buellwinkle

Is there a log file somewhere. For example, if someone had their camera resetting itself for whatever reason, is there a system log, something like /var/log/messages in regular Linux

We use Cradlepoint mobile broadband routers. They are in Boise, ID but not sure where manufacturing is. The one we use takes a USB 3G or 4G stick from one of the popular carriers in the U.S. like Verizon or AT&T. Then you can connect that to a PoE switch and install as many cameras as you like to it. So not sure what you mean by USA based products. Do you mean manufactured in the U.S. or their HQ is in the U.S. or they have a U.S. based presence? Made in the U.S.A that I know of includes Arecont in the L.A. area and Stardot in the O.C.. IQEye is HQ'ed in the U.S.A, also in the O.C., but manufactures in China that I know of. US presence can be lots of companies.

A few brands allow writing to a CIFS amount other to FTP, so if you can set these up with FTP, NFS or CIFS, there's no reason you can't. The limitations with FTP is once they are full, they typically stop working and there's no playback from the camera. With NFS or CIFS some cameras like Axis, Mobotix even Hikvision in theory can manage the space and provide playback.

Check out Brickcom cameras. The last one I reviewed had a 3G SIM card slot and I believe they have new and improved models that support 3G/4G.

I think I have all their PoE switches by now, their 8 port, 9 port and 16 port, all work great.

I've been using that version you posted on a few dozen cameras, no problems yet, actually just used it today. I've tried it on 2032 bullet, 2132 mini dome, 2732 dome, 3332 eyeball/turret.

Check to see if you can connect to the camera via the web browser. If so, it's just a hiccup on Milestone so you may want to reboot the computer. I actually have this happen on a Dahua camera, but pretty rare.

I concur that you can't divide a 360 degree image by 4 and expect the same for resolution as it has to crop the image to make it square. For example, taking a 4MP camera and dividing it into 4 90 degree streams does not yield 4 1MP images. We were happy with the same situation with the Mobotix Q22 where there were two glass doors to the outside and darker inside. You can't really see out the doors because they were so bright, but you could see the person once they step inside. Actually helped us catch who was entering the facilities that was not authorized. The new Q25 should be better in low light, but actually be worse with the bright lit areas, almost too sensitive. Either way, it does not do in-camera correction. Watching the ACTi's perform at a recent tradeshow in commercial type light, the image quality was pretty good and I believe you can break it up into 6 streams and likely lose less pixels during the conversion, so it may be possible that it's 4MP sensor gives you the same pixels after correction than the Axis 5MP. Also the ACTi is day/night, the Axis is day only.

All depends on what software you'll be using. Software that lets the camera do the motion detection tend to be way more efficient than software that does the motion detection itself. Believe it or not, it requires a lot of developer effort to allow the camera to do the motion detection, so products that do this costs at least $50/camera like Exacq, Milestone, Avigilon. Software that does motion detection is free to cheap, like Zoneminder, BlueIris, iSpyConnect. So a trade off between investing in better hardware to run cheaper software or cheaper hardware to run better software. Since I already had a slow PC, it was less expensive for me to buy better software so my choice easy. As for hard drives, depends on how much activity exists at your place. I use a 1TB drive with 14 days recordings and it works for me. Hard drives are super cheap, certainly not an area to skimp.

Their NVR software is pricey, maybe $200 per camera, so not sure that's where you want to go as you camera probably cost about that price. They do have an in-camera app called Axis Camera Companion (ACC) that works pretty well. You install the program on Windows and then when you setup the camera, it uploads the app to the camera. Because that model does not have an SD card slot, you would have to setup a NAS (or even a Windows share on your PC) and it will record to it without any external software or PC. You can buy a cheap NAS for maybe $100. To view the camera or recordings or to make changes to the settings, you would do it through the Windows program. The downside is that there's no smartphone/tablet apps or even a web interface, everything has to be done through the Windows app.

E44 has other features, like varifocal lens and that's what makes it more expensive, it's also a much larger camera than say the E32, so maybe metal costs more, LOL. I use an E32 at my house and when I do reviews, it sits side by side, so has become my benchmark. During the day, it has a consistently good picture and while the Hikvision can be as good, at different times of the day, the E32 is significantly better. At night, there is noise, but it's not bad. What makes it look worse than it is, is their web interface, looks real bad, but when I look at it via NVR software, the picture looks a lot better. Also, noise reduction is a trade off and I feel I get more detail in the image with the noise than I do with cameras with better noise reduction. I would compare the E32 night time noise levels to Mobotix latest night sensor and to the Hikvision bullet. The E44 is slightly better, but not enough to justify the price premium. As a comparison, Dahua would have less noise, but less detail. What I like about their bullets is they still use the traditional mounts, so more mounting flexibility. The E44, like the Dahua and Hikvision uses an integrated mount but I really hate making 1" holes in the side of the house or in soffits.

Spiders depend on your location. In So Cal, I get spiderwebs only on my hard to reach cameras and seasonal, so may not happen for a few months and then happens every week for a month or two. Some people put a highly scented oil drop on the camera, like a Citronella oil as spiders tend to be repelled by strong smells. I use a duster on a long pole to wipe the front of the camera down.

What I'm thinking is the 2332 is the English version (not necessarily a USA version) and the 3332 is the China version and yes, they tend to cost about $20 more per camera. The only thing that I know of that's in Chinese is the day of week, and that may very well be the price difference between the two model numbers.

