buellwinkle

That is so cool, let me know when you find something like that because every single PTZ I've tested records full time when you do that because the camera panning creates motion. I did see something else that may work for you and that's to use a hemispheric camera to detect motion, then send an HTTP command on motion detect to a PTZ to go to a that area and start recording. The only two brands I know of that allow sending HTTP commands are Axis and ACTi.

Use this calculator to find what lens and resolution you need to reach your goal - http://ipvm.com/calculator Just enter the distance, lens, sensor size and such and it gives you an approximate visualization of the plate. At night, figure you'll need maybe 50% more due to noise. Also, at night, to read a plate which is highly reflective and you have to contend with head or tail lights, make the max shutter speed about 1/200/sec. This will make everything near black except for lights and plates. I love the idea of a WiFi camera, just never used them outdoors before. A good source is Brickcom, they have a nice bullet with WiFi built in that worked pretty well for me in testing I've done. Here's a shot of a plate using VGA resolution at 42' at 1/200/sec exposure. If this was taken with auto exposure, the plate would be a white rectangle.

In testing the Dahua SD50230S-HN 30X PTZ camera, someone asked me about tracking. It's a cool camera but for it's low price, it does not do tracking. So I found that iSpy can do PTZ tracking and it's free. While it had PTZ definitions for 198 PTZ cameras, it did not have it for Dahua. What's cool about iSpy is you can use it for PTZ tracking only and some say is better than {TZ cameras that have tracking built in. You can run iSpy just for tracking, and record with your favorite recording solution or record with iSpy, the product is free but has optional pay plugins and features. The caveat is that no tracking solution is perfect as multiple objects can appear on the image and confuse the tracking. Below is the tested XML section to include in the iSpy PTZ2.xml file and I submitted it to them so hopefully they'll just include it in future releases. I don't have the camera up anymore, but tested it on my desk. It tracked my hand. PTZ even at 30fps was very responsive and accurate, more so than from the browser interface. As long as you hold the arrow buttons in iSpy it went in that direction. I set the speed slow, but if you want faster PTZing or tracking, change arg2 to higher number where 1 is the slowest, 8 is the fastest. To download this free open source software, their site is ispyconnect.com <Camera id="199"> <Makes> <Make Name="Dahua" Model="SD59230S" /> </Makes> <CommandURL>/cgi-bin/</CommandURL> <Commands> <Left>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=Left&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Left> <Right>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=Right&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Right> <Stop>ptz.cgi?action=stop&channel=0&code=Right&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Stop> <Up>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=Up&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Up> <Down>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=Down&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Down> <ZoomOut>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=ZoomWide&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</ZoomOut> <ZoomIn>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=ZoomTele&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</ZoomIn> <LeftDown>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=LeftDown&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</LeftDown> <RightDown>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=RightDown&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</RightDown> <LeftUp>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=LeftUp&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</LeftUp> <RightUp>ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=RightUp&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</RightUp> </Commands> <ExtendedCommands> <Command Name="action=Preset 1">ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=GotoPreset&arg1=0&arg2=1&arg3=0</Command> <Command Name="action=Preset 2">ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=GotoPreset&arg1=0&arg2=2&arg3=0</Command> <Command Name="action=Preset 3">ptz.cgi?action=start&channel=0&code=GotoPreset&arg1=0&arg2=3&arg3=0</Command> </ExtendedCommands> </Camera>

None of my cameras are port forwarded in my home, so no security hole for me. I only port forward Milestone XProtect which has higher end security. I do port forward my lake web cam, but not a security threat. Also, while it's a pain to use the authentication method, if it's in a script, you can use CURL and it sends the user:password in the URL, no problem because I'm using it daily to put the temperature on the OSD.

I only installed to prove out that it works, so don't remember exactly, but I believe I just used rtsp://

40th, does you CastleKeeper support edge recording and the new Onvif G specs, just curious. As for Moore's law, storage is one area where it hasn't applied maybe doubling in performance every 10 years instead of each year like processors. When I quoted 100,000 writes, that's from Sandisk Extreme specs, most cards are rated for 10,000 writes. But I get that it makes sense for cloud as a way to store most recent video before sending it offsite.

iSpy said they would include this in their next release and this is months old, so you should be able to select this model from their list by now. There's basically a file called PTZ2.xml, you just have to add this in there. You can change the model number to what you like. The two cameras should be identical in commands sent.

There's confusion between number of pixels and resolution and camera companies love using pixels, after all, why differentiate between a $99 16MP digital camera and a $999 16MP camera, same right but resolution between the two can vary by a lot. I did verify resolution on a chart compared to other 3MP cameras I had including Dahua and ACTi and the resolution was comparable at 3MP and did drop when put in 1080P mode. People think that going to higher MP cameras, like 5MP makes for 2/3rds more pixels and that's true, but not 2/3rd more resolution and from what I've seen, I would guess at maybe half that, about 1/3rd better resolution. At night it's much, much worse where I've seen 1080P cameras that were marginally better than 720P cameras in resolution because of the additional noise from higher density sensors.

