buellwinkle

There are a pretty long post on this not that long ago. The problem with them is they get extremely hot and people have had them warp and go bad. Don't really know the purpose of them. If it's a dashcam, why doesn't in come with the attachments. If it's an action cam, again, why doesn't it come with it's attachments and waterproofing. For a dashcam, I use the ws300w. But also have been testing another one that's better but cost more, like most things in life. For an action cam, I like the JS1000, comes with all the stuff like a Go Pro but for a fraction of the price.

The problem with most PTZ cameras is what do you do at night? If the only goal is the postman, you are in luck since they typically only come during the day. Is the area brightly lit at night or do even care about security at night? Also, PTZ cameras either need someone to operate them or you put them on a patrol of preset locations. The problem is you are dividing the time the camera can record by the number of presets. So say you have 3 locations to check, at each spot you check activity for say 10 seconds. You may miss the mailman because he may drive by and you camera was pointed elsewhere. If you need IR illuminators for a PTZ, there's two ways to go. You can put one at each preset location or you can get a PTZ with an illuminator built in, so forget the price for a minute, they are huge, basket ball size and have a look to them, almost R2D2ish, so that doesn't meet your criteria of being discrete.

The only thing in Chinese is the day of week in the on-screen display. So I turn that off and displays just the date and time, like most camera brands do anyway. Other than that, you can chose from many languages in the upper right but English is the default but you can pick Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Czech, Chinese and some I can't decipher. Also worth noting, they are setup for PAL frame rates. To change it to NTSC, you go to the Configuration/Image screen and select 60hz for Video Standard. Sort of not intuitive.

Either of those two NVR software apps are great for starting out. I use the 6mm and 12mm in my side yards to narrow the field of view so I don't see a lot of wall or fence. My 6mm camera is still too wide for my side yard, may swap it out with 12mm.

More importantly than getting an lens rated for MP, get one that's rated for the sensor size or larger, meaning 1/3" or 1/2" sensor. If it's made for a 1/4" sensor you may get vignetting.

It's not easy to run wires through walls with the ends on anyway and to me, I want the shortest cable possible to minimize power loss. So buy a crimper and tester, cost maybe $20 or less and a bag of RJ45 plugs and start practicing. The wire that comes with it is cheap, but I use it to make shorter jumper cables, haven't had a problem but I wouldn't put it in my walls.

Finally had a chance to try out the Mobotix D15 domes. We have several D14 domes so we have a basis of comparison. Mobotix claims the new domes have 5MP sensors (albeit still put out 3MP and 1.2MP video) that are 4x more low light sensitive. Side by side with the old 3MP sensor in the D14, I can say that for sure, the older D14's are a little better in image quality. I think Mobotix had a chance to stand out with the D15 and they are at best equal to the D14, certainly not any better in low light when set to the same exposure settings. This applies to the color and b&w sensor in low light, no difference I can discern. The other area that bugs me is no WDR, and there's some high contrast situations that it's struggles with. Is not so much an issue with the D14 which balances this better. The other area where the D15's disappoint is they are now 2-axis domes as you can't rotate the lens like on the D14. Seems like a big step backwards here. The only thing I can think off is this is a budgetary move for Mobotix. Don't know why they fail to mention this as it's key in decision making. The image quality in the market has definitely caught up, and in some cases surpassed Mobotix. When you combine that very poor support response times, not sure there's a value proposition for Mobotix other than the distributed networking aspect which is really the sole reason we use them.

Interesting choice of words, so you want to "descent" down to cheap glass. Don't blame you as you have no basis of comparison. Like me, who bought a cheap 300mm lens from Nikon for my DSLR camera, was like $99 and was thoroughly disappointed and a friend got a 300mm lens from Nikon that runs $5,000, he's happy. There's plenty of lenses on eBay and Amazon for cheap, maybe even $5 but if it were my money, I would get a used good lens, here's one $20 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/FUJINON-YV10X5A-SA2-8-5-50MM-1-3-CS-LENS-XLNT-/121224149192?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3985b8c8

I believe you have a condition called "analysis paralysis". Time to pull the trigger and don't look back. These days, most name brand cameras are decent. You'll get different opinions from different people, no shortage of that. So stop thinking and start spending

Yes, HDCP.

If the high megapixel doesn't benefit you much and 720P is good, the best deal I've seen is the Messoa bundle. The cameras typically run about 300 each by themselves but the bundle is $999 with 4 cameras and an NVR and switch. The NVR is 8 channel, so you can add as you go. A little higher end than the cameras you've been looking at that are made in China and offices in the U.S. for support. When I saw them at a trade show, they looked pretty decent. I asked Messoa to send me the cameras and NVR for a review and they said they would but it's the holidays, may take a bit longer .

Yes, a box camera makes most sense for your needs, wasn't even thinking about it but we just put one in recently. Get the one with a fixed lens because it's cheaper, throw the lens away and get a good CS mount varifocal lens. We use a Fujinon 5-50mm lens, that's like a 10x zoom, so you can zoom in on the quarter or mouse to fill the frame with the subject. Those lenses are not terribly expensive, maybe $100 give or take. Also, a CS lens is larger, allowing for more light to come in, allowing for better low light performance. I would not cheap out on glass as it's more important than the electronics in getting good image quality.

Sounds like a good story, so the NVR is putting out HDRC protected video, have not seen that and why would one TV honor it, and others don't. Most cheap NVR's are setup for standard monitors. You have to connect a monitor to them, then you can configure them for 1080P and HMDI.

I would not get a generic lens for a dome, what if it's too large, wont' fit inside the dome, if it's too short, will create light bleed. If you can get an ACTi lens for that camera, that would be ideal.

