buellwinkle

After playing with the 5211, I think the 1231 is a wiser choice. It has some cool features, but the illuminator is only good for 3-6', so it's not like the 1231 that can light up 30-40' out. So to use the 5211 effectively, you woud need decent illuminators. Their reasoning is the power required to run the zoom reduced the power available for the illuminators, a trade off. Then if you really want to use the 18X zoom, you would likely need very powerful illuminators that can reach maybe 50m out. The noise reduction is very good though, much better than the 1231, too bad they don't offer the noise reduction option on the 1231. Also the WDR during the day is much better than the WDR on the 1231. The other thing that made it ineffective for residential use is the lens only goes to 4.7mm for it's widest focal length and I got used to the 3.3 on the 1231 whch gives me the exact view I need. Also the auto-iris is nice during the day, the 1231 is a fixed iris so bright sun can cause glare. I have another location where I want to test it that may offer a better use case. I'm just not up there for a few days, but it would be cool to have it at Mardi Gras, with the 18X zoom and 4MP.

Here's the problem with that approach, and maybe it's just me. When I install an ACTi camera outdoors, typically mounted against a wall, the back cap is screwed in place with 3-4 screws and the ethernet cable goes through it. If you take off the rear cap, say on a 1231 or 5211E, you may have to move the camera to do it. If I have to plug in a different ethernet cable to point the camera, and then later have to move the camera to plug the permanent cable and screw in the rear cap, I still have to re-point the camera again. I guess the only exception would be a pole mount where you have access all around the camera, but still, I think the camera will shift as you install the rear cap. I think at best, it helps you with focusing and varifocal adjustment on the ladder. Zohan, I have the ACTi 5211E installed, will let you know how it works out. If you want access, I can do that. Autofocus and zoom makes a big difference, no focusing or setting a varifocal lens on a ladder. All you need to do is mount it and point it. 4MP resolution is nice, very crisp image. Can't wait to see it at night with their noise reduction.

You'll need to have a PC as Tom said and NVR software or get an NVR device. To save money, I would get all the same brand because Geovision will give you the NVR software for free if you only use it with their brand cameras. Maybe a Geovision GL-BL220D or BL320D to replace the Compro. Also, depending on lighting, maybe you want a indoor dome with IR illuminators built in like the GV-FD220D instead, that way it works well in the dark. If you want to save money, get 1MP indoors, usually indoors the areas are small and 2MP may not be necessary, but outdoors, the more resolution the better because you are generally covering a larger area. Also figure the cost of a PoE switch to power and connect the cameras. There are some inexpensive 8 port (4 PoE) switches for under $100 USD.

How does it do at night in low light? How far do the built in illuminators work at night?

Looks like it's an installation aide to allow you to focus, adjust the varifocal lens and point the camera using an IOS device as the display via WiFi. Interesting approach. Can't you just ue their free app with any WiFi router on that network? UPDATE - I tried the app, works but only seems to find one camera at a time and out of 6 it found 3 by hitting the search button. So it's designed to work with a network with one camera, meaning to use the WiFi method, you'll need to turn the other ACTi cameras off or have the luck that it found the one you want.

If you want lots of features, the Vivotek is better, if you want a camera that works, ACTi is better. Vivotek has poor support and service (may take months to get an RMA for a defective camera), their camera quality is inconsistant, their software is buggy. ACTi is more expensive, has great support, rarely come across software bugs (even less than Axis for me).

The Samsung DVR is stictly for analog cameras, so it's a throw away. You'll need either a PC with NVR software or an NVR (which is the IP version of a DVR). There are many cameras available in Europe, for example Axis is made in Sweden, makes cameras in all price ranges from as low as $150 USD to thousands. Mobotix is made in Germany, cameras costs from about $800 USD to typically $1,500. There's several brands from Taiwan, I would recomend ACTi as a solid performer. Panasonic in Japan is also a big player with IP cams. Let us know which brands you have access too. Many of these cameras are not available in retail stores anywhere, you may have to buy from an online reseller. Also, to recomend a camera, you need to tell us if you want A dome, bullet, box cam, fixed focal lenght or varifocal, IR cut filter or day only, built in illuminators or not, PTZ or not. Most importantly, your budget.

Interesting article. In Axis training, they say 40 pixels head size to ID a familiar person, 80 for an unknown person, so they are pretty close with their 35 and 83 pixels respectively. Of course the more the better, imagine at 35 pixels, someone's eye maybe 2 pixels tall, say 3 pixels wide, I would not call that very identifiable identifiable. What happens too is people love sharp crisp images, so they crank up sharpening which takes surrounding pixels and increases contrast around the edge of an object, like an eye and it looks sharper from a distance, but actually loses resolution.

