buellwinkle

Yes, you can pan left and right, but you have to take the camera apart to do so These models are fixed domes, meaning they stay put until you take them apart and change the angle the lens points to. If you want PTZ speed domes, then that's totally different beast and way, way more expensive. If you are considering that, check out my reviews on the PTZ Panny and Axis on my blog, cool cameras if you have that need. An alternative to PT are the new 180 degree cams. You mount them flat on the wall and you get a panoramic 180 degree view or you can break them up into sections and each section becomes a stream. Geovision, ACTi, Mobotix make these cameras (maybe others too). The ACTi KCM-3911 is 4MP, if you break that up into 4 streams, it would be like having four 1MP cameras, each one covering 45 degrees. Maybe I'll review that after I'm done with the ACTI TCM-7811 review. They also come as 360 degree cams, set one up, a Mobotix Q24 in a clubhouse to monitor people coming in/out through different doors. The only downside to Mobotix is that you have to chose, day or night, not both, where the Geovision and ACTi are both day/night in one camera.

Wow, you guys ask the tough questions, but can an IP66 surveillence camera be submerged in water to a depth of 30', my Flip can with it's Flip underwater case that only costs $30. Cisco got rid of Flip becaue they realized that eventually cell phones were going to take over the 1080P video market. Heck, most $100 p&s 14-16MP p&s cameras can do 1080P video, so why buy a dedicated device for this. So no, they did not sell a $400 camera for $100. My cell phone, which also happens to also be a 1080P camcorder is on 24/7, everyday, business depends on it, it subject to being dropped daily (try dropping a IP camera every day, see how long it lasts). As for recording a Flip while it's connected via USB, I doubt it, the display says something like USB when it's connected. You can get the new GoPro Hero2, it will give you live streaming and I believe record at the same time.

The Flip can do things a $500 surveillence 1080P camera can't do, it comes with 8GB of storage and can store 2 hours of video internally, has a color LCD display, it's very small, it has a battery and it actually performs quite well in low light, maybe better than 1080P cameras costing $500 as you know, an 1080P IP camera costing $500 is not necessariy high end. My point is from a manufacturing point of view. I can't imagine it costs more for the parts and labor to make a Flip camera vs. a low end 1080P IP camera, in my world, I would think it would cost more to make a Flip because of the cost of the 8GB storage, memory, LCD display, buttons, flip out USB port. Sure, there's components in each that are very different but I can' t imaging that pure manufacturing costs can justify a $400 difference between the two and I think that's the OP's point, why does it cost 5X more for an 1080P IP camera vs. a Flip and why can Sony or Panasonic mass produce a low cost 1080P surveillence camera. And my answer is economy of scale, nothing else. And before you say IP cameras are so wonderful in harsh conditions, below is a link to my adventures in the jungles of Misiones province in northern Argentina bordering Brazil going on a boat ride that took us under the Iguazu waterfalls and filmed with my Flip. Not to mention that a few days later we were at the southern tip of Argentina chilling with Penguins on the Isla the Martilla in Tierra de Fuego, again with my trusty Flip. Took to the pounding water of the waterfalls and the salt water of the Beagle canal pretty well. Good trip, good Flip camera. I did have it inside the Flip waterproof housing.

To me, most cameras do well during the day, the difference is how well they do at night.

Pansonic and Sony cameras of decent quality actually command a premium price. I received a consumer grade Panasonic camera, a BL-C230, you can buy it at Best Buy for $299. For that money you get a VGA camera, cute cube packaging, no external lighting, poor low light capability, limited pan/tilt capability, mic/speaker, no internal SD card slot, WiFi, certainly nothing close to a Flip in image quality or resolution. Again, economy of scale and from what I understand, Panasonic is #2 in IP camera sales behind Axis so they have better economy of scale than other companies in the business. There are WiFi SD cards, I guess you can stick that in any camera and read it via WiFi on any computer/tablet/phone assuming you have software to make it work.

If the fighting area is against a wall, you could mount 2 say domes at different points along the wall and one in the ceiling for a professional look. The only issue I have with the M50 is that it's digital zoom, so it will degrade the image if used. Also, I would imagine you would want different angles of the same action, to sort of stitch a montage together of a certain fighting move. A series of cameras at different angles, maybe one higher than the other to get different perspective, may keep it interesting. Where a PT camera can move the area being filmed, but is not giving you a different point of view. From Axis, M stands for inexpensive, the only M camera that has external ports is the M1054. I find the camera little grainy and no varifocal/zoom lens. Lens is glued in place. Then you get into the P & Q series and the price gets out of what I think you'll want to pay. Move into Taiwan made cameras (Messoa, Brickcom, ACTi, Vivotek, OpenEye, AVTech, Speco) and the prices drop, features go up but quality is still very good on most of them. The best deal I've seen in a simple indoor dome, and I haven't been able to get a hold of one to test is OpenEye. The CM-610 is 2MP (1080P) at 15fps or 720P at 30fps. It's not varifocal but comes in a choice of 3 lenses, not sure if they are interchangable after the fact. I've demo'ed one, pretty good and at as little as $200, not a wallet buster but no external inputs/outputs. The CM-715 does, but then the price doubles.

