buellwinkle

The app likely lags because it's trying to stream the larger resolution. If you have newer ACTi cameras, try setting it up to use Stream 2. Set it for 320x240 (when watching 9 cameras on one 1080P monitor, that's as good as it gets anyway since you are only using 1/9th of the screen for each camera). Also, are using WiFi or 4G, that's not going to cut it. Use an Ethernet adapter with your Android device or Amazon Fire Stick. Then setup the app to use stream 2. An alternative is to get Intel NUC PC, about 4.5" square, comes with a VESA mount for your TV so attaches to the back. Low power draw, about 10-20W, you can use a small MSATA SSD for software and booting up. Then install Windows. Not sure how the ACTi NVR works, but with ACTi NVR 3 software, you can run the client on Internet Explorer and show the cameras that way. Even then, run ACTi NVR3 software, turn all recording off, set the cameras to use the sub-steam only and run the ACTi NVR 3 client in full screen mode. Software cost is free. With 4 camera, get a Celeron NUC, about $130, get 4GB RAM, about $40, get a small MSATA SSD, 32GB or 64GB or $50-70. The 9 camera setup may need a faster PC, maybe the i3 or i5 NUC.

IR, Infra Red, means no go on Red. The only way to capture red letters on plates is to go with white light in day mode. If you use a really good low light camera, you can capture rear plates just using the rear plate light. The other thing I've done is put an LED outdoor narrow spotlight mounted in the landscaping pointed low at the plate, like a 60 or 75W equivalent. You don't want it to distract drivers so make sure it's a very narrow spot light, a hooded fixture and aimed as low as possible. The toll road by me uses flash devices for LPR and toll collection. They used to use trolls but the cost too much. It looks like a lightning storm at night with flashes going off in each lane in both directions. So what cameras fit in this category, nothing from Taiwan, sorry Geovision. The best is Bosch Dinion Starlight 8000MP. 5MP of amazing see in the dark that rivals anything I've seen. Pretty close behind are the 1MP Axis Q1604 and Samsung SNB-5004 or Bosch NBN-733V. These are all box cameras, why, because they have the capability to put the type and quality low lights lens. Hikvision has it's Darkfighter camera, 2MP, have not tried it, but same price range as anything above, so why not go with a brand name were service and support will be top notch. Good bang for the buck lenses are from Fujijon auto-iris, their 5-50mm, 15-50mm, 8-80mm. With Bosch I would go with their 5MP lens because not many make a 5MP lens. You say LPR, but I assume you mean LPC as LPR implies you want to do plate recognition which requires a lower resolution camera. We run our 1.3MP cameras at VGA resolution for LPR as anything larger would use too much CPU power to ingest the plate numbers. If you goal is LPC, then go for as many pixels as you can afford in a super low light camera. Let us know how it works out.

Look for an HDMI stick like Android or even an Amazon Fire Stick. These plug into the HDMI port on your TV/Monitor and get power from the USB port on the TV or a USB power adapter if your TV does not have a USB port. They are small, maybe 2-3" long 1" wide. You can use double stick tape to hold it against the TV. Then download an IP camera viewer app and you can setup a grid of cameras to watch. I use IP Cam Viewer, but may not be available for Amazon but someone here said they used Tinycam with it. The advantage of the Fire Stick is it comes with a remote where the Android stick requires that you purchase that separately. Don't know of a cheaper way to do it as these devices run about $40.

Push notification done by cameras involves an app on your smartphone. When the camera detects motion, it sends a signal, likely in the way of REST interface to that app and the phone chirps. How can they disallow that, unless it's N. Korea, I just saw a documentary on that country called "The Interview", tragic. Viewing the video is optional, up to you but usually it's only 10 seconds long. With Hikvision it only works with iPhones (claims to, but does not work properly with android). Dahua's I've never tested but I believe it requires the pay smartphone app for that feature, not the free one. With AVTech, it works with their free app, but they have a pay app without advertisements, but the only advertise their own products. Also, regardless of brand of camera, BlueIris NVR software has push notifications with it's smartphone apps. You can have most cameras send you a text via your phone companies email protocol. I usually get these sort of notifications within 10-15 seconds, not as fast as push notification, but faster than email notifications. I use this with my home automation system to alert me of issues.

