but at night could mean the difference in being able to identify or not. (each frame is still low quality, but when played at speed, your brain will integrate). I have a backup camera on my car that works quite well in the same light. I'm guessing its 30 fps. Thanks again for all you help. One final thought, I haven't noticed a play @2x speed or 5x speed on the LR. Seems pretty basic and simple. Am I missing it? Rick

I just saw 8-9 fps in Luxriot. What I'm trying to do is get ~30 fps @ 1280x1024. But when I use low resolution (in arecont vision software), I dont see any speed up in frame rate. I'm not even sure how to change the res using only luxriot. Perhaps I'm just not getting the 3105 to use lower res.

same cable

I'll try a direct connect (crossover cable) later, but I need to find a power source. Personally I have a hard time thinking this is it, as the data rate (in arecont vision software) says only a paultry 3-10 mbps. I did a thruput test between my acer-one netboot and this PC (direct connect via crossover) and got around 11 MBytes/sec, which is full 100 mbps wire speed. So I know the PC side can handle it. I will try the same test via the switch and see what that gives. Just tried ftping a file from my acer aspire-one (wimpy netbook) to my PC through the Netgear switch. Transfered a 300 Mbyte file in 27 seconds (11 Mbyte/sec). This is essentially full wire speed. so I don't blame the switch.

I'll try a direct connect (crossover cable) later, but I need to find a power source. Personally I have a hard time thinking this is it, as the data rate (in arecont vision software) says only a paultry 3-10 mbps. I did a thruput test between my acer-one netboot and this PC (direct connect via crossover) and got around 11 MBytes/sec, which is full 100 mbps wire speed. So I know the PC side can handle it. I will try the same test via the switch and see what that gives.