buellwinkle

Loftek manufactures cameras, nail dryers, thermometers. Basically cheap low end stuff ranging from $5 to $30. In quantity, you can get the Loftek cameras for $30 but my personal opinion is that it's overpriced because there's other companies carrying a very similar product for less and ebay is flooded with similar products from Shenzhen, China. Just go to Alibaba.com and search for Loftek and you'll see the wide range of products they manufacture and the prices. Here's a similar product on eBay and it's a genuine WanScam, in my expert opinion, much better than Loftek although clearly more expensive at $38. http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-GEN-WIRELESS-WEBCAM-IP-CAMERA-AUDIO-VIDEO-WIFI-CAMERA-OSD-IR-Motion-Detction-/160723377312?pt=PCA_Video_Conferencing_Webcams&hash=item256bdc1ca0

I have 6 in my primary house, all 1.3MP which has worked well for me. I do have an additional indoor cam I've been too busy to setup. If you have a condo with limited access, for example shared walls on both sides, I think you can get by with 4 cameras, one in front, one in back and 2 inside. We have 4 in our vacation condo but only one pointed outside, the other 3 inside.

What he said. It's unlikely a camera company will have a relatively costly feature and not tout it. It's not that the camera brand is cheap, it's that you may be chosing a camera with features that won't do what you expect in trade for a lower entry price. If you don't want to change the cable, there's ethernet to coax converters, so you can leverage the existing wiring, although if it's all in conduit, why not just pull it through. What I did to sell people on megapixel cameras is to take a picture with a digital camera, resize it to the 1.3MP or 2MP resolution and to VGA/D1 resolution and overlay the vga image over the megapixel image to show the value. In today's world where cell phones come with 5-8 MP cameras, TV's are all 1080P, it's hard to imagine that someone would accept less.

Rather than tell you the difference, it's more about what's the same. There are lots of small companies, some may be a family operation in Shenzhen. There are companies that make that plastic shell that you see that makes all these cameras look the same, there's companies that make the plastic lenses, the LED's,the circuits. Then these small mom&pop companies buy the components in bulk and sell them on eBay, pretty much their only outlet to sell. They try and get some traction on Alibaba.com to see if a reseller in another country would buy them in bulk to resell and they go between $25 and $50 a camera depending on features. Then those resellers go on eBay and sell in their own countries. Foscam has managed to grow to the point where they have a following, so you can get help from the community and they seem to offer the largest selection of camera choices. The problem in the past with going with what many refer to as Foscam Clones is how able are these companies it getting you bug fixes, firmware updates. None are good, but some are better than others. So you may get the Loftek, and it works fine, or it may be buggy with little to no chance of ever getting it fixed. With all that said, these cameras are toys at best for experimentation. The image quality is very crude, fuzzy, color is a loose term, you'll see colors but may have no bearing on reality, they have buggy firmware, they generally don't last long, I've seen them last from 3 days to a year. Their WiFI radios are very weak and will constantly disconnect unless in the same room as your router. The best way to take advantage of these cameras is not to use them, but to buy a bunch up for $25-30 each, put some clever US website up for under $100, sell them for $69-89 each, pretend your a big US company, dump a bunch on eBay to unsuspecting suckers that think they can get a quality PTZ camera on eBay for under $100. Then use the profits from your venture to buy decent IP cameras. You'll find a bunch of these manufacturers on Alibaba's website.

I don't understand the need for a hybrid camera. If you use it with a DVR as an analog camera it will only give you analog resolution so why not just buy a cheap analog camera. Because if you wait a year or two to convert, the technology will change and you may get a 41 megapixel camera for the same price (Sorry, was just watching a review showing the new Nokia phone with a 41 megapixel camera in the phone, yes, not a typo, 41 megapixels in a cell phone). The other way to marry the two worlds would be to get a decent megapixel IP camera, forget analog, and use a hybrid NVR or NVR software to allow the use of the megapixel camera with the remaining analog cameras. BlueIris Software ($50/server) that runs on Windows will allow you to have analog cameras via a capture board record together with IP cams and is designed for home use, meaning it's easier than most to use. Also, keep in mind that cheap megapixel sensors tend to have poor low light capability as compared to many CCD's used in analog cameras, so what you think is a better solution may turn out to be poo if there isn't adequate lighting. This camera you mention is a day only camera, you can't use IR illuminators with it so make sure you have plenty of white light at the gate.

