Razer_SE

Wow. I use, and am still buying, Exacq systems, but I'll easily admit that Avigilon is a great product. In the end Exacq was significantly cheaper and still met all my needs and more. Were it not for Exacq then I would be using Avigilon myself. It's fine to not like a product, but at least try not to come off crazy when talking about it! Some things may be true, but it will get lost in the rest unless your arguments are clear and have real proof or good examples.

I do know that the processor will not matter hardly at all with Exacq, the other one will require a lot of thought in the actual computer as it is a hog in comparison. I'm running many, many Exacq systems and the CPU is not something you have to think about. I'm running 9 ACTi 3mp cameras and 1 ACTi 2mp camera for example on an i3 with 2gb of RAM. The CPU usage is around 1-4% without the client up on the screen, and when it is it is closer to 20%. That's it. I just looked at another system for comparison as a good example - I thought this system had a dual core pentium but when I looked it was a celeron. Celeron E1400 @ 2.0ghz. 2Gb of ram and there are 8 cameras, 6 ACTi e31s and 2 ACTi KCM-3911 hemispheric cameras. Without the client running I'm at 1-3% cpu usage, even with me remotely pulling video from it from my client on my laptop. Pulling up the web view and viewing every camera at once will take it to 50%, and the same with viewing on the local client. I very much like not having to worry about processor usage, though I'd recommend better than a Celeron lol, at least it works fine.

I too am interested - no idea why I want one but I do. Just got a new car and a dash cam could be fun and the video quality is truly impressive to me anyway. For no more than they cost I'd like to try one of these out. The market seems to be full of many tiny brands, seems that someone big could really make a nice business for themselves by making and marketing a quality "brand name" dash cam at a good price. I understand the lifetime concerns and weather issues and such people have brought up, but I think the op was specifically asking about the quality of the video compared to IP cameras. I have to say that the quality of the captured video on many of the dash cams are better than I'm getting out of 3mp security cameras. They are not cheap by any means, so I just want that sharpness and image quality in a security camera. If I get a dash camera I could take some shots beside some IP cameras just to compare image quality, that could be fun as a comparison. Maybe some day.

Well, I see you are using exactly what I do for a switch, that was my first thought. I have a hundred or so ACTi cameras, and I've found that my Cisco 300 series managed switches will not like certain ACTi cameras. For example, I'll have 7 e31 cameras and one will keep disconnecting. Power cycling the switch will bring it back for a few days, or a few weeks, but it will always fail. I'll move it to a new port that another camera worked fine on and it does the exact same thing. It follows that camera / cable, so it's not the actual port. I switch out the Cisco switch for a ZyXel 8 or 16 port unmanaged switch and it will be fine, no further issues. The only other time I had issues like this is was firmware related on the 5611 and 5211e, the 5.09 firmware had a known problem with disconnecting issues.

Thanks for the replies, I ended up with 12,000' of Honeywell cable for my first order and have already installed well over half of it. So far it is working great, but the real test will be how well it holds up over time I guess. I looked a the Remee and CommScope cable too, but the local people at ADI said they recommend and sell the Honeywell more than any other. Who knows, but I'm giving it a try! If it gives any trouble at least I;ve got a couple of other good options, thanks guys.

It varies wildly as many have already pointed out. I literally never even think about the processor of the computer, I had to run look at a system real quick to see what is averaged. I use Exacq, so my only choices are cameras with built in motion detection so there is no real load on the CPU. The system I looked at currently has 4 3mp cameras, and one 2 mp camera. Web server is running all the time, and being fed to a remote viewing location. CPU is an i3, with only 2gb of ram. With the client loaded and viewing 4 3mp cams at once I'm at 28% CPU usage and with the client closed, but still recording and such in the background as a service I was from 1% to 3% CPU use when watched over five minutes. Ram use was 48% with client running, 40% without. Running Windows 7. I'll have better example on Monday as I will install the rest of the cameras then, I'll have 9 total 3 mp cameras and the one 2mp camera, along with 5 analog cameras all hooked up and running. I'll also see what it is with and without the client running so you get a good idea of usage with 29 mp going through it! I've no clue what that would require for CPU if it were not camera side, but I'm sure it would not be good!

In my experience with the ACTi I like the WDR during the day a lot, it really helps certain shots out a ton. At night it is bad, makes for grainy video with so much shadow though. I wish WDR was able to be disabled automatically when night mode kicked in. In the end for me, I have had to disable WDR on virtually every camera that has it except for a for a select few that are bright enough shots to stay in day mode all the time. If it was an indoor shot of a gas station or something with windows and there was a lot of light then WDR would be a must have I would think.