I have one on my driveway, the IR works great, the WDR compensates for the high contrast shadows you get from the glare of the concrete driveway and the dark shadows from trees and house. At night it works very well, lights up my driveway (3 car garage, 26' deep) as well as our truck parked there. I have mine mounted about 10-12' high also. The only issue I have is that during dusk and dawn, the camera will get false motion detects as the IR filter is about to transition. Don't have the same issue on my three ACM-1231, so go figure. I do have a weird issue where a black line appears down the middle, happens about once every 2-3 months, I reboot the camera and it goes away. I did RMA it, but waiting for a KCM-5211E to replace it while ACTi resolves that issue.

I get varifocal lens cameras for outdoor cams when I can because you never know what you want in the future, for example what if you repurpose a camera. Even a 3MP camera, we have one that has a 22mm lens, we want to repurpose the camera but can't use it with that lens and the price to switch lenses from Mobotix is prohibitive. If it had a varifocal lens, it would be a slam dunk but that wasn't an option at the time. Some of the new cameras, like the ACTi kcm-5211e have zoom with autofocus which makes life super easy. You don't like the focal length, change it from the comfort of your laptop.

I've used Mobotix cameras with a WD My Book World Edition 1TB, costs about $150-200 (depending on availability from Thailand). Actually Mobotix recomended this for up to about 3 cameras. Maybe get a Drobo if you need to use it with more cameras or need higher capacity.

The rule of thumb for facial recognition that I go by is you need the face to be 80 pixels tall to indentify someone and of course that has to be facing the camera, no harsh shadows, adequate lighting. You can't say how many megapixel you need to achieve that, for example with a 3MP camera, 30' may be too far if you have a wide angle lens, yet 1MP may be fine at 30' if you have more of a telephoto lens. For about the same price or less, check out the ACTi kcm-5211e, it's 4MP, has built in IR lighting, is autofocus (beats manually focusing on a ladder) and has an 18X zoom lens. You can have your high resolution, tweak the focal lenght from the comfort of your PC and even setup a zoom patrol if you want. I'll be doing a review on my blog of the camera in the next 2-3 weeks.

Ditto on the TrendNet TPE-S44, have a few in service for over a year and no problems. Trendnet may not make good surveillence cameras, but the switches are fine. There's like a 30W limit on the entire switch. I never had a problem with 4 cameras on the switch, but if you use PTZ cameras that have higher draws, you may be limited to 2 cameras.

Most people don't use good passwords, so use a good password hacking tool like Brutus AET2. It can do a few thousand password attempts per second. http://www.governmentsecurity.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=4510

Do you want the camera to be part of a doorbell system or just be a camera tucked in a corner to watch your front door. I've used Arecont, hated it, dumped it on ebay. They have amazing night vision called midnight mode, BUT, it's totally worthless because it sets up a multisecond exposure that will blur anything moving faster than your house. In practicality, it's awful in low light when you set maximum shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. Frankly though they are pretty cheap, certainly a lot less expensive that something good like Mobotix. Arecont software is free for one camera, then it gets expensive and it's not really that good. As for ACTi, awsome cameras for the money. Certainly not the level of Mobotix, but do provide a clean crisp image. What I personally use on my front door is an ACTi ACM-1231 which is 1.3MP, has decent low light capability and when it switches to night mode, it has an effective built in IR led emmitter good for about 30-40' and a varifocal lens (like a 4x manual zoom). For another $75 or so, the next step up is the TCM-1231, has more frames per seconds, WDR and h.264 compression. I have both and I don't see much of a difference, so save the money. If all your cameras are ACTi, then you can get their NVR software for free, I believe you get your choice of 16 camera enterprise or 64 camera license professional versions, and did I say it's free? Someone did mention the ACTi Cube (acm-4201), also an awsome camera, very sharp picture, built in microphone, built in PIR motion detect and 1.3MP resolution. But this is an indoor day camera, would not recomend it for outdoor use. I have some sample images and review on my blog at ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

