voip-ninja

Do you have the model number? I understand that Axis is one of the best options but from the prices I checked it is likely over what I want to spend for a residential install. Around $700 was what I had in mind spending for each cam, max. Clearly this is one area where you get what you pay for but I can't go too crazy (or I find myself in trouble with someone else.....) You can get P3364-VE for about that price, especially from Amazon ($649 currently from a reseller there). The light sensitivity on these cameras is very good. I can post some examples later. I don't think that integrated IR is going to cover a huge area as you intend to do, it's really designed to work like a spotlight. You can get some pretty powerful external wide-beam external IRs that will throw IR up to 150' at a 60 degree angle. If you were looking at the Axis with integrated IR they are the P3364-LVE, right now they are about $950 and up from resellers. Would love to see a review on one. Here's the Youtube video demo from Axis on the IR performance; _tr7SvjeSRw

I talked to Axis and the P33 with integrated IR are now available with some US distributors and from what they are saying any distributor can now get them. They also have a "closet" demo video of the integrated IR working in a small space and the performance for that kind of application (camera in your closet or doorway) looks to be quite good. For the OP, I will try to post a night video and stills from my P33s for you... they work VERY well in low light situation, but I do get better performance with one of them (that gets almost zero external light) when I use an auxiliary IR.

Others have reported that the only reason the heaters ever need to function is to prevent condensation. Not 100% sure I buy that explanation as many electronics, even though they are generating heat will stop functioning properly at sub freezing temps. In any event, it's unlikely the heaters would kick on unless the temps get below freezing, in which case both the heater and the fan should be going to circulate the warm air.

That's a good point. I don't know at what temp the heater comes on, for some units it comes on at 0C. In my case, the temps have been a little colder than normal here, down to about -15C and I haven't had trouble or condensation issues with either the Axis or Samsung cameras, and the heaters on the Samsung only work when using 24V power which I am not doing. It's worth noting though that for the Samsungs, they are installed directly on insulated walls or soffits and that probably keeps them better regulated temperature wise than the Axis ones which hang out on the corners of the home, get exposed to moisture, wind, etc.

Was the switch under the camera set to class 2 or class 3? When I had the switch set to class-3 and plugged it into one of my older mid-span units, the camera would not power up... which is probably a good thing if that mid-span could not provide the maximum power necessary.

You should be okay then. Basically during the 802.3af handshake between the PoE client device and the PoE host (in this case your Xyxel switch) the maximum power capabilities are determined. As long as the device powers on when it has the Class-3 switch option selected you should be okay. The reason Axis put the switch in is pretty clever... they make it so that the camera can be deployed on newer Class-3 capable PoE mid-spans but also have a fall-back position to work with lower power mid-span units, but prevent the heater from coming on later on after having been connected to a mid-span that cannot provide a full 15.4 watts, but has enough power to initially get the unit going....which could cause the unit to fail due to overloading the power available. More PoE info here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet And this one is good too http://www.veracityglobal.com/support/articles-and-white-papers/poe-explained-part-2.aspx

Please followup in this thread when you get it going and get a chance to compare the Axis companion with the Surveillance Station. Interested in your thoughts. One glitch you might run into is that with the most recent version of the Surveillance Station application from Synology, it will by default set your Axis camera to 0 degrees flip. If it is under an eave as you plan to do, you will need the camera 180 degrees and will have to set that in the Surveillance Station as it actually sends an instruction to the Axis camera now telling it what degrees it wants the camera rotation set at. It's a bit annoying to have to make the change but not really a big deal. One other thing... your P33 has a switch on the underside of the camera itself (take it out of the housing) that sets it for Class-3 PoE or Class-2 PoE. Mine were defaulted to Class 3, which is fine since I use Class-3 mis-spans. However, your Zyxel is almost definitely not a class 3 PoE source so you will probably need to set the Axis to Class-2 for it to power up. I believe the only difference from the camera perspective is whether or not the heater are allowed to work (needs class 3 poe for that).

The edges of the image from my P33 that is wide open at 2.5mm are quite sharp, especially compared to the 3.0mm wide angle of the Vivotek that it replaced, which was very blurry at the corners.

I mounted mine directly to the soffit. If the soffit is something similar to plasterboard or drywall then it should be a non issue to mount a two pound camera housing to it. At least, it's been a non issue for me.

The P33 can simply be ceiling mounted. All you should need to do is provide a CAT5/6 drop to that location that terminates where your PoE switch is located.

