buellwinkle

Could be a cable or the switch. I've had more PoE switches fail on me, even high end ones from Cisco and Netgear fail than cameras and not in a easy way, usually some ports work, others don't or it's intermittent.

There's only trade magazines and even being in the trade they are worthless to me. You best bet is forums, blogs, reviews on the web. The closest to a magazine, articles that come out almost daily is John Honovich' site ipvm.com but even then, it's more industry oriented rather than end user but you may like it.

Slightly misleading in that they used the "pro" version of the SSD vs. what most consumers buy. The difference is that commercial grade SSD drives like what's typically used in IT departments has a lot of spare sectors that take over for failed sectors. So that 250GB drive they tested costs more than double what consumers pay and for all I know may be a 500GB drive with half spare sectors where a consumer grade drive may have only a small amount of spare sectors. Then enter the $5-30 microSD card with fewer sectors and many of unknown quality. Also, I believe a cameras say in a driveway with cars, people, animals triggering MD, I think a typical 1080P camera can fill up that 64GB card in a day. But since you are knowledgeable in the area, here's my dilemma. I wrote some quick code on an Arduino to update the OSD on a Hikvision camera with current temperature using a temp sensor. I figured it would run once an hour and exclude updating on duplicates, meaning if the temperature didn't change by more than one degree, don't update the camera. But say worst case, 24 updates per day or 8,760 writes per year to the same sector on NAND Flash (same tech as SSD or SD cards) on board the camera used for cameras settings. Do you think I'll hit a wall, say in the next 3-5 years of useful life of the camera or it's insignificant?

When you first got the cameras and plugged them into a PoE switch that's connected to your router, they get a DHCP address. I use a free smartphone app called Fing (for IOS or Android), put my phone in WiFi mode and it scans for everything on my network and the ones that say ACTi are your cameras. Then I use Internet Explorer to connect to each one (admin/123456) and change the IP to a fixed one. Not sure about their NVR's, never tried them but their NVR software is very good.

Can you view the camera from their web browser interface at the time you lose video from the NVR?

OEM is not technically an importer as the contracts can be done through the USA office. OEM is someone that buys cameras made by Hikvision to OEM specs and sold, supported and rebranded by someone else like Trendnet. Or do you mean an importer/distributor of Hikvision branded products? Or official U.S. distributors of Hikvision products like ADI Global?

The 2532 has a 3-axis lens, so it can be mounted vertically on a wall without any special mount. Many cameras have SD and continuous recording sounds good but 64GB is very limited and SD cards are NAND Flash and have limited amount of writes so it's unknown how long it will last. Some have reported months, some have had theirs for a year. Also, outside of Hikvision, Dahua and Mobotix not many that support SD card recording have a built in way of playing it back. With most, you have the video as a file on the SD card you can download to your PC and play, tough to do when there's thousands of videos and you don't know which contains what you want. So make sure the camera you chose has a good way of playing it back. Another approach is a separate Windows app where it lets you play back what's recorded on SD in an organized fashion and that's Axis and ACTi. Also, if you have outlets, then consider Powerline, more reliable and you can have say a PoE switch in your attic that powers/connects a few PoE cameras, then use Powerline to get the connection back to your router.

If anyone can pull of WiFi it's me as I have electrical outlets put under each eave during constructions for holiday lights, but not very common. I was looking at new homes for sale and the model homes had a WiFi camera at the entrance to each home and it was plugged into an outlet at the bottom of the door with the wire going down the wall. It was so funny, all I had to do to thwart their security is unplug it.

That's a tall order as the better cameras are PoE, not WiFi. The only one I can think off at the lower price end is the Hikvision ds-2cd2532f-iws. It's WiFi, 3MP (but can be downgraded to 720P or 1080P), has an SD card slot for local recording and playback, but it's not a bullet. If you want a bullet, check out the Brickcom WOB-200Np, it's 1080P, WiFi and on camera SD card recording. This is probably the only WiFi camera I would buy as it flat out works with a powerful radio and large antenna. WiFi just does not work well outdoors unless you have a mesh network setup outdoors. If anyone can reach an indoor consumer grade WiFi router, this is it. Of course if you get a few of these it will overload your WiFi network. Honestly, can't even imagine why someone would use WiFi for HD security cameras, just seems like the cumbersome & expensive & non-reliable. First you'll need an outlet to plug in the power wall wort adapter. Since it's outdoors it has to be GFI protect, so getting an electrician to install this near the camera has to be way more expensive than getting him to install an Ethernet cable and use PoE. Second, you will not likely have decent enough WiFi signal outdoors if your WiFi router is indoors. So you'll likely need a WiFi access point wired near the camera. Lastly, the problem with WiFi is latency, so while you may have more than enough bandwidth to support 1080P, you may not have the latency requirements meaning you could drop frames for choppy video, especially with multiple cameras and you using WiFi for other purposes like Netflix streaming, tablets, laptops, Tivos, etc.

You can use the TFTP method to downgrade.

