anthonyris

Hi all, I installed a very nice JA series video intercom (Door station + 3 internal video stations) a few years ago, and have been thinking about how to make it remotely accessible. I am wondering if anyone here has found a way? Basically, I'd like to be alerted to doorbell ring, and access the door video unit remotely (tablet/phone or laptop). (FWIW, I'm aware of some of the newer devices that do this, but would like to leverage my existing, installed infrastructure if possible. I also have Vivotek ip cameras, but looking at the video intercom specifically.) Any thoughts/ideas are most welcome! .//A.

Been using the Solstice for a year now with 2 HD Vivotek's streaming to it. - Been pretty reliable, easy to use, small form factor. - No hangs, lockups - UI for accessing the stored video is pretty straightforward. Java applet a bit of a memory hog, but that's Java... - **Can't access stored video from iPhone/iPad, can only see the live stream. - would love it if it had an HDMI output so I could easily have it show on my TV - SMART drive diagnosis reporting a failure in disk integrity, but NVR still working fine. Tried to reset the warning diagnostics, but the fault report persists. Have to figure that out. - New Firmware was recently released, so shows some ongoing commitment to the product. All in all, not sorry I got it as most of the IP NVR products are either way too physically large, or are meant for commercial 10+ camera installations. Nothing else terribly interesting in the home IP security market. At least that I know of. This is a good, solid product for the home security market.

Update on the following issue: (still can't access the PTZ controls, tho.) "- Can't get the email SMTP settings to work. Saves fine, but never sends an email, just a cryptic error message." Well, I did get the email sending to work. And wow, what a bizarre way to set up email... - I noticed in the log that there was a sendmail failure: sendmail: 554 5.1.8 - Domain of sender address root@MYNVRNAME.MYNVRDOMAINNAME does not exist - Weird, as I had set up my email settings/smtp/sender address correctly. But I recognized the MYNVRNAME as something I set elsewehere... - the MYNVRNAME is what i set in the Solstice Network Config as my Hostname and MNVRDOMAINNAME is what I set under Domain. - those two settings, for people familiar with routers, arte typically used as an easy identifier on a LAN, and nothing to do with an email address (or even an actual domain, for that matter in most residential uses, as it is for running local DNS). - the NVR's sendmail system was ignoring what I entered on the Email settings page and pulling in the Hostname and Domain from the Network config. - to fool it and make email work, I put my ISP email address Domain in Hostname and the ".com" in Domain. For example, if my email address was mickey@disney.com, I would put "disney" in Hostname and "com" in Domain. No periods. - Solstice sendmail then concatenates the two fields and presents them to the SMTP server as a valid domain name. I then started getting emails from admin@disney.com (note: that's not the real email address). Wow. Bizarro. If I would have put something nondescript in the Hostname and Domain fields, don't think i would have ever suspected that setting for the email failure. Have a few triggers set up (Motion, camera disconnect). Works fine. Can customize the email that is sent. Plain text. However, haven't found a way to email me the snapshot or video clip from the camera when motion was activated.

Nah, I'll be the guinea pig! Just received one this weekend (4Ch, 3TB). I'm a Mac user and was looking for something that had Mac-compatible web access (no more ActiveX pls...) Have it hooked up to a Vivotek FD8162 (2MP) running over my LAN. Actually, the Vivotek cam is connected to a small dedicated 802.11N access point via Cat5, and the AP then connects to my LAN wirelessly. Been running a few days, no troubles. - iPhone/iPad app works pretty well for streaming, but no access to settings/recordings via the apps - Pretty nice Web UI works in Safari and FireFox (better in Safari). - Able to see any of 4 live streams (my camera supports 1920×1080 and down with H.264 or MJPEG encoding. - System streams fine at 20+ FPS. For security recording purposes, I only record the 8-10 FPS stream. - Adding 2 more cameras next week. - Easy to setup, discover camera. Concerns: - Don't know long term support/reliability/viability. - Can't get the email SMTP settings to work. Saves fine, but never sends an email, just a cryptic error message. - PTZ controls don't do anything. Cam has a digital PTZ (at 2MP, it's actually useful) and I can pan/zoom from the cam's UI, just not from the Solstice. All in all, nice little unit. Enterprise grade? Not likely, but works for my purposes. Wished the thing had a simple IP Decoder and HDMI out, so I could just have it attached to a TV as well...