My own experiences with eBay/Paypal are quite different. I bought a camera that did not even have an advertised feature (integrated IR) and it was a four month fight (involving literally dozens of long phone conversations) with the seller and Paypal to get my $650 back... all because I followed the seller instructions and shipped the item to the address they provided, which cleverly was not their address on file with Paypal, so then they refused to refund my money. I have 0% trust of Paypal now, whereas with Amazon I have never once had an issue with a return and I've spent thousands of dollars annually with them on every product imaginable. If you do use Paypal do NOT make payments from your bank account. Use a credit card that has strong purchase protection so that you can do a chargeback in a dispute. It is not possible to do a charge back if you foolishly make a payment with Paypal linked to your checking account, as I had done... you are 100% at Paypal's mercy on any kind of dispute.

Good news on the warranty then... bonus! It looks like there are one or two vender generic mobile apps that allow viewing of both live and recorded feeds. NetCamViewer mobile appears to be one such app. The Synology app is actually pretty decent for live and event viewing, I just wish it worked right with MPEG-4 and H.264 as it would use a lot less BW and allow me to view my cameras for longer periods from my mobile without exceeding bandwidth.

Actually if the product is used by the government, military, or financial industry this will not fly, and they do pretty exhaustive testing for this kind of thing. We actually have had to do firmware updates for fairly old devices to switch them away from having static passwords, in order to pass govt/military JITC tests. Personally I would not deploy a device with a static (and known) root password in my wife's small dental practice, let alone a larger business. I also agree that the thread is poorly titled. This is not an ONVIF security issue, this is an issue with low end manufacturers equipment. If they have a default static password that you can change, that is fine. If you can reset the camera with a physical button, that's fine too.... but having a hard-coded firmware level backdoor password that can't be disabled or changed is a big no-no.

Wow, that Amazon price is awfully tempting! I wonder if Axis will honor the warranty. Sorry for the question, but in the paragraphs above are you talking about "Netcam Viewer Mobile" or where you connecting via a web browser directly to your Syno? I'm referring to direct connection using a web browser to connect to the Synology. I'm not sure what Netcam Viewer Mobile is, the Synology mobile application is called DS Cam. The advantage of taking a low price from an Amazon reseller is that typically you are very well protected (vs eBay or craigslist, etc). I doubt Axis will honor the warranty since they want you to go through your reseller, but honestly don't know. I got such a good price on mine that I was not overly concerned about the warranty.

My principal frustration with Synology is that currently their OS X integration is broken, now that Apple removed the option for 32 bit Java. Synology has not addressed this and it has now been broken for a couple of months. Other source of frustration is that if not using MJPEG with the mobile viewer then you will have a lot of connection problems. This almost never happens with MJPEG so I ultimately just switched all of my camera feeds to MJPEG and it works fairly reliably from both Android and iOS running the free Synology surveillance application. Also, be aware that since the Syno web app uses Java and uses a lot of outbound ports on the network it can be difficult/impossible to get it working if on the other end you are trying to view inside of a network with a tight firewall. I have been unable to use it from hotel networks, my office network, etc.... I've learned to live with this, I just use the mobile app over cellular when I want to check up on things. There is currently a reseller on Amazon who is selling a few of the P3364-VE 6mm for $649 which is still a very good price, just not as good of a price as I got a month or so ago when I basically stole two cameras at $449 a piece. I have not tried the Axis companion setup since it does not support my Samsung cameras... I also don't know if it can be used in conjunction with Synology. IP Cam Viewer Pro is "okay" but does not let you view events and so is of little use to me. Frankly I think the app is seriously over-rated and barely worth the $3.99 asking price. //update From what I can see, Axis companion works with EyeSpyFX viewer, which is $8 each for iPad and iPhone (and another $8 for Android). It gets pretty crappy reviews, so not sure how good it really is. It's rather disappointing that a company as big and noteworthy as Axis won't spend the $$ to make their own mobile viewer software.