Maybe an IR illuminator that has a regular light bulb base? http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-IR-illuminator-IR-bulb-940nm-10W-invisible-light-for-cctv-camera-E27-/171176468026?pt=US_Surveillance_Gadgets&hash=item27dae99e3a

Yes you can see the bulbs glow red on just about all IR camera, but the light being emitted is invisible. They are using 850nm wavelength. They sell illuminators that are 940nm that still glow slightly, but are way less visible but also way less effective so you may need 2-3X the amount of light to be equal to an 850nm illuminator. Illuminator companies like Raytec sell 940nm illuminators as an option, maybe the most cost effective is the RM25, under $400 I believe. People here have tried inexpensive 940nm, not sure anybody was pleased with the results. What some people have done as a budgetary move is to cover the typical 850nm LEDs with fully exposed and process color print film negatives. This seems to filter out the visible wavelength of the LEDs while still providing decent light and in your short distance, likely good enough. Alternatively, people have used the media from floppy discs as filter.

The best deal I've seen on a starter system is the Messoa, 4 cameras + 8 channel NVR with a hard drive and switch for $999. The cameras alone cost about $300 each. The reason is this, when you buy Swann or Lorex, you are not buying a product they made, it's being OEM'ed from various companies in China, sometimes good, sometimes bad. If you have an issue with the camera, they didn't make it so they may not have the best resources to help. I get that these products sell for less, but honestly, If you like the product, get it from the manufacturer, Hikvision because at least they can provide access to their latest firmware updates and know the product they make better than anyone else. ADI, a major wholesaler has a Hikvision bundle sale going on now, so it could be price competitive. Messoa is a manufacturer in Taiwan, like ACTi, Vivotek, Geovision, Brickcom. Their support and service will be better and they will have a wider selection of cameras than OEM's will have. Another choice is ACTi cameras, mostly because they have excellent NVR software that's free that you can run on a fairly slow PC. Their camera prices are pretty competitive. With cameras now coming out in 10MP, it would seem to restrictive for me to settle for an NVR only capable of 1080P (2MP). That's why I prefer a PC with NVR software over an NVR, the flexibility for the future. I had my NVR PC for a few years, but switched software 3 times. Separating the investment made sense for me.

If money was no object, I would definitely put S15's in my house.

It's quite easy to understand, but I had trouble with this too originally. If you know nothing about what you want to buy, then your only criteria becomes features for price. We are too close to it so we know better but newbies don't. Heck, you can tell them Axis is great, but they think it's all the same, might as well save a few bucks. Then to someone that's never had a good camera, it will be the best camera they ever had, go on Amazon and give that product 5 stars. Foscam is a prime example. For example, take a guitar. If you have an interest but never played, don't know anything about it, you may go to a music store or Costco, and a get a pretty acoustic guitar for $99 that looks for all intent and purposes is like a Gibson, Martin, Takamine or Taylor. You may strum both and come to the conclusion that why would anyone pay more than $99 for a guitar. You take your $99 guitar home, try to play it, maybe take lessons, get frustrated because it's hard to play, not because playing guitar is hard, because playing cheap guitars is hard.

So still doesn't work, even after you changed it to compatibility mode? That's odd. Maybe a newer firmware release will make it work, but all mine work fine in IE 11 in compatibility mode.

We used to have a lot of Buffalo in the Los Angeles county on Catalina Island but they shipped most off to Wyoming. Man, if I can connect a Dahua camera to a Buffalo, that would be so cool, the Buffulo Cam.

Many work that close, but be careful as some lower end cameras have glued in place lenses. As an example, indoors, you can use the ACTi D54 or D55, both you can focus manually.

Many PTZ cameras, analog or IP have RS-485 connectors. This is so you can attached a PTZ joystick to control the camera quicker than by using the web interface which can be clumsy/slow on any network PTZ camera. This is totally optional if you chose to use that or not. Since this hobby is new to you, consider that if very few people have this camera, you may not be able to get much help from the forum. You can also get the Dahua SD6982A PTZ, much more common.

It's likely IE 11, maybe the same genius that designed Window 8 and the Surface RT. Just click on the gear icon on the upper right of the browse, select "compatibility view settings" and click Add. It will work fine after that.

That Axis covert camera is very cool. They had a demo at the last trade show I attended where it was mounted inside a fake ATM and the hole for the camera was about 1/16". But it's a day only camera, not suited for low light use. But you can go semi-covert. The lower end Axis cameras, the M10 series can detect motion and send an email with photos to you. You can hide it discretely inside of something. I have mine send me 4 pictures over 2 seconds. Get a model that has PIR motion detector, forgot what it is, by mine is an M1031-W. Pretty accurate motion detection for me, maybe 1 or two false alerts a year. Another camera I use for this purpose is the AVTech AVN813, has an SD card, can write motion detect video, can alert your smartphone in seconds of motion detection and starts playing the video of the event. You can also look at live video or recorded video from your smartphone and has audio, speaker and mic. If recording video is too intense, you can lower the frame rate, say to 1 or 2 per second, then you can records a few seconds and use very little storage. You can decided when to get alerted or not from the smartphone app, so easy to use in that regard. Will require you setup port forwarding on router to view video. Both of these are day cameras with white LED's, so that aspect may not be as discrete but you can leave a light on or get a small cube cam like the two above with IR LED's that are more discrete, like the Brickcom WMB-300AP. As to where to hide the cameras, you can put them in a cereal box or hollowed out book with a hole for the lens. A bird house also works. Any of the cameras you typically see at "spy shops" are usually overpriced for what they are and very low end optics. I thought about selling that stuff because it has much higher margins than network cameras.