JoeShmo

I've got an escam K108 mini nvr running 20150124 firmware (came with it) It detects my Dahua IPC-HFW4300S-V2 Cams (2014-11-03 firmware, 3MP) but will not display the video from them on the main screen. If I go to Channel Parameters->Display settings, it shows video in the little preview window, so I know its able to login to the camera. The Mini NVR is able to find and display the Hikvision ds-2cd2032-i (3MP) without a problem, but not the dahua (which I have 4 of). Any suggestions? Connected a disk, and it does seem to be recording these channels, and via webpage, I can also see the video on them. Just not on the console of the NVR.

marky & davel, FYI, There does seem to be a new version, as I just ordered some of these from amazon, and they came with a November 2014 version. Odd thing is the WEB version appears to be older than what you have. Device Type IPC-HFW4300S-V2 Software Version 2.420.0004.0.R, build : 2014-11-03 WEB Version 3.2.1.229556 ONVIF Version 2.4.1 Since I'm still trying to figure these silly cameras out, I cannot test the problems you are having. I can say that the camera is still set at 3MP after 1 week of use (so far).

to tie the POE switches together, it would be nice to use something that does SNMP, so you can monitor bandwidth. Otherwise, you can get pretty much any generic gigabit switch, just don't go TOO cheap, stick with a known brand; 3com, linksys, dlink, smc, adtran, procurve, cisco, etc.. I generally would search google shopping for "gigabit switch", and sort through the vendors that way. 4 loaded 8 port switches are seeing around 20mbit/sec and 2000 packets per second on their uplinks each. So you can do the math there, and make sure the switch you get can handle the packets per second. Typically, thats the part that whacks on switch CPUs is the packet count. If the bw and pps are not even listed in the description/specs for the switch, I'd say don't use it. For alternate software, I'm waiting to hear back pricing for ONSSI, but I'm a little leary of places that do not publish pricing. Depending on knowledge levels of people, and comfort, you could go with something free, such as "ZoneMinder". I've installed it, and gotten it running under Linux, but still playing with it to see if it'll work out for our setup. If this is one of those things where you set it up, hand it over, and leave, I'd suggest going with one of the "bigger names" (Exacq, OnSSI, Milestone, etc..) and get the full support, so you or they can call someone for real support. If this is a friend, and you'll be pretty much maintaining the system, and they don't mind retaining you for a time, and you will maintain it, then it might be ok going with a ZoneMinder setup, but make sure everyone understands that there is no official support (at least that I know of). You post a message on the ZM forum, and hope someone answers in a reasonable amount of time. Sure, good $$ savings, but you "pay" for it when theres problems that you are at a loss for when you need to fix. For the price comparison of Axis 211A vs the Arecont 1300, it was about the same price after you figure in the lens. At around $500 per cam, it still seems a little on the high side. Make sure the camera itself will do motion detection, as alot of the software out there these days will not, and relies on the camera coming back and saying "hey, theres motion, go ahead and record now". Another trick I use for camera selection, is look at as many recording software packages you can find, and check what cameras are supported. You should be able to narrow things down when you see that theres just a handfull of cameras that seem to be supported by all the recorders. Axis is of course one of the most well known, although personally, I have not been too impressed. Their management software is handy though, to keep all the firmware up to date, and monitor when a cam stops responding...

Ok, I know people like standards, so a nice setup for powering non-POE devices I've used is the Dlink DWL-P200, as it comes with both a standards compliant PoE Injector and what I like to call an "Un-POE", it takes the 802.3af power off the line, and gives it to you as a seperate 12v or 5v lead. However, what the origional poster is probably looking at for a much cheaper thing is something along the lines of the POE-PS-150-001 (search for it, since I cant post URLs yet). They're about $5ea. These work great in a pinch, but as you can see from previous posts, I'm sure we'll all recommend not using this. But at long as things are documented, and labeled, and you are careful, then sure, you can indeed use it, and I've done a few hundred feet with it. Just make sure you account for a voltage drop, and pay attention to amperage requirements for your device.

I found this thread while searching for recording software (using Exacq now). Figured I'd toss in what we're doing. around 102 IP enabled cameras now, accross two Exacq servers. We went with Exacq because of the price (around $160 per camera, but we could purchase one at a time). Now, they changed things so in order to get software updates, we'll have to pay $30/camera yearly. Certainly adds up when you have over 100 cameras. We still have about 60 more analog cams that need to be converted to IP, let alone new cams going into other buildings. So we might be replacing Exacq soon. We've only used Axis and Arecont at the moment. Axis seems to induce alot of noise, making motion detection really annoying to try to fine tune. You can fix this a little by reducing the default gain levels on the cameras. We're using the 211A mainly, since it has the AI drive. We're also using a few Axis 421QA analog-to-IP boxes, which are amost useless for motion detection, they seem to need to record full time. Adjusting sensitivty for motion detection on these causes it not to pickup people walking accross the frame, but sometimes record for no reason, because of the "noise" in the frame. We've ordered some Acti boxes to see if they are any better. Arecont (using 1300M-AI) seems VERY nice for motion detection. They detection area grid is not as fine as Axis, but if I throw a paperclip accross the field of view, it picks it up, and theres not too many false "noise" recordings. We record at full resolution, and 10 FPS on all cameras. For 60 cameras (Mix of about 50 Axis 211A, and about 10 of the Areconts), we get around 60 days of video on 4.6TB of disk space (using 3ware RAID 5 w/6 drives). Our building with the most cameras (around 40 cameras) generates around 135-200mbit/sec. Its a mix of Mjpeg and Mpeg4. With a new setup, you can most likely go with H.264, and see lower bandwidth and storage needs. For switches, I'm kind of liking the Linksys/Cisco SRW208P. These are 8port POE switches with 2 gigabit uplinks (10 ports total). The two gig ports can also do SFP, so added bonus if you need to do fiber. Bonus is that they do SNMP, so we monitor bandwidth per port as well as uplink (We're at around 3mbit/sec per port). We're also using normal Cat5-E, as no single camera (even megapixel) is going to go beyond 100mbit. The 8 ports provides a nice failsafe to be sure you don't over-extend the switch or the gig feed (as long as you don't daisy chan too many). We then tie each SRW208P back to a Cisco 2960G, and put it onto its own vlan on our existing network (which can move later if it start taking up too much CPU). I'd suggest using a similar setup, finding a non-POE gig switch to tie the various SRW208P units back to. If this is going to be a seperate isolated network, no need to worry about routing, just keep it switched. If you hop onto an existing network, put some ACLs in place to only allow certain IPs to talk to the cameras. So thats about it for what we're doing. Maybe you can get some information from the above. If I missed anything that you'd like to know about our setup, just let me know. Its pretty simple stuff. Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention motion blur. We had some problems with this on an Axis 211A. I swapped it out with the Arecont 1300, and things seem ok now. After doing some playing, it basically comes down to lighting and shutter speed. The higher the shutter speed, the less blur, but darker the image. So sometimes, you can increase gain, but watchout for the added noise. Additionally, this is another reason for going with the AutoIris lenses, makes it a bit easier to deal with lighting. Also, if at all possible, avoid pointing cams at lights. When watching hallways, keep the ceiling lights out of frame. We don't have too many people walking on our ceilings, and if they did, chances are they'll be sticking dowm from the ceiling at least 6 inches, so we should be able to see 'em (grin).