buellwinkle

They are all the same, trust me, none of them will pay return shipping because return shipping is so high. At best they may just take your word for it and give you a credit of $20-30 towards your next order. I've bought cheap items like SD card that were worthless from a seller with thousands of positive feedback and returning them was fruitless. Yes, they said return it and they will issue a refund but cost of returning it exceeded the purchase cost. Consider the cost of doing business in a foreign land. This is my experience and I buy a lot in China, from access control to cameras, but try to not use Aliexpress.

Hikvision cameras are pretty good at rejecting the wrong firmware. so probably doesn't hurt. Also, one of the only camera companies I've worked with that gives you a backdoor way to reload firmware using TFTP. So the risk is low, just make sure you have a copy of the current firmware from the OEM just in case so you can go back. The worst case I had is that it deleted the admin account updating an OEM Hik with Hikvision firmware but that was on an NVR, never had it happen on a camera but was able to reset it with a code provided by Hikvision but they are not doing that as much anymore, especially if it's OEM. It's important to make sure you have the latest firmware at all times, LOL, only kidding, it's always a risk on any brand of camera to update firmware as it can introduce as many bugs as it fixes. So unless you really need to update the firmware, don't do it. Also, updating firmware from Hikvision on an OEM camera will still display the OEM name for the camera, that's fixed in an eprom along with the serial number, not something you can ever change. So how do you like the Hikvision PTZ? I'm more of a Dahua fan when it comes to PTZ, so have been curious if their PTZ's work well, good image quality. Please post images day/night.

I had no trouble installing 5.1.6 on top of 5.1.0, China version camera, applying the hack and all working fine, all in English. The test buttons are there but did not test each individual button but some. For example, I tried the FTP one, test as shown below. Really, unless you are having a problem with your camera you should not upgrade the firmware. It many times breaks more than it fixes. Here's the firmware release info TEST Failed TEST Succeeded

I know what will happen, it will brick the camera, happened by accident. What's the big deal, just run 5.1.0 forever, what will happen? I actually run 5.0.2 on most of my Hikvision cameras. Never seen people so concerned about firmware releases. How many of you actually update the firmware on your computer's motherboard every time a new release is posted?

You don't need to change the port on the DVR's if your router supports port mapping that allows you to map the DVR port to an external port number of your choosing. For example, the DVR may use RTSP port 554, but you can remap that as 10554 and it will work externally as 10544 and internally as 554.

Odds are, even if you have 1 camera now, you'll want to add more so you would be better served by getting a PoE switch. Look for one that is full power on all ports as cheaper ones tend to have power budgets that limit how many ports you can use. I use ZyXel on the lower end, about $70 for an 8 port switch (4 are PoE) and no power brick, plugs straight into an outlet.

It's the flavor of the month. Last year it was Dahua, this year it's Hikvision. The biggest difference is price, the Hikvision bullets/domes tend to be cheaper, but not to be outdone, Dahua is coming out with it's competing line and should get those to test soon (sitting in U.S. Customs over the weekend. I can tell you bar none, Dahua leads in PTZ with not only very good PTZ, but widest range of product I've seen from anyone. The two companies are next to each other, so not uncommon to have a family have workers at both plants. Out of the inexpensive stuff, I can't really say what's better, it depends on what properties you value.

You need to first set a fixed IP on your device (camera or DVR, now sure what that is you got). Then port forward the port (or multiple ports) as required on your router. Check with the people you bought it from or a support number as to what ports need to forwarded. At that point, you should be able to access the device using you iPhone and your WAN IP address. Then you need to setup dynamic DNS so you access the camera even after your ISP changes IP on you.

I would get the 12mm lens to ID someone at 50', will work fine because I can ID someone at 25' with a 4mm lens, so figure you need 8mm to do it, so 12mm should be piece of cake.

Doesn't the Netgear 24 port PoE switches have power budgets that would limit having full 15.4W per port? The one we have has a 192W power budget.

The problem is really Congress and our postal service. Congress approved a bill that would subsidize small shipments from China to the U.S. to help drag out economy into the toilet. It's called e-packet and they can ship a product to you cheaper than anyone in the U.S. can ship it to you. The problem is there's no reciprocity, meaning, you can't ship from the U.S. to them for the same price. To give you are real world example, they can send a camera to you for a few bucks, maybe $5, but to send it back the same exact way, with tracking, 1 week delivery it's about $80 (ouch), Fedex 3-5 day is $105 (bigger ouch). The good is they can offer 10 year warranties, money back guarantees for life, who cares, because it will cost you almost what the camera is worth to ship it back and they know that all too well, hence why they are so eager to tell you to ship it back. Even if they made a mistake, even if they sent you a bad camera on purpose, they will never pay for return shipping. So what can you do about it, honestly, as the congressman for you district to redo ePacket to have reciprocity, if they pay $5 to send it here, we want to pay $5 to send it back. It's very easy to do, go to this website - http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ Enter your zip code, find your representative, click the email icon and send him your thoughts. Tell him we want the same shipping rates back to China that e-Packet provides for China.

He's running Milestone XProtect, they have Android and IOS apps, you can look at the live video or the recorded video, I know, I run Milestone and their apps. What other smartphone apps let you see what Milestone recorded?

