buellwinkle

Are these the covert 940nm ones? or did you also get the 850nm?

Ah, same problem I had. The fix is to install the new 6.9 Device Pack from Milestone, it all works well now and keeps it in h.264 mode. You don't really want to use MJPEG as it will end up using about 3-4x more bandwidth on your network and may impact the quality of the recordings.

I personally don't like the built in PoE on some of these NVR's because it isolates it from your home network so you can't access them individually from your PC if you need to check an tweak the configuration or if you are installing it and want a PC close buy to check the aim. I did see the new small NVR from Dahua but have never tried it. I would imagine it's the same as the larger one, just smaller and probably supports just 1 drive vs. the full size one supporting 2 drives. Keep in mind, it's made for Dahua cameras, it may not play well with other brands even if it says it does.

ACTi cameras come from the factory with DHCP, not a fixed IP.

Plates at night are tricky and also depend on states as they come in different colors, fonts. California plates are bright white and very reflective so it's easy to end up with a white rectangle at night with no numbers unless you can get a pretty close crop. Also, capturing plates of a car at night that is moving at 30mph as you wanted vs. a parked car is a whole different ball game.

Don't know the limitations of your NVR but most NVR's use lower speed ARM processors, maybe Atom processors and there may not be enough processing power for the resolution, frame rate and compression. If you want to do some testing to see if it's the cameras or NVR, if you have a decent speed PC, download one of the commercial NVR products and see if it does it there. Also, is there a way to telnet into the NVR. Most run some sort of embedded Linux so you can see what's going on in terms of CPU, I/O and memory usage.

May work but exceeds his size requirements.

I like the new lower end domes from Axis, sort of a stripped down P33 but no IR LED's on this model and the M3024-LVE with IR LEDs is only 1MP. Thewireguys, Yes, IPConfigure on the Q1604 but we plan on a very tight shot with a 50mm lens and the IR illuminator they recommended. Sure, I know you can make fake plates but why go through that trouble, just wait for someone to come in and follow them in, LOL. It's more of a convenience thing rather than ultimate security. They have several alternatives including remote control access, RFID tag access and the visitor entry dialer. If it was that secure I wouldn't need cameras at my house, LOL. Are you using IPConfigure with a long lens to capture just the front of the car? If it works out like I expect, I was going to write a front end app for it to manage the plate numbers for a few of these which is their shortcoming, each cameras is separately managed.

I have never tried it but the AverMedia NEH1008HN is popular, I believe about $450. Some people like a smart NAS approach like Synology. I have one where I had 4 camera on it, worked well. It had a limitation of 1080P and I had 3MP cameras so I stopped using it but it now supports higher resolution cameras. Like Maxicon said, my preference is to have a PC and software on it as that gives you the most flexibility. For 8 cameras, you can get a Celeron or the new low power i5 PC and run a wide variety of NVR software ranging in price from free to maybe $399 for a commercial grade solution. I always start with free, work your way up.

Sounds like something is wrong because my D32 works fine with the new or old firmware. Actually, I had a minor issue with an E32 where it would keep going to H.264 where Milestone wanted it in MJPEG and would switch back by itself. Still happens, ACTi couldn't replicate it on their E32, but Milestone fixed their software to use H.264 with that camera so it's all good now.

All seems to work well. CPU utilization when viewing from my mobile app is down in half. The install process is easier, no more having to setup the mobile server and mess with a lot of annoying things to get it working as one would expect. The interface looks cleaner. Their camera scan still doesn't work for me, don't know why, only finds Dahua cameras, not ACTi or Hikvision which is ironic because it has native support for ACTi and Hikvision and not Dahua. The only gripe I have is I used to leave Smart Client running on my desktop in a small window with all the cameras showing, but now the minimum size for each thumbnail is larger and won't shrink as much as before. Maybe it's an option somewhere.

Took me a while but installed 64-bit Windows to upgrade to the new version. No upgrade path from 32 to 64, so started from scratch. Then installed the new release from scratch and latest device pack. Some people had questions on using Smart Client from another PC. You have to open up the HTTP port on the Windows Firewall, here's how I did it. a. run wf.msc b. scroll down to "View and create firewall rule" c. click on "Inbound Rules" d. click "New Rule..." under Action on right side e. select "port" and click "next" f. "specify specific ports" enter 80 and click "next" THREE TIMES g. give it a name and click "Finish" I can see why they did it that way, not allowing remote Smart Client connections unless you yourself open the Windows port. Might be in the manual, but I couldn't find more than see your administrator. BTW, my upgrade worked using the old number, but YMMV.

Looks like I'm stuck on installing the new version as it's 64-bit only and I have 32-bit Windows installed.

There's a saying in Brooklyn that sort of fits here, Fugetaboutit. The cameras is fine, but you would need about a 50mm lens, not the 6mm lens that comes with the camera. If it's day only, you can probably get away with just a 25mm lens

If it's temporary, use a PC with HDMI out and use the web browser to connect to the camera. Also, many phones, tablets have HDMI out but may require a special cable. Then watch the camera on the tablet using one of many apps that displays cameras. Lastly, you can get a tiny Android mini-pc which has HDMI out and can run apps that display cameras.

Absolutely. The new dual and even quad core Android mini-PC's do well.

I'll try the upgrade later today. Do you just download and install over the existing version or uninstall the old and install the new? Also noticed the new device pack now supports the Hikvision bullets/domes without ONVIF, meaning they now take motion detection from the camera.

Someone else complained about this with BlueIris and ACTi cameras, maybe part of a new maintenance updates. Try a different program, like ACTi NVR 3 which is free, just to see if it works better. Here's the link - http://www.acti.com/product/detail/Video_Management_System/NVR_V3 Pretty easy to install and setup. The only weird thing is that by default, the schedule is set to record full time so you need to go into schedule, change it to event recording only, that is if you want event recording. You set the motion detect windows and sensitivity in the camera. BTW, I was using BlueIris and slowing my ACTi cameras started not working, first the older ones like acm-3511 and then the E32 were not right, so I gave up and switched to Milestone at Voipninja's recommendation.

If you search the forum you can find previous recommendations. This one sounded viable - viewtopic.php?f=19&t=37523&p=230129&hilit=microphone#p230129

What do you mean by monitor? I monitor my cameras via a smartphone app on my phone and tablets. If you want to record, have an older PC, I would recommend Milestone XProtect Go, it's free for up to 8 cameras, supports a wide range of cameras, stores up to 5 days of recordings and has very good smartphone apps and a remote browser interface. it's a little complex to setup, but if you stick with it I bet you will like it. Other's that are free are Axxonsoft (16 cameras), iSpyConnect (Windows open source), Zoneminder (Linux open source), but are more CPU intensive, but 2 cameras shouldn't be a problem. Some of these also have smartphone apps. I would try all free choices before spending money, but BlueIris is pretty good for $50 (+10 for smartphone app), but I wouldn't say it better than any of the above.

Even better as I use my tablet as a remote, so if I was watching TV, the tablet would already be in my hand or nearby. I can understand a use case of watching it on a TV, for example, the car wash I go to that also happens to be an MB dealer (don't have an MB, just use their car wash), has a display with 4 cameras showing their garage with the busy mechanics, so I agree there are other use cases for displaying it on a TV than home security. Actually can still use a tablet for that purpose as many have HDMI out or a dedicated android mini-PC. For during the day, I'm on my PC all day, work from home, so I usually have an app on my PC with all my cameras to see if someone is at my front door, if a Fedex truck stops at my house, if someone is in the house I don't expect.

That camera has very good low light performance and up 12mm varifocal. I can read a plate at about 70-80' with my 12mm camera during the day but it's 3MP or about twice the vertical resolution as your Axis camera. At night what happens is the plate is very small compared to the overall dark scene so the auto exposure adjusts for the scene at night but when a car comes down the street at say 20mph with headlights on, the camera I have at least doesn't adjust exposure fast enough or even can adjust enough to get the plate. When you are in your driveway with your car still or moving very slowly, sure, there's plenty of time for the auto exposure to adjust. We are putting in the cousin to your camera, the Q1604 (w/Lightfinder) but with a 5-50mm lens, our hope is to capture plates at 50-60' at 25 mph at 1/60th exposure and an Axis T90A42 30 degree illuminator. Should be going in hopefully next week, waiting on construction. An app that runs inside the camera will scan the plate, and trigger a gate to open if it's on a list.

You can read a plate with that camera during the day, no problem, at night it would be nearly impossible unless you can make sure the person does not have headlights or taillights on. Also, not sure that camera can capture a plate at night at 30mph unless you can at least go to 1/60th of sec min exposure. I would get a box camera, put 5-50mm lens on it, focus it only on the license plate area, do not try and capture more than the front of the car and resolution is not that important, it's getting a tight shot on the plate. Then you need enough light to counteract the backlight effect of headlights. A built in illuminator would be worthless and WDR will also be worthless.

I went this route thinking it would be a good idea, hear a noise in the night, turn the TV on, switch HDMI ports, use mouse to control Android app. In practice, not that practical. First, you have to wait for the TV to run on, you have scramble to find the right remote then find the mouse to control the android app then your eyes have to adjust to the bright TV in a otherwise dark room. It's disruptive if you wife is sleeping and would alert an intruder to your whereabouts. I found a better solution, actually Maxicon found it first, I just starting it using it and it works for me. It's to buy inexpensive Android tablets, in my case running Milestone's app. I hear a noise at night, reach for my tablet at bedside, tap a button to turn it on, tap on the Milestone app, and voila, I have a view of all cameras. I can take it with me to hide or a safe room. If I left a TV on with all the cameras showing, if I have to move to another location, the intruder can enter the room and watch me if I have to move to another room or provide surveillance to them if police arrive. I should be a writer for all these detective shows on TV, LOL.

I would say one of two things happened. A connector came lose inside the camera where its losing the green signal and reseating the cables in the camera may fix it or there's a malfunction in the circuit that you can't fix. I don't think it's a sticking IR filter as the grass would look darker, like purplish color, but not white like it looks in your image. I would first try and track down who you got it from and see if they can repair or replace it.