These two cameras are probably the absolute best cameras $70-80 can buy and will provide hours of entertainment. Frankly I'm shocked that such highly regarded surveillance camera companies won't be at the ISC West show at the end of March. If you buy these cameras in bulk, I've seen them as low as $30 wholesale, FOB Shenzhen.

Would you go with something low end like Netgear ReadyNAS or Drobo 4 bay and run Raid 5 as 3+1 in that $400-800 price point instead or is that not good enough?

Doesn't meet his requirements of two way audio (mic only) although it is smaller than my Smart car. Is digital zoom of 3X OK, or do you need real optical zoom, like 10X or better?

When you compare this to common NVR solutions costing thousands, most do so without RAID at all. So not sure if the requirement is that common if common commercial NVR products do not include it. Maybe it's more of the thinking of someone coming from an IT background. Sure, I can understand a casino having 24/7 surveillence, storing their video maybe on a NetApp NAS, but probably not for small businesses. Also consider that with Mobotix, you can have each camera or small groups of cameras on different NAS devices, thereby lowering that risk that you'll lose everything because one NAS dies byt by distributing the camera amoung several cheaper NAS devices, you could move a camera to another NAS while the defective NAS is being repaired or replaced. There sure is a difference between how the government prints and spends money than the commercial world.

What's your budget. The cheapest 1MP (720P) PTZ camera from Axis can set you back a few thousand, almost double that for 1080P HD (2MP). I have a review on my blog for the Axis P5534. Everyone's definition of small is different. I own a Smart car and people tell me that's small and I can assure you, the P5534 is smaller than my Smart car. Panasonic has a less expensive solution, WV-SC385 for about a grand for 1MP (720P) for indoors. Outdoors the WV-SW395 raises the price a bit, to about what the P5534 goes for. Also small as it's smaller than my Smart car. I have not heard good things about this camera, so make sure they have a liberal return policy if you buy this. If you want to get creative, look at the review on my blog on the ACTi KCM-5211, it's Z not PTZ, but can be made PTZ with an external pan tilt mechanism and probably do the entire lab experiment for well under a grand. The advantage is that it's 4MP (double 1080P resolution) and has autofocus and ACTi is a good brand and has 2 way audio you wanted.

All cameras have issues with video motion detection outdoors as any breeze, reflection or car headlghts can cause a shadow that triggers motion detection. These shadows or reflections can be larger than the object you are trying to capture. If you want more accuracy, I believe Geovision NVR solution offers analytics where it may make more intelligent choices about what is a person verses a shadow. The other alternative would be to use an external PIR motion detector and Bosch has a good selection of outdoor sensors thay may work with Geovision as many cameras have external alarm inputs for this.

Some camera brands include their NVR software for free. I've used AVTech and ACTi cameras that work very well for me and their NVR software free (you provide the PC). Also Vivotek provides the NVR software for free although their cameras can be buggy. If you want to mix camera brands, I've used BlueIris software ($50 per server) and it works well with a broad range of cameras. Zoneminder runs on Linux and is open source (free). At home I use an small Atom based PC with Windows 7 for the past year or more. It's tiny, quiet, has HDMI port so I can use a TV as a monitor, lower power consumption and cheap. If it help you get started, you can see reviews of different cameras on my blog.

Based on Google's study, it's best to replace hard drives once they reach their 3rd birthday. One interesting thing I recently found out about is that SSD's have a life and it's determined by the number of read/write cycles. They usually come with a reserve of memory to replace where memory errors are detected, but there's a difference there between consumer and enterprise drives as to how much of this spare space there is and you can tell how soon an SSD is going to die by how much of this space has been used up. Common wisdom would dictate that SSD's would last forever since they have no moving parts, but apparantly that's not true and in some cases, a spinning drive could outlast an SSD.

