buellwinkle

Can't tell you what to buy and don't know the UK market, but from my experience, buying cameras from lesser known brands is a crapshoot. They tend to be less mature, may be less responsive in support, are typically smaller companies with smaller staffs and worst, at least for me is lack of 3rd party support for NVR software, for smartphone apps, etc. The least expensive cameras I've had good luck with are Hikvision and Dahua. Chinese or OEM versions of this tend to be more affordable. Like I said, don't know the UK market so don't now where you can buy these, but Google is your friend. Also, I love eBay, but sometimes, after you received the goods, rated the company, I find most of them are hard to reach for support and warranty for example a year later, especially in a situation where the manufacturer may not provide direct support as is the case with many companies in China. So chose someone you trust to buy from.

Tough crowd. Maybe Larry, if he's watching can create a dashcam subcategory under megapixel cameras like there is for SDI since they are all megapixel these days and surveillance/security is become more prevalent in cars. It seems to have some interest here, I'm interested.

They are SDI cameras, unless I'm seeing something different or coupon code is required. They do offer a network camera version for $1,199.

I haven't done it to SD, but to NFS but it's tricky in that you have to get all the pieces to puzzle correctly, so patience is the key.

I just received a flyer from Bosch offering demo cameras to try out their products. Maybe you can get one on loan to test out.

We researched some lenses for an upcoming project and found Fujinon to have good quality and they make a large variety of auto-iris lenses. We were looking at one for a 1MP camera, 5-50mm, autoiris and it was about $100. It could be a 1/2' 3MP lens would work just as well. As a photographer, Fujinon has a much better reputation for quality than Tokina. You may need a C to CS adapter like we did.

It's hard to compare images, yes during the day it's great, so are most 1080P IP cameras. Where it's hard to tell is at night. Sure, downtown Manchester, everything is lit up, it's not typical U.S. suburbia or rural areas. At night, on a poorly lit street, the street is still well lit by headlights and can't really see beyond as it's too dark. Price wise, is it really cheap, its day only, indoor only, has no illuminators, doesn't even come with the power cord or mount for that price. I figure that by the time you get the mount, the SD card, the power cord, the clip that holds it, the Velcro, you're well over $100. The problem with this as a dashcam, it doesn't have the some of the features people in that space want, and maybe I missed it but GPS encoding and impact sensor would be nice. I do like the size, and the wife had an incident where she was hit from the rear and the person was so out of it, they didn't even realize they hit something. What I would like in a dash cam for our truck is something license plate mounted that can act as a rearview camera and then also record say the last half hour of driving in case of an accident. This fad started in Russia, but I think it's making it's way here.

Here's pictures of the naked 2.8mm Hikvision domes, old on left, new on right. The 12mm comparison I showed before was not correct as the lens and foam is very different but I didn't have their new 2.8mm to compare to, but today I do. The build date on the new dome is 8/2013 that I got direct from Wrightwood Surveillance. The old design had a floating hood that held the foam, but no pressure against the dome to provide a tight seal. You can see the new design pushes the lens out further and the foam has a bevel to it where previously it was square. Also, there's a clear photocell on top which is not protected in the old design, but is shielded from the IR LEDS on the new design and is tinted green. As stated before, the Ethernet RJ45 jack changed from a square to a much smaller round waterproof design. I'll get some images tonight.

The Dahua IPC-HFW2100 are good, the Hikvision ds-2cd2032-i are much better, but you can't go wrong with either other than support. Going a little higher end like an ACTi D32 would give you better service, support since this is sort of new for you and they have pretty good NVR software for free. You'll want real outdoor cameras, where the illuminators light up the area at night. Also, Milestone XProtect Go is commercial grade software, free for 8 cameras and has very good smartphone apps and a decent web interface or remote access that works with most browsers. Once the surveillance camera bug bites, you'll have a half dozen cameras before you know it, a front door cam, a driveway cam, a backyard cam, it's just a fun hobby.

I would send it back, sounds like it's going to happen again, why wait for the warranty to end.

The gasket covering the part of the inner rings of LEDs is normal, doesn't affect the operation of the IR illuminator. I have a 12mm Hikvision dome that has a narrower gasket, but not sure it would work with the 2.8mm lens, may block part of the image. Just mounted an ACTi D72 on the wall by my front door, I lucked out and did a rough pointing, went to my PC and it was perfect. That's like 1 in 100 for me.

Some of you have asked for the wall mount bracket for dome since it's 2-axis and needs to be mounted level. Nice clean look, cables feed through the wall mount. PM me on where to get them.

