buellwinkle

My concern is the 1/60th max shutter speed that could impact low light capability as I usuallly run my cams at 1/30th of sec. Other than that, looks like a good value and I'm not a fan of 1080P because it's wide and short and I can't get the type of coverage I want. Maybe I'll get one to do a review. I'll see if they have any in stock. Also, my wholesale price list shows this to havre a 4.5mm to 10mm F1.6 lens but the Dahua site says 3.3mm-12mm F1.4 lens. What are you guys seeing? The issue to me is 4.5mm is too narrow for a 3MP camera as typically with that much resolution you want to cover a larger area.

Back to two NVR's to swap solution. In IT departments, they call this sneaker net and used when networking is not an option.

A lot of companies will introduce a new product to one market at a time to work through firmware issues. But I pinged Axis yesterday on this and have not heard back.

Just a note on NVR+ that I ran into that may help with those considering it. If you buy a camera license, it's for that specific camera as it generates a string that you provide them and they give you a license key specific to that camera on that specific PC. If that camera gets replaced, say even under warranty, you have to pay for a new license key, same with PC. I know, sucks. BUT, you have the option of buying a USB key, I believe it's $10. With that key, you get the number of channels you buy regardless of camera or PC, so say you get a 4 channel license, it's 4 channels of any camera they support anytime on any PC that has that USB key. While I never enjoy having to deal with these piracy protection methods, the Dahua cameras worked best with this software. If anyone finds a cheaper source or better software, let me know.

They are not available yet.

Exacq Start will do the job but cost $50/camera and I heard it's slow to find recorded video. Avigilon's low end NVR software will also do the job, but cost more than Exacq.

You can save money and get an i5, $100-200 cheaper and almost as fast. For the same clock speed, the i7 peforms the same but adds hyperthreading. Not sure if a lot of apps take advantage of it. You can always overclock the i5 too if you need a little more oomph, about 50% more oomph.

Sure, you can use an Atom processor based PC if you wanted to. All their cubes I know of are PoE, the ACM-4201, TCM-4201 and TCM-4511. Some are 12V + PoE. This is an indoor camera. The TCM-1111 is probably their least expensive outdoor camera.

I have the KCM-5611 and HFW3200 and both do very well at night but the Dahua is not WDR. So details in the shadow in bright sun, ability to see license plates with headlights on, is superb on the ACTi and not good on the Dahua. So depends on your expectations and if you need/want WDR. Also, the ACTi is autofocus and 18X zoom vs. about a 3-4x varifocal on the Dahua. ACTi provides NVR software, Dahua does not but don't know if that's important to you. The Axis Q1604-E also has WDR, but is not their best low light camera, that would probably be the Q1602-E with the lightfinder feature but it's not megapixel. They are coming out soon with the P33 dome with lightfinder and 1MP resolution.

Can you have two NVRs and swap back and forth, so say it's one a week, you go Monday morning, take the current NVR, put last week's NVR in and rotate them?

China is the least expensive way. Check out NetVisionDVR, their prices are good, they have a very wide selection of Dahua products, albeit with their own model numbers and they give you the NVR software for free. I haven't tried the software yet but better than nothing. They have a 2 camera minimum I believe.

NVR+ is all server side motion detection, works fine. Were you able to find a copy of the NetVisionDVR software anywhere? As for i7, that's a pretty powerful server, I think you'll be OK. You can actually go i5 as the only difference is the hyperthreading that most software can't take advantage of anyway. Maybe use the money to get faster clock speed i5 or overdrive the i5. I was thinking of upgrading my i3 to i5 or i7 but i7 didn't seem to add much value for the addional bucks. Maybe I'll use the difference I save to get a small SSD drive for the OS and the 1TB drive solely for recording.

This appears to be the NVR+ company website - http://www.ipcctv-software.com/features.html. Buying through them is expensive because it's in pounds sterling. One could use CNET to download it from. Here's the link - http://software-files-a.cnet.com/s/software/12/17/79/88/nvr-ipcctv.zip

I try and tell people this, the 5611 is not like any camera that ACTi sells for low light performance. Also, it does so with good WDR. For example, I can see the treads of the tires on my truck in the shadow of the truck in bright sunlight where with most cameras, it would be just black with no detail.

Don't know who developed it but the least expensive place I found that carries it is Linovision at $20/cam. Like I said, works very well, no issues I ran into. I want to take a look at another NVR product from NetVision which is free with camera purchase. I thought it was the same but it's not but supports ACTi cameras which is a huge plus for me.