I can certainly understand where you are coming from, but I've been there done that. It's worth it for some to put in RAID to have the protection, but I don't buy that enterprise grade drives are far superior to consumer grade drives. The people that believe that the manufacturers MTBF rates are real are just drinking the Kool-Aid. Worked for one of the largest SAN manufacturers and even did a project with the other largest SAN manufacturer testing different drives and SAN scenarios for a project. I can tell you, that the difference between consumer and enterprise drive life is insignificant, it's mostly hype. Google, who believe or not is the largest manufacturer of servers in the world and they don't even sell them, just for internal use, has done a study and found insignificant differences between consumer and enterprise drives. There study is below - http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Contact their support and see if you let them access the camera for a few days if they can include support for it. Most software vendors I've dealt were glad to do this. If you want, i can make the request also so it looks like more than one person needs this. I can give them access to mine if they want.

I heard you can hack the playbook and put Android on it. It will never work with the browser because it requires quicktime or actives to work. There may be some 3rd party IP camera apps for the Playbook that may work with the AVN80X.

Must be a made in china issue.

Just posted a review of the Vivotek IP8362 on my blog. Frankly, the ACTi 1231 has much better night vision. So yes, you get about 50% more pixels with the Vivotek, but at night, there's not much detail. What's a cool camera for night vision, and 1.2MP is the ACTi TCM-7811. It uses a CCD instead of CMOS for a more noise free experience. Currently that's their best camera for low light.

Is the night pic on your blog at 1/30s? Yes, all my cameras are set to 1/30th max shutter speed. The difference between the ACM-1231 and TCM-1231 is about $100. The TCM give you h.264 compression, more frames per second and WDR feature. I find the noise levels on the ACM are lower than the TCM. I don't need the faster frame rate or h.264, so not worth the extra money for me, but may be for you.

Clearly it depends on how much you value data safety vs. how much money you want to spend. The Mobotix can be setup to email you if it can't write so the risk of not capturing data for a long period of time is small. I figure any hard drive will last 3-5 years. If you are risk adverse and cash rich, then spending a few thousand for a fail safe system makes sense. On the otherhand, under $200 for 1TB with a 3 year warranty does represent a good value.

I use ACTI acm-1231 and tcm-1231 and both work very well at night up to about 30-40'. To get 50' you may have to increase the max shutter speed but I like to keep mine at 1/30th. You can have it FTP events to an FTP server, but you can also use their software which works very well and it's free. Even the iPhone/iPad app is free, lets you see multiple cameras. It's 1.3MP, so not 1080P, it's 1280x1024. To get 1080P you need 2MP and Vivotek, Messoa and Geovision make 2MP cameras, same price range, although they are what I perceive to be lesser brands.

We are putting in OpenEye soon and they do well in low light, the cm-715ai. I'll let you know once they go in how well they do for us, From an installer I spoke to that works with a lot of cameras, they do very well in low light, even without the illuminators and he said the support is great. This specific model may be slightly above your range, but they make them without the illuminators, then they are in your price range. The ACTi also do well. The TCM-7811 is their low light camera, 1.3MP, CCD. The TCM-7411 is slightly cheaper with a CMOS sensor. The only one in your specific price range would be their ACM series and I've had good luck with them, so the ACM-7411 would be it. All have varifocal lens.

I think the IR Illuminators on the KCM-5211E are just for show. They are rated 3-6', which for a 4MP camera with a 5mm wide angle and 18X zoom is not very useful. For me, I go with ACTi because of the built in illuminator.

IQEye to me is sort of overpriced for a China made camera. ACTi is probably the best from Taiwan and priced well. Are you looking at IQEye because you need the NVR capability built into the camera? If so, Mobotix is a better camera overall than IQEye in the same price point.

I find that WDR on the TCM-1231 just reduces contrast that dulls bright objects and brightens dark objects. I think reducing contrast accomplishes the same thing. Frankly, overall, I'm happier with my ACM-1231.