voip-ninja

I did see your review of the Brickcom bullet and appreciate you putting it together. The fixed dome version of the Brickcom that supports on camera motion detection and is outdoor rated is very high on my list but I'm just a little put off by why you have to use a high power poe mid-span to get the fan/heater support when other cameras are able to get by with just the regular poe. One recommendation for future reviews is that for judging night and low light performance it might be helpful to have a location in a back yard or some other non-lit location to get a better idea of how these cameras really do in low light situations. Thanks for the note on the ACTi, I was not aware of the design difference. I actually thought, from your review, that the 7811 did not have particularly good night performance and the temperature ratings on it won't cut it for me during cold evenings here in the foothills unless I'm okay with just letting it go dead several times a year when it gets below 20F outside.

So, I've been talking with one of the US based Vivotek tech support folks (he has been really helpful, I really can't complain too much about Vivotek technical support) and he has confirmed something I have been suspicious of for a while now. Specifically he writes to me that this model camera is known to have some IR reflections when the camera angle is tilted close to level with the dome. So, that's that, not too much more I can do about the IR reflections problem. I will investigate possibly moving this camera to a different location once I can buy either a Brickcom VD-130NP, Vivotek FD8335H, etc, for this location as I believe both of those have newer generation IR dome gaskets that will work better at the angle I have the lens pointed.

You are probably right. They (various HOAs, most notoriously ones in Florida) tried similar BS stunts years ago trying to prevent people from putting sat dishes, TV antennas, wifi antennas, solar systems, etc, on homes... they have gotten their asses kicked in courts on each and every one of these. If what you are doing is providing energy, information sources, etc, then their aesthetic concerns don't trump your rights to access energy and information. Having said all of that, for me, personally, I find large bullets and box cameras in a residential setting aesthetically displeasing, so I am moving to all domes at my home. If you have a monster enormous house, than a couple of full blown PTZ domes, etc, would not look that out of place and can be done tastefully (at a high price) but the typical residence is not 10,000 square feet on 10 acres of property.

A lot of the dome cameras can be recessed mounted, and if you are creative you will likely be able to mount it and never have them (HOA) say a word about it (paint the exterior shell to match the paint on your house and the dome would be VERY unobtrusive and hard to spot). I find it odd that you live in a covenant controlled neighborhood with a strict HOA and yet have problems with break-ins. If the breakins happen at night then your biggest concern should probably be low light performance. Facial recognition in low light conditions is tough (in my opinion), and it's probably worse if you are using infrared with built in illuminators.

Looks like my Synology NAS supports Brickcom cameras. Anyone have any experience with the FD-130NP or VD-130NP specifically? My NAS supports camera recording from these models of fixed domes.

I am having some challenges with night mode at the moment, so nothing to share as of yet. The IR illuminators are posing quite a problem and it seems as though the sensor doesn't do very well at default levels, so I'm still playing around with it. Do you have anything in higher res than 800x600? There is a very small file size limit on this forum which forced me to resize the 1600X1200 image.

I posted a daytime picture at 50% resolution in the pictures thread. Still working on night mode settings, so far it's proving painful to setup. Also, for some reason, the motion detector on this camera doesn't appear to be working properly... at least, when I program my Synology to do recordings with the on-camera motion recording with 90% sensitivity and 10% trigger area, I am almost never getting a recording, even if a large vehicle drives by. However, the motion recording activates every time I am up on the ladder staring at the camera from 1 foot away... go figure. Not quite sure I can recommend this yet. The daytime PQ is decent, but setting the focus on these, dealing with the PITA illuminators and some other install challenges (the metal base on mine wasn't drilled out properly for the screws, I had to take it to a hardware store and have them re-tap it for me for 8/32 machine screws) makes me question if I would buy it a 2nd time. On the plus side, I got it brand new for only $450, so it was hard to pass up. I might be looking for something with better night time PQ (without the illuminators) for my next purchase. The Acti 7811 might be worth looking at. The Samsung cameras also look very interesting, but sadly my NAS does not yet support them.

I am having some challenges with night mode at the moment, so nothing to share as of yet. The IR illuminators are posing quite a problem and it seems as though the sensor doesn't do very well at default levels, so I'm still playing around with it.

Interestingly enough, Vivotek has an entire troubleshooting article written on dealing with this issue (IR bleed through). http://www.vivotek.com/support/appnote.php?appcon=19 I am pretty sure that my gasket for the lens is loose/dirty, so I might have to look into removing the lens board and then reseating it.

Hmm, sadly, not the answer I am looking for. The primary reason I upgraded out of my very solid Panasonic PT camera that was at this location was that I wanted something similarly unobtrusive that would provide me with decent low light performance at night. As an aside, the daylight performance is much better than the older VGA camera. I posted a sample at 50% resolution in the appropriate demo image thread.

Vivotek FD8361.

regardless of how I position the gasket I can't seem to get a tight seal to the dome. Are there any installer tricks for dealing with situations like this? The bottom left part of the gasket appears to be tightly sealed to the dome but the rest of it seems to have a gap and repositioning over and over again hasn't dome much to straighten it out.

