buellwinkle

I installed their latest version of their PSS software. I configured it as best I can but it's not recording. I have the schedule set for every day, I started recording, I set the camera with motoin detect zones, but nothing. Any ideas?

Tenvis

You have to configure the zoom feature in BI. Click the PTZ tab when you add/configure a camera, check the box that says Enable Pan/Tilt/Zoom and select ACTi from the drop down. That will enabled the currently grayed out PTZ controls at the bottom of which you would use the magnifying glass icons to zoom in/out and you can set presets in BI. Have not tried BI with a zoom capable ACTi but if you run into trouble, I can double check it against the KCM-5611 which is the replacement for the KCM-5311 but should zoom the same way.

Not sure what this has to do with access control systems, but I do know that Dahua (makers of your q-see) has access control products but never tried them. But if this is an out of topic question about your DVR, if you can log in but not see video, maybe it's an rtsp or video port that's not port forwarded on your router. Check the manual for your router to see if there's additional ports that are used. They are made by Dahua and they tend to use 3 ports for each device. You can also try Dahua's app called DMSS that may work better.

Switches and IP address really don't have anything to do with each other. For example, if each switch goes back to a seperate NIC on the NVR without every going to a router, then each NIC can have it's own subnet. For example, we buy servers that come with 4 NICs, so each is it's own subnet, for example, one can be 10.0.0, 10.0.1, 10.0.2, 10.0.3. We use these for internal interconnect, not for outside use, in your case it would be to connect 4 switches that are independant of each other allowing for greater bandwidth. Usually the PC or NVR connected to the outside world is what goes to the router, so a 5th NIC would be on your router and be a assigned an address on your router's subnet that you would port forward for external access. Or you can do it another way, if bandwidth is not an issue, connect all switches back to the router and assign all cameras in the router's subnet along with the PC or NVR. No need to expose each camera individually to the internet by port forwarding, only the PC or NVR. Also, do not use ports 81, 82 and so on, that's just asking for trouble as those are assigned port numbers and many ISP's and corp firewalls block those. Move it up to high numbers, like 10080, 10081, 10082.

What's his number? I looked at Dahua pro in my phone book and couldn't find him. Just considering it for my review, if it doesn't work, I'll just leave it off. It does work fine with BlueIris.

If you have the camera setup with h.264 there will be considerable latency as it processes the video but if you set it to mjpeg or mpeg it will be as close to real time as an IP camera gets. I would make the AE closer to 50, even 100, 0-11 is way too low. I know it gets noisier but not that bad for a camera without noise reduction. If you really want better, get the KCM-5611, no snow.

Thewiredguy, Didn't even know there was an access control forum here. We use the HID Global VertX V2000, 2 door controller instead of Edge mostly because we seem to have everything come in pairs, but the EDGE product is just a single door controller and is priced at roughy half the price of the 2 door controller. We use HID Global readers from the MiniProx to the MaxiProx. They've been in place for over 3 years, works great. We use a cloud service called ControlMyDoors.com that has been very good, low cost, allows remote access which is nice. They even integrate IP cameras into the system for snapshots, for example, you can have the HID controller trigger a camera to take a picture everytime someone swipes their card/fob. Then in the log, you can view the image for that entry attempt. HID has made a special customization to our contoller, for example at the pool, it triggers a buzzer if someone props the gate open. Also, Phil at ControlMyDoors has made customizations to his software to make it community friendly as most software out there are specifically designed for employees and office buildings. At another place we have a condo, a high-rise, they use a similar setup from Honeywell. They are 34 bit vs. the HID Weigend 26-bit format. In theory, having more bits allows you to have more cards/fobs without a chance of a duplicate but that only applies if you have tens of thousands of cards for one system. The biggest initial expense for us was buying thousands of key fobs. We found a place in Shanghai that can make then for under a buck with our logo silk screened on them and they come in several colors. At another community we looked at a system from Schlage called BrightBlue. It's different in that it's a box that supports a bunch of readers and you connect to the box from the internet to access it. It has a wireless feature that may help if your doors are nearby. Also we installed a system from Brivo but pulled it out. It worked well, but didn't have the features we needed for a community, again, it was focused on office buildings, not residential. What do you want to know?

Nothing you can do about black sky or black asphalt. It's funny but I have the opposite problem in the front of my home. There's a street light across the street. it lights up the background great, you may think it looks great, but if someone comes between my camera and the street light, they are dark like a silhouette. So I have to have lighting to counteract that. So don't stress over lighting the scenary, this isn't a photo contest. Concentrate on the subject you are trying to capture and that person is lit pretty well. By overlighting you can blow out your subject, but you would have a prettier picture. As for the day/night issue, yep, I have it on my TCM-1231 camera and all other ACTi cameras are fine. The only thing you can do is fill out a problem ticket with ACTi, enough people do it they may fix it.

There's only one camera brand I know of that has serious WiFi built in and that's Brickcom (see review on my blog). It can pickup WiFi routers a mile away, amazing. Image quality is good both day and night. Price is a little high but it's a good unique well made product, comes with free NVR software that's pretty good. At the time of my blog posting, they only had a 1.3MP bullet but were real close on a 3 and 5MP bullet, so check with them on that. Keep in mind that WiFi does not mean wireless, you'll still have to power the camera, albeit you can do it with low voltage, 12V or PoE.