That is interesting news, I was unaware of that. I know nothing about tyco so I'll have to do some quick reading! I've just purchased my last full size servers and will be done ordering the licenses for a good while by the end of the year, so hopefully I'm good for a few years anyway. After that, who knows, if they get bad I'll jump to Avigilon if they can just lower the prices a bit. Exacq killed them in pricing when I looked before for the type of systems I needed, and the web views and the like. Then again, nothing was as bad as Milestone lol!

For a system that takes you one hour to configure how many cameras is the system? I don't know about him, but for me from unboxing an Exacq server to it being done and ready to head out for install is maybe 30 minutes total. That is for me changing the default user accounts around, installing firefox, a few camera utilities, VNC setup, and exacq web server setup, and setting my desired static IPs. That's all I really need to do, my Exacq user accounts and all settings are all stored in a default setup file, so a couple clicks and the exacq is good to go for 8 ip cameras as my default install. Unbox, spend 30 minutes on it then it's ready for install!

Avigilon or Exacq. Milestone is out there too, but the first two I mentioned are better than anything else I've used.

Has anyone else been having a lot of issues with ACTi 5611 and or 5211e cameras not staying connected for whatever reason? I have about 30+ of these at separate locations and recently have been having a lot of problems with them staying connected, and just power cycling the switch fixes it. ACTi camera utility cannot even find them, so it's not a software problem on the DVR side. I use Cisco 300 series business class switches mostly and they seem to have the most issues so I've been tweaking the switches lately to see if I can cut down the issues. I turned off green ethernet, set the the power on that port to critical, upgraded the switch to the latest firmware and such. Most of that was done this week so time will tell if that helped or not. The other brand switches I use is ZyXel though, and there is no management on those, or fancy features, just all power all the time and I still have this happening. Literally just power cycled a ZyXel switch via a ups remotely right now which reminded me to post this. Also important to note that I have other ACTi cameras on these switches, at times all 8 ports filled and the only camera that ever has this issue is the ACTi 5611 and or 5211e. I have always had this issue with this series of ACTi cameras, but maybe only every 90-180 days or would a particular camera need the boot. This last week or two I've rebooted almost every one I have! Most are running the newest firmware on the camera also, that may be the issue as I did upgrade them all here recently. I know they have mentioned that in the firmware notes before, where they were fixing the dropping of connections, but for me it seems there is still a lot of work needing done! Anyone else? I'd open a ticket with ACTi if it were not such a brutal process to get understood - hoping someone else has heard of the issue and that they are working on it. I need a better contact than the stupid help ticket system as that has proven useless for me anyway.

Well, it's fully supported now. Appears to have had support for the last five versions of Exacq. You might take another look, there are roughly 50 or so Samsung cameras supported on there when I looked in the link I posted above.

I used to use these, and my older ones were dead simple then they came out with a newer model that had a couple of power switches on it. One main one on the back, and another one on the front. I cannot remember exactly how they worked as mine are all out in the field now, but I seem to remember the front switch not working as I expected it to, I thought it worked backwards to how I expected it too. Been a couple months so I don't remember clearer sorry. I do know that the front switch in the wrong setting caused POE phone to not work until it was changed. I use the 16 port models now and have no issues, and no power switches!

I looked at luxriot a while back and it was pretty nice actually, but in the end I chose Exacq for less processor needed and a few features I needed. In fact, your original computer would handle that camera load just fine with Exacq. I run 8 IP cameras on i3 or less processors all the time with no issues, I have 6-7 running on old Pentium dual cores with no issues. In fact, the hybrid systems handle 8 IP cameras, and 16 analog with an i3 and 2gb of ram with no trouble at all. You will have to look up each of your cameras on the link below, but I know that many will work just by looking at your list, as I use Vivotek and Acti and I know the other brands are supported. https://exacq.com/support/ipcams.php As mentioned Avigilon is another solid choice, but they did not quite support the cameras I needed at the time not sure where they stand currently.

I wish it was that easy! I am accessing all my sites remotely, and I have currently 63 separate remote sites. I have to VNC into each site, then update the cameras from there and most only have on or two of the 5211 or 5611 cameras! Many of the sites have 6-10 acti bullets though and upgrading them all at once at a single site is easy, I love that for sure.

So I finally had to roll back about 20 more of the cameras yesterday as they all were offline. I got them all done and then got a link sent to me with the new 5.10.01 firmware where it is supposed to be fixed. Man, I sure wish I had that about 8 hours earlier....

