buellwinkle

Should be the same one linked in the previous page.

There's no issues with Chinese day, over 1 billion people use it. So if you buy the official Hikvision branded camera, China edition, everything is in English (or whatever language you chose from the dropdown in the upper right) except the day of the week, for example, today it was 星期一 . Don't know why, weird, why let you chose Spanish for example and display 星期一 instead of Lunes. But you can turn the day of week off and still get the date and timestamp if you chose. I like it in Chinese, adds a little spice to an otherwise boring OSD. Regardless of which firmware you load, it will display this until one day, they realize it's a bug and change it to the chosen language.

I think Atom is too slow, get the Mac Mini, run Windows on it.

Definitely makes me want one now, more than ever. Too tough of a choice between the $99 C and $199 S versions or get the 5 for $99. If you get the S, and someone wants to steal it from you, will he also need to steal your finger to unlock the phone?

On a recent review on the Hikvision 3MP with 12mm lens, I was able to read a plate about 80' away in bright daylight. At night, never going to happen, a good box camera with low light sensitivity with a good 50mm lens combined with an awesome IR illuminator would be what you need.

I've had Macs for a long time too, still have my Mac SE with B&W monitor built in. But here's the problem, the NVR PC needs to be on 24/7 and really nothing else running on it and no ability to go into any power saving mode. It would seem like a waste to buy a Mac solely for this purpose, not only due to the cost of the Mac but you'll be extremely limited in software choice, very little community support and it may limit the cameras choices as not all NVR software supports all cameras. So the best you can do is look for Windows based NVR software that can at least let you view the cameras and recordings via a web interface compatible with OS X and IOS. Or get an NVR that has a web interface compatible with OSX and IOS.

This was posted as a comment on my review of the camera and may help here. I reported this to Hikvision to see if it's a fix they can include in a future firmware release.

The one that came with the camera, LOL. I only upgraded one camera to help troubleshoot issues people were having, but never used it since. Firmware updates are a double edged sword. It may fix some issues and introduce new issues. I only do them on my cameras if I have to to solve a problem, to risky just to do it for fun. I just updated a bunch of year old Mobotix cams with problems but only after 2 weeks of trying to troubleshoot an issue and nobody from support getting back to me, I was lucky, didn't brick any and it fixed the problem but I have other models that have 4 year old firmware, would never think of updating because they all work.

Sometimes IE gets junk in cache that's impossible to get rid of except over time. Maybe change the IP temporarily and try it.

If you have two cameras, swap them, this will enable you to test the switch and cable to see if there are any issues with them. I have not tested BlueIris with the new 5.0.2 Hikvision firmware so don't know if there's a common bug.

Never had a zoom that powerful, but with an 18X optical zoom from my balcony to an event about a block and a half away, maybe 500' away and 1080P resolution, the heads of people were only about 25-30 pixels high, not enough to identify them.

Cutting drywall, drilling into masonry, siding, stucco, that's just part of getting a clean professional look. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Just hire professional electricians that not only have the know how, but also have specialized tools to minimize collateral damage.

Lorex or any lower end brand is not going to give you the level of support you need as it's normal for just about any camera to give comparable messages when setting up email. You need a brand with a higher level of support and I would recommend Axis or ACTi. Used to get good support out of Mobotix but that seems to have gone downhill.

Sure, but doesn't that add to the intrigue, the mystery.

When the hard drive gets full it starts deleting the oldest recordings.

I was working on Windows Script that checks a list of cameras by sending an HTTP GET request to the camera. If it fails, it sends me an email for each failed camera/nvr or I can have it send a text for that matter. My reason is sometimes I don't check cameras every single day and it would be good to run a script, even once a day that checks to verify they are working. It actually runs very quick if all cameras are up. Is there anything like this out there or does some NVR software have this simple capability. Someone asked on the Milestone forum but got no response so I'm guessing not.

I gave up looking and wrote the script (attached) so I can run on it my windows PC running the NVR software. If you want to use it, edit it with notepad and add your list of cameras (IP or domain name) and your SMTP information to send email alerts. To run, you can double-click on the script and it will run silently in the background to check each camera unless there's a problem, then it sends an email. The program runs a check once and then ends. To schedule it to run on a regular basis, use Windows Task Scheduler, it's part of Windows for a long time. You find it in Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Task Scheduler, click Create Basic Task, the rest is prompts. I thought about using a free host monitoring program, but you never know what it's doing with the data, with access to your network. At least with a script, you can read the code, see what it's doing and only runs when you schedule it to run, not 24/7 in the background. I tested this with my email, my cameras on my Win 7 PC, YMMV. camchecker.zip

I flashed to the same firmware as you on my HFW3300C and the image stayed the same but when I started playing with the new features like HLC, it made the image very dark, so I turned that stuff off and it went back to normal.

Good solution if all you cameras are port forwarded and exposed to the internet. For example, on two projects, they don't want anything accessible from the internet.

I know I would if I was headed that way.

720P is half 1080P, wouldn't that be half the bandwidth, 3-4Mbps vs. 6-8Mbps. Also, that assumes h.264, could be double/triple that with MJPEG for example.

Yes, stopped in Chicago for some bad pizza and headed for NYC, we don't want it. LOL.

With that many cameras, you need to look at your network topography. You are likely pushing the limits of GigE. I would use all GigE PoE switches or at least 100Mb switches with GigE uplinks with no more than 8 cameras per switch with 100Mb.

I don't understand how software can be the limiting factor unless it's 32-bit, then I can see it hitting a wall at 3.2MB of RAM. The rest can be mitigated as new rack mount servers can support 24 HDD, multiple disk controllers, multiple CPU sockets, each with 8-10 cores, up to 2TB of RAM, 4 port 10GigE NICs. Do they have an explanation of what the bottleneck is? With resolution growing, and I see 8MP cameras being the norm with 4K TVs and monitors within two to three years, 250Mbps is just an unrealistic bottleneck, maybe per GigE NIC it's reasonable, but not per server.

He did post pictures before, very nice illuminator. I did contact Axton about the specific illuminator you have and it appears to be discontinued. The replacement illuminator is already in the same price range as Raytec rm25, or about $300ish. So I love the ideal of that illuminator for $200 but not sure it's still possible unless they re-started making it. To me, $200 seems to be a sweet spot. When you think about it, a 12V LED light is something that should not only last many years, but it should be reasonably priced. It's not like LED is a new concept. 2 years ago you may have paid $60 for a 60w equivalent LED bulb and it was lousy. Today you get 60w equivalent bulbs for $10 and they are good.