That actually looks pretty good considering it's probably just a porch light in the front. For a camera like that, I would put in two IR illuminators, say 30-45 degrees apart from the camera on either side to avoid shadows. When sizing an illuminator, look at the angle that matches your lens and look for something that has an effective range of 2-3X what the spec's say. I found some pretty decent low priced illuminators online for about $40 that are 45 degrees and effective range of 80m but do really well for the range that you are trying to cover. No matter what you do, you will still get some noise at night and that's because that camera does not have noise reduction in it's firmware. The newer ACTi's do, not that one. That's not necessarily bad as noise reductions does the job with the noise by smoothing it over, but the trade off is the smoothed over noise comes at a price of lower detail. So for me, I would rather take an image with noise and better detail and use noise correction algorithms in Photoshop and some noise reduction plugins that I have control over in a forensic situation. Look at what the TV show CSI does with blurry and noisy images, amazing -

I tried RTSP on two software packages, works fine. I have a 1080P bullet from Dahua for testing. I used BlueIris, configured it as a generic RTSP camera and also with IPCam Viewer on my Android phone and it works fine. I'll try and get a review done in the next week on the camera on my blog.

If you get anxious and want to start playing with it on Monday, see if you have an old 12V adapter, one that can put out about 1 amp or better. Should come with a green block connector that you attach the wires to.

That would be good to know as I didn't see anywhere in the interface where you set max exposure.

Suckwang is a real brand? Each dome cover is specific to a brand and model. for example, i may have two vandal domes even from the same company and they attach differently, usually the dome and the ring are one piece glued together at the factory. Most vandal domes have a camera inside a housing. So you maybe you can find a housing only, maybe on UK eBay that the camera can inserted into.

How are you handling the pigtails connectors? It's sort of odd to me as normally I have my cat5 and rj45 plug sticking out the wall and then I feed that through the dome housing to the camera. Having it inside the wall seems like it would be PITA because if later I want to swap out the camera, I have to crawl into the attic to unplug it and hope the next camera has a similar pigtail. Sure, you can make the whole large so you can feed it through, but then it's more difficult to caulk for a weather tight seal. I ask because your Dahua looks fairly simple but the higher end Dahua cameras have about 6 connectors at the end of the pigtail so the hole I would have to make in the wall or eave would be rather large.

ACTi has had several WDR cameras and they do what they say, but the latest, the KCM-5611 is impressive as it does WDR without compromising image quality. For example, in my driveway, I can see the threads of the tires on my truck that are not visible with other cameras. Also, in my driveway, it's a tough environment as I get full direct sun into the camera in the afternoon, at night it's fighting the backlighting from the street light across the street. Also worked well to show license plates despite the brightness of the headlights and a non-WDR camera would just show a blank square for the plate.

Do you use a remote control to work the apps or a wireless mouse/keyboard?

Since I can view my cameras from my Android phone and my phone has HDMI out, I can use my phone to watch the cameras on TV. I wonder if you got a cheap Android phone that has HDMI out and not get phone service for it, just use it via WiFi, will that work as a cheap solution.

Different community, different layout, different model cameras, M12 vs. D12-180.

Look at my review on the M12, the D14 performance at night is the same. They measure lenses in 35mm film camera equivalents, so you are better off comparing viewing angle instead of lens size. The images on my blog were the widest available for an M12 or 22mm lens and that's so wide, you can see the edges of the camera. They do have an 11mm lens which their widest and I believe it has a 180 degree viewing angle, the 22mm is a 90 degree viewing angle. What I've done at one location is use their 180 model that makes a 180 degree image using two 90 degree lenses and you can record them seperately or as one image. We use it with 2 B&W sensors to cover a wide pool area giving us 2.5MP combined. What makes them awesome is the dedicated b&w sensor that provides crisp sharp contrasty b&w images that you can't just get from a color sensor in b&w night mode.

If you want discrete, stick to a dome camera. They are ubiquitous and many people don't even notice they are there. As for built in illuminators or not, that doesn't really add to the size of the dome and the more megapixels you have, the more light you need at night. Without illuminators, we use Mobotix D14 DNights, a very nice dome with excellent low light performance using a dedicated b&w sensor for night use and a color sensor for day use. Has the NVR solution built into the camera, so no need for an NVR so while it may appear expensive, it can be cost effective. At a lower cost are the Axis P33 series domes, ACTi makes nice domes as well as Brickcom and IQEye in the mid-tier. Dahua on the lower end seems popular, currently testing their bullet but their domes without illuminators are small & inexpensive. Also OpenEye on the very low end, the CM-710 has good performance, but don't get their CM-715 as it's really bad.

No, but maybe googling PoE Powerline may yield something. If you ever been to CES, you know how overwhelming it is and you come home with bags of brochures and you can never find that one thing you really wanted to remember. It's like when I went to ISC, there was a booth selling an LPR camera that outputed text along with the image for license plates, something we can interface into our access control but I could never find them again.

Running ethernet costs me between $65 & $100 per run depending on the length/complexity of the run. One thing you can do is put switches at intermediary points. For example, if your NVR/PC is in the back of the house, and you have 2-3 camera toward the front, you can have a single run to the front of your home and then PoE switch with short runs to each location. Also, if they are outdoors, maybe you can run the wire under an eave or soffit where it's not visible. Check out Brickcom, they make up to 5MP cameras that can effectively run WiFi. Of course you will have to supply power and you can use PoE injector to power them, but you wouldn't have to do a home run, just a run long enough to reach 110V. Their WiFi is serious WiFi, not a cheap $100 camera that doesn't work more than 20-30' away. When I scanned WiFi with the Brickcom, it found about 50 SSIDs and compare that to my laptop that found 2-3. But you may find the additional $100 or so for the WiFi option about the same as hardwiring and makes more sense for areas where hardwiring is not physically possible. At CES two years ago, there were a few companies that had powerline adapters with PoE injector built in, another alternative, but then you need a direct outlet to plug into.

The difference is amazing, you won't be disappointed. When I used a 5211E on my driveway, it was so dark it was useless. Also, the 5211E has an IR working range of 2m, the 5611 is 20m.