A bargain in switches is the Netgear ProSAFE Gigabit Switch with PoE (JGS516PE for 16 ports, JGS524PE for 24 ports, 1/2 are PoE). It's managed, it's quiet, it uses a standard power cord (no power brick or wall wort), it's cheap for a gigabit switch let alone one that is managed and can be rack mounted or desktop.

The logo must be visible and upright, it's in the Hikvision terms of use. Doesn't matter which way is up, the lens rotates almost 360 degrees and you can flip the image in the settings.

Remove the dome and the black plastic cover behind the lens. There's two wands, one for focus, one for focal length. You twist the want counterclockwise to loosen it, then move the wand to get what you want, then tighten the wand clockwise to secure it. I don't remember, but there should be a T/W for telephoto/wide on the lens barrel near the wand that controls focal length.

Always wondered how well the Asoka PoE Powerline would work. I use Powerline in a similar situation and use a wall plug PoE adapter plugged into it. Ended up putting two cameras on so I now I use a 4 port PoE switch instead of the injector.

You can set the maximum shutter speed for auto exposure in most cameras. I tend to set it at 1/30th for general purpose, about 1/200th for special purpose like license plate recognition. Some brands even let you set a fixed shutter speed, but some like Hikvision do not. Some cameras have aperture control too via iris control. More gain like more ISO equals more noise and most brands set gain more aggressively than I like to achieve the Lux rating they claim. Some cameras allow you to set this via the web interface, some hidden settings are available via URL commands.

I use sub streams for live view at 704x480, main stream at 3MP for recordings. To display say 8 cameras, all at 1080P or 3MP at full frame rate at 5-6M bitrate at the same time would require a larger server running a current model i7. What I do is use views that contain a smaller set of cameras, for example, if it's my home, I would have a view of the 4 cameras in the front half of my home, 4 in the back and sides, 4 insides and there's overlap. Besides, trying to view 10 small thumbnails at full 1080P is not buying you much anyway.

I have 10 cameras, 8 are 3MP, 2 are 1.3MP. Since I do reviews, there's usually one or two additional cameras. I'm using an Intel NUC i5, a small computer that uses very low power, about 4.5" square and 15W power consumption with a 2TB HDD. It has HDMI out, so you can view directly on a monitor or use that as a server only and run what they call Smart Client on other PC's that access the video feed and recordings from the server which is the way I typically use it. I like it because there's no CPU fan to fail, it's easily hide-able, even comes with a VESA mount so you mount it to the back of many monitors/PCs. For more heavy duty commercial installs, I've been using a Dell T20 server, holds 6 HDD (4 3.5", 2 2.5") and is built tougher with larger fans to handle that many drives. I use the Xeon version which is comparable to an i5. They are relatively cheap, like $400-500 depending on sales. The trick with that many cameras is to have a gigabit switch or a switch with a gigabit uplink to gigabit switch the PC is on. I use Netgear's 24 port desktop gigabit smart switch, 12 ports are PoE and runs about $250ish.

Sounds like you went from one extreme to the other and you won't get much better support than from companies like Axis, one reason it costs more. I have not found a generic NVR I like and Axis does not sell an NVR I know of. They do offer NVR software for sale and for free they have Axis Camera Companion where the cameras write to a NAS or SD card, and you use a viewer program on a PC to view recordings and live view multiple cameras. Overall, not that great but works. You may want to look at commercial grade NVR software on a PC like Milestone XProtect, Exacq, Avigilon, all work well, all priced similarly by camera starting at about $50/camera. I believe all have about 30 day trials so you can see which you like. I personally use Milestone XProtect at home and on commercial installs and very happy with it.

Very cool. Why would you not use VLC to do the same?

I agree, especially combined with better compression algorithms, It could be 4K does not take up much more disk space than the current 3MP stuff they have. Then figure the new 6TB HDD, the entire eco system to support 4K surveillance is coming together. I would like to know if they are going to come out with 1080P mini bullets, domes, eyeballs with their new low light sensor they are using in their new box cameras.

If you upgrade to more current firmware, you'll be able to make the change to the camera settings from the NVR and save you the trouble of doing them separately. I set mine up to have the max sub stream which is 704x480. It actually looks pretty good when view 4 or 8 cameras at a time. To me it's more important to have 1080P or 3MP recordings so I can get the level of detail needed for evidence. I believe that NVR can do two 1080P streams at the same time for simultaneous playback. To me it's impressive that they can pull that off with an ARM processor, same like what's in a cell phone. Raspberry Pi or in a camera itself.

Try updating the firmware. When I updated to 2.3.9 from the Hikvision USA FTP or Hikvision Europe Portal, it added more functionality, like being to control camera settings from the NVR. You can put the digicap.dav file on a USB stick and then tell it to upgrade firmware tom the file on the USB stick.

Buy 2 Dahua "lite" series cameras and use their free PSS software.

No, the versions that Wrightwood has only works on camera models they sell which is the Raptor firmware, it will not work on the camera model you have.

Just a thought but the Hik NVR's I've used display the sub stream in live view. Are you getting the same effect during playback. I ask because playback is from the main stream which is 1080P, the sub stream is usually a lot less. iVMS likely displays the main stream. If this is the case, you can increase the sub stream to the max which I believe is 704x480 which is what I use.