voip-ninja

How you will set up the cameras will depend on what cameras and software package you choose to utilize. I do recommend that for IP surveillance cameras you set them up with a reserved IP address on your home router. The camera should have its MAC address printed on it and you will want to punch this into your router with a specific IP that is unique for each camera. This way you can web directly into your cameras if you need to adjust something rather than having to use software packages that do that. Also, as far as IR, yes, if you have the budget for it, you do want to get separate IR illuminators as they provide good low light illumination while still being discreet. They also use less power than big area flood lights. You will have to experiment with pointing them to get good performance. Look for the "IP camera starter guide" (or whatever it's called) sticky at the top of this forum, it has a section on IR including the products a lot of people are using. I use Axton illuminators at my home, they are very high performance, you need to pick one that has the range and FOV (degree of illumination) that works for your application. They are available to run on either PoE or they can run on a cheap 12V power supply as long as your wire run is not so long that a 12V supply will overheat. There are also better quality dedicated 12V power distribution units available that can power multiple 12V illumination units. Keep in mind that "budget" illuminators can be had for as little as $50. Good ones are typically $150-$300 or more. Each. The reason I asked you where you were located was to get an idea of temperature range. In Indiana you can probably get away with using budget cameras outdoors, although in the winter time you could get some condensation issues that cause problems. "Good" cams have enclosures with heaters and fans and are typically rated to below zero degree temperatures.

With the kinds of questions you are asking, you might consider bringing in a professional to help you with the installation. IP cameras require a CAT5e or CAT6 hardwired network drop that terminates into a PoE (power over ethernet) switch. The switch functions as an extension of your local network. You do not need different network cards in your PC for different cameras. Generally speaking your layout would be; IP CAM 1 ----> CAT5e cable ----> PoE switch (or NVR) IP CAM 2 ----> CAT5e cable ----> PoE switch (or NVR) ----> uplink to router If you aren't familiar with networking (sounds like you aren't) then this could be a bit of a challenge. You need to run network drops to each camera location, and if running outside you need to shield the cable from UV appropriately by either getting outdoor rated cable or by putting the cable in conduit. All network drops from all cameras terminate to a central location where you would install either the network video recorder (which would have the power over ethernet function and would then connect to your router) or a PoE switch (which similarly would uplink to your router). As far as camera selection.... what part of the country are you in? $150-$300 is on the extreme low end for outdoor cameras, and if you want good night time performance you will need either cameras with superior low light performance or you will need lots of exterior illumination that is on all of the time. Some cameras have integrated IR but in general integrated IR is of limited use since it only lights up a very small area and it also attracts insects which trigger false alerts. Most cameras allow you to set the detection areas and/or set areas to exclude from motion detection so that blowing trees and bushes (for example) can be excluded and not trip constant motion alerts. Even on a low sensitivity setting, things like trees blowing and cars driving by are going to look like motion to a budget camera. Some of the higher end cameras have features like facial recognition and can be programmed to identify and follow people, but products like that are far out of the scope of budget of your typical residential user.

You forget the part where you say that you want them for under $75 USD each. " title="Applause" />

Buell hit the high points, but I'll just reiterate a couple of things. Real-time motion alerts on outdoor cameras are, in general a terrible idea. Perhaps if you have a camera in a very specific location (a doorway) and can tune it so that you don't get too many false alerts then this is something you would consider doing. You really would be far better off having one or more cameras inside the area you are protecting that can be configured to send the real-time alerts. Even then, simple things such as the iris on the camera changing at different times of day (due to lighting changes), etc, can trigger an alert.... I imagine it could get very annoying. You also don't mention what your budget is. You indicate you are in a big hurry and want to go right away, but 6-8 quality cameras for good day/night performance, plus external IR illuminators for some areas, plus the cost of an NVR or the PC software needed could run you anywhere from $1000 at the low end (low end analog or 480P cams with a cheapo NVR at Costco) to over $10K for higher end product.

$7500 still sounds very high for a 3 camera install (per location). Let's say that the materials the installer needed cost $2000 for the installation. That still leaves a HUGE profit for him of $5500. Let's say the install took him a solid 40 hours (even though realistically it should have taken perhaps 4-8 if he had someone else do the wiring)... that's still a rate of over $100 per hour before costs (vehicle costs, etc). The problem is, when contractors get greedy, as this guy clearly is, it gives the entire profession a bad name. The fact that he won't fix your problems with ISP etc and consume your 10 hours of "post install support" to do it is absolutely inexcusable. Personally I'd take the clown to small claims court. You also still haven't told us which specific model cams and NVR he installed, which would give a better idea of how fair or un-fair your deal was.

Thanks for the clarification on IP Cam Viewer. That it can't do any playback (which is understandable) limits its usefulness for me.

