buellwinkle

Yes, that did the trick. The one previously posted did not work, said video failed. Also, and this is a Mavericks issue. In Lion, it told me this plugin is from a unknown developer but gave me the option to open it anyway. In Mavericks, it just gives me an OK button, but no option to open it. I had to go into System Preferences, Security and there it was, showed the plugin name that was logged and gave me the option there to allow it.

Cool idea. Wish I can do that, but I can't modify the mailbox as it's maintained by our homeowner's association.

I don't understand, you are asking if you should buy a $100 capacitor, and that must be a heck of a capacitor to fix a camera that cost $100? Is this the capacitor I would use to make my DeLorean a time machine?

I tried that on my MacBook, installed the package in that link and with Firefox or Safari on OSX Mavericks, I can say that I get the same message as before, Live View Failed with the 5.1 firmware. I'm beginning to hate Mavericks as much as 5.1. Can't even run VMWare on it so now I can't view the camera at all, either directly on OSX and on Window via VMWare. What did you do that's different?

It was just a bad cable, he's back in business.

Heck yes, we plan for those. What we didn't plan for last week and extremely rare in So Cal was lightning. I got some nasty hits, wiped out not only a few trees that got a direct strike, but killed a lot of equipment, switches, cameras, phone line, wireless bridge, extenders, access control controllers, electric door strikes. Man I wished it was just an earthquake but Nor Cal got that, 6.9 few hours ago, we have insurance for that. But for what it's worth, the only Hikvision camera in the melee survived.

The Hikvision would provide a brighter IR light and would be better than the video from the Dropcam and be 3MP, vs 1MP on the Dropcam The image from the Dropcam at night has a lot of noise reduction going on making the image look less sharp. Look at the level of detail at night, completely dark room. You have to click on the image to see it full size and then click on the 4 arrows in the lower right.

Or who picked their nose and immediately used the fingerprint reader. Actually, from a sanitary point of view, you have to touch the fingerprint scanner to read but only look at the iris scanner from a few inches away. You may be confusing it with a retina scan where you eye has to be very close. Still think it's best way to go with you want biometric access control.

I can attest that Dahua and Hikvision cameras survived our record breaking temps at LAX yesterday, 83F

Do you mean OpenALPR? It's totally independent of NVR software, you would have to develop the code to pass their routines an image from the camera say 4-5 times per second and it returns the plate number as text, then you would have to write this say to a database or file, along with the image the plate match was based on. Then you would have to develop the code to search and display the results. This is a cool project for someone to take on. I would if I had the C skills. I bet we can find a few people that want to work on this, we can setup an open source company using crowdfunding site like KickStarter.com using donation based funding.

Analog or IP, the principals remain the same, the software remains the same. If I was going with Bosch, and certainly not a bad choice to go with, I would get their NBN-733v camera with a nice 5-50 or 15-50mm lens. Would be a little less expensive than the Axis Q1604.

Did you try recording, say to the SD card to see if it's recording audio?

To do true LPR where plates are captured as text which you can search will take some work and either good C coding skills or software. Software that does this runs about $800-5,000. I use Milestone LPR, costs about $1,500 for the first camera + the NVR software and it works well. Camera that can see a plate at night is a science experiment but I can share what worked for me. It's best to use a box camera with very good low light capability, I chose the Axis Q1604. Then you need a good telephoto lens, one that can capture no more than about 6-8' with at the point the plate crosses the camera. I tested software that would not even do that much width. We ended up using just about 45mm to get that, but the plates are very readable. You really only need VGA resolution, anymore is overkill. Lastly, you need an IR illuminator that can overcome headlights/taillights. We used a Raytec RM100. What I tested besides Milestone LPR is IPConfigure and last but not least, OpenALPR, free but you have to write code. I can help you there from a camera perspective, but I'm not a C coder.

Try unplugging the other cameras to see if the problem goes away.

The Hikvision 5.1 firmware supports portrait mode, it's called "rotate" in the image settings but have not seen what it does in the NVR software I'm using but does work from the browser.