Then it's the updated one. The 4 channel can handle 1080P 4 cameras then. Ironically the 8 and 16 channel has the same limits for total FPS but can connect more cameras but at reduced frame rate. So pretty good deal, since that NVR would cost about $200ish on it's own in China, plus the 1TB hard drive and 2 cameras and Costco's return policy. Is that available in the stores or just online? i wish it was the 8 channel version though as 4 seems so limiting.

That model NVR supports one 1080P camera so it should work but what will you do with the 2 cameras it comes with? The 4 channel NVR supports either 1 1080P or 2 720P or 4 D1. Wait a short time and their new NVR will be out that will support 120FPS of 1080P or 240FPS of 720P.

Yes and no. That NVR, if it's true that it's the 4 channel NVR can only handle 2 720P cameras (or 4 VGA cameras). The 8 channel supports 4 720P cameras. Dahua is on the brink of releasing the new NVR that can handle more HD cameras. So you could buy it, but adding more cameras may be a problem. You can get those cameras in China for about $120-130 each. That NVR is about $200. A 1TB drive is about $100. Add shipping and that setup will cost you more than $499 in China. So it is a very good deal, just afraid it's not expandable because the NVR is out of steam at that point. It could be that you can lower frame rate in half to support the 4 cameras.

The problem is that's an older camera and doesn't work with the techniques used in their newer cameras. What you can do is stream the camera to one of the streaming services like ustream and they convert the stream to flash so you can view it anywhere. This is just one of several streaming services. http://www.ustream.tv/

It's clear that UV light damages sensors, I have no doubt about that. Also can cause a hazyness to the camera in direct sunlight. So there's no harm in applying a UV filter to the camera as it won't affect image quality or detract from low light ability and I feel it willl extend the life of the camera. The question then becomes how do you attach this to the camera. Can't use it on a camera with IR LEDs on the lens or it will reflect back. I always thought a clever inconspicous outdoor enclosure for an indoor camera is a birdhouse. You can get cheap kits at art supply stores and cover the hole with a UV filter you glue in place.

I should do a full review but here's the two key screenshots so you get a flavor of what the product looks like. If you have Dahua and/or AVTech cameras, have trouble finding the right NVR software, this is the best I've seen so far. Live View Screen Playback Screen

Koolmer, thanks for the heads up on their software. Works very well indeed. It has a very short list of supported cameras and no support for generic cameras but I tested it with Dahua, AVTech and Axis and worked very well. Does server side MD, but actually wasn't a pig like others. With three cameras, 2MP Dahua, 1.3MP AVTech and Axis VGA it may have used 25% but I have other stuff running, and this included viewing the cameras and may use less cycles if I ran it as a service. Has Android and iPhone apps but did not test. Uses a timeline for viewing recordings, you select which cameras to view during playback and has variable speeds from 1/4X to 8X for playback. Playback is smooth. Has motion detect and privacy zones. Supports multiple monitors. Has a nice clean contemporary look. Also has face recognition that I also did not test. The pricing seems to be $20/camera, don't know if they throw it free with a camera purchase as mentioned, but you can always ask. For the OP, this is a pretty nice interface and if they like NUUO, this one is comperable. I find NUUO a little too flashy in it's presentation and to me this one looks cleaner, more professional looking. Way easier to use than Milestone. BTW, you would have to get the pay version of Milestone and it would cost more than the cameras. As for Digifort, could not find any pricing details or a way to download a trial version. I like to test software before buying to make sure it's compatible with cameras I have, see if it works and see how much resources it consumes.

Side by side, the M1114 has better image quality day and color night. Clearly it's not the same resolution as the M1114 is 720P (1MP) and the P1346 is 3MP and the M1114 is day only and the P1346 is day/night. But in general, that's been my experience, the 3MP cameras don't seem to do that well in low light compared to 1MP cameras. So as the P1346 struggles at night, the image gets noisier and soft from the camera's attempt at noise reduction. P1346 at night P1346 daytime M1114 daytime M1114 nighttime Yes, the M1114 at night is noisy with very low light but with a little more light, the M1114 does really well like this backyard area with just a porch light.

Milestone is compatible with Dahua and comes in various flavors from free to more expensive than the cameras.

The Axis camera used is CMOS, Axis support said too bad, that's what I get for using an indoor camera to look outdoors. Yes, I agree, a high quality camera like Mobotix which doesn't have autoiris will run for many years with direct sun exposure. My guess is cameras made for outdoor use must have coatings on the lens, like UV coatings to protect the sensor and indoor cameras do not. Maybe gluing on a UV filter which are cheap on eBay may do the trick in protecting the sensor.