buellwinkle

What do you mean? If you mean, can you view the video using a browser, then the answer is no as the plugin only works with Windows and Mac. If you mean by any means, sure, you can use VLC to view live streaming video from the cameras. You can also set it up in Zoneminder and do recording and live viewing.

It's a weighted average of a set of stock prices that represents the market or a market segment. Used to measure how the market as a whole is doing. Think of it like your security camera keeping an eye on your business or home, you use an index to keep an eye on the market.

It can still display in Chinese, but gives you a language drop down in the upper right where you can select English before you log into the camera. I've done this on dozens of cameras and maybe 1 or 2 I had to set it to English from the drop down.

If you are a Mac guy, do yourself a favor and downgrade to 5.0.2 firmware. It's horrible in 5.1 or 5.1.2 where if you use the webrc plugin, and you can get the latest from the hikvision download sites, it will work, but lucky if you can see 1 FPS. So you go with Quicktime that will give you the full frame rate but impossible to use via the WAN, don't know why. I reported to Hikvision USA as I have several of theirs but don't know when they will fix it. On the other hand, most of my cameras are 5.0.2, no problem accessing it with Safari or Firefox on my Mac running the latest OSX, Mavericks. This is just a Mac issue, all this works fine on Windows, just in case others are reading this that don't know what OSX is. With all that said, you are on your own as I've never used 5.0.2 on my one and only 2432 as I need at least one cameras to have the latest firmware for testing purpose, like to answer your question, LOL. I can tell you that Quicktime is not even an option in 5.0.2. Everything will work perfectly in future versions of the firmware, just hang in there. As a former software engineering, it took me years to say that with a straight face but now I'm really good at it so I moved to marketing.

I've tested various 5MP cameras and frankly, the only one I would buy for myself is the Axis P3367-VE and it's a little more than $250, just add a 1 to the front. Then when you look deep at actual lines of resolution as Maxicon has frequently showed us on test charts, you'll see the declining value prop as pixels increase. For example, one would thing that 1080P is double 720P, it is in pixels, but the actually lines of resolution is not twice but fairly close, so you get value from that. Going from 1080P to 5MP would seem like you are getting 2.5x more pixels but don't confused pixel count with resolution. The cheaper the camera, the less benefit. So the level of detail you see won't be much different. Frankly I don't see a big difference in detail between a good 3mp camera and a mediocre 5mp camera. The other issues is sensor pixel size. The more pixels on a given chip size, in general, the smaller pixels are, the more light they need to work. So in general, higher pixel cameras do not perform as well as lower resolution cameras of the same quality. For example, the best low light cameras from Axis, Samsung, Bosch are 720P. So at night you may get more detail with less pixels. Technology is improving all the time and someday, 12MP or UHD/4K will be just as good, but that is not there yet.

Two reason, one is they come out with say 5.1.3, you would have to get the Davinci tar file and see if you can apply the same fix by searching for the string. The other reason is understanding how to modify the code as CBX has published changes for other issues like the NAS issues but is a Linux guy but you can use the process above to apply his fixes but in the a Windows framework.

Yes and no. The only difference between English and China software is a flag. Someone went in with a hex editor and it was 3 bytes difference. When you load firmware via the browser, it uses this to validate it's valid for that camera or you get a language mismatch error but otherwise it's identical. You can use TFTP to force the wrong language firmware, but it has no effect on how the camera works so if it was Chinese it will stay that way. .

That's the problem with tiny domes. They are too shallow and don't clear enough of the fascia board to work properly. Put a small section of 2x4 between the eave and camera, that should do it.

Don't ask me why, but some models come in English some Chinese. So the 4mm for example is all English and uses English firmware, for now, the 6mm & 12mm use China firmware, but converted to English for you. Some resellers are putting 5.1 to get around this. Applying new firmware, even English firmware would show in Chinese in 5.1.2 on the 6mm & 12mm versions. In prior version this has not been an issue and it's impossible to say about future versions. Please note that there new bugs introduced in each firmware release and for example, there are people that bought cameras with 5.1.2 firmware but have downgraded to 5.0.2 for example for Mac compatibility as it works but is awful in 5.1 or 5.1.2. Most of my Hikvision cameras, English, Chinese, USA versions are running 5.0.2. Having the latest firmware doesn't always work out for the best. I just replaced a camera that got hit by lightning that had 5 year old firmware, no problems. The 6mm and 12mm is available from Hikvision USA, but besides the higher cost, they are not available to consumers, meaning I have to buy them as an SI at ADI or Tried. If I get caught reselling the cameras, their process is to immediately void the warranty, the policy is on their website with a long list of resellers that they do this with. So be ready to show a receipt from an authorized distributor for warranty, not a reseller. For example, I had an issue with one camera, and I had to show I got them from ADI which I did. This is part of their effort to stop resellers, crazy huh!

