buellwinkle

I believe there are Android intercom apps that you can use and place a cheap Android device at each location. This can be an older used Android phone using WiFi or a cheap tablet.

Living in Norway should not hamper the happiness of Costco that many of us in the U.S. and Canada enjoy. There's a service the will provide you a U.S. address and then re-ship the products wherever you want them shipped - http://www.shipito.com/

I had issues with the newer ACTi cameras and Milestone. I upgraded to their latest "device packs" and all is well.

The problem it's in an small confined area of a balcony surrounded on 3 sides by walls that can reflect light. It would be good to see IR capabilities further out, larger area. For example, I have older ACTi cameras that work great indoors, very clean crisp image. Put them outdoors in a larger area the image at night breaks down, lots of noise.

ISPs for consumers never wanted you to setup a server at home, so not sure that would ever happen. There's still some free DDNS services out there. All you need is one device to keep it updated, be it the router, one camera, or one PC. Here's a good comprehensive list - http://dnslookup.me/dynamic-dns/

And there are so many of these small manufacturers in China, making basically what is the same camera as they all share the TI chipsets, the Aptina or Sony sensors, basically all clones of each other. Of course they will have similar image quality. I dub these the "Dahua Clones" named after the famous "Foscam Clones" from about 3 years back. I attend the industry trade shows and there's usually a huge section of booths from China and Korea and they are loaded with these small manufactures and they seem to all have the same products but in different housings. They are looking for someone in the U.S. to take their product on as an OEM and sell it here with U.S. branding. I thought about it doing it, but these days, with 3MP Hikvision and 1080P Dahua cameras so cheap, not sure the $20-30 difference in price is worth having a no-name camera, worrying about future support, warranty from the manufacturer, product longevity and support from leading NVR software companies, smartphone apps and such. But I was told there's a segment of the market that does not care about leading brand names, just wants the lowest upfront priced product that does the job. So look out, the BuellCam is coming, LOL

These days routers don't seem to last that long but sometimes you get lucky.

Hikvision is a large camera company, most products that I've used have support for Hikvision cameras.

Good to have focusing aids and I have to refocus mine soon when I install it with the varifocal set to the telephoto side of the equation.

I can certainly understand the reward vs. risk if there's a camera that's unique and not available in the U.S. I certainly got Dahua cameras direct from China early on when nobody had models I wanted in the U.S.

Zoneminder is a pain that way, sometimes you get lucky right away, sometimes you have fiddle for days, weeks, months, LOL. To make sure the cameras responds properly to the URL string I gave you, you can test it with VLC Player (free). Click on Media, then Open Network Stream.

Can't speak for the NVR, but when I upgrade Hikvision cameras it preserves the password the camera had before. Is there some sort of reset button you can press and have it reset to factory defaults, then the 12345 password should work. But I did have a freaky experience recently with upgrading a Dahua camera firmware where it changed my Admin password and had to use the backup 888888 to log in, but resetting the camera also reset the password back to admin/admin.

I thought you were committed to Dahua, so what's the appeal of a going with a small importer? At the quantities you buy for your projects, you should be able to get Dahua's like this for under $100 from a wholesaler.

This is the RTSP URL string - rtsp://youripaddress:554//Streaming/Channels/1

That's because they are unbranded Hikvision that came from Hikvision USA, different than ones destined for the Asian market.

This is fully adjustable. From the configuration screen, click video and then day/night and experiment with the "Switch from Day mode to Night mode" setting.

The specs for the varifocal camera says it has alarm I/O. Hang in there for the newer model Hikvisions, the image quality at 50' in total darkness is awesome.

I would be cautious buying Hikvision direct from China, the firmware is China specific and people have complained the U.S. firmware won't load because of a language mismatch. Also, if there's a warranty problem, find out what it costs to ship the camera back, how long it will take and how they turn it around. Keep in mind many in Shenzhen ship via courier to HK because it's cheaper. Shipping a problem camera back for repairs direct to Shenzhen may cost a lot more than you think and the time it takes may be long. There's two models commonly available in the U.S. both are 3MP, both have IR, one is a dome, one is a bullet, but they sell out quickly due to the low price. My distributor says about 1-2 more weeks for their shipment to come in. They typically run $169 - $175. At least you'll get a U.S. warranty and be compatible with U.S. firmware. Also, I did a write-up on how to have these camera write directly to a NAS via NFS and playback directly from the camera if you don't want an NVR. There's many reason to have some sort of NVR solution though. Being able to view multiple cameras at a time, being able to playback recordings from multiple cameras, being able to view live and recorded video from smartphone apps.

You select which stream you want to configure at that point, not the one you want to see. There's definitely two streams as I can view them via VLC Media Player with rtsp://192.168.0.84:554//Streaming/Channels/1 in my case for the main stream and rtsp://192.168.0.84:554//Streaming/Channels/2 for the sub stream. Not only different resolution, but again the aspect ratio is different which is apparent which stream I'm referencing besides the fact that one fills my monitor, the other one is tiny in comparison. I don't have a Swann version to test with, I just borrowed one a while back to do the review.

Oh man, you got short changed. You should have gotten the Hikvision ones because they definitely dual stream. It's defined under Configuration --> Video/Audio --> Stream Type --> Sub Stream. I have not tried IP Cam Viewer with Hikvision, but with Dahua, I'm sure it's using the sub stream because it's 16:9 aspect ratio and my main stream is 4:3 aspect ratio and it's displaying the 16:9 view which looks different than when I log into the camera via the web browser. Using a Samsung S4 if that makes a difference.

That's been my holly grail too, LOL, finding someone that will support it. I don't have time to do it, but when the contractor fails, I'm the one that has to go in and cleanup the mess or spend time with them to make sure it's right which many times takes longer.

IP Cam Viewer uses the second stream by default on cameras that multi-stream, so no, it's not sending the full main stream to it. I usually set my second stream to D1 resolution and 5 fps so I can view them on my phone without problems. Avigilon, Exacq, Milestone, ACT NVR3 can use the camera's motion detect abilities but may not be possible with all cameras. For example, with Milestone and my ACTi cameras, 1% is possible as a server only, but then start adding in Dahua and Hikvision drives it up to 7-8% but that's as a server only. Start using the same PC to view, then the CPU goes up a bunch, like 50% on my first gen i3 with 4 cameras. But I rarely view from the same PC, so not an issue.

One can never say because each camera is different, configured differently and software can be very, very different. So maybe with one software product you can have 16 1080P cameras on a Haswell i3 and one you can only have 6-8 1080P cameras. Also, is the same PC acting as a server only or server and display as that can make a big difference.

Back then I suggested just buying the cameras and paying an electrician to run the cat5 and install the cameras and then hiring some network camera hot shot to aim/focus/configure the cameras, would have a lot, lot less and probably less aggravation. BTW, we don't even pay that much for a large local security company to install 4 Mobotix D14 cameras ($1,500 each just for the cameras).

It's like finding contractors to build a house, the honeymoon is over when the contract is signed. I've dealt with a lot of security companies and for the most part, they are the worst. We've gone through so many, it's sad. We had one had 2 guys spend an entire week trying to get an electric strike to work. We had one guy, different company spend a month trying to configure a group of cameras and after a month he didn't even have the right time set on the camera and couldn't figure out how to access the camera remotely, forget about recording or having the lenses in focus. I had a router hang, told the property manager that I need someone to go there and reset it. They sent someone out there for a few hours and came back and said the router is bad. So out of frustration I drove over and unplugged the router, plugged it back in and all was good. So I feel your pain. BTW, not talking about the sharp people here like thewireguys, just the companies we hire