I'm using an Axis M1031 and an AVTech AVN812 at our lake house, but the white LED, while very bright is very annoying. I just started using the Hikvision ds-2cd2432f-iw at my house and it's working pretty well and having IR LED makes it practical for a house you actually live in. I have it recording with Milestone XProtect by using the PIR to trigger recording. Turning lights on in the house or shadows do not trigger motion detection, it has to be actual people motion detection. It's new for me and I haven't gone away since, but the goal is to have it send me a text alert if there's motion detected while we are gone. Then I can go in with Milestone phone app and see what's going on. Image quality, night vision and of course resolution make my older cameras seem obsolete.

I started with CCTV at our lake house in lieu of an alarm system. It's a pair of cube cameras with PIR motion detectors, 2 way audio, capable of alerting me pretty quickly if someone enters our place and I can call the local Sheriff's office. To me, a cheaper better alternative to a monitored alarm and not so much for forensic evidence. At home I have the same setup with one camera, but I have 8 other cameras that are there mostly for forensic evidence and personal use to see who's at the front door, who pulled up to my driveway and such. I deal with Sheriffs on collecting evidence on a regular basis, so I have a good idea what they want and what most people setup on their own is worthless. You need a close-up of someone's face and a camera that captures the overall event and that only helps if they catch the guy or you can ID the guy. If you can provide a license plate, that's ideal, but not so easy to get. As for guys in masks coming to rob you, I think that's more in the movies that every day life.

There's newer iris scan technology that may work better. Go to the ISC West tradeshow in 3 weeks and see what's available yourself.

You are better off dealing with China because they are much closer to your time zone. I had someone from OZ buy a camera from me on eBay and somehow a cable got disconnected internally. It was a nightmare because I said if it doesn't work, get it fixed under warranty or return it, but he didn't want to do either because of the expense and dealing with a 19 hour time zone difference didn't help in his frustrations. Luckily ACTi talked him threw plugging the cable back in. I never would have sold it to him outside the U.S. but they have these re-shippers with a U.S. address, so it was unknown to me.

To me it depends on the situation. For example, my driveway is square, if I want to cover it better, a 4:3 aspect ratio makes more sense. My side yards are narrow, having a wider 16:9 format hurts more than it helps. In my backyard that's wide but not deep, I use the wider aspect ratio of 1080P. Every situation is different, but for me, I see more use for 4:3 than 16:9.

The issue with VitaminD was CPU use, so they limited it to 1MP cameras for a while. Sighthound increased the limit on resolution, but not sure it's improved in performance. It's not their fault, anytime you do video analytics it will put demands on a computer. Say most people now buy at least 1080P or 3MP cameras and want at least 15 fps, the question is how many cameras can you run even on the fastest PC you can buy. Not sure everyone needs this level of motion detect accuracy. For example, if I record twice as much as I need to, I can buy a larger hard drive for $100.

Pay a little more, get a varifocal lens camera, say 2.8mm to 12mm and you don't have to decide until it's mounted.

Post some sample pictures of plates.

The best bang for the buck is the Hikvision ds-2cd2732f-is. Meets all your requirements except the IR part as no dome I know of does that. To get true 80-90', I would recommend a separate illuminator and what would give you the results you expect, the Raytec RM200 or maybe you can get away with an RM100 if the angle is narrow enough. Get a model that has the spread you want, for example, if you set the camera to a 60 degree viewing angle, then get the version that has a 60 degree light spread. The camera is about $400ish for the US version, about $259 for the Chinese version. The Illuminator is about 3-4 times that price. What city/area are you in?

DDNS has nothing to do with ports, it works with all ports. It's just a mapping of a DNS name to an IP address that's dynamically updated when your IP changes. I only have the HTTP and RSTP ports open on my Hikvision cameras because that's all I need to have it work via a browser but I don't use them with IVMS. As for ports, I'm actually moving away from using the 8000 range because some software uses that. I'm using higher numbers like 12000 range, less problems.