I use mostly ACTi as the best bang for the buck for me. The ACM-1231 bullet cam, 1.3MP, IR illuminators, 3.3-12mm varifocal lens, day/night and outdoor, costs under $500 for outdoors, the ACM-4201 cube, 1.3MP, 4mm lens for indoors. The resolution is plenty for covering all sides of the house and certainly more than enough for indoors. Bandwidth is not an issue for the four (soon to be 5) 1.3MP cameras at 8 fps and my 2 vga cameras at 15fps. Even if it was, so what, get another lan adapter for your PC, put 3 on each subnet, but I wouldn't worry about it, my guess is the cameras put out 5 Mb/s, not an issue. They feed into a ZOTAC PC which is about the size of a Mac Mini (about 7" square, 1" tall) and has very low power consumption and an HDMI port so you can plug it into the big flat panel TV. The PC cost me about $350 with 2GB memory and a 320GB laptop drive. I then run BlueIris software, $50. What I like about BlueIris is that it has some good features for home use, like being able to turn on recording when you are about to go out and it gives you a few minutes to get out of the house. Also has a web server so you can view your cameras from your iPhone or Android phone, laptop, anywhere you have internet access. Don't get me wrong, I like Mobotix, but mostly for commercial applications, like a few I'm looking at for a condo complex to watch over their common area, but their pool is like 50 x 25, mine is 7 x 7', don't need 3MP to cover my Jacuzzi, haha. The Mobotix image quality is very good, better than ACTi, but ACTi still holds it's own and I would say it's average from what I've seen of commecial quality cameras.

I think what he's trying to do is get the video sent as AVI or MPG files that he can directly import into his video editing software. Most cameras and NVR software seems to store this in their own format and then provide utlities to convert the data but he doesn't want to go through this tedious step, he wants the camera or NVR software to record directly in a format suitable for him. So does Milestone or any other NVR software has the option to record to AVI files instead of their own format?

Anybody have any experience with Speco megapixel cameras (bullet and dome) and if they are any good, bad, indiferent, if they are made by anyone else.

I did that on my ACTi as you described and it was too bright. Support set the max shutter speed to 1/30th and the picture turned out great and not much motion blurr at night.

Or, Vivotek IP8332, about $400 USD, 1MP, outdoor ready, comes with IR illuminators.

Yes, rename the file to an mp4 extension and make sure you have an H.264 codec installed on your PC. You'll know when you get an error saying something like invalid codec.

Although I have not tried it, the Vivotek cameras claim to write to local storage (SD) or to a mount point (NAS). Certainly inexpensive enough to try out and see. When I get less lazy, i was going to call my supplier and order one to try out. Just understand that Mobotix is a complete NVR solution in each camera. Just because other cameras will write to a NAS, doesn't mean that it will have any playback capabilities. So you my just end up with a bunch of files and then rely on OS time stamp and local media player features to view the recordings, which isn't terrible. IQInvision claims to have NVR features on their higher end cameras but have not seen it and their prices are higher than Mobotix. I love the idea of the camera writing directly to a NAS, but Mobotix is expensive. My home requirements are for 6 cameras, so you can see that 6 X $1,500 can be out of reach for most homeowners or small businesses. What I did was setup an Atom processor desktop (dual core, 35W consumption, the size of a Mac Mini at 7" square) and run BlueIris. This gives me a central place to view all cameras, a place to record to and a remote view capabilities through it's web server. So not as cheap as getting a NAS for $169, but for $350 I have a pretty decent solution with 6 cameras, 4 of which are megapixel cameras.

He meant -5C difference, so if it's showing a 26C (79F), it may really be 21C (70F) outside. I don't think it's that far off, when I played with it, it was showing 71F when it was about 69F outside. I didn't see any evidence of these cameras building up too much heat. The spec's show only 3W consumption which is a pretty small amount of heat to dissipate, especially outdoors. But I do love the idea of showing outside temps, like for a web cam. Anyone know of an IP thermometer than can be intergrated into a web page with the image and temp (doesn't have to be in the same image, just the same page).

For a home setup, I use BlueIris and don't let the $50 price fool you, it's perfect for home use and remote access through it's web server. One thing I like that's cool is that you can turn recording on/off with a traffic light icon. When you turn it on, it gives you a few minutes to get out of the house, that way you don't end up with a bunch of alerts and recordings of you leaving the house. As far as cameras, VGA cameras are cute, but you can do better. I replaced my low end Axis with low end ACTi cube and you get more bang for the buck, 4 times the resolution, better dim light performance, PIR motion detect on the newer models, interchangeable CS mount lenses. Cost is comperable to the low end Axis, maybe a little more. The cube cams start with the ACM-4201 and go up to their higher end TCM line. Just understand that these Axis and ACTi cams are "day" cameras, meaning that you need white light at night to see anything. You can not use IR illuminators. I was thinking of upgrading my indoor ACTi cam to the 3511 because it has day/night capability and built in IR illuminators.

Does it provide a webserver for the cameras? To me that's key, being able to remotely monitor the cameras from a web browser.