voip-ninja

Because Corporate Wifi -> ISP -> Comcast can have different rules and different routes than Corporate Wifi -> ISP -> AT&T The ports could be the same at the far end but the rule-set, etc, could be different. There could even be something at an ISP level (beyond your local network admins) affecting things. Are you able to access the mobile server over a regular web browser to each location from your wired network at your office? That result would also be a clue, but no one here can fix this for you, you would have to talk to the network folks at your office.

Your question is really not a CCTV type of question at all... it's a windows question and could probably be best handled in a more appropriate forum. I never open up RDP access over simple port forwarding to windows boxes. It is an extremely risky thing to do as you must really be vigilant that everything is locked down. And, you are quick to dismiss that your contractors would not do something like this, but how well are they securing your passwords? The only way the system is secure is if YOU are the only one with those credentials. If anything you can make them some super restricted account for access, or, better yet, use something like Team Viewer if they need to look at the system so that they don't have access to your machine. Your machine might have had more than another profile created, you could have a ton of mal-ware installed. If you use the same password on any other machines on your home network they could be compromised too as it would take someone with the right tools about 5 minutes to scan and infect every machine on your home LAN that they could gain access to via the one with open RDP access. If it's really that important to you to be able to RDP into the machine, you should look into using something like LogMeInIgnition which proxies everything through their servers, so that it's more secure (done via HTTPS) then a direct connection as you are doing.... or, you can swap out the cheesy router you probably have at the location with something that does SSL VPN and only use the SSL VPN connection for gaining remote access.

You need to talk to the network administrators at your office... to find out if they are blocking that port or doing something with it. Alternatively you can try switching things at Site A so that a different network port is in use. It could also be something specific between the internet service provider for your work and Comcast.... they might be doing access control or other things with certain services on Comcast networks. In short, you can't do anything yourself to fix this, you need to talk to your office network people. To prove this out, I would be willing to bet that you can view both locations via wi-fi at other places that don't have strict network policies. To put things in perspective, I have all kinds of issues using services like this at my work. They are hard asses and block/firewall/ACL all sorts of things in addition to monitoring how much bandwidth is being used by employees and what sites they go to. So, I simply don't connect my personal devices to their stick-in-the-ass wi-fi network.

That's not what I read at all. He has cams at site A He has cams at site B He is viewing at site C When he's viewing at site C, he can view site A via wi-fi, but with site B he must switch to cellular. The most likely explanation is that the port that he's using for access to his site A cams is blocked at site C.... they might have blocked or fire-walled the port in use. This has nothing to do with NAT local loop capabilities, because if I understand correctly he is not viewing at the site that has the cameras.

Also, if the homeowner is willing to eat the cost, point out that it makes sense to do two runs as long as it's open. Helluva lot easier to have a spare cable in there if something goes wrong x years down the road. I agree about trying to do some kind of conduit access, 800 meters is a seriously long run to do.

As far as Milestone goes, it's worth pointing out that the free "Go" version and the very expensive professional version are pretty much exactly the same other than limited capabilities on Go, such as number of cams, length of archives, number of access connections, etc. Buell, were you going to do another Milestone review soon?

If you have people committing acts of vandalism then why won't you consider the modest cost of buying a real outside camera? I don't have a lot of sympathy when someone buys the absolute cheapest thing out there, points it out a window, and then complains it doesn't do a good job. Those are nanny cams and aren't designed for what you are trying to do.

If you want two way audio communication at the door then you need a camera that has an audio input, audio output and you also need to (preferably) find one that has full duplex (not sure how common that is). As far as installation goes, you will need to wire a microphone to the camera as well as running the low line output for audio out into an amplifier and then to a small speaker. You will need to choose a camera that has a mobile app or web browser that supports the push to talk or you will have to get a 3rd party surveillance package that supports the feature. Personally if that's the route you are going, and you don't have a lot of time to fiddle around and play with it (installing it in a basement, etc, and making sure it works the way you want before putting it into its final destination) you might want to hire a professional. Or, get one of the "door cam" products that does everything in one small battery operated unit for $200-$250.

If door monitoring is your primary need, I would look into this project; http://www.getdoorbot.com

I think this is the route I'm going to try. Might as well be a guinea pig for science Make sure to post a review.

You would need to know the amount of light it puts out (as it translates into range) as well as the vertical field of view (FOV) to know if it would light a wide enough area to be mounted up high and provide any useable illumination for stuff that's down at ground level. All in all, I'd be skeptical it would work, but you could always buy some, run it in your basement or something and experiment. If you want a good illuminator with a really wide field of view, that can throw useable IR light out 50+ feet, get an Axton illuminator, just pick the one that has the specs that match your location.

If you are a DIYer then you can absolutely do this yourself. In my humble opinion the "hard parts" of a CCTV install are pointing/focusing cameras properly and setting up motion detection well. So, do two things; 1. Buy cams with electronic zoom and focus to make focusing and zooming them less painful. 2. Get recording software that gives you ample feedback so you can get the motion recording and alerts right. If you've got the time and modest technical skills it is absolutely doable, and there's no reason to spend USD 7500 for a few cams and an installation. As far as networking goes, the cams will need either a PoE switch or power injectors. Look on eBay for a "mid-span power unit". You can get rack mountable ones that can handle as many cams as you want and you don't need to change out anything else in the network.

I was going to send this to Beull as a PM (as I know he's starting to play with Milestone) but there are other installers and re-sellers here who have Milestone experience so figured I'd bring the topic to the group. In playing around with Milestone "camera based" motion detection I have come to the realization that Milestone sets up its own events for this on the destination cameras. In other words, I can set up all of the motion detection areas and tweak the sensitivity (per zone) on my Axis cameras, but none of those events will trigger motion recording on Milestone XProtect. Apparently I must use the Milestone wizard and motion detection settings to tweak motion detection and it seems a bit limited. What are the experiences of others? Is there a not-super-complicated way to force Milestone to use the motion detectors I have programmed into my cameras or do I need to rely on their detection setup?

BI doesn't use camera side motion detection which is why it's a CPU hog. If you use a software package that makes use of camera side motion detection (like ACTi, Milestone, ExacqVision, Avigilon, etc) you should be fine.

Which version of Milestone? I demoed and ultimately bought licenses for XProtect Essentials with 4 cams. I'm quite happy with it other than normal issues like this one when you are using something new. What tipped me over was the quality of the Milestone mobile apps. They are quite good. That's the version I was thinking of. I first thought about XProtect Go but since my cameras are watching my lake house I thought the 5 day limit would not be good for me. I have Blue Iris but liked that the Milestone came with an app for my phone where I have to buy the one for Blue Iris. What are the specs of your computer? I have a Core 2 6400 2.13GHz with 2GB of RAM. Wasn't sure if that would be good enough for Milestone or not. I would probably start a new thread asking for a direct compare of Blue Iris vs Milestone, I know that Buellwinkle has direct compared them. In addition to XProtect Go limitation of 5 days of archiving, it also has a limitation of only 1 viewer at a time. I'm not sure if it counts mobile app viewers towards this limit. I think your PC will probably cut the mustard no problem. I tested out initially on an older 2.6ghz C2D and the CPU only broke a sweat when I was using the mobile server to simultaneously view 4 H.264 streams... I'm guessing it has to transcode them. Worst case, you might have to upgrade the CPU if you do a lot of cams or mobile intensive stuff. I actually am now running XProtect on an old Windows Home Server HP EX495. I spent about $85 bumping the RAM up to 4GB and another $30 on a used E7500 CPU (2.93ghz C2D). It is now way over-specced for this job but I have headroom if I want to upgrade cams or add more later. I bought a $50 copy of Windows Home Server 2011 for the EX495, which is basically a slightly stripped down version of Server 2008. At $50 its pretty hard to beat since it is more or less a real server OS.

Come on, it's all in good fun. Yes, I saw that thread which convinced me that in the case of Axis at least, the XProtect Recorder is direct-programming the cameras for the motion detection. It's unclear to me if I could build an event for each of my motion windows and point them back to XProtect from with the Axis cams. In any event, after some tweaking I'm pretty satisfied with the quality of motion recording I am getting. I have observed one other fairly small problem. It seems that if I leave the thick client up in my virtualized Windows 7 machine, and then re-connect it, sometimes one or more cameras will show "connecting" or simply show a black screen. It does that with live video as well as recordings. If I wait a bit eventually they reconnect... or if I close and re-connect the thick client it straightens it out. Not that big of a deal but worth mentioning.

Which version of Milestone? I demoed and ultimately bought licenses for XProtect Essentials with 4 cams. I'm quite happy with it other than normal issues like this one when you are using something new. What tipped me over was the quality of the Milestone mobile apps. They are quite good.

For the number of cams you are talking about, to record at say 10-15 fps with MJPEG you will probably want at least 1TB of storage to record a couple of weeks worth of events. The viewer PC does not need to have outstanding specs for most of the software that is out there.

That's interesting. I've pretty much 100% confirmed that what I am setting in the camera itself is having no affect on what Milestone is picking up. I was wondering why I was missing a lot of motion events even though my Axis cams were set up appropriately.... as soon as I tuned things in the Milestone interface the events were being picked up. Perhaps Axis is a special use case. Interestingly, when I was using Synology it did seem to pick up any motion event detected in the Axis cams, even after I resized windows, added additional ones, etc. Sounds like a great opportunity for you to test their tech support since you are now a Milestone distributor.

With Milestone you get a choice of using camera based motion detection or using their built in motion detection. Interestingly though, they provide the same "motion detection" tuning interface regardless of which you choose. From doing a bit of research I suspect that what happens is you set your exclusion areas, sensitivity, etc, and they then program the camera appropriately. I would just like, in the case of my Axis cams, to be able to allow the Axis cam to do all of the motion detection and still have the Milestone Recorder do the motion recording. Not sure if this is possible or not, but the Axis camera motion detection (which for example allows you to set different sensitivity for different areas) is superior in my opinion to what Milestone offers by way of their motion wizard.

Hi Paul, That's kind of a tall order for the budget you have. As far as license plate reading goes, you will basically have to mount a camera that is pointed at a specific spot on the road and has good illumination in order to reliably read plates (you can't just shoot the whole road, you will need to have it zoomed in to the bumper area to get good reading). You also might need a camera with good WDR performance in order to compensate for things like oncoming vehicle headlights affecting the ability of the camera to read the plate. Assuming you went with all budget 2MP bullet cameras from a manufacturer like ACTi, your budget is doable at about $450 per exterior 1080P camera and you going on a shoe-string for the recorder PC, PoE switch, etc as well as going as low end as possible on the interior cams. This also assumes you try to get the best prices you can even if you don't go through an authorized dealer/servicer. Keep in mind that if your outside cameras are not mounted directly on the exterior of your home (instead you mount them on gate or pole away from the property) you will need to run direct burial CAT5e or CAT6 to the camera location. So; 6X ACTi 2MP bullets - $450 per (D42, etc) = $2700. 2X cheap 720P interior domes - $300 per = $600 So, $3300 for cams. You still need cabling, PoE injectors (or 8 port PoE switch), as well as a PC to run the free ACTi NVR recorder software. So... doable, barely. If you are willing to direct order something lower end like HiKVision or Dahua you can probably shave $500-$750 off of that price. Their NVR software isn't as good though from what I've read.

Why? Because they are dirt cheap, that's why.

There aren't vendors here who can do what you are after. This place is frequented by pros and amateurs who do installation and maybe do some re-selling and technical troubleshooting. If you need 10K pieces then just start emailing the chinese camera companies directly and stop posting here.

If you are going to run the software on your PC, then what's going to stop the thieves from walking out the door with the evidence of the crime if there is a break-in? Are you at least planning on SD card storage as a backup on the cameras themselves?

I agree that for his project ACTi is probably the way to go, especially if he's going to use a purpose built PC as the NVR and all cams are the same brand.