buellwinkle

You have several things going on here that I just don't understand at all. The first one is you are comparing switches to routers which serve totally different purposes. Why do you need a router, don't you already have one on your network? Not a good idea to plug a router into a router. Next, why would you think 8-30VDC will power a camera that requires 48VDC or are they selling you a model that has 48VDC, so I'm missing something here. What is the purpose of the Routerboard, it can't be for cameras is it?

There's only two ways to reduce false positives. There's NVR software capable of identifying a human form, like Sighthound (formerly VitaminD). This by it's nature may be CPU intensive but can be more accurate than other methods. Next is PIR motion detection which detects movement in heated objects, for example, people & cars. This gets rid of motion detects from clouds, wind blowing objects, shadows, headlights, reflections and such. It's still vulnerable to animals, birds, dogs, coyotes, mountain lions and such but can be mitigated by blocking the view to the ground and sky. This will likely remove most of your false motion detects. You would need a camera with alarm I/O and in the Hikvision line that's the ds-2cd2732f-is, great camera. Runs about $250ish, but that's just the start. A decent outdoor PIR motion detector can cost about $100 and you'll likely need a 12V power supply to power it unless you get a battery operated one. I'm not sure this would even work with your NVR, so you would need NVR software that recognizes this. I use Milestone XProtect with Hikvision cameras and use this feature. Also, from Hikvision, indoors, check out the ds-2cd2432f-iw, it has a PIR motion detector built into it, so easy peasy. Also has mic and speaker. Both these cameras have SD card slots, so you may not even need an NVR and yes, you can have it write to SD card based on PIR detections. Not sure alarm I/O in an NVR will do what you want as it's just one input at the NVR level, not for a camera. As for getting the low cost Flir thermal IP camera, about $600ish which is a bargain, that shows movement in heat also, so you can see someone say hiding behind a bush that would otherwise not be visible. Very cool, but probably beyond what you are trying to accomplish. Also, in our world of 1080P and better, you may need to know the Flir at that price range is 80x60 pixels, yes, for the entire camera. VGA (640x480) thermal cameras are still at least $1,300.

Actually Hikvision USA recently admitted to this vulnerability in their cameras but said they fixed it in late 2013. They claim their exposure is limited to cameras exposed to the internet with default passwords. Even then, my guess is you would have to expose the telnet port, not just RTSP or HTTP ports.

Getting a seamless composite is not really possible. For example, Mobotix makes a dome with two sensors fixed at 90 degrees to get 180 degree coverage, but the coverage is skewed like Maxicon's images, but Mobotix has a way to make it look seamless as one video, but still looks odd because of perspective. Wish I can show but it's at a customer location. It's not like when you use stitching software to combine a few pics from your camera or phone to make a panoramic view. To create that cool panoramic video that is already de-warped, de-skewed, get a hemispheric/fisheye camera with a 180 degree view and does it in-camera. I think a decent PTZ with a patrol of presets can give you added value of having one feed that covers different areas at different zoom amounts that can't be achieved with a few 4mm cameras. This is a similar site to yours that has 3 PTZ cameras in different locations going through a patrol - http://www.sundiegolive.com/ He even embedded local radio stations, but the default marine weather station is sort of annoying. With a 12x Dahua PTZ for about $500ish, it's not that much more expensive than 3 Hik bullets. From a surveillance perspective, I totally agree with Maxicon, but this isn't about surveillance, it's a cool webcam.

I have the same issue on my Galaxy S4 and it may just be a Samsung issue because I have my Google tablet and never had it crash. Rarely use the web browser client, usually with Safari on my Mac and did not have issues.

Before my i3 I used an Atom PC and I'm sure the new Atoms are faster and I had 6 cameras then, did not have a problem with that. The only reason I upgraded to the i3 was Maxicon found these cheap i3 at the time for $250 on eBay from an NVR company going out of business and the issue with the Atom once you start getting more cameras is most have a small case that only holds one hard drive. I think you can build a Celeron with 2 drive bays for close to the same price as an Atom and get twice the power. What I repurposed my Atom NVR to is a Window Media Server to act a Tivo. To my surprise, it's more responsive and works better than my Tivo.

What I use is a 4 PoE port switch attached to a Powerline adapter. The reason is if you put say 3 cameras, 1080P or 3MP I'm assuming, on a WiFi repeater that will put a lot of continuous traffic on your WiFi network and affect performance of other stuff you may care about. Even putting 1 3MP WiFi camera while testing a camera caused dropped frames and I was maybe 10' from the router. If wireless is your only choice, get a pair of bridges, attach the switch to one, then the router to the other via Ethernet and keep that traffic off your WiFi. For example, you can get cheap Ubiquiti Loco's for about $50/each for this, even get the 5ghz to keep them off the crowded 2.4Ghz WiFi band. Still a fraction of the throughput of Powerline.

Even at $600, still be the best value out there. The next best to me would be the ACTi B95 at a few hundred more. Cameras are like computers, they rarely drop prices, just come out with better stuff for the same price but when you think of a PTZ in this price range, that's amazing compared to a year ago and even then, many of those were not even PoE. To give you an example, one of the least expensive Dahua PTZ last year was the SD3282D-GN and was 3X zoom, and was the same price at Costco from Q-See, $600 and the price on that model has not gone down other than distributors trying to dump their inventory, so maybe $500, still not worth it compared to the 12x version. Then when you figure a year ago, Dahua wanted nothing to do with the U.S. and now they are embracing it, even opening a service center this year.