Image quality wise, they are comparable, same resolution, same 2.8mm lens, same hot spot in illumination typical for very wide angle IR cameras. The ACTi is a full sized dome, so more flexibility in pointing and it's 3-axis vs. 2-axis on the Hikvision. I would think you would get better service and support from ACTi than from Hikvision. Hikvision is smaller, less obtrusive but plastic vs. aluminum on the ACTi. Then software, you can't really compare ACTi NVR3 to BlueIris. Especially in your situation where you want 3 cameras in one area and the ability in NVR3 to do synchronous playback is huge, seeing all cameras playing an event together as the subject moves from camera to camera, BlueIris can only playback one camera at a time. Being able to scrub a timeline is also key with NVR3 and it's not as easy in BlueIris. Next, you need a serious computer to run BlueIris as it's sort of a CPU hog, I ran ACTi NVR on an Atom processor Nettop for a year with moderate CPU use. I don't care so much because of the upfront cost of the PC, but the electricity costs as they are quite high by me and only going higher. I run BlueIris, NVR3 and Milestone all on one PC, but transitioning to Milestone because it has better smartphone apps, it's sort of in-between NVR3 and BlueIris in CPU use and supports a huge list of cameras. BTW, I should have the reviews on the D72 and DS-2CD2132-I wrapped up by Monday or Tuesday. Just finished the bullets, the D32 and DS-2CD2032-I.

I got major recording issues on one D14, I have a feeling Mobotix will be replacing that one pretty soon.

My installer does a lot of work at schools, I'll give him a call later to see. If you are in So Cal, he's good and reasonable. The schools where he installs use Axis P33 domes (they tried the cheaper M series domes but didn't have the results they expected). Nice thing about Axis is they support corridor mode in many of their cameras and if you have 16 or less, you can use their free Axis Camera Companion app in the camera that records to an SD card or to NAS storage and view the cameras with their free PC app. I know how crowded halls can get when class periods change, I used to tune pianos for the local school district and it's crazy in some middle schools for example. So not sure you'll be able to physically see 100' away with dozens of kids in the hallway. Imagine this, one tall teacher standing 5' away may be enough to block the entire view of the camera at 12mm. So if you ask me, can you see a kid 100' away, the answer is a qualified yes, but if there's nobody blocking the view. I say get one camera, try it out, use the varifocal lens to try different settings, maybe try different mounting locations. When you have it figured out, you can buy the rest you may need and get fixed lenses where you can to save some dough.

I can see people wanting to use NVR appliances or software with Mobotix as Mobotix can be difficult to use at times and also it would give you the flexibility to incorporate other camera types that Mobotix does not make, like speed domes, LPR cameras, box cameras with special lenses.

I have not used it specifically, but seems affordable for a dome with a varifocal lens and 3-axis but not day/night and no IR LEDs, but if this hall is always lit, then that doesn't matter. I prefer ACTi, their D61 has about the same specs and lower price and without testing both side by side, my instincts would be to go with ACTi over Vivoktek but for about $30 more, get the 2MP version, D62, better low light sensitivity and you can never have too much resolution. The 2MP D62 can be had for less than the Vivotek 1MP.

OK, I'll throw some new camera images out there, keep it going. These are images an ACTi D32, 3 megapixel IR bullet, good bang for the buck camera from ACTi; Youtube videos here; Day - Night -

Get a 1080P or 720P camera, 16:9 format, turn it 90 degrees so you get a portrait view (vs. a typical landscape view). Now everyone will look sideways. Then get BlueIris software, ~$50 and it has a corridor mode that will flip the image 90 degrees to match the camera so for example, instead of a 1080P camera showing you 1080 pixels high, you would get 1980 pixels tall, pretty cool. This more than doubles the effective pixel in your image.

Daniel, have you tried the fix suggested yet?

The 12mm lens will not distort the image, heck, the wide angle 2.8mm lens will distort with what's called barreling and the closer you get, the more it will distort the image. With the 12mm lens, objects that are close will need a faster shutter speed to not get motion blur. If you are not sure, get a varifocal lens camera and adjust as needed.

People asked where to get this, I'm just providing the only place I know that carries it, at least in the U.S. If you have another place, please let us know. Honestly, I would not have posted this if people haven't asked where to get them. I've promote other products all the time, like Newegg for Zyxel switches and Trendnet Powerline adapters, as an example, just my experience with the products and where to get it. Not that you haven't promoted Avigilon products over and over again, but that's cool, you like them, you sell them, you install them, you tell people about them.

That's dated over a year ago, may be hard to find something that old. The latest is dated May 2013 and Maxicon posted it before and has worked for me.

I've seen self contained systems when I was at ISC West but didn't take notes on that. But I would think you can build it, just get a PTZ camera that runs on 12V, a 12V battery, a mobile broadband router with a mobile broadband USB stick (or a WiFi router if you will be that close) and mount the camera to an outdoor metal nema enclosure with the battery and stuff you need inside and then put pole mounting straps on the back of that to mount to like a light pole or telephone pole. Then just strap the contraption on a pole, check it all from your laptop, no wires, no mess. If it has to be for an extended time, put a 12v solar panel on top of it. Keeping everything 12V will make it easier.

You asked for the Hikvision dome wall mount, and now it's available here - http://wrightwoodsurveillance.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1_6