Yes, use the Milestone IOS or Android app. It's the only one that will let you see not only the cameras, but what it recorded and the price is right, free. Make sure you are running the latest Milestone 2013, because it's harder to setup in older releases. You'll need to port forward your PC running Milestone to 8081 for android or 8082 for ios. You can first test it with your phone in WiFi mode on your home network to see if that works, the move up to port forwarding and setting up DDNS.

Any PoE switch that has more than say 4 PoE ports will have a fan. Think about it, you are asking the device to potentially dissipate 246W, not going to happen with heat sinks inside a small metal box. If it's not loud out of the box, it will be as dust collects on the fan and circuit board. Move up to 24 port PoE switch at full power at each port, that's a big switch and typically has multiple fans. Switches in general tend to be 4, 8, 24 and 48 PoE ports, not many in the 16 PoE port variety. We use the 24 port Netgear Prosafe but doesn't meet you needs as it's only 192W total power and you need 246W. If it's by your home TV, don't you already have devices with fans, cable box, Tivo, DVD player, NVR. It doesn't bother me, but bothers the heck out of my wife, but part of the noise of living in an area that is too quiet. What's what I love about living in an urban environment, fan noise helps drown out the noise of the city, LOL.

In your price range, choices are limited. You can get say tow ZyXel es1100-16p that have 8 PoE ports, runs about $150, full power on all PoE ports and get two of them to fit your budget.

Thieves look for signs of cameras, not camera signs. Not sure it would add any value. We put them in commercial installs at the recommendation of an attorney, but at home I do not have any such signs. I think what would scare a thief off more than an alarm sticker or cctv sign is a dog warning sign, one that seems sincere more than warning to thieves, maybe one that says please do not feed our pet Pitbulls, we keep them hungry on purpose.

Put the IP address in Compatibility Mode in IE and try it again. Many cameras stop working with IE after some senseless update.

Well you are not going to get the functionality of having recorded video clips and the weather overlay without BlueIris. But here's the 411, re-streaming software is not cheap, I believe Wowsa starts at a grand and Unreal is maybe half that. What I like about Unreal Media Service is they have a free version good for up to 15 users, 5 cameras I believe so I did my review on it and it works well. VLC works and of course it's free, but did not give me smooth video but maybe that's improved. The one guy I know that does this has serious bandwidth, not cable or u-verse/fios but dedicated digital circuits, streams live 1080P video to hundreds of viewers. If you want to allow more and more people to visit your site and keep up with the bandwidth, your best bet is to go with a streaming service and the cheapest is YouTube Live, meaning free. The reason is you only have to send one live stream to YouTube, everyone else connects to it, unlimited, 1 user or 100, same bandwidth from your point of view. Then embed the YouTube videos on a web page so it looks like what you have now. Instead of the embedded weather in the video, put the weather somewhere on the page like most sites do.

Likely streaming to a Wowsa server or Unreal Media Server. What are you using for live streaming? I'm use BlueIris also for live streaming cameras for a community, works well too. I use the jpegpull.htm that I modified to make it look pretty, easy to do. Get rid of the background wallpaper that's lame, the unnecessary controls and works with any browse.

That fix didn't work for me. Waiting to see if Dahua has an answer. It stops for a while and works fine, then starts doing it again, filling up my hard drive with the LED's going on/off all night. Mine is an ipc-hfw3200cn and is 2 years old (bet not many on this forum older than that) but didn't do it until recently. With all this activity happening at the same time, could it be an EMP from a solar flare. Seems like we are in the peak of an 11 year cycle of solar flare activity and maybe it's targeting only the large Dahua bullets.

If you are looking for a complete indoor system, let me suggest ACTi. First, you'll get way better service and support from ACTi. Next, they will give you 16ch NVR software for free that is very good. Figure in quantity, you can get 1MP indoor domes for under $200. I like Dahua and Hikvision, but not a fan of NVRs in general, mostly because they are limiting, not as flexible as a PC and you can run 16 cameras for free with software from the manufacturer, assuming you stick with the manufacturer. PM me if I can help with this as I have access to most manufacturers.

I would imagine IR has to be on to see the plates at that shutter speed which is likely set high, otherwise the headlights would be correct but plates would be dark.

The lenses are not 6mm and 12mm, it's just the max. Unless you need the very wide 2.5mm, I would get the 3.3-12mm version. 3.3 is pretty wide and width only 1MP of resolution 2.5mm may be too wide. AXIS P3363-VE/P3364-VE/P3364–LVE 6 mm: 2.5–6 mm, 105°–49° view, F1.2 AXIS P3363-VE/P3364-VE/P3364-LVE 12 mm: 3.3–12 mm, 82°–24° view, F1.4

Don't agree on the Internet Explorer thing, I view my Dahua using Safari on my Macbook. But i used both the Dahua and Hikvision NVR and same to me, although I'm not an NVR fan and prefer a PC with NVR software. With Dahua I found that if use different brand cameras, you can do full time recording, but not event recording, although with new firmware releases maybe they got it better. With the Hikvision, you can use Dahua from what I've heard. The closest thing to a general purpose NVR is a Synology NAS, supports many cameras, has all the features one could want, I believe the first 2 cameras licenses are free now, then it's $50/camera. One nice thing Dahua does over HIkvision is they have a small footprint model and if I'm ever going to use an NVR, I would want it to be as small as possible.

How are you trying to use it with VLC? I'm not at my PC, but if I remember right, you have to open a stream and then put the rtsp URL in there and start the stream.