buellwinkle

Maxicon, I would normally agree, but the circle is so perfect, not convinced this is just a reflection back from say a nearby fascia board that's too close. Hope it works out.

That does look awful, but on the ipc-hfw2100, there's a small reflection back from the white eyebrow. Some people have used flat black paint on the bottom of the eyebrow to eliminate this. You can see from the similar looking Hikvision mini-bullets that they put a black plastic piece in this area to solve that problem.

I've used it for a few weeks and worked well. Some people have issues with the SD cards failing after a few months. You can have it write to a NAS and that worked well also. We put microSD cards into our commercial cameras installs in case there's a problem with the NVR solution, we can use that for temporary storage, but in a busy location, not sure you would get more than a few days, if that recorded.

He meant if you use a PC as an NVR.

There's an extra pigtail if you get the model with an S at the end. The pigtail has about 8 wires on it, two will be labeled for the microphone. You will need to solder a jack suitable for that Olympus microphone. Then plug the microphone in. In the configuration screens for audio, you can chose mic or line in. Chose mic and set the volume to your taste. My disclaimer is I have never tested with that microphone, so just going by what someone said works for them.

Congratulations. Does this help with your ability to make these sort of fixes? Maybe there's a way to get the fixes back to Hikvision so they put it in their latest firmware, like the fixes to the NAS stuff, especially if there's a way to use a single NAS partition to handle multiple cameras.

I have the same issue with IE but works like a charm in Firefox.

I have one here, still in box, will probably get to it later in March.

The standard is 15.4W and the camera uses about 6.5W at night, so 0.5A is more than enough.

How is Home Server 2011 a waste, cost $50, how much is Win 8 Pro, I think more than Home Server. If I see one more "metro app" pop up on my PC I'm going to scream. Good find on the Trendnet 16 port PoE switch.

Is there anyway you can get to the language flag and change it?

Here's my comments on image quality, at least from a photographer's point of view; - Color accuracy is pretty close to neutral with a slight magenta cast - Compression artifacts are visible to naked eye, see if you have the option to reduce compression as may what's what you are calling noise. - Noise - not seeing it but seeing some noise reduction taking place causing some blurring, typical of Dahua - WDR - there are dark shadows that can be improved like the women getting out of the black car, there could be more detail in the shadows. But maybe overcritical as women dressed in a black Burca coming out of black car is not ideal. - Resolution - not adequate to ID anyone, Burca aside, their heads are about 20-25 pixels tall, you need about a 5MP camera to maintain that field of view and get enough pixels to ID someone, but do not know if that's your goal.

I can say with a very high degree of certainty that at best it will not work, at worst it will fry the camera. This camera is not 12V PoE you are reading the specs wrong, it's PoE or 12V, not both or used interchangeably. Also, by going to 12V, you are cutting your maximum effective cable length by 4, meaning if PoE works to 100m, 12V PoE will work to about 25m. That's not my opinion, that's the law, Ohm's law. But thanks for sacrificing your camera for the sake of science

Could damage the camera, I've seen one get damaged this way, melted the wire. Why don't you want to use the correct PoE adapter? Since you like aliexpress, try something like this - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pcs-US-Plug-48V-0-5A-Power-over-Ethernet-Adapter-Wall-plug-with-RJ45-connector-PoE/1454130677.html

Yes, that's the switch we use. The SFS port is a gigabit fiber optic port, you likely won't be using that but instead use the Ethernet gigabit port. Like I said, it's really 2 gigabit ports, one for your NVR and the other to your regular network.

Bang for the buck, I like the ZyXel es2108pwr, 8 PoE ports + 1 gigabit uplink, run about $275ish. Also, I use a Cisco 8 PoE port switch that's all gigabit but it's not as reliable as the ZyXel, it's more expensive for sure at about $400 and with 8 gigabit ports, I end up using one for the uplink, so to me it supports 7 cameras. We also use the Netgear Prosafe PoE switch, but may also be pricier, don't remember what we paid for it. These above are full 15.4w PoE power on each port. Be wary of cheaper PoE switches that say 15.4w power, but have an aggregate max, like 8 ports, but 60W total, then you plug in 8 cameras and not all work. Or switches with don't have a gigabit uplink or all gigabit. Cameras with mic's are tough. The Axis P33 series outdoor domes have a built in mics and so do some Mobotix. Indoors, if you can get away with a cube style camera, most brands have mic/speaker built in. Hikvision has mic input (most brands have line-in that requires 12v to power an amplified mic).