Sure, but Flip was so cheap that Cisco killed it. Sure, I get it, heck my cell phone does 1080P video and audio and does it pretty well. My only explanation is market size/scale. Cisco probably sold millions of Flips, so they can mass produce them for cheap. It's not the electronics, how complex it is, optics, network, blah, blah, it's economy of scale, how much it costs to support and market a product. So if it takes so many engineering, accounting, management, marketing, sales dollars to do millions of cameras, and a surveillence company has the same engineering, marketing, management, acounting and sales costs, but only sells a hundred thousand cameras, clearly the cost per unit is far higher to produce a surveillence camera than a camcorder that's ubiquitous. Then there's manufacturing costs, I can't imagine it costs more to manufacture a 1080P IP camera vs. a 1080P camcorder of comperable quality. Hence, you have a $99 Flip that outperforms 1080P surveillence cameras costing 5X more. But that's changing, as surveillence cameras become more ubiquitous and there's more competition, you'll see prices drop but I doubt to camcorder/cell phone levels. My guess is that low end camcorders and p&s cameras won't even exist in a few years, all replaced by smart phones and tablets.

BlueIris is a CPU pig. I love the software, but I gave up on it, actually my computer gave up on it. Some SD cards have a write protect switch. It could be that when you inserted it, you are tripprf the switch somehow. It's hard to see, heck a uSD card is hard to see in it of itself. Are you able to write to this card using a computer, camera or phone?

Hahahaha!

Not sure how IP cams would fit in, but first, PTZ cameras for $500, 720P, hmm, not going to happen. You can go through my blog, I have reviews on two 720 PTZ cameras, the Axis P55 which runs over $2K and the least expensive decent 720P PTZ I've found, the Panny WV-SC385 for just over a grand. Will be doing a review on the Q60 series next, that's 1080P, but also not $500, heck, the sales tax may be close to that much. Many camera companies have SDKs, like Axis that you mention. If you can develop your own IOS apps that would be really cool to turn a camera on/off, pan/tilt/zom, start recording. But there should be plenty of IOS apps already inexistance that let you control the PTZ and start/stop recording. Also, most cameras let you setup an external trigger. For example, you can setup a physical switch to start recording and setup an event to record when the switch is pressed. You can even have it trigger a red recording light. Also, is audio important? If so, you'll need to get microphones, they typically don't come with the camera. An alternative may be to have a series of 720P cameras fixed cameras with a varifocal (manual zoom) lens or interchanable lenses so you can set the focal length where you want it. Make sure it has audio and external inputs. Can't think of any off hand that are cost effective enough, but Axis makes a bunch of low cost domes starting with M3xxxx. If it was me, I would use a camcorder, $200, pay a kid to shoot the video.

Just curious, why did you remove the IR filter from your Canon 20D? Why did you just not install a switchable IR filter so you can turn it on/off electronically like a surveillance camera?

What you may call complexity, I call flexibility, features, options. For example, Arecont has the least amount of features I've ever seen in an IP camera, hence they are simpler to setup but I would never buy one. Mobotix makes some of the most complex cameras to setup, but that I would buy. not because it's complex, because it can do stuff most others can't. So like cars, there is no perfect car, if there were, life would be easy, everyone would just buy that one.

