MaxIcon

I like the Vivoteks a lot - they're the best overall performers of that motley assortment. Lots of people don't like them for whatever reasons, and support is supposed to be poor, but I haven't needed any. You'd have to spend a fair bit more to get better performance, I believe. Daytime images are very nice, reliability has been great, they're some of the easiest to set up and configure (except the onboard recording, which is a pain), and they maintain their frame rates well with little image blur - multiple streams or clients don't slow them down, which isn't the case with a lot of cams. I also like that it's easy to switch to a single network cable if you don't need the alarm or power inputs - they have a standard RJ45 jack on the internal board and come with an extra seal for custom cabling. Of all my MP cams, I've had to fiddle with them the least, and they've been the most reliable. Night images are not bad, but not great. After Buellwinkle's review of the 2MP version, I set mine to stay on color instead of switching to B&W, and the image quality is a bit better. The onboard IR is good, but has the standard drawbacks of non-intelligent IR - things wash out up close, and the auto exposure is slow to react. Some people have trouble with IR halos, but mine have been ok. You can swap out the lens with other M12 thread board cam lenses, and these are available from really cheap to pretty expensive, so it's easy to test out an inexpensive one to see how you like it. Some have wider barrels than others, and the foam ring may not fit easily. The default lenses are good for the areas I cover, so I haven't had to change them. The main problem I'm having is that I now want higher resolution, but none of the other cams I'm trying are working as well as the 1MP Vivoteks, and the higher performance 2+MP outdoor cams are a lot more expensive.

GV is bundling this camera as a freebie with the GV-1480 card for about the same price as the card without the cam. Many people buy the bundle, then resell the camera to cut costs or because they don't need it. Sounds like you got a de-bundled cam. How's the camera performance aside from the frame rate?

But do they support my combo camera and nail dryer?

I'm doing the same thing - replacing my analog cams with IP. Currently, I'm running Blue Iris 3 on an Intel I3 box, and it's holding up pretty well. The search function is not as good as some of the more professional software, but it's easy to use, inexpensive, no license fees, supports lots of cameras, and technical support is good (though there's no ONVIF support currently). I like it a lot for an inexpensive home system. The CPU load can be high on older machines, depending on the total MPs and frame rate. I'm also running Milestone Xprotect Go (their free version) on another box, but it's a lot more of a pain to set up, and hasn't been as reliable in general (possibly because I'm not setting it up right). Search is much better, though. It also runs as a client/server system, rather than all-in-one like BI3. CPU loading is much lower because the client doesn't run on the NVR box. One plus of using a generic PC or laptop is that you can easily upgrade to other NVR software if you decide it's worth it. My system's a Core i3 540 3.07 GHz with on-chip video, 2 GB RAM, 2 TB HD, running on Win7 Embedded, with the following cameras: 2 x Vivotek IP8332 1MP 1 x Vivotek FD8134 1MP 1 x Messoa NCR870 2 MP 1 x Arecont AV5100M 5MP 1 x Arecont AV5105DN 5MP 2 x LTS Y-cam clones 0.3 MP About 15 MP total Running all of them, I run the CPU load pretty high - 80-90%-ish. Disabling one of the 5MP Areconts drops me back down to 60-70%, and I could run several 1-2 MP cams in place of each Arecont. This system would run your 6 1.3 MP cams with room to grow. If you have a spare PC, you can run many NVRs in demo mode to try before you buy. The main thing is to check that the cams you want are supported.

What's the software you're referring to? I'm setting up a spare cam for some casual LPR tests, and was just going to record it with my standard NVR, but this would be useful.

Should be fine, but you won't know until you try. They probably figure nobody would use 2.5" SATA, since most people want high capacity 3.5" drives that cost less. I've had very similar HDs, with slightly different model numbers, where one worked on a DVR and the other didn't. It took installing them to find out.

My Messoa shifts focus as I tighten down the lens screws, and there's enough slop in the threads that it was hard to get it focused in the first place, as focus would shift when I let go of the lens. Add that it required removing the IR board to access the screws, and I've got a few new lenses on the way to try out, and it turned into a big pain. I ended up putting teflon tape on the lens threads, which both holds it in place securely without the screws, and keeps the lens stable by getting rid of the thread slop. Dunno if that would help with your Vivotek, but it's an easy fix to try.