The elegant solution would be to get a camera with a mic built in, just saying or maybe a camera that has mic in instead of line in then you don't need power or a camera that has 12V out on the camera. The amplified mic has a pigtail on it with a power jack and a rca style audio jack. You have to run a wire from the camera's pigtail or block connector to the mic. You need to run power to the mic, be it 48vdc if you find one or 12vdc if you don't. Maybe I'm not getting it but do you already have an extra Ethernet cable running to the camera that you planned on using to power the Mic? If so, how long is this cable, because if it's short I would just put a 12VDC power supply on the far end and solder in an plug on the other. Also, if you want the power side to send this as PoE, not sure why you would, go on eBay, search for 12V Wall Plug PoE injector, it will push 12V through 2 of the wires, solder an rca plug on the mic end. Never said any of this was going to be pretty, LOL. This would be so much fun, I wish I can have mic's in California, they just aren't legal here unless all parties in the video consent, bummer.

The problem with 10 PoE port switch is that I've gone through this, I wanted a 16 port PoE switch with 16 actual PoE ports and I'm beginning to think it's a unicorn. I can get several switches with 8 PoE ports, and I can get several with 24 PoE ports, but where's the in-between. Maybe I missed something so let me know if you find it. You can get two 8 PoE port switches with gigabit uplinks and feed them into a Gigabit switch which is what I do, but works out as I have one at the back of the house, one in front so I save on wiring effort. Make sure that with that many cameras, the switch is either Gigabit or has a Gigabit uplink port.

What's the point spread?

The lower priced decent outdoor dome with alarm in/out, HD resolution (1080P or 3MP) with a varifocal lens would be the Hikvision DS-2CD2732F-IS. About $259 shipped. Go without alarm i/o and you can get closer to your price range with a Hikvision Eyeball camera ds-2cd3332-i., fixed lens About $169 shipped. Both standard PoE, weatherproof, work well day or night, 3-axis lens aiming (can be mounted on a wall, ceiling, floor, slanted ceiling), have IR illuminators, easy to use. The first one has an microSD card slot and can record/playback from the camera. For MJPEG, ACTi cameras have MJPEG or H.264, cost a little more, but but you can get a ACTi D71 (1MP) or D72 (3MP) for about the same price as the first camera. No alarm out yet, but they should soon. Best deal out there may be their E77, 10MP, has alarm in/out and is going for about the same price, maybe $279. They are 3-axis, IR illuminators, SD card slots and such. Those are the value leaders. Dahua makes domes in this price range, but I have issues with them and IR light bleed so I don't recommend them, but their bullet style cameras are good. Adding alarm in/out sort of puts you up a class in cameras, don't know why, but it does, but it's worth it, more to tinker with. For example, I want to connect my camera in my garage to the garage opener so I can send a signal to the door to close if I'm in my bedroom and forgot to close the garage door. Go on my tablet, enter an URL to trigger alarm out and viola, the door closes.

Hard to prove out unless you physically have a video wall to test it on. Getting the software is the easy part.

Definitely buy in the U.S. I can assure you that dealing with China for warranty and shipping something back is going to be a long painful expensive process. But I agree, get the real deal from Hikvision, not OEM from Lorex. Also, NVR's are sort of limiting and if you have a spare PC or get a cheap PC, you can get free NVR software that works great and supports a variety of cameras.

I'm impressed that anyone can get a single digit out of that. I blew it up on Photoshop, the numbers are 5 pixels tall, even in daylight that would be very difficult. Imagine trying to represent a letter or number with 5 pixels tall, maybe 2-3 pixels wide. Axis in their training recommends plate numbers be at least 15 pixels tall, just for future reference.

Maybe if you loosen up some of your requirements it would help. Here's what's making it hard; - the camera will have access to ethernet, POE with 5VDC (12VDC is possible but extra work), or 24VAC/240AC. Wireless is possible but rather ethernet/POE. Don't even know what you are talking about. Most PoE cameras rely on an injector or switch that meets the 802.3af standard or 48VDC at 15.4W. - ability to alarm on motion detect and remote trigger a TCP/UDP port or HTTP server. Email and FTP would be nice extras, but must be able to trigger a server remotely. Does this even exist? Not a clue what you are talking about. There's such a thing as alarm in & out to connect alarm devices and trigger relays like on gates to open. Also, there's general events you set that can typically send emails or ftp on things like video motion detect or alarm input. - MJPEG viewable via HTTP It's getting harder and harder to find MJPEG cameras, most are H.264, but possible.

Can't answer that question but consider that you don't need to run the 12V all the way back to the PoE switch, maybe you have a 110vac outlet nearer to the camera you can use to plug in a 12V power supply.