Glad to hear that they work so well, I'm planning on getting a few of the really long range ones at the beginning of next month. I can set them up to trigger an email which is how I have them now, but at night there is no one to really see the email. I can also set it to send a text message, but I'm getting sensitivity dialed in correctly first. Soon we will be a 24 hour a day operation so whoever is working overnight can check them. Next thing will be to get a phone dialer to actually dial a number and alert a group so we can try and get a few arrests ourselves! Anyone know of a good dialer that can be triggered by a relay from my DVRs?

I just purchased a couple PIR sensors from Optex with good results so far. I needed very specific long and narrow beams (80' by 6') and they were one of the only games in town for my needs, but they were reasonable as far as price and are working good so far. Easy to wire up, good flexibility for ranges and adjustment also. Have to lower sensitivity from the highest as two nights this last week it picked up a big raccoon walking by lol, but picking him at at 40' was pretty cool too. Still testing levels as they are new to me also. My next one will be the 330' long by 10' wide beam, be interested to try that one. I purchased mine from Amazon.

I use a ton of ACTi cameras and they work very well for me, but I also use Vivotek cameras and have been very pleased with them. In my case I'm using the basic 1mp cameras and had moved to ACTi from Vivotek but am considering switching back now. I have way more issues getting a good picture in low light on the ACTi cameras than I do on the Vivotek cameras for some reason. I tweak and tweak the ACTi cameras where the Vivotek gives me a good image right off. Many times the Vivotek will be giving a good color picture where the ACTi is black and white only and not great then. For a high megapixel camera though ACTi may well be the better choice for now, not sure how well Vivotek compares there. As far as dome vs bullet I prefer bullet cameras too, the only major reason is that at times the cameras with built in IR will reflect on the dome resulting in a very bad image. If mounting outdoors the bullet is many times more waterproof as the average dome is open on the back side.

The ones I've rolled back are running fine now, so that is good. I'm not using ONVIF at all, I am using ACTi protocol but still getting the lost connections so I'm not sure whats up there. Seems to be more widespread than just when under ONVIF just so you are aware. Think I'm rolling back and waiting for a while again! The same bug affects the 3911 cameras also, which I can understand as they are running the same firmware. At least I know it is definitely firmware related and not something specific to the camera itself I guess.

Well I did get a reply from ACTi, So at least I'm not crazy - I've done three more reboots and rollbacks this morning. If nothing else I'll not have many left on this firmware at this rate I guess. Hope the update comes quickly, they said they are releasing an update soon.

I have yet to contact tech support, I've never had great success with making them understand what is going on - I will try to get a ticket opened up today I guess. I came in today and found two of the 5211e cameras off line this morning at one of my locations just down the road from my main office. I've never had them both go offline, one of them has never gone offline before and the other one only twice in a little more than a year. I found another one in separate location that was offline, also on newest firmware and it is the only IP camera there, so it has the entire switch all to itself as far as power goes. This one was also a 5211e. Lastly, I found a 5611 offline at yet another location, after reboot it also came back online but it has lost all it's settings and is back to factory defaults. Static IP address and all is gone so I'm starting over on that one. It is on a switch with one one other camera, an E31. Everything else at that location is analog currently. Has never been offline before, it's only about three months old. The E31 is working fine, in fact every single one of my ACTi bullets was working fine this morning, and I have about 200 of those currently. I rolled every one of them back a version or two in firmware to see what happens. Not bad for a Monday morning huh?

6.03.17 is now out for these cameras, I'm upgrading 4 of them now but they will not be installed until next week as they are brand new.

I am using Exacq, latest version on all of my servers. I've been installing a few servers a month for 1.5 years now, so I started with 5211e cameras then started using the 5611 as soon as it came out and have never had major issues with connectivity until now. Something has changed, so I'm going to keep hammering away until I find it! I'll figure it out eventually I'm sure. This is affecting sites installed 1.5 years ago and sites installed this last month, and it all started about three weeks ago or so with the real issues.

Yes, about three weeks ago I installed 5.09.15 on the vast majority of them. I'm starting to look that direction as many of the cameras had been up for months before the upgrade with no issues, and some have had to be rebooted two or three times since. I just checked one I know I've not had to reboot for a long time and it is running 5.06 firmware. I may look at rolling them back if this continues. I had not thought about it but I am having the same issues with a few of my 3911 hemispheric cameras too, and they are using the same firmware as the 5611 and 5211 cameras. I know I upgraded all of those to the newest firmware and I've rebooted three of them a few times recently for the same connection issues and a reboot of the switch fixed those also.