buellwinkle

Never been to it and I was assuming it's like ISC West which is huge because of the venue, Javits Center. Thanks for the heads up, save me some airfare and $400/night hotels. I was surprised with the ASIS show last month in Chicago, it was larger than I thought, maybe 2/3rds the size of ISC West.

I would go with Hikvision over ESC because they are the largest manufacturer of surveillance cameras and have a mature product that works vs. a house brand for a small reseller where there may be risks. You will get noise at night, but I prefer a little noise over the alternative which is over processed noise reduction that blurs detail. But if you prefer lower noise, Dahua has a cleaner image at night, albeit at the expense of detail. It's a toss up, some people look at the Hikvision at night and say it's better, some look at Dahua and say it's better. As for cameras that I have used that have the best night image quality, Axis P3367-VE, Mobotix D14 SEC DNight, ACTi KCM-5611. But, not even close to the same price range as what you are looking at.

Long term, if you want a stable camera, no problems, turn it on, forget about it, come back in a couple of years and it's still working, get Mobotix. I installed these at two communities that will never maintain them. Also, if you have cameras even 1 year old, it's hard to compare to what's been coming out the past year in terms of image quality, resolution, low light capability and price. Even Axis, who knew they would add illuminators to cameras and they have in the past year, even a lower end model, the M3024-LVE. ACTi has gone 5 & 10MP on their newer cameras and some of the ones coming out in Jan/Feb are awesome. Sony's new high models do the really good job in low light and noise. Canon has new models that are impressive in low light. Vivotek continuous to unimpress. Samsung has different quality/price tiers, so depends on what you pay.' You best bet is to go to ISC East next month and check out all that is new.

It's real easy to do. Find the camera with the SADP software, send the serial number to Lorex or Swann support and enter the password recovery code that Swann or Lorex support will provide you. That will reset the password to 12345.

With a typical varifocal set to 12mm, you should be able to capture plates at 50' during the day, maybe 10' at night with proper illumination.

Since you twisted our arms and you won't really appreciate what we are telling you, this is the absolute best PTZ camera available for under $200. Agasio = Foscam. It's WiFi, VGA and 3X zoom. http://agasio.com/agasio-a621-poe-outdoor-pan-tilt-poe-ip-camera.html

That wasn't my experience, 2 cameras overwhelmed my quad core PC with HD Witness but may have improved since. As for ease of setting up, they all install easy enough, it's a regular Windows install. The complexity is configuring them, opening ports for remote viewing. The easiest is ACTi NVR3 out of the three, the most complete in terms of cameras supported, web browser support, smartphone support is Milestone XProtect. The problem I had with Exacq was it didn't support all my cameras as they have a very specific list of models and firmware and you can have a supported camera with newer firmware and it's not supported. Also, you probably mean Exacq Start, that's their more basic version. These are very basic NVR solutions, it's not going to have a lot of features you won't use. To get these enterprise or POS features you need to get their higher end product.

To capture plates you need to have a focal length that can capture just the grill of the car with the license plate, not the entire car, not surrounding area. For example, we use a box camera with a 50mm lens to capture a plate at 50-60'. Sure, with a varifocal 3MP camera set at 12mm I can read the plate number from the video at 50', BUT (huge but), at night it's worthless because the headlights/tailights will overwhelm the reflective plate number and you'll see nothing and combine that with noise and noise reduction, even if you can see the plate, it will be a blur. To compensate for this, we use a power IR illuminator that compensates for the backlight effect of headlight/tailights.

Not sure you will see less noise if you work out any monitor issue, maybe worse. When you have more pixels than screen real estate most cameras will display a small display that fits and have e-ptz controls to let you see the image at full size and pan around the image. Most NVR software will display the image that fits in a box but usually lets you use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and use the mouse to move the center point or some let you draw a box on the screen and it will zoom in to that spot. Soon 4K monitors (8MP) will be more common place and you won't have to do this. I was listening to an analyst say in about 2 years you should be able to buy a 4K monitor for $300.

Yes but may only record 1080P and not 3MP.

Could just be light reflection, meaning the flat back alsphalt does not reflect as well as the decking materials and as well defined close object to reflect the light on the other camera. Have you tried swapping the camera locations?