While Hikvision makes extender plates for some of it's cameras and we use them for the ds-2cd2732f when mounted on concrete wall, unfortunately, they do not make it for that camera. The only Hikvision solution is the DS-1272ZJ-120 wall mount. Any place that sells Hikvision should be able to get you that mount.

Those cameras are in English. The issue of cameras in Chinese that I posted a fix for comes from people buying direct from China. Here's some pics from the 12mm bullet -

Covert cameras are usually mounted inside a wall or object. For example, if you have access from a wall behind where you want the camera, you can put a panel on the back side that holds the body of the camera and then the pinhole camera portion is installed so only a small portion of the lens is exposed, with either of these cameras it's about 1/8-1/4". I was just thinking about it and you can make it totally discrete by scavenging an outlet and use the ground outlet hole to put the camera through, nobody would notice it's a fake outlet.

There are companies with mobile NVRs. Typically the ones I've seen are SDI, not IP based like from Samsung that they showed off at the ISC show. Dahua has an IP based mobile NVR, the NVR0404MF has PoE switch built in, so no worries converting 12V to 48V PoE. Their website brochure is here - http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/nvr0404mf-270.html

I agree with the above cameras except that NVR is just for 8 cameras. I would recommend you use a PC with software as it's easier to configure the features of the cameras (a pain from the NVR), PC's are easy to understand, fix, replace, grow as needed. Software is a lifetime purchase in a sense, you can move it from PC to PC so that investment is protected and supports many cameras. You can use the low cost BlueIris as it's easy to use, cost about $40 for the entire PC or what I use is MIlestone XProtect, most features, lower CPU use, cost about $490 for 10 cameras which ironically is the number of cameras I have at home.

I have not tried their motorized focus/varifocal cameras but definitely sounds like something broke. If the hard reset doesn't solve it, time for a replacement. For me, if I want higher end with motorized focus, the best I've used is Axis, like the P33 series. Was never happy with other cameras, seemed like as much work as just focusing it manually and perfection was always in-between two settings. We use Axis on poles were it's not easily reachable and it comes in handy. If you want more of an autofocus/zoom/PTZ type camera, for about what you paid for that Hikvision, you can probably get the Dahua PTZ with 12X zoom, nice camera and don't have problem with Dahua PTZ cameras, seems to be more of their niche.

Plates are tricky to do. You need a good low light sensitive camera to get faster shutter speeds, we use an Axis Q1604. Then you need lighting. Lighting allows you to set a faster shutter speed to stop motion blur, we use a Raytec RM100. Next you need a telephoto lens, for example, we capture plates at about 70-80' away and have our 5-50mm varifocal lens very close to the max 50mm, maybe get away with 20-30mm if it's closer like 30-40' away. We get crystal clear plates day or night. It's hard to do with a general purpose camera, but say you are on a budget. Get a 12mm IR bullet, like the Hik 2032. Get the camera in a way so it's no more than say 15-20' away from the plate, set the resolution to 3MP and set the max shutter way up to between 1/120 and 1/250 or the highest you can get and be able to read a plate so it's not blown out as a white rectangle and not too dark where you can't read it. Don't worry about anything else as it will all be pitch black except plate and headlight/taillights. I would go for rear plates because a) they are lit, b) many cars where I live don't have front plates, c), tail lights are less bright than headlights, d) front plates are sometimes dirty from bugs and stuff. Also, set image sharpness way down, like 25%, set contrast up a little and turn off smart ir, not so smart. Also turn off BLC or WDR as that will introduce noise.

You can set the size of the data/time. I make mine pretty small so it's barely visible. I bought a camera to record video, not time and my NVR software can time stamp video on export if I need it to be.

How would you attach an SDD drive to the camera that has an SD card slot? Does your camera have a USB or E-Sata port? Or are you talking a NAS with SSD drives in it and you'll use NFS/SMB/FTP to write to it? What brand/model PTZ do you have?

