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I'm not Mike, but I can tell you about reading the plate. The short answer is no. You need 40 pixels per foot to read a US plate (1 foot wide) in good lighting, and 60-80 ppf will give more reliable results if the lighting is not great. Night images have other problems, and the Hik's not very good with plates at night unless you can get them fairly close or have good lighting. The plate in that image is only about 26 ppf (20 pixels wide in the original image, 26 if you scaled it up to 1080p). You would need a longer lens to read that plate at that distance.

That's the easiest way, in general. I use my phone, but lots of people like tablets.

How about magical CR123 batteries? A typical CR123 is rated at 3V, 1300 mAh. You'd need 4 of them to power a 12Vdc camera. Using a camera that draws 6W, that's 500 mA, so you could run for 2+ hours. The Brickcom may need more power for the cell circuit, and to get more life you could run more batteries in parallel, though that increases the chance of catastrophic flaming failure on CR123 batteries unless you hand-match them. Likewise, a 12V 7Ah UPS battery would be bulkier, but would power a 6W cam for 14-ish hours, depending on the voltage drop curve. You can get much larger 12V batteries, of course, so if the Brickcom works as a standalone cell video source, all you'd need is the cam, the battery and some cabling, and an appropriate case.

I don't know Foscams except by reputation, but they can suffer from marginal CPU horsepower. First thing I'd do is reduce the frame rate by half or reduce the bit rate by half to see if they helped. I'd also try constant bit rate. 30 fps is generally more than is necessary for any but specialized situations, and if you drop to 15 fps, you should be able to get by with 2Mbps with no problem if those settings help.

Cat6 is slightly superior for long runs of POE connections because the larger gauge wire gives less power drop.

After some thought on this, I believe one way to implement an affordable, compact, self-powered surveillance cam would be to use a cell phone. There are lots of how-to posts for doing this on wifi, so you'd just need an app to stream the data over the cell connection instead. Battery life would be limited, low-light performance would be terrible, and you'd likely need some custom software to make it happen, but it would be much more compact than a Pelican case stuffed with gear.

With the increase of LPR use by law enforcement, I wouldn't be surprised if better IR capture properties are rolled into the license plate specs in many areas.

Here's a post from someone who does this on a regular basis: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=9372.msg55936 He makes self-contained units that require external power, but it's simple to add a power source if space isn't an issue. This isn't going to be some tiny spy device that no one will notice unless you're willing to spend pretty serious money.

That shouldn't be a bandwidth issue, as 56Mbps max is 14Mbps per cam. You can run 4 1080p or 3MP cams at 8Mbps with no problem, giving 32Mbps total, and can usually drop them to 4Mbps with no obvious degradation unless running very high frame rates. This is a firmware design limitation, I'd think, but I don't have one of these NVRs.

If wireless is critical, it's hard to go wrong with the Hik DS-2CD2432F-IW. You have to make sure it has the W in the model number to get wireless. http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/wholesale-Hikvision-DS-2CD2432F-IW-3MP-w-POE-IP-Camera-network-camera-Built-in-microphone-DWDR/638300_1472253824.html

If this were mine, I'd take the cover off and see what it looks like inside before I'd send it out for an expensive repair. This would let you track where the wires go and see if there's anything open or disconnected. This lens should have 3 motors - zoom, focus, and AE - so that may clear up which wires do what. I've got a smaller version of this at home with a control box, but it's been a few years since I've messed with it. I've converted a few auto-iris lenses to use with non-auto-iris cams by removing the auto iris drive assembly. This is easy on some lenses, and tricky on others. You then have it fully open all the time, which can be an issue depending on the app. If you do take it apart (you'll need some tiny screwdrivers), take pics at each stage so you can get it back together again. Also, this appears to be a C mount lens, so if you've got a CS mount camera, you'll need a C to CS adapter for it.

VirtualDub can make time lapse video from existing footage. Google virtualdub time lapse to find info on it. If you want to record timelapse directly, Blue Iris is quite good at it, with a lot of flexibility. http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=3962.0

I had the same problem of slow switching, and ended up going with a separate device for viewing the cams. After trying a variety of Android tablets, all-in-ones, old XP laptops, and an iPhone with limited success, I found that using a Win8.1 tablet does the trick for me. Currently I'm using the Winbook TW700 Tablet ($72, or less if you're near a MicroCenter and can get an open box), which is too small for 4 cams, but is perfect for one at the front door. It's been running on the full-page web view for my Dahua 2100N for nearly 2 weeks now without a hiccup, and pulls 5W. You'd want something bigger for 4 cams.