There's two reviews on my blog for PTZ, the Panny WV-SC385 (indoor cam but you can get the optional outdoor housing for about $250 more) and the Axis P5545-E, both good 720P PTZ cameras. Will be reviewing the king soon, the Axis Q6035-E which is a 1080P PTZ camera which lists for $4,500, add the mount and midspan to power it and sales tax, you are at over $5K, just wanted to let you know so you will think everything else is cheap by comparison, hahaha. I do have a review on my blog for the Foscam too but that's not PTZ, it's just PT and not outdoor ready. You zoom by physicaly carrying the camera closer to your subject, what I call sneaker zoom. You can't really put it in an outdoor housing because the LEDS will reflect back. It's not day/night, it's night only so plants may look purplish brown during the day. Get the clones, some are made better and you can find them on eBay for $50. Haven't reviewed any Geovision yet, but that's not a PTZ camera, so you may be splurging up the wrong tree. If you want to get creative, check out my review of the ACTi KCM-5211E. It's an outdoor 4MP (double 1080P) camera that has an 18X optical zoom. No Pan/Tilt but has support for an external pan till device that's not too expensive. So may be a cool PTZ for about a grand. The least expensive PTZ I would recomend is the Panasonic BB-HCM580a (non PoE) or the BB-HCM581a (PoE). Again, stick in an outdoor housing and you have a nice PTZ, albeit VGA resolution for under a grand. Another interesting alternative may be to get 360 degree camera, like an ACTi KCM-3911 ($600ish) which is 4MP and puts out 6 streams, so like having 6 cameras, each one pointing in a different direction to make 360 degrees. No optical zoom though but what PTZ camera lets you see 360 degrees at once? You would have to setup a patrol to stop at 6 different locations, each location only getting maybe 10% of the camera's time. Geovision and Mobotix also offer similar cameras. The Mobotix is day only, runs about $800ish, the Geovision is comperable to the ACTi in functionality, did not look at the price but demo'ed the camera at ISC and it looked good and my guess is pricing is comperable to the other two.

Sensor's ability to distinguish colors drops off as the amount of light hits it diminishes, normal for any camera, but usually a survellience camera will switch to b&w to gain a litte better low light capability but not always for the better. A webcam has an IR cut filter that is permanently in place. This is to correctly colors caused by infrared lightwaves that sensors are sensitive too, this makes things like trees green, your black bowtie black. The downside is that the webcam will not work with IR lighting, so you'll need regular white light to light up the area for security purposes. Do you need it work at night, and if so, have you given that any thought? Landscape lighting that focuses on lighting up plants and hardscape will look great on the webcam, but not really shine a light on the subject you may be trying to capture. Just something to consider. I love the experiment, look forward to seeing the results.

Post pics when you get it.

While h.264 compression helps with bandwidth, the decompression that the PC has to do to feed BlueIris will suck up even more CPU. Like I said, try it and see. Just providing things to look for, breaking points that may happen when you approach the limits. Also, what do the USB extender's cost, maybe more than the USB cam costs. Nice thing is you can go to Walmart, Costco or Best Buy, get what you need, try it and return it if it doesn't work out. May be a great idea, not sure many have tried it.

Sounds like a software bug maybe or the SD card slot is defective. Try a lower resolution and lower frames per second to see if a lower bit rate will help out. As for motion detection, if you want 100% accuracy (or at least way better than you have), see if you camera has input ports on the back and most do. Check the firmware lets you trigger an event based on external input. Then buy a PIR motion detector, Bosch makes a nice simple one for under $20 good for a 40' x 40' area and trigger on external input instead of video motion detect. DSC is another reputable company that makes them.

So far, haven't tested it yet, the TCM-7811 dome is the best bet because of the Sony EXView HAD CCD sensor. For the low $600's it does a lot, wide varifocal lens (3-9mm), SD card slots. The TCM-7411 will save you a few buck but will have a regular CMOS sensor, not bad, but not CCD. The same from Axis will not have the IR Illuminators, and you'll need a P33 series which is about a grand for an outdoor dome with IR cut filter. Then putting in a decent IR illuminator will require additional wiring and cost at least a few hundred bucks. There is one newcomer but they won't let me review their cameras. The OpenEye cm-715I would fit the bill, priced reasonably, 2MP (1080P), 3.3mm-12mm lens. Just don't know anything about them and it's shame but they are the only IP camera company that refused to provide a demo camera to review. They also have an autofocus version called the 715AI but depends on if you will be changing the focal length a lot or like me, set it once for life, so why pay extra. Also, you may be used to two way audio meaning mic and speaker are built into the camera as many Panny's do. Most higher end cameras that give you two way audio, especially outdoor cameras will not have mic & speaker, but provide you jacks for them and each camera has different specs so make sure you get the right mic before just buying any. Even within the ACTi line, they have different specs for mic's for different models. Most people don't want a mic anyway because almost always, it's illegal and against federal wire tapping laws and state laws in many states to record a conversation. So indoors I do use cams with mic's, outdoors I do not. So you may turn in evidence to police for a small crime you captured, and the video may not only become inadmissible in court, but may be used against you and you end up in jail, not the thief. Wierd huh? You can check with a lawyer. We had to for our community, can't put them at risk. You can use audio as an event trigger and you can listen to live audio, just not record audio.

BlueIris software supports webcam, analog camera cards and IP cameras in one software package that runs on Windows. For $50, it's pretty good. With that many cameras, make sure you get a decent PC, better than an Atom processor, maybe a Sandy Bridge i7. Also, if you want to code, and who doesn't, you can check out the Zoneminder open source project. Being open source the price is right, you get the software and can even contribute code you develop to the open source community.