A typical modern day NAND flash storage like an SD card has life of about 100,000 write cycles or 274 writes per day over a year. So depending on activity, it could last a few months or a few years. I don't see this as a practical storage method for surveillance cameras and don't see edge storage including profile G taking off unless theres a breakthrough in SD cards. Not sure the manufacturers care as their primary use is cameras and smartphones. I have the extreme best use case in an indoor camera that gets a few motion detects a month and it's been working for about 3 years now. But outdoors, with constant video motion detects, I doubt it will last a year. Would be cool if they had cameras with very small spinning disk built in like the 160GB 1.8" HDD put in the iPod classics like this one - http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-MK1626GCB-1-8-160GB-HDD-FOR-iPod-Classic-6th-Gen-Replace-HS161JQ-Hard-Drive-/200881466817

At night, two things happen, camera noise increases which increases the bandwidth requirements and shutter speed increases making it physically impossible to achieve higher frame rates, for example, if shutter speed increases to 1/10th of a second, the physically fastest frame rate you can get is 10 fps. When you factor in compression and image processing, it's going to be less, maybe 6-8fps. There may be a setting in the camera were you can set the max shutter speed to 1//60th and allow you to maintain the higher frame rate. Then use external illuminators to brighten the scene.

One does not have to go back in history that far to know that Hikvision cameras were susceptible to the Heartbleed SSL vulnerability, so it's possible, but not common. Certainly not any more vulnerable than devices you use daily like smartphones, tablets, laptops.

I tried with AT&T and Verizon, both can't get to www.itunedvr.ru or that link. Ironically that site is hosted in the UK by Hostinger. Is that a free web host, that may explain the service level, I can't even connect to them, LOL.

I have the 2.3.9 USA firmware I got from their FTP site a week or two ago and works well on a 7608 I put it in for a neighbor. PM me for the link if you want it.

Yes it will. The grain you see that most of us call noise is because the camera is trying to push the sensor beyond what is reasonable. You can control this by reducing max gain to say 50, but then the image will be dark. It will also save on disk space as it takes more bits to store noise. If you have a suspect in that image, the noise will make identifying the suspect all that more difficult.

When you are in an enclosed area where the IR LEDs reflect off objects and are nearer by, you'll get a clearer image. Also, common to Hikvision is the IR illuminator is not wide enough for their widest angle lenses creating a spotlight effect. Putting in say 2 illuminators, one on each side of center would provide a more evenly lit image and less noise. For example, this is a Hikvision with a 4mm lens, many would be happy with this image But to me it was too dark in spots. One $60 illuminator made a huge difference./

Send the one back, they probably made a mistake.

I have a switch in my garage to handle 3 cameras in that area and I have a 24 port desktop switch with 12 PoE ports. I have the switch in the garage with a gigabit uplink going into my gigabit 24 port switch. Both are managed, but that doesn't matter. Heck, in one install with about 16 cameras, we have several locations, each linked with 100Mbps extenders to a gigabit switch at the central location. With only 4-5 cameras per 100Mbps path, it adds up to 400Mbps on the gigabit switch, no lost frames, everything records as you would want.

Why would you not be able to record a 4K camera to NVR software? I was recording the ACTi E77 which is higher resolution than 4K using Milestone.

That's pretty good for a low end 5MP camera, you can't expect it to be as good as a 1MP or 3MP camera and all the settings in the world are not going to make it much better. If you don't want noise and you don't want external illuminators, consider the Axis P3367-VE or Bosch Dinion Starlight 8000MP, both compare to 3MP cameras in low light sensitivity.

You can also add in external illuminators. There's some decent inexpensive ones out there like the Tri-Illuminator and CMVision IR3.

The only open source software I know if is Zoneminder on Linux and iSpyConnect on Windows. Zoneminder is complete open source, iSpyConnect has their basic product as open source, but has premium features on subscription. There's better free software, but not open source.

Get the Hikvision covert cameras, the ds-2cd6412fwd, very good low light performance.

You can get 3MP covert cameras where only maybe a 1/2" hole shows, the rest of the camera can be in the attic. Let me know if you want more details. We use them on commercial projects inside entry dialers in communities and nobody has a clue there's a camera in there.

Depends on two things, do you have more time or more money? If you are a good C++ developer, you can write your own for free using open source LPR components. You can't beat free. If you have money instead of time and skills, the cheapest I've see is $50 as a plugin for iSpyConnect. Have no clue how good it works but it's as good as iSpyConnect, don't get your hopes up. The least expensive commercial solution I found is from Geovision, about $800 per camera + NVR license costs but people in the business says you get what you pay for. I use Milestone LPR, it's $1,300 + 300 for the library + 99 per camera for NVR license and it works well for me after weeks of tweaking. If you need a cheap LPR camera, let me know, I have one good for about 30-50' that I made from a Hikvision eyeball camera.

I have a 10W draw at 100% CPU with a Celeron NUC, about 8W during normal state.