That's funny, a first generation i3 for 35 cameras. If I had 35 cameras and wanted a used server, I would be looking at a 2U rack mounted unit, with dual xeon processors, maybe an old HP Proliant DL380 and when I say old, a G6 or better (G7 or G8). You can find them cheap on eBay. RAM is not that important, I run 10 cameras, mostly 3MP with 4GB and it uses less than that, so 8GB is likely more than enough, of course that depends on the software and never heard of NVMS-1000.

First understand that Dahua and Hikvision have little to no factory support, especially when buying directly from China. So you are on your own. When you start getting into Hikvision or Dahua that compete with Axis or Bosch, the price differential is not as great as you think. You are basically looking at the lowest end from these China based companies to the highest end from Europe. So you can't say compare a 5MP Bosch Starlight for say $1,200 to an $85 camera from China, the image quality difference are truly staggering, but when you've only eaten hamburger all your life, you may not appreciate steak. That's not to say the lower end Hikvision are bad, they are quite good, but far from the best. For example, to compete with Bosch's $1,200 camera, you would have to get the Hikvision Darkfighter camera which is 1080P (not 5MP) and that would cost $800ish just for the camera. At that price point, I would easily buy Bosch over the Hikvision for the better quality and better support and double the resolution. Then there's Axis, yes their higher end cameras can be pricey, but the quality is very good and has features not found in the low end from China, so you have to compare apples to apples. Axis lower end is not that expensive, maybe $500 for a 1080P outdoor dome. If it's a big project, say 25 cameras or more, you can get bid pricing from Axis for a more competitive price. Then you have the issue of service and support. I know I can call Axis, Bosch, ACTi and get someone to help me with a camera issue and get it replaced if there's a problem. You can justify that you can just buy additional cameras from China to make up for that, but it's an added expense. Or you could buy from Hikvision USA or from a U.S. source with support and warranty, but that would cost more.

If using Geovision cameras, why not use Geovision's free software? I'll give it the benefit of doubt that Geovision products have gotten better, but you should consider a more popular brand, at least ACTi if looking at Taiwanese manufacturers and their NVR software is very good and CPU efficient. Would certainly not do Mobotix as their quality has gone downhill. Axis and Avigilon make good cameras, but may not be price competitive with Geovision. Also Dahua and Hikvision make pretty decent cameras. If you are looking for NVR software, I would stick with the top 3, Milestone XProtect, Exacq or Avigilon software. They are more efficient and when you have 100 cameras recording on one server or allow you to have multiple servers and combine into one interface, you want something efficient and reliable. They all have trial software so you can try it out. As for buying cameras, with a 100 camera purchase, you can typically get bid pricing from the manufacturer. I know Axis and ACTi both do bid pricing and that may reduce the cost of the cameras by 10% or more from the manufacturer to the distributor and on to you.

I never had a problem plugging in a non-PoE device into a PoE port on a switch. I have a lose Ethernet cable on my desk, connected to a PoE switch that I use to plug in cameras, NVRs, PC's for testing purposes and never had an issue.

Good choice. I believe they 1080P/3MP Hiks and Dahua are the best in their category. If you go 5MP, the only two I used that I like costs a bit more, the Axis P3367-LVE and Bosch Dinion Starlight 8000MP.

Yes, loaded it on a ds-2cd2632f-i, no problems. There's one change I like in that it asks you to change the password if you leave it at the default.

I think this is a new feature with the latest firmware. I was surprised it worked so well. The other way around, not so much. Was not able to get Dahua cameras to record with camera motion detection on the latest Hikvision NVRs.

Try re-loading the firmware. If that doesn't fix it, something is wrong. Never seen a Hikvision camera do that. You can get firmware from Hikvision.com, click support, download, firmware and it's the one that says 2xx2_series_ip_camera_firmware_v5.2.0....

Have you confirmed this with motion detection by any chance? Absolutely. Worked on a review and only had 2 Dahua cameras, so supplemented with 2 Hikvision cameras and works the same way with camera motion detection.

That's the myth, but models are actually the same camera and both can be English or both can be Chinese versions. I seriously doubt it's Hikvision USA as it invalidates the warranty if you don't buy it from an authorized wholesale distributor directly as an installer/integrator as they don't allow resellers. So if you are expecting support from Hivksion USA, that would be so cool if they finally decided to support end-users, specially from ebay or amazon, it would be a genuine Christmas miracle! My guess is he'll have someone call and pretend they are from Hikvision.

You can use cameras that have push video like AVTech who started the trend or even Hikvision cameras have push notifications using apps on smartphones. It chirps the phone to alert you of an event, then plays back the video created from the event. It takes maybe 2 seconds, faster than actually dialing a number and having to answer a phone. Although I've never tried it, Mobotix cameras have VOIP feature that can dial a phone and provide an audio alert message.

You probably have to go in and delete the cameras that were automatically configured before you can add more.

For PTZ cameras, I prefer Dahua. There's more model choices, they've been doing it longer and are well made.

Hikvision cameras work with Dahua NVR's, at least current models.

Easy, go to Advanced Configuration -> Security -> Security Service and check ssh or telnet. I did test it just now for you, and entering showKey shows some keys, challenge code for me is ABCDEF if that helps.

When you say "add a device", what are you adding it to? Can you view the camera using an internet browser? I've never seen anything on Hikvision that asked for my phone number.

I actually tried adding curl to a camera and it just didn't fit as the file systems are full. I can keep it mounted on a NAS for example and run it from there or if you have a camera with an SD card, you can run it from there. A cheap and smarter alternative could be a Raspberry Pi, about $40 with sd card and power adapter. You can write a shell script to issue curl commands to control IR on a set of cameras. You can do it based on a calendar of dusk/dawn times so you can program it to control IR based on that information. You can google raspberry sunrise sunset timer. There's a couple of solutions that are well documented. I was working on using a Raspberry Pi to issue a curl command with the temperature using a temp sensor and it works.

My experience with unknown brands is that the cameras don't last. There's a lot of heat buildup in these type of cameras and a very small manufacturers probably don't have the resources to do a proper engineering. I see guys like this at the ISC shows all the time. It's funny because you mention that to them and they say that was last years model, we worked that out this year and they say that year after year. I worked for a tech startup and their only hardware designer was a kid out of school. They got parts from China and built servers for sale for millions of dollars. The servers stayed up for sometimes days because once in rack, the vibration from one server caused the fans to fail in an adjacent one. Then the fans failed, the server overheated. So he designed a fan ducting system using cardboard and scotch tape. That didn't work out well, luckily we didn't burn down any data centers. After that fiasco the CEO gave up and just bought Dell servers. It takes more than slapping together parts to make something last and that's what many of these small companies in China are doing. Grabbing parts here and there and building a kluge. As for the night video. This is typical of companies in China and Taiwan. When you are in a big city, take NYC or Chicago as local examples, there's so much light pollution that you don't even notice as your eyes adjust and it's bright. I got one camera once that was awful at night at my suburban house. Took it to my vacation condo in the middle of a big city, the quality at night was awesome. So if you are in a big well lit city, all is good, otherwise, it's likely not so good.

Forgot, you are right, NVR's only output 1080P no matter what. I keep thinking more of NVR software and PC you can output 4K video in. Price is not that much of an issue though. I paid $259 for a 27" 1080P monitor and you can get a 4K 39" monitor for not much more at $339, I think it's worth future proofing your investment for when that NVR is old and breaks and the new one outputs 4K.

The Aptina has greater dynamic range. It has greater dynamic range with WDR off on the Aptina compared to the Exmor with WDR on, but the image won't be as pretty, meaning it won't have the bright colors and high contrast that people expect from point & shoot cameras. But from a surveillance perspective, I think the Aptina is better.

If you have four 1080P cameras and you want to watch them all at the full 1080P resolution, then you need 4x 1080p resolution, or 2160P aka. 4K, aka. UHD. Not a big deal, you can get 4K monitors for fairly cheap now, like a 39" Seiki for $339like here on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-SE39UY04-1-Class-Ultra-HDTV/dp/B00Q2VFC4U/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1418964558&sr=8-3&keywords=seiki+39+inch+4k. If you watch four cameras on a 1080P monitor, then each camera will only use 1/4th of 1080P, so 960 x 540 for each camera.