First understand that BlueIris is sort of CPU hog. You start adding a bunch of HD cameras, you'll need a serious PC to run it on. USB camera rely on the PC's CPU to do the work that IP cameras do internally, so it will also eat up CPU. a good amount. So while it may work on paper, you may want to try it and check the CPU utlization. Like other's have said you are limited to the USB limitations in terms of bandwidth and cable length. While one 1080P camera won't saturate the USB port, you may not realize that USB ports are shared, so you may overload the USB bus if you add a couple of these at the same time. Yes, I know it's rated 480Mbps, but that's bits (small B), 1080P no compression may use a good portion of that. probably about 1/5th. Also, check to see if the driver will support multiple cams. Never seen more than one webcam on a computer.

In that price range, I use the ACTi 1231 series cameras (both ACM and TCM models), they work really well, my oldest one is probably 4 years old. Has varifocal with a decent wide angle, I think 3.3mm and the built in illuminators do the job. I have a review on my blog, click ACTi under catagory. ACTi provides their NVR Enterprise software for free, it's pretty good, I use it but there's a whole new version coming out soon that is awesome (and still free). Their support is good, RMA's are quick, reliable cameras. Also, ACTi recently came out with the TCM-1111 which is a decontented TCM-1231. I think it's about $350. You lose some of the higher cost features of the 1231 like varifocal lens but may suit your needs. You are used to VGA resolution. Having 1.3MP camera will give you 4X the resolution and you may not need to do varifocal as most of my camera are set at about 4mm anyway. I would not recomend any Vivotek camera. You can see the review on my blog but the owner of that camera is not happy at all and he owns lots of different cameras. Very buggy firmware & software. I just started reviewing a Brickcom for my blog, a newcomer. Really nice bullet camera, crystal clear images, can record to a NAS, has about a 4X autofocus zoom starting at 2.8mm which is really wide, wider than my ACTi 1231. Has a uSD card slot too for recording. This is a step up from the ACTi 1231 in features and quality, but also in price. Brickcom does have one unique feature that sets it apart, it's that they can do wireless, even in their 1.3, 3 and 5MP cameras using dual band WiFi, even 4G if the camera is in a remote location with no internet or you want to keep it in your car and drive around with live video feed to the internet. Very few megapixel cameras can do WiFi let alone 4G. Their illuminator also is very good. ACTi is introducing new models and I'll be reviewing one in about 2 weeks. They are backordered so I've been waiting 2 months for this one, the TCM-7811. What's special is that the IR illuminators are rated 40 meters and it uses a CCD sensor vs. a CMOS which should work better at night. ACTi is coming out with a low light 4MP camera soon, hopefully by summer. As for cold, here's the deal. Most of the bullet cameras will work well in cold, down way below zero. Dome cameras have a large exposed area and typically require a heater to work well in frigid weather. They typically include the heater, but since you need it, you may have to power them with 12V instead of PoE or some use a higher power midspan PoE injector. I'm going to be reviewing an Axis dome that requires a 72W midspan PoE injector which is like 5X the power of a regular PoE. In So Cal, even the mountains, it just doesn't get cold enough to care, maybe 15F on some days (actually supposed to snow tomorrow) so I never tested any camera with the heater on but I'm not going to make any excuses, I like it that way As for lighting, if you can disguise it as landscape lighting, maybe, But don't go out and annoy your neighbors with motion detect 300W floods, that will make them angry. Also motion detect lights don't work as people expect. What happens is the light goes on, the camera goes on, it takes the camera a few seconds to adjust exposure so your capture may be an overblown white blob where the person's head was. If your camera supports profiles which I doubt, you can set it to go into a fixed exposure mode at night that will work with motion detect lights.

Maybe the wrong forum for analog cameras. This is the IP cameras and by their nature, IP cameras can be accessed from anywhere. Samsung, from what I know is sort of a mid-level camera, not as bad as some chinese analog cameras you may see at Costco for $299 but not really much better. We briefly tried a $600 Samsung analog camera (just one camera) and it wasn't that good.

You are pushing the limits of class 4 as it is and not all cards that say class 4 can actually go that fast. So get class 10, they aren't that much more dough. How do you like the Rainbow cam, never heard of them before but the prices seem good. Do they work well at night. Do you have any images from it that you can share?

What I've done with Mobotix in the past is have them connect to your camera and see for themselves. This way there's no question when you send it in for repairs that the problem exists. Last thing you want is to send it in and have it come back the same.

Its a Videolarm, Model FDW75C8N. This dome is POE... Hi-PoE and includes the injector to power the camera and dome.. 60watts!!! Got it from iSourceCCTV (same company as securityideas.com) for $638. This dome housing made some images blurrier. I would try the Panasonic housing, it's a lot less expensive.