1. hardwire means running an Ethernet cable from the camera to a PoE injector or PoE switch. The single cable can power and connect the camera, no power adapter needed. When I tried WiFi HD cameras, I got choppy video, it's not really suited for it. 2. You can actually monitor this from Windows Task Manager, Open Resource Monitor and see what your network is doing. There's software that does this better, just offering a free option. For example, viewing 4 cameras now using Milestone client, it's reporting 3.2Mbps. At night that increases because of noise. 3., sorry, the Hikvision is 3MP. It's pixel resolution, just like for a digital camera, more pixels means more detail. For example, if you have a picture of someone 20' away using a wide angle lens, with 1MP, you may not have enough resolution to identify him, at 2MP (1080P) it's more realistic, at 3MP it's more likely, at 5MP it's even better. The rule of thumb in the industry is you need a person's face to be 85 pixels tall to identify them, about 45 pixels tall to recognize someone you already know. 720P = 1 million pixels or 1MP, 1080P is 2MP, 3MP has no cute name, 12MP is UltraHD (4K), I use Photoshop to measure this using the ruler tool. Don't know how to measure this otherwise but you can do it relative to the resolution, for example, if you are looking at a 720P image, that means it's 720 pixels tall, a face should be about 12% of the height of the image, if it's 1080P, then it can be 7% of the height, 3MP, about 5%. What I do to minimize bandwidth is with Milestone XProtect software, you can specify that the software use the substream for live viewing. The substream is a second video feed from the camera that is much lower resolution, say 640x480 so you can live view and use much less bandwidth, but still record the main stream at full resolution.

It would not likely be a good idea to take old cabling and re-use it when it's usually not that hard to use the old coax to pull new wire, especially when you are going to make a big investment. SDI is OK, but limited to certain cameras and certain resolutions, so not as flexible as IP and with IP, you can connect directly to the camera without having to go through the DVR/NVR. Also, Cat5 is way cheaper than Siamese coax cable and easier to pull as it's not as rigid. For you top 3, modern day IP cameras are way clearer than you can imagine compared to analog, especially old analog. You can probably do with less cameras given the resolution. As for pulling footage, I use Milestone XProtect software and to me it's pretty simple, I go to the playback tab, find the video I want by scrubbing a timeline, then left click to set the start/end points on the timeline and click export. I can export from one camera or several. The export can be in generic format like avi or it can be in it's own format and includes the player in the zip file. I can also zoom in the image during playback by drawing a box around the section of video and when I export it, it shows the zoomed in. When you have more pixels than your monitor can display, this comes in very handy at highlighting a suspect. As for network, can't do that better than on PCs. I can view cameras from multiple servers in one layout. Of course you have to limit yourself to what internet bandwidth you have or if the locations are close enough, a few miles and have clear line of site, use wireless bridges for a private network. To output to two TVs, that's easy as most PC's now have HDMI output and you can get a box that allows you to display the same HDMI feed to multiple TVs. As for stable, I have a few projects with Milestone, no stability issues. I use PC's meant to be servers, not home PC's and that helps with long term reliability as they use better components, larger fans, more drive bays. For backups, we use Milestone Express or Pro and that allows for each camera to write to two disks, they call that archiving. But you can also backup a PC using various methods, pretty standard stuff. As far as which cameras, there's a good assortment of brands depending on budget, how much support you'll need. For example, Dahua and Hikvision make very good cameras for very low prices but may not have a high level of service and support. ACTi to me has good support and reasonable prices, maybe more than Dahua or Hikvision but not terribly more. Axis is my go to higher end brand, costs about twice what ACTi costs but has better image quality and also has good service and support. If you are looking into POS integration, mostly to display cash register receipts on the camera pointed at the register to check for employee theft, that may affect NVR or software choices. I'm looking into a camera that should be available soon that will have POS integration built into the camera, very cool.

In your budget, you can get an inexpensive PC, maybe $300-400 and run Milestone Essential, $49/camera and have a pretty good solution in your price range that supports a very wide assortment of camera brands, is expandable/flexible, has very good smartphone apps and a web client accessible from PC or Mac. So say 8 cameras, license cost $392, PC $400, total in the middle of your price range. An alternative would be BlueIris, $40 for the PC license, but you would need a faster PC, maybe an i7, so PC cost a little more, maybe $600-700, again, the middle of your price range. Supports a lot of cameras. It has smartphone apps and web client. What I would hate about investing big bucks on an NVR is when it breaks, it's an appliance, may not be repairable, so you are down until you can get it repaired or replaced. PC's on the other hand are ubiquitous, can be quickly repaired/replaced. We had a $2,000 NVR on a project from a company called OpenEYE, U.S. based, local support and when it broke which was when it was a few weeks old it took weeks to get it fixed. As for security, my NVR PC only runs the server components and is hidden, much in the same way an NVR might be with restricted access. The PC has robust Windows security that's proven and even once on the PC, you have to log into the software. I used RDP to access the PC, so no monitor, keyboard or mouse needed for it.