Yeah, my old-school Cisco SRW2008P sounds like a hovercraft. It drowns out 3 PCs and a UPS on the same stand. Fortunately, it's in an out-of-the-way location, but if burglars follow the noise, they'll go right to it. I'm adding an inline resistor to slow down the fan next time I do any serious maintenance on the equipment stack.

IR is just light, and like light, it's damaging at too high an intensity. Your iris doesn't respond to it, since it's not sensitive to that wavelength, so you don't have the auto protective mechanism that you have to visible light. So, the key is how much power the eyes are exposed to. Like with visible light, too much can damage the eyes, small amounts are no big deal. Your eyes are exposed to IR all day, every day, especially in the sunlight, but the power levels are low enough that you don't get damage (UV is riskier, due to the higher energy of the short wavelengths). Electric space heaters, for instance, give off large amounts of IR by design, and they're fine to put in a baby's room as long as nothing catches fire. It's not easy to know how much power an IR LED puts out. Most give specs for input power (though rarely on cameras, but you can measure it), but only a fraction of that is turned into actual IR output power, and that fraction depends on the LED design and model. After it leaves the LED, the power drops with the square of distance, so moving it twice as far away reduces the incident power by 4x. If you wanted to be completely 100% sure, you'd avoid anything that could cause a risk to a baby's health (including that space heater). If you wanted to use an IR camera and reduce the risks, you could reduce the IR power output by putting a resistor inline with the IR assembly to reduce output (and illumination). Most IR cams have more than enough output for a baby's room, but you'd really have to look at it on a case by case basis. Another option would be to disable the on-camera IR and use an inexpensive external illuminator, pointed at the ceiling, so that the reflected IR illuminate's the baby's area. This would diffuse the IR quite a bit and avoid the risk of the baby staring directly at the IR LEDs for hours at a time (not likely, but everything's possible), and can give pretty good illumination, depending on the room size. This requires a lot less engineering than reducing the built-in IR. YMMV, as always.

Analog systems are still popular due to the low price and ease of use, but it all depends on how many cams and what your resolution needs are. Looking at the extremes, a single analog cam, DVR, and hard drive ends up being relatively expensive in cost per cam, and you could get a single 1MP IP cam for less with better quality, and record to an existing PC or laptop. Bumping to 8 cams, the per-cam cost is a lot lower for analog compared to the same IP cam setup, and you're more likely to need dedicated NVR hardware to handle the load (depending on the NVR). Also, analog cams and dedicated DVRs are a lot easier to set up and record than IP systems, especially for people who aren't PC/network literate, and tend to be more reliable in my experience. I'm a big fan of IP myself and am converting over after many years of dedicated analog systems, but when a friend asks for a starter 4-8 cam recommendation, it's pretty hard to justify IP cams, unless they have a healthy budget. For business use, the improvement in quality with IP outweighs the relatively small cost savings of analog, IMO.

Boy, that brings back some memories. One of my happiest moments in CCTV was replacing a fleet of time-lapse VCRs with single-channel DVRs. Those things took a lot of babysitting, head cleanings, and regular tape replacements, and it was always hard to predict if the playback was going to be good enough when you needed it. The Sonys we used (which were quite pricey back in the day) had error codes, and we'd start getting transport-related ones after a few years. Sony had a refurb plan and would rework them for about the price of a decent Dahua today. They wouldn't last as long after a refurb as when new, but we saved many thousands of dollars that way. That was serious money in the 90s! This is really a golden age of CCTV, with these Dahua-grade DVRs, NVR boxes, and IP cams costing a fraction of what we paid back then for much less performance.

This works well for me with my 1MP Vivoteks. Stream 1 is set for max resolution and quality and goes to the NVRs. Stream 2 is set for lower resolution with the same full-frame picture, and goes to web browsers for people who want to have a smaller window up on a monitor. Stream 3 is a cell phone resolution. If the PC users want to switch to higher resolution, the Vivotek web page has a quick and easy drop-down for it, and it takes a few seconds to switch between streams. All 3 streams are independently adjustable for encoding format, quality, size, FPS, etc, while some cams restrict secondary streams depending on how the primary stream is set. I've never seen any effect on the frame rate from multiple streams being read, which isn't the case on some of my other cams. We don't use the NVR streams because they have a bunch of other cams that aren't of interest to the desktop viewers, and the 2 NVRs I'm running aren't that flexible in terms of reducing screen clutter at the client end. ETA: I forgot to mention the 4th stream. I don't routinely use it, but generally set it up when I'm comparing between various stream settings; for instance, comparing H.264 full res vs MJPEG. This makes it quick and easy to switch between two settings by selecting the streams.

