grege

Hey all, Looking to add some dome cameras to my house to watch the back deck stairs, front door, and basement doors. I currently have some ACTi cameras but I'm open to other brands. The bullet cameras I have are ACTi E42 and I have to manually focus once I set the zoom. That's a pain with the location of the cameras so I am also looking to replace them with something that can autofocus. I would also like the dome cameras to autofocus. What brands/models should I look at? Also, how do I know if they autofocus? Thanks

This isn't an NVR but I use Sighthound to watch my cameras. I use it on a Windows computer but it is also available for Mac according to the web. https://www.sighthound.com/download

wrong forum. please delete

I was using Blue Iris but it was a drain on my PC which made the vides be choppy. I tried the ACTi software since I have ACTi cameras but I was getting too many false positives and when I asked ACTi about it, they looked at my setup, tweaked it a little, and said that is the best it gets because of using them outdoors. I tested Sighthound at the end of last year when they had a free trial