4K UHD is like advertisements that say 1080P HD. It will use a whole bunch of CPU to decode 4K from multiple cameras. Don't know what other NVR software does, but Milestone has a feature where you can select the sub-stream for live viewing, but still records and play's back at full resolution. Then the client app doesn't have to worry about 4K. To me, the high resolution is valuable for playback to get details. When live viewing say even 4 cameras, you don't need all 4 to be 4K on a 4K monitor.

It's always best to hardwire cameras because as you add more and more 1080P or higher cameras, you are putting stress on your WiFi network. Also, WiFi means the connections is wireless, but you still clearly need an AC adapter to power it. This becomes more difficult outdoors where there are less power outlets and may not be convenient and who wants to see wires everywhere, hence PoE cameras that are powered and connected via a typical Ethernet cable. But here's what you can get. There are very good WiFi cameras called cube cameras. They are indoor only and look like your Dropcam. The best out there and what I use are the Axis M10 series, AVTech AVN813 and the Hikvision ds-2cd2432f-iw. The best being the Hikvision because it's day/night, has a good IR illuminator, comes in different lens sizes, has 2-way audio, PIR motion detection and is 3MP (3x what your Dropcam is in resolution). The advantage of the AVTech is their Push Notification that alerts you near instantly if there's motion detected. Both the Hikvision and AVTech can record and playback on an SD card. When you see that these cameras are in the same price range as Dropcam but way better image, more features and no monthly fees, you'll see it's a bargain Outdoors if you ever go that route has many good choices, the best deal out there is the Hikvision ds-2cd2032-i or Dahua ipc-hfw4300s, again comes in various lens sizes, 3MP, easy to install but not WiFi, it's PoE. If you want a dome and want more feature like SD card recording and audio, varifocal lens (manual zoom) the Hikvision ds-2cd2732f-is is the ticket, I use them in commercial installs. Then the question is NVR, yes or no. Since you are not concerned about recording, the NVR does not add any value. You can connect to any IP camera on the internet using free to very low cost apps for IOS or Android and certainly for free using a PC or Mac browser. You just need to setup port forwarding for each camera and is not that hard to do. The future is more and more camera brands are starting to embrace the Dropcam concept, at least the live view aspect of easily accessing the camera from say a smartphone without any port forwarding. The latest to enter this is Dahua. They are starting with their NVRs but they said in a few months, their cameras will have this feature. Basically you use their smartphone app to scan a QR code displayed by the camera when you are home, that links permanently to your phone, no port forwarding, no typing in IP addresses or ddns, easy peasy.

I've used 2.1 Essential in the past because I had a 32-bit Windows 7 computer and while it's a total PITA to re-install Windows to 64-bit, the latest version is so much easier to install and works better. So if you ask me is it worth it, yes, enough to have done two 32-bit to 64-bit Win 7 upgrade just for Milestone and trust me, I was not happy about it. Also, for what it's worth, I had 2GB RAM and that worked OK for 32-bit, when going to 64-bit it barely started. Upgrading to 4GB actually made things faster than before with 32-bit and 2GB RAM. On the other server I went to 8GB because it was cheap, but actually memory usage never goes that high, it's mostly for future proofing.

Wow, re-cycled a 2 year old post. I use BlueIris for this on a project and works great. Uses very little CPU and it displays the cameras in a similar fashion to what theuberoverlord describes but is easier because it supports just about any camera out there. For example, I was using it with a few Mobotix cameras, added a Hikvision and it just worked. What they have is a web client that is called jpegpushpull.htm I believe. All I do is edit it to remove the unneeded frames and just display the cameras. Also there's generic versions of this that have a nice clean display for multiple camera. Let me know if you want to go this way and I'll point you in the right direction. For $39, it maybe costlier than free, but the time I saved coding my own makes it a bargain. Also, there's some free add-on's to BlueIris that let you embed weather data to any camera (yes, even analog and usb webcams in addition to network cameras).