It's starting to sound like they moved the POE hardware out of the camera to make room for more features like the SD card slot and wireless circuit.

A good starting place for this is to get the firmware info from the cam, then google it in quotes. This will tell you if there are other brands or support sites that make it available. It might take only googling sections or different combinations of the firmware string, for instance. If you have firmware update files, those file names can be a google resource for finding other vendors selling the same or rebranded cams. Likewise, if you have PDF manuals, you can search for specific strings from the manual or look at the Properties section of the PDF to see if there's something unique to search on. For instance, with Dahua, one of my cam's firmware reports as this: Software Version 2.400.0000.0.R, build : 2013-12-31 WEB Version 3.2.4.161826 ONVIF Version 2.3 If you google "2.400.0000.0.R", you'll see threads with links to various download sites.

You need to make sure they either supply the string for pulling the stream, or are ONVIF (not a guarantee, but may help), so that BI can talk to them. Lots of people have searched for strings for no-name Chinese cams without much luck. You'll also want to see if they have any kind of software support site. The camera may work fine out of the box, but getting upgrades for small-vendor cams can be difficult to impossible. There's a lot to be said for paying a few dollars more for popular name brands, but many of us need to learn that lesson the hard way. Still, it may work out fine. BI's CPU load goes up quickly with resolution, and you'll use a lot more CPU with a 5MP cam than with a 2 or 3 MP cam. If you've got plenty of CPU to spare, that shouldn't be an issue, or you can reduce the frame rate. Many cams drop the frame rate above 2 or 3MP, so that may not be an issue. As for the benefit of 5MP over, say, 1080p, you get 2.4x the area resolution, but only 1.6x the linear resolution (depending on the specs), which is what counts. Even then, if the lens quality or compression aren't good enough, you'll only get more pixels, not more real resolution. The ACTi E77 10MP camera is a great example of this; its 10MP image is not as good as a Hik 2MP image, and just loads down the CPU and hard drive for no real benefit. There's a discussion on this here: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=43946

Ordering from AE totally depends on the vendor. Some have good reviews, some not so good, some awful. Here's a popular AE store on some of the forums, though they don't appear to carry this new version of the 2032. http://www.aliexpress.com/store/638300 I bought a cam from them recently with no issues, and went there because others had recommended them. I assumed the cover for the SD card would have a gasket; otherwise, it wouldn't have the IP66 rating, but you never know for sure until it's in hand.

That's a nice addition to the 2032, and the easy access looks good. I like the reset button placement too. All they need now is a mic, speaker, and IO breakout box!

1 - The IR LEDs can be disabled. It's buried a bit deep in the menus, but they added it a few releases back. 2 - The camera doesn't do any on-board recording (no memory slot), so this will all be done by the NVR or software you use. I haven't used the network drive or FTP recording features, so someone who's worked with those will have to comment. I run 2 independent systems, 2TB each, with 9 cams - one recording motion for about a month, one recording 24x7 for about 5 days. Software like Blue Iris will let you clone the camera and run one channel motion detect and one 24x7, but 24x7 eats up a lot of disk space. The built-in motion detect on most cams is much less flexible than the motion detect in software like Blue Iris, but software motion detect uses more CPU. 3 - I think there's a setting to reboot on a schedule, but I may be thinking of Dahua, which definitely does. I run all mine without reboots, though the Hiks will hang very intermittently and require a power cycle. 4 - The 2032 doesn't come with an SD card slot. SD card cams are generally a good bit bigger, and vary a lot in how easy it is to access the card, set up and access the recordings, copy them, etc. SD card sizes won't hold a whole lot of video, and they wear out over time due to the constant re-writing. I used to use them but haven't for some years, but some people like them. If you want to stay small, there's not a lot of choice with SD cards. 5 - Firmware is a complex topic for Chinese cams, and there are lots of threads on it. If you buy Chinese cams, they usually come with hacked firmware for English, and updates will either fail or reset the language to Chinese. There's a variety of fixes for this. You always want to either read the feedback on new firmware first, and make sure you have a file for your present firmware (and TFTP capability just in case). If I were to start with 2 cams today, I'd get a Hik 2032 mini-bullet and a Hik DS-2CD2332-I turret; either both in 4mm or one in 4mm and one in 2.8mm. For software, I'd install the Blue Iris demo and Milestone Xprotect Go. By the time you get everything configured, set up, and tested, you'll have a much better understanding of how things work and what you want in your next cams, and those 2 cams are very useful general-purpose cams.

Here's what mine shows. I'm running older firmware still: Software Version 2.400.0000.0.R, build : 2013-12-31 WEB Version 3.2.4.161826 ONVIF Version 2.3 Status: idle appauto:1 dh_keyboard:1 ethaddr:90:02:a9:2d:xx:xx: ID:WIIR230TZC3KV017W00xxx fd:-1 debug:0 HWID:IPC-HFW4100S:01:02:02:19:0A:00:01:00:00:00:00:210:00:00:02:00:00:00:00:00:100

Several of mine are like that, and I recently had my first failure, after about 2 years. Unplugging at the switch didn't help, but unplugging and re-plugging several times at the camera pigtail brought it back online. The Silicon Valley climate is pretty mild, with little rain. Most of my cams go through junction boxes now, and I tend to wrap the 12V connectors for IR, but some of the network connectors are still exposed.

Best bet is to use self-fusing tape, which seals better. It can be a bit of a pain to remove, but gives good waterproofing. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=self%20fusing%20tape&sprefix=self+fu%2Caps

I haven't seen any 30 LED fixtures with 2W LEDs; this would require 60+W of power and quite a lot of heatsinking for reliability. I believe they'd be quite expensive as well. I don't really follow the high-end illuminators, though. Something's funny about that 100W LED; it looks like the marketeers are playing fast and loose. The maximum power draw spec on it is 60W, and the output spec is 9W at 850nM. Regardless, it sounds powerful, but would need a biggish DC supply (something the size of a laptop brick), and would require serious heatsinking to avoid burning out a $75 US LED. The linked illuminator uses 0.25W LEDs, which are typical in the multi-LED lights. The main thing to watch for with this is LEDs dying or going dim over time, which is the most common failure on the inexpensive multi-LED devices. Typically, these have multiple sets of LEDs connected in series, so if one burns out, 4 or 5 more go dark at the same time. Some people have good luck with these, and it all depends on how well it's designed and manufactured.

This depends on how the manufacturer implements the resolution in firmware. There was a recent thread where one Dahua model had some resolutions that were scaled and some that were directly sampled, resulting in different fields of view depending on what was chosen. Here's how it works in general, but you should check out both specs and samples from the specific model you're interested in to be sure. For instance, some older 1MP cams are more square instead of 720P widescreen. 4:3 aspect ratios (old style almost-square TV/monitor format): Typically 1.3MP and 3MP. 16:9 aspect ratios (widescreen TV format): Typically 1MP (720p) and 2MP (1080P). On most cams, switching from 720P to 1080P will give you the same field of view with more pixels per foot, but some will trim to show fewer pixels (not too common these days). The Hik 2CD2xxx series have a smaller horizontal field of view at 3MP than at 2MP, but this is unusual. Likewise, switching from 2MP (16:9 widescreen) to 3MP (4:3) will give you the same pixels per foot at a certain distance, but will give a little wider horizontal FOV and a much taller vertical FOV. For example, here are the resolutions and field of view for the Dahua HFW4300S with the 3.6mm lens: 3MP = 2048 x 1536 1080P = 1920 x 1080 SXGA = 1280 x 1024 1.3MP = 1280 x 960 720P = 1280 x 720 D1 = 704 x 480 3MP, 1.3MP, D1 = 70 degrees H, 51 degrees V 1080P, 720P = 65 degrees H, 36 degrees V SXGA = 65 degrees H, 51 degrees V What it boils down to is to make sure you can see a sample of the resolutions you want before you commit. As riri7707 points out, a name brand 3MP cam will let you choose between the various formats and resolutions, and is usually the best way to go for flexibility.

So, what worked?