I'm running Milestone which has a free version although I have the pay version. I have 9 cameras, mostly 3MP. I have a first generation Intel i3-540 processor which is about as slow as a modern day Intel Celeron. As a server, I'm using about 15% CPU. People say that your CPU can be high if live viewing a lot of cameras. This is true, so you can limit this in two ways. You can create multiple layouts that have fewer cameras each, for example one for front vs rear cameras, or indoor vs. outdoor with say 4 cameras each. Also, Milestone has a feature where you can live view sub-streams which are lower resolution for live viewing. After all, having 6 3MP cameras live viewing all at once on a 1080P monitor does not really add much value. The value of the high resolution is in playback after an incident. Just my 2 cents.

It's PoE+, so you'll need a PoE+ injector, ping me if you need one. The price is on the high side, surprising from Costco. The U.S. Dahua model is the SD42212SN-HN. Works well in low light and fairly small, about the same diameter as a typical 4" vandal dome, a little taller.

Dahua has a complete line of video intercoms they showed of at ISC, actually my distributor was there and showed this off. It's IP based, but the reason I've been holding back is I want smartphone integration. Meaning I want to be able to get the doorbell ringing or intercom from my phone and this is in the works. When they get it working, I'll get one to evaluate. For those that are familiar with Dahua, no it will not work with iDMSS. Now if it can integrate facial recognition so it displays the name of the visitor at the front door, that would be cool too!

If cost is an issue, and you have a spare PC or even the one you use daily, get some free NVR software and use the savings to buy 2 more cameras. There's several free solutions, some that even include smartphone apps and web clients for remote viewing.

Why do you need to reset to factory defaults? The official process to reset by reset button is to disconnect the PoE network cable, press the reset button, connect the PoE network cable, hold for 10 seconds and it should be reset. A full reset does not reset the password, that's a lot harder to do. Once reset you can use SADP to find the camera at it's 192.0.0.64 address and change it to your network. If you have Win 8, there's issues with Winpcap that is part of the SADP install, just install Winpcap from their website, works.

That's the angle of adjustment and you clearly are looking at the wrong part of the manual as it's typical Hikvision to have every single model they make in one manual. It says 2-axis and the two cameras you mention are 3-axis domes and no such thing as a PTZ that is 3-axis although that would be awesome if they can make one that does that. Specs can be found here - http://www.hikvision.com/en/products_show.asp?id=7274 Motorized VF cameras are not meant to be used as a zoom, it's just an installation aid to allow you to focus and make adjustments to the VF lens remotely. I'm torn on this feature because I can focus a lens manually once and it's generally good for life and I can get more accurate focus that way and save about $100 in camera cost. But to some, the cost is justified by the time saved in the field focusing cameras. It's more practical on installs that are very hard to get to, for example, we have cameras on poles on slopes where we need a cherry picker to reach and do maintenance. If you want a PTZ, the best deal out there now is the Dahua 12x optical zoom PTZ for about $529. The model is the SD42212SN-HN. Or if you want a better brand, the ACTi B95, 10x optical zoom, about $900 is very good. These are amazing prices because a few months ago, it would have set you back double that price. Wish I can help you on the electronics but our installers do this for me, so don't know the details. I know it a higher level as I was an electronics major, but heck, that was a long time ago when I had hair on my head, LOL.

Here's a diagram from Axis but it's the same on any brand. The box that says Relay, that's what you need. But too bad you can't cut and paste that from graphic to reality, because that would be cool.

Didn't do anything special to get QT to work on the mac. The other problem you have sound switch related. What switch are you using, how may cameras, how many pixels, and how is your PC attached (Wi-Fi, Ethernet to switch, to router).

You can do it in a single operation if you use the command line of 7-zip, but I had no problem with the Windows GUI, first to create the tarball and then to gzip and then stuffing the same exact file into different models of cameras.

I came across a weird problem with 5.1 or 5.1.2 with the Mac. When using Webcomponents, you get at best 1 fps and very choppy video. This did not happen in V5.0. If you chose Quicktime, you do get smooth video and full frame rate when connected to your LAN, but remotely, you get no video, but works fine on Windows, so not a port forward issue. Here's where it gets weird. When I called this into Hikvision, they have a demo camera with V5.1 firmware but V4.0 encoding (V5.0 comes with V4.0 encoding but V5.1 comes with V5.0 encoding) and it not only gives you fluid video on Safari with Webcomponents, but also lets you view remotely using Quicktime which is not available in firmware 5.0. Have you had this problem? Any workarounds? Anyway to install V4 encoding on V5.1 firmware? Should we all just give up and get Windows 8, LOL.

Why not just record locally on an SD card for each camera, keep them separate. Why would one neighbor want to allow access to their recordings to another neighbor, don't get it. Since each condo likely has it's own router, hence it's own WAN address, you can access the cameras external to your network as you would any external device. So your cameras would write to your recording device, the other cameras would reference the recording device by your WAN address/port number.

What do you mean by good audio? Microphone built in, audio in, studio quality, are you making videos to publish or just security? If you like Hikvision, the ds-2cd2532f-is has a microphone built in. The ds-2cd2732f-is has audio in, you add the microphone, preferably an amplified mic. How good the audio would depend on how good the microphone, type of microphone, placement. Also, the ACTi E77 can be had for close to that price, has audio inputs also, good brand, good support and service.

Camera manufacturer NVRs are probably not a good idea if you have a mix of camera brands. Either go with a generic NVR like NUUO or go with software like Milestone, Exacq, etc.

Both the same price, $50ish per camera for their entry level product. Download both and try it. I found Exacq did not support all my cameras, but may support yours. I believe both come with a 30 day trial period, plenty to install, setup, try the web client, the smartphone client and see which you like.

I usually go to Woot.com every day to see what the best deal is right now, changes daily.

Is it because it melted, LOL? Why would you do that?

I have one here, after a while it melted the wires and shorted on one brand of cameras, can't speak for all.