I would put ACTi NVR, Exacq and Milestone as needing the least CPU, an i3 would be enough. BlueIris, Axxonsoft, HD Witness as requiring more CPU, an i7 for 8 HD cameras is not unusual. Never heard of Xeoma. As for Linux, why? To me what's way more important than the OS is a) a good web interface that works with various browsers and OS (like Mac, Windows, Linus browsers), b) good smartphone app support for IOS and Android, c) software stability (you may think Windows is not as stable as Linux but the NVR software can be less stable than either mature OS) and d) good multi-cam playback with timeline scrubbing. If that helps narrow down the search, let us know what the new shortlist is.

Hikvision bullets are good, domes are so-so and 2-axis domes are not good for beginners. ACTi costs a little more but has good support/warranty and has good free NVR software. Dahua also makes low cost decent cameras and have some unique products like their IR PTZ's. You'll need a PoE switch, ZyXel, Cisco, Trendnet are popular. PC software is what I recommend if you are going to mix up brands eventually and one that supports lots of brands of cameras is Milestone XProtect and they have a free version called GO for up 8 cams, 5 days of recordings and is CPU friendly (meaning you can have a low powered CPU), has very good and free smartphone apps and remote web access. Other free solutions are Axxonsoft (16 cam for free), iSpy and Zoneminder.

If you hang in there, by February ACTi is coming out with a small 1080P PoE PTZ, 10x zoom for about $800-900 price range. Currently, the least expensive PTZ I would recommend is the Dahua, 3X zoom, 1080P, small size $599. Even the cheap Foscam, VGA resolution, 10x, outdoor PTZ is about $400 and who buys VGA cameras, cell phones or TV's these days.

Put in Cat6 foil shielded burial grade solid wire Ethernet cable and put it in schedule 40 PVC conduit, it's what we do on our long runs. If you don't like the idea of a long range PoE switch, you can get extenders. We use Veracity Cat6 extenders good for 2,600' but our longest run is only 1,600'. http://www.veracityglobal.com/company/news/veracity-longspan.aspx

CFL does not put out as much IR light as LED, you'll notice a big difference switching from one to the other.

Does it support ONVIF? If so, you can turn the ONVIF feature on in the E42 (off by default) and try that. If not you can try RTSP.

The cameras are cheap because they are not PoE so you'll need an A/C outlet nearby to power the cameras. Let us know how they work out. The following is free software worth considering - - Milestone XProtect Go - same as commercial software, very good smartphone apps, 8 camera limit, 5 days recording, low CPU use - Axxonsoft - same as their commercial version but limited to 16 cameras, 1TB storage, high CPU use - Zoneminder - open source Linux, high CPU use - iSpyConnect - open source Windows, IOS smartphone access via html 5 (no app)

You need to find a better security guy. There are cameras that do very well at night, depends on your budget. Also, you can get external illuminators to help in some tough spot. In the front of the home, you can use LED bulbs in porch lights and run them dusk to dawn that will make a big difference (don't use CFL).

I just want to let people know that have bought Derytech OEM Hikvision cameras or NVRs, currently being sold by someone that can't be mentioned here as Hikvision branded cameras but they are OEM. Even using firmware posted on his site does not work, found out the hard way. Do not upgrade the firmware with regular Hikvision firmware. You have to get the firmware from Derytech. What happens is the firmware update completes, but it changes your admin password to something that hasn't been figured out yet. Then you have to get a password reset code from Hikvision. If someone figured it out, please post here but nobody at Hikvision or Derytech has figured out what the admin password is.

Which camera? The varifocal version?

You can get the instructions here - http://www.wrightwoodsurveillance.com/stuff/Quick%20Guide%20-%20TFTP%20Automatic%20Update%20tool.pdf

ACTi.com is for ACTi, Axis.com for Axis, Hikvision.com for Hikvision, DahuaSecurity.com for Dahua.

For that budget, look at ACTi cameras, the 9 channel NVR (ENR-1200) runs under $700 here in the U.S. and you can get 4 cameras, like e32 bullets and/or e72 domes (both 3 megapixels) for under $350 USD here so would imagine if it's $2,100 USD here, it's probably under £2000 there. Considering the quality and support, to me represents the best value for your price range. Alternatively, you can get Axis cameras, the M3024-LVE Domes (1 megapixel) in the under $600 price range, 4 would be $2,400 USD, put SD cards in the to record or record to network storage and skip the NVR and use their free Axis Camera Companion to manage the recordings and provide playback through a Window app. Axis does not make an NVR, so if you chose to have an NVR, you would have to go 3rd party. On the lower end, there's Hikvision or Dahua 1080P or 3MP bullets/domes, tend to run in the $200ish range, the NVR about $500.

What is your budget? How many cameras?