That is exactly the problem. You may need to slide the gasket up the lens barrel a bit. Usually these things are just a rubber or foam ring that's friction-fit around the lens. Looks like the gasket in question is a rubber gasket that has a metal "spring" on the end, but this spring looks like it's only there to keep the shape of the gasket intact, it does not allow it to be extended. The gasket pops free of the board lens a little too easily, I will have to play around with it and see what I can do to get it in there and have a tighter seal with the dome.

Looking at the Vivotek advanced setup it looks like Synology enabled motion recording (motion window is labeled syno_window_1) but the motion recording thresholds might be set so that most events don't get recorded. It looks like it is set to sensitivity 90% and percentage 50% which might be why I am not getting recordings, this is a pretty large area of the screen, I will have to see what Vivotek has to say about these thresholds in the user documentation.

That is exactly the problem. You may need to slide the gasket up the lens barrel a bit. Usually these things are just a rubber or foam ring that's friction-fit around the lens. Ah, I see, I will take a look, thanks.

Thanks, I'm not sure if this will be possible, lI have the dome screws tightened as much as possible and the lens gasket is not making contact with the dome that I am aware of.

The Panasonic cameras are probably the way to go, but they only offer VGA in most models, and one problem that I've encountered is that my Panasonic PT cameras only offer G.726a audio which is incompatible with iOS and possibly android as well.

Blue Iris works extremely well as long as you have the appropriate expectations. I have it recording 3 VGA IP cameras on an old Windows Home Server that uses a 1.8ghz Celeron CPU and it doesn't skip a beat. Routinely that server is up for several months at a time between reboots and Blue Iris has not locked up or crashed on me in several years that I can recall. The flip-side is that Blue Iris has a very limited web browser (I have mine set up for access over the internet) and they do not have a dedicated iOS or android application for smart phones or tablets. They do have a smart phone optimized browser but it's only good for looking at live camera feeds, not recorded events. I agree with the other comments, you got a good deal on your cameras, but they are very low end cameras with extremely limited support. You get what you pay for. Personally if I was worried about people skulking about a property with acreage I would spring for one decent quality PTZ dome with IR, that would cover my main entry point to the property, and record even at night.

Does Blue Iris still have no ability to do on-camera motion capture? I only have 3 VGA cameras right now and so I still use it with a low end windows home server and the CPU is not crazy high, but yeah, if true that's a major disappointment. I am now using Surveillance Station from Synology, which runs on my Synology NAS and does support the camera doing motion detection for most cameras that it supports (I am running this in conjunction with Blue Iris that runs on a different box). It's actually growing on me, but it requires ports to be opened on a remote firewall in order to view the cameras or recordings, which means that on a lot of remote networks (at my office, at hotels on their network, etc) it does not work. Luckily their iPhone app works pretty well and works over the AT&T 3G network so I am able to check events, etc, from that. They don't seem interested in fixing that stuff either.

Is that Cisco fanless?

One NVR worth looking at, which is geared towards the home or small business user is Blue Iris. It supports hundreds of model cameras and is pretty cheap. It works fairly well and has an easy to set up remote web interface that lets you access live feeds and recordings from anywhere.

Ah, interesting. I knew that most 8 port switches only had 4 poe ports but did not see that in the Cisco spec. The Netgear 16 port 10/100 switch has 8 poe ports and the advantage is you can use all 8 ports for poe since your uplink port will be a non poe port. It is very compact and I have had good success with it, other than the one early failure on a unit after about 2.5 yrs. I have had a second unit running for the past 10 months and so far so good.

Good one with the "let me google that for you" link, I've used that myself in the past! I guess that I did not realize that the term for such a device was a "poe splitter", I was doing searches for 12V power injectors with cat5 and having pretty crappy search results.

So, I've been doing a ton of research on newer generation fixed dome cameras with day/night capability, and outside ratings, as a replacement for my Panasonic PTZs which are great cameras, but limited to only VGA resolution and low light capabilities are pretty terrible. One thing I keep running into with the weather rated cameras are notes that the fans and heaters only work with a 12V power supply. Currently, all of my cameras are driven off of class-3 PoE mid-span units, which can deliver up to 15.9 watts. How would I provide power to remote locations for a camera that requires a 12V supply if all I have run is CAT5e or is it even possible? Also, should I simply assume that ALL cameras with fans/heaters require 12V source? I just got a bit of a deal on a Vivotek 8361 on eBay, it's not clear from the specs if the fan/heater on this unit require 12V but I'm going to assume it does. Thanks.

Cool deal Matt, that's what I had seen too but after running into virtually every other camera indicating that the PoE did not drive the fan/heater I was coming to the conclusion that none of them did. I will look at the link you provided for a power solution. I am interested in possibly trying one of the 1.3 MP Samsung cameras when Synology supports them and they only support fan/heater over 12V apparently.