With 8 HD cameras on first generation i3 with xProtect, all at full frame rate, I run about 10-15% busy on the server. Can't even imagine an i7, some day I'll own one, in the meantime, i5 is as fast as I go. I would imagine with an i7, you should be able to get up possibly 32 cameras given you had the version that supports that many cameras. Any software that does in-camera motion detection is going to be pretty efficient, XProtect, Exacq, Avigilon. Any software that does in-PC motion detection is going to a CPU hog like BlueIris, Zoneminder, iSpyConnect. As for ease of use, nothing impresses more than handing a tablet, tap on the XProtect app and see all the cameras, pinch to zoom, playback recordings. And it's all free, which is very cool. Also the web interface for remote access works pretty well.

Here's the 5.1 Firmware for camera from China. Link may only work in the U.S. - http://wrightwoodsurveillance.com/forum/thread-69.html

Yes, because when you are a newbie, all the support you can get would be of big help. Also, having the software included makes it easier knowing that it will work together. Also, the D32 uses a typical camera tripod mount, meaning if the included mount does not work for you, you can easily buy different types of mounts that are cheap. One issue I have with the mini-bullets that have integrated mounts is sometimes it's not ideal, in my case, the eave is recessed a few inches and the fascia board causes reflections back onto the camera. The camera comes as silver/gray already, but it's metal so you can easily paint it.

They all seem about right for the UK and all below you budget. The advantage of the ACTi is that they provide very good NVR software for free, their website has manuals, firmware and knowledge base, and their support may be better, albeit for a higher price than what Hikvision and Dahua charge. Would not equate someone you don't know "selling out" to product quality or demand. Hikvision is the largest CCTV company in the world but ACTi is better known for their commercial grade products. I don't think you will be disappointed with any of these. The Dahua you linked to is 2MP, so not the same as the other 2 which are 3MP. If it's just one camera, make sure you buy a PoE injector to power the camera. If you plan on more than one, consider a PoE switch. PoE allows you to power and connect the camera using ordinary Ethernet cable which makes for an easier and cleaner install.

Without looking, I believe the option is center instead of flip.

Sure, any type will work, mostly personal preference, outdoor bullet, dome, eyeball. See what brands are available. For example, for a bullet an ACTi D32, Hivision DS-2CD2032-I, Dahua IPC-HFW4300S, all good value 3MP cameras with built in IR Illuminators that should be in your budget and surely would if you were here in the U.S.

I personally use ACTi, Hikvision, Dahua, AVTech and Axis on different properties and they all make cameras in your price range of well under 250 quid or about $400 USD. Next choice is indoor, outdoor, indoor looking outdoors and what sort of lighting exists at night from street lights are on all night like in London or total darkness like in a rural area or somewhere in between? What sort of mounting location, like at your front door, in front of a store, garage, etc.

What cameras brands are you able to get in the UK?

How fast are cars traveling that you need 30fps to get plate capture? Is this NASCAR or Indy Racing? We get cars going up to 40mph with 4fps. I would imagine you get up to 60-80mph with 6-8fps but to capture cars at that speed you need very high shutter speeds. Also, lower any sharpening as that can increase noise at night. Are you using LPR software? We have what appears to be a similar situation to you where you use access control to open a gate but we are using LPR to enhance access control for a similar application to yours where the gate opens automatically on a plate match or notifies law enforcement on their plate list. So far, early stages of testing with a small number of people on the plate list but it's really cool, just drive up to the gate and voila, it magically opens. But what's really cool is during forensics, being able to see on what days/times a suspect has entered to see if we can tie a single crime to multiple crimes.

Milestone does let you run the client on a separate machine to minimize load on the server which is what I do. With BlueIris, you can reduce some of the CPU of rendering the image by minimizing the window but no option to separate the two workloads which to me is huge because my NVR PC is just that, a PC tucked away, out of site. When I want to see what's going on, I can run the client software on any PC or on one of my tablets. ACTi NVR is a little different in that the client is all browser based, so you run the server process on one PC, then the client anywhere you want on IE (only IE). ACTi NVR is only free for ACTi cameras, after that I believe it's about $50/cam. I've run all 3 for a while. I had BlueIris for about 4 years, still run it on one location but no motion detect, no recording, just for remote view some cameras through their re-streamer, actually very low CPU use for that use case. I've run ACTi NVR for about 2 years, great product but switched to Milestone a few months ago for 3 reasons, 1. at the time, they only supported ACTi and I started buying non-ACTi cameras, 2. I use a MacBook Air when I travel and it's not Mac friendly, 3. they didn't have an Android app at the time (now they do).

I was just illustrating the noise levels, not that much different considering that the ACTI E32 is not advertised as ACTi's low light camera, just their ordinary 3MP bullet where the Mobotix is being billed as their ultra low light camera with MxLEO, sort of how Axis has Lightfinder. From my testing, the D15 is not at the same level a say an ACTi KCM-5611 that is billed as ACTi's low light camera. I switched out one of the worst offenders back with a D14 and the low light sensitivity is not quite as good, but there's very little to no noise compared with the D15 and during the day, the areas that used to be blown out are decent. What happened is they made the sensor more sensitive to light, but that had a bad effect during the day where it's very easy to blow out an image, for example, a sunlight on your jeans may be enough to blow that part of the image out to a white blob. Also, what I noticed is that the camera is not able to react to light changes as quick as the D14, so it takes longer to adjust to incoming headlights in a side by side comparison. The other problem we are having is really poor frame rates on recordings to NAS, certainly far worse than the D14 setup the same way. We are in the process of deciding where to go for new cameras and money is not the issue, just looking for best quality image and NAS record, probably Hikvision or Axis. Already told 3 customers to hold of on Mobotix to see if they can improve the product or chose something else.

Looking at the specs & pictures, I don't see anything other than the model number.