An i5 would be more than capable I think of doing what you are describing. Handful of 1-2 MP cams won't push even an i3, so an i5 would leave you with room for expansion. Do yourself a favor and do two things; 1. Build the box, load the OS (I would actually recommend you go with WHS 2011 as it's $50 and is basically a stripped down MS Server 2008) and then download trial versions of all of the packages for security once you have some cams deployed. I think that picking the right software package for what you are trying to do is at least as important as camera selection. 2. Once you know what you're going to do, reload the box and "deploy" it with your security package of choice. 3. Do all of the Windows updates, software updates, etc, and then turn all that auto-update garbage off (especially the FU MS Windows auto update). You don't want your server going down for maintenance unless YOU choose to reboot it. 4. If you're really paranoid then you might want to deploy two drives in a RAID-1 configuration so that the loss of a disk drive won't take your security recording box out of commission. Good luck. Sounds like a fun DIY if you like this kind of stuff.

This. In my experience the difference in viewing remotely via the BI app vs IP Cam Viewer is huge. IP Cam lags like crazy - it streams the full resolution of the camera vs BI sending compressed jpeg images. When I view on my phone, BI has about a 1 sec delay and boost the cpu usage about 10-15%. IP Cam will have no effect on CPU but will be anywhere from 1-30 second delay. IP Cam Viewer is simply taking the full feed from the camera and sending it to you. This takes a huge amount of bandwidth, but of course won't affect the CPU performance of the box you have doing the NVR functions. Problems with IP Cam Viewer include that you can't review recorded video. When I tested ExacQVision, Avigilon, Milestone and others, remote viewing always has a cpu impact, and it also depends on if the cams are doing H.264 or MJPEG. Viewing with dedicated thick clients always seems to have the lowest impact on CPU, and viewing with mobile apps (where the images are typically being re-encoded to be sent at lower transmission rates) have the highest CPU impact. Having said all of that, I am running 4 cams on a C2D 2.93ghz which is a pretty basic CPU and it's running quite well... the server is even doing 2-3 other things.

You can go with far more cameras by using a software package that makes use of built in motion detection in the cameras versus the software doing the motion detection. Also, as mentioned, there are sometimes dramatic differences in how different software packages handle things. Also, remote viewing has a cpu impact, and a different one for viewing with a thick client, thin web client, mobile device, etc.

Routers have supported upnp for years. If the camera supports upnp then it will set up its own port registration at the router.. However, your home IP address is not a fixed static IP address. Typically it's a dynamic IP address. So you have to register a domain against a service like dynamic-dns and then program all of those settings into the router or camera. You also have to know what ports the camera registered itself to so that your security program (that you are using to monitor from the internet) can find them. In theory it sounds like it should be "easy" but it's not. Typically simple dynamic-dns on the router combined with static port forwarding is the easiest and most reliable way to get this to work. As buellwinkle mentions, some of the "super easy consumer happy fun time" cams simply relay all of your data out to the cloud and then when you use a client to monitor you are actually going to this cloud repository to access your data. There are some problems with this approach. For one thing, there's usually a cost involved. Another problem is that the quality of the video is typically slimmed down (a lot) so that the end user's network bandwidth caps, etc, aren't exceeded. You also (in many cases) don't have a physical copy of the recordings locally that you can review at high speed (scrubbing many cams simultaneously). It's a fine solution for a nanny or pet cam but woefully inadequate for a "real" CCTV setup.

$15,000 for 4 cams? Wow. What cams did you put in? Your last posts on this subject indicated you had quotes of $5000 or so for four outdoor cams (some 2 MP) which seems much more reasonable. I have four pretty good Axis and Samsung cams that I bought myself (from some of those internet nut jobs selling at or near cost)... ran my own CAT5E for the camera drops.Use a smal micro-server with 1.5TB of storage space and paid for some licenses through a re-seller for a commercial CCTV software package. Set up my own router (not hard). My total out of pocket for the whole thing, maybe $2,750. As someone else mentioned this is not an insurmountable DIY. I'm sure I would hire an installer for a larger job, primarily to speed things along but no way would I pay that kind of money for a few cams. The story you tell is why contractors in general have a bad reputation. Unfortunately yours happened to be in the security business.

So another interesting factoid. I re-installed XPRotect today on a box I just finished setting up. Was an old EX495 Windows Home Server. I upgraded it to a 2.93ghz C2D CPU (20% faster clockspeed than the CPU on the box I was testing with), put in 4GB of RAM and loaded it with WHS 2011 (basically a slimmed down version of MS Server 2008). Not sure if it's related to my loading the x64 flavor of the Mobile server, or if it's that server 2008 is less efficient, but I do observe that the CPU utilization is a little higher on the mobile server. With it display a view of 4 cams on a tablet the CPU goes to about 30-45% and stays there. If I go to a single cam feed it drops to about 10%. Just thought I'd mention it.

Did you get the xprotect mobile server working?

Sergy, I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time with it.... especially if the mobile apps are limited in scope. What I can say is that I run cctv recording software on a headless micro-server that has no video card. When I was using remote desktop to try to set things up, the HD Witness software complained about my machine not having optimized video drivers. The camera manager was very choppy and the video it displayed (from only one camera) was badly formatted and not working very well. I appreciate you guys offering to help, but I don't have a lot of interest in playing beta tester for the HD Witness application.... since it's free I would imagine that a lot of people who are less fussy than myself would be more than happy to jump through those hoops.

I might be interested in moving from Synology to Milestone in the not too distant future. I would need Milestone Express plus an additional two camera licenses (4 cams total). If anyone can get better pricing or knows a reliable source send me a PM. Thanks.

To get the web server working you first need to do a few things; 1. Go to the overall system view, go to the "servers" section (near the bottom) and add a new mobile server. Populate the fields. I can't recall if it will ask you at this point what port # you want to use. 2. Now that you've added the mobile server - you will have a green mobile server icon in the system tray. Right click it and if necessary re-enter the primary server credentials to get the mobile server talking to the recording server. 3. Right click again and choose "edit port numbers" put in something you want here. 4. Re-start the server 5. Right click the server icon again and choose to launch the web interface. You will observe that it uses a funky url path to access Milestone. Fortunately this is resolved in the next mobile server package so you won't have to deal with this after you update it. Once you have the built in one running you should download the mobile server 2.5a package and install that, the 2.5a mobile server is newer (and better) than the one that ships bundled with the xprotect packages.

Milestone? You go to the camera settings and you can choose the video format and resolution you are after. If using MJPEG you can set the frame-rate and set a separate frame-rate for burst video for recording motion events.

Nope that's what I did. After populating those fields mine connected. Sounds like you might need a device pack or some tech support help for sure.

Yes, when I tried the "Auto detect" it saw my cams but even after putting in the credentials it would not connect to them. I added them manually and it quickly added them. It would be an annoyance if you had a lot of cams and it behaved that way.

Yeah, it could be a model they don't yet fully support. When I tried to evaluate Milestone last year they did not support my Samsung SNV-5080R cams, and nothing I could do would get them to work. This time around they installed and work with very little effort.

With Milestone I had to manually add all of my cams to get them to come up. However, once I input the camera IP address, port #, login and password, it was able to automatically figure out what kind of camera it was when I clicked the auto-discover/configure button. It was actually fairly painless. I downloaded HD Witness, but really not impressed. Seems slow on my server hardware, and just generally seems unpolished compared to other packages out there that charge money.

I have not tried it but I guess I'm willing to give it a spin. My needs are different than that of most here. My #1 use case for any surveillance software is the quality of access when away from home. Whether this be from mobile browser, full browser or with a dedicated app. I not only like the ability to view my cams (which pretty much anyone does these days) but it is really important to me to easily find events and view the recorded footage. I have personally found that Synology for example is pretty good in this area, but many others aren't (finding recorded footage on the ExacQ mobile app is flat out PAINFUL). With Synology, there are a couple of problems. They send full size images/events to the mobile device which consumes a ton of bandwidth and also means that playback of events recorded at decent frame-rates is really really slow. Another problem that I have (but which won't affect most users) is that I want to keep a mobile device up and connected to the camera feeds indefinitely. Synology used to do this fairly well, but I could only view multiple cameras when I was using MJPEG and with newer versions of their software I have found that mobile clients time out. Avigilon has problems here too, as they simpliy let the screen go to sleep after a few minutes with no option to keep the device awake and connected. ExacQ has a nice live view, but it also doesn't stay up and connected and finding/viewing recorded footage is a pain. All of them have their plusses and minuses but right now out of all the stuff I've tried the one that seems to fit with my needs the best is xprotect.

I can only surmise that you don't use the mobile apps much or at all. They don't work well when Synology is using MPEG4/H264. At least that has been my experience with Vivotek/Panasonic/Axis/Samsung cameras.

Well, for those with basic needs Synology does reasonably well. If you don't mind using the bloated and java dependent browser interface to access the recordings (locally mind you, WAN access leaves a lot to be desired) then it will absolutely do the job. It is a bit of a chore to review for specific events because Synology's ability to scrub multiple cams at high speed is not very good. And, as mentioned, Synology only works "well" with MJPEG, which is a space hog. Even then, the mobile apps are sort of hit and miss. If you are only using MJPEG then it is possible to display multiple cameras simultaneously in both the Android and iOS app, but only the iOS app is able to display multiple cams at once if they are not all MJPEG. The mobile apps also "quit" or disconnect unexpectedly and they don't automatically reconnect. Using a Galaxy tab as a "doorbell camera display" was somewhat frustrating as it would just randomly be disconnected (and of course it's always the time that someone is ringing your bell at 10PM that it has quit). Milestone has issues too, and the support looks like it leaves a lot to be desired, but definitely better than surveillance station, assuming you have a box to run it on.