Hi Hitch. I just got back from vacation and noticed your post. I think that I have almost exactly the setup you are considering, I have a DS1511+ DiskStation and am using Surveillance Station to drive four cameras total... 2X P3364-VE 2X Samsung SNV-5080R I have not had issues with either of these camera models and the Surveillance Station. Initially I was going to go with all Samsung cameras but ended up stumbling onto an amazing price on the P3364-VE and finished my install with a pair of them instead. Comparing the cameras against each other, they are both pretty capable but the low light capability of the Axis as well as the 2.5mm wide angle performance on the 6mm version of the camera simply blow the Samsungs away. In my case I put the Samsungs in very dark doorways, so having the integrated illuminators is a nice plus, but it is possible that the Axis would actually still do a decent job in those areas. I have my Axis cameras installed under eave corners on two corners of a large 3500 square foot home. One camera has no illumination other than a couple of street lights 100+ feet away and has a fantastic picture when it switches into night mode. The second camera is at the front/driveway location and I had previously installed an Axton 12V IR illuminator in that spot, and the performance is excellent... not sure how it would be without the external IR but I expect it would still be quite good. I think you will be okay with either camera model, but the stronger integration and support for Axis in almost every NVR software/hardware out there might make it worth spending the extra money. You could also go the budget route and give one of the Dahua domes a try. I'm sure that the night time performance is not up to par compared to Axis but they are cheap enough to be essentially disposable. They aren't explicitly supported by Surveillance Station but you might get it working using a generic ONVIF profile. As to Surveillance Station itself, it works fairly well. It supports motion based recording which is a plus and it has a "sync" playback feature so that if you have a lot of cameras you can watch playback on all of them synced together. It's pretty nice to be able to watch the previous day or two of footage at a high speed to see if anything suspicious was going on (burglars casing your house, etc). Surveillance Station does have a mobile app that works pretty well, I actually have a 8.9 Android tablet sitting on a small table near my front door which runs the Surveillance Station mobile application 24X7 and allows me to view any or all of the cameras... it's really nice when the door bell rings and I can take a quick look at that tablet and see if it's UPS, a door to door salesman, or someone I actually want to talk to. Keep in mind that Surveillance Station only works well with the mobile app if you use the MJPEG codec from your cameras. You get one free license for a single camera with the Synology, so I would say purchase a camera, and compare how Surveillance Station works compared to the camera's built in DVR software before spending the cash on more camera licenses. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions, I have pretty much the same setup you are contemplating.

I don't have any direct experience with the M1114, but I do have a pair of P3364-VE installed so I can make a few comments. I do not run full 30fps video when recording my cameras because I simply don't see the point of it.... so I can't comment if there are hitches in the video when a lot of things are going on. When I initially set the Axis cameras up and was using live view they were doing 30fps and I can say that the video was fluid and simply rather amazing to look at (almost like looking at a TV broadcast)... however, 30fps even at a resolution like 1280x960 uses a LOT of bandwidth and chew up a ton of storage space on the NAS. Something like 150GB per day. It's simply nuts. I think you will find that most people who do 24 hour continual recording will use something like 5-8 fps. Having said that there should be no issue with 100 megabit for even a 5MP camera feed, so not sure why you are running into issues at 30fps. I have four motion detection windows defined on one of my P3364 and it has never proven to be a problem. I have no direct experience with the ACTi cameras, but I chose the Axis because they have a longer warranty, amazing low light performance, and they are weather rated to -40F using regular mid-span PoE (a lot of cameras require 24 or 48V DC for heat ers to operate). The ACTi cameras might also work at low temperatures, but if the manufacturer does not rate it then I don't trust it to operate trouble free long term. It's been in the single digits temperature wise at night for the past couple of weeks and my cameras have not had any trouble.

Looks good. What does that camera cost? I have noticed that my Axis cameras do superbly in snowy situations due to all of the extra reflected light. They are reluctant to switch into night time mode.

Does anyone know how to troubleshoot Axis cams? Last night I selected one of my Axis cameras from my Synology NVR... the image started to flicker and then the NVR reported it had lost contact with the camera. I could still ping the camera but I could not access the web server... I suspect it crashed. I rebooted the camera and it is working fine but I'd like to avoid it happening again.

Are there logs that survive the reboot, because all of my logs looked cleared after the problem happened. I am using Class-3 dedicated midspan units, not PoE switches. The mid-spans are on battery. It is possible that one of my mid-spans is flaky so I will try to swap it out.

I need integration between my two P33 cameras and a pair of SNV-5080R Samsung cameras, so Axis companion is really not an option unfortunately.

So I have one final camera to install and it's at a point in my house where a CAT5 run is going to be difficult to do in-wall. What's the recommendation for running CAT5 externally on the outside of a residence? Do I have to run conduit for it to be up to code (and if so what kind of conduit is recommended for this), or could I simply staple some outdoor rated CAT5 along the eaves and then paint it to match? Thanks.

So on this low cost system do you think there would be a great disavantage in purchasing the F2? I guess I am assuming that the stock 6mm lens has an F1.8 lens? Thank You Chucky I don't have any experience with these lenses, just pointing out a consideration as I know something about lenses from my photography hobby.

Also keep in mind that the lower the F stop of the lens, the narrower the depth of field. So a lens operating at F1.8 might have a larger out of focus area then one that is F4, F5.6, etc. It's a trade off.

You are probably right. What's weird is that it's been operating for a couple of weeks without an issue prior to this. Also, If the Synology did something that confused the Axis camera it should have recovered itself, that's a pretty basic thing that a security camera should be able to do (reboot if needed or restart services). I have two of them so I will have to keep an eye on it. Synology is on thin ice with me anyway so if this keeps happening then I will probably be 86'ing the Synology for NVR use and get something else.