What's your budget, and what are you trying to record?

If you can post some screenshots, that would be very helpful in helping people figure out where the weak spots are. Does the camera look good in live view and bad in recorded view? If so, a better DVR might help. If it looks bad in live view, the camera or lens may be the problem.

I have an AR-6080, bought on a whim and not tested yet, and it looks like everything inside but the DVD is built by/for GVI, rather than them rebranding another OEM's gear. Amusingly, the thing is fairly huge, and is mostly empty inside, with a big external power brick. It could have been 1/4 the size with internal power and still have room to spare. I'm guessing this is part of what put GVI out of business - switching to a business model of designing and building all their own gear in a very competitive market. Probably wise to avoid them.

OK, here are some screen grabs (half-size, with a link for the full size). This is the IP8332, which is 1MP, and it's running H.264, 10fps, "excellent" quality. I may change from H.264 to get the view a bit crisper, and I'm currently running contrast at -5 to resolve the mid-day shadows best. Taking these grabs reminded me of why I like the Vivoteks so much. The web control is very fast and flexible, and I can change parameters and go back to screen views very quickly, compared to my other cams. They've been among the most reliable as far as connections go, too. Brightness, Saturation, Sharpness are all set at 0, and contrast is adjusted in the pics below. My assistant is standing in the shadow of the tree, about 35 feet out, and you can see the shadows at the car show a lot more detail than the more distant shadows. The camera's up under the eaves, as you can see. Contrast +3: http://maxicon.com/cctv/vivotek/viv-ip8332_front_contrast_+3-2.jpg Contrast 0: http://maxicon.com/cctv/vivotek/viv-ip8332_front_contrast_0-2.jpg Contrast -5: http://maxicon.com/cctv/vivotek/viv-ip8332_front_contrast_-5-2.jpg

When I'm looking for something like a switch, I search Newegg and Amazon for stuff in my price range with lots of very good reviews (4 star and above), and read the reviews to see if the negatives are something I care about. This switch doesn't have a ton of reviews, but they're mostly very good on both sites. I'd buy this one if it met my POE power needs, and would expect good results from it.

You can get some pretty decent IR illuminators from Amazon for a reasonable price - search on YY Trade IR30 for one. Not expensive, has a photocell to turn it off in the day, runs from a standard analog cam PS, and mine really lights up the area. It claims it's weatherproof, but I haven't opened mine up yet to check. Likewise, DealExtreme has IR rings for cams for $3-5 each, shipped, if you don't mind a little DIY. It's a bit riskier than buying from Amazon as far as performance goes, but check the ones with good user reviews. Shipping's slow (often several weeks), but I've ordered a lot of stuff from them with no problems.

As suggested, look at Hybrid DVRs. A couple of important specs to drill down to are how many MP/channel they support (and whether all channels support the same), and what the total MP supported by the box is. Some inexpensive hybrids will support higher MP on channel 1, and limit it on the rest of the channels, often to as little as 1.3 MP. An alternative is to build or buy a PC based DVR with a hybrid capture card, which can have a lot more flexibility. Aver's hybrid cards work pretty well, though they need a decently powerful CPU if you're going with very many cams.

Bright sun and heavy shade combinations are challenging to the older Vivoteks like mine (dunno if the newer models have WDR or similar); depending on what's centered on the screen, you either get washed-out highs or impenetrable darks. I've turned the contrast down on one and that's helped a lot, while the other only has this problem during a short period. It seems these cameras come with fairly high contrast and saturation as a default because it makes a well-lit scene look really good - crisp and sharp, bright colors, and much more life than an analog cam. Subduing these qualities helps the balance a lot, but probably doesn't sell cameras as well. I've got one in a similar situation - under an eave, looking into the backyard where the sun gets pretty bright at times. Let me see if I can grab a few screenshots this weekend.

I've got an Arecont AV5100M, an AV5105DN, 2 Vivotek IP8332s, and a Vivotek FD8134. These are all older gen, lower end cams than what you're looking at, but I can relate my experiences. I haven't needed factory support for any of them beyond some setup help that I got from web searches (and they were all bought used, so there's no vendor support), so I can't speak to that. The Arecont software is clumsy and limited, and is easily the least friendly of any of my IP cams, despite them being the highest end of the lot. Until I fixed the IP addresses, they were constantly changing over the course of a week or so. They come with a rather quirky setup utility that's critical to the initial setup (and finding them when the IP changes), and is completely different from the web interface. I have a hard time getting a decent frame rate out of them (especially the AV5100M, even at half res), connecting from an older corporate grade GB POE switch, and they're a good bit more sensitive to both lighting and how many connections there are when it comes to frame rate. They have traditional CS mount lenses, and the focus is extremely finicky at full aperture. I was expecting better low-light performance with a 1/2" sensor, but the 5MP rating means the elements are small compared to lower MP cams. The image quality is decent, but I'm still working on tweaking them in for settings and frame rate (likewise, limited time in the evenings to deal with this). All in all, I'm a bit disapointed in them, and had I paid full price for them, I'd be pretty unhappy. That may change as I figure out how to maximize their performance. The Vivoteks, also bought used, have been far easier to set up and use, and have been much more reliable in their network connections. I have the IP8332s mounted outdoors on the included mounts (not high end, but decent), and they've been ticking along for several months with no issues. All the streams are available in multiple resolutions, you can resize them by either zooming or scaling, the web interface is quite good and the settings are very flexible, and they don't seem to care if there are 3 or 4 clients talking to them at once. They maintain my frame rates (10fps) with no problems, though this is much easier with a 1MP camera, of course. The daytime images are clear and crisp, and I'm very happy with them for the 1MP rating. The image quality suffers at night, but the built-in IR is pretty good, and they're quite an improvement over the analog cams I was using. The FD8134 struggles more with the frame rate, and it's not as sturdy feeling as the outdoor cams, but everything else is similar to the IP8332s. They all have board-cam style lenses, with a much finer thread pitch than the Arecont lenses, so focus is much easier to tweak in. In terms of user experience, software, and stability, the Vivoteks are far better than the Areconts, and are much better than the 2MP Messoa NCR870 I've been setting up as well. I had them up and running in no time, while the Areconts and Messoa have needed a lot more babysitting. If I had the budget, I'd spring for some higher res Vivoteks based on this. I haven't tried the other cams people like a lot, like Acti and Mobotix, because they're out of my budget range, and the newer Areconts may be improved over the older models. YMMV, as always!

First, stick with a decent name brand that has a record of support. Find their web site, look at their software and firmware updates (there should be several versions available), and generally see if they seem reputable. Dahua gets good reviews here, and other vendors sell their DVRs under their own names. Some DVRs let you split the total frame rate between the used channels, but many will limit you to 1/4 total frame rate per channel. That's enough for most uses, anyway. For the cameras, specs don't usually tell the whole story, so read through the posts here and find affordable cameras that the users give good reviews to. Cheap no-name ebay stuff often gets replaced after you spend a lot of time banging your head on it. Spend a little more, and save some time and money.

If you still want to find out more about the OEM, you can try searching on the PC board numbers once you get it. Open it up, look for model numbers and such on the various boards and components, and plug them into Google. Not always effective, but I've found lots of obscure components that way.

If you go to ebay and search on PAA060F, you'll get a bunch of hits on this model. Most aren't clear about what the output pinout is, but many of them look pretty similar. Some have a simple barrel plug, but if you add CWT or Channel Well to the search you'll get some 4 pin models. Not too expensive, either.

I've been working on getting a Messoa NCR-870-HN5 going, and here are the screenshots from it. This is the latest firmware (Kernel Version: Linux version 2.6.18_v1.5.1 _2M_MS00; App Version: AP_01-00-59-07_2M_MS00), and it seems to be mostly stable, though I've been having a lot of network resets on it. I like my Vivotek IP8332s a lot more for friendliness, flexibility, and stability, but haven't had this one running long yet. Main page - there are no lights on except through a few windows, and a rope light peeking around the corner. It's pretty much black back there, with only the IR on. The web page only displays a 640x480 jpeg stream - to see the other streams, you need a DVR, VLC, etc: Image menu - 4 screens: Network menu - 6 screens: System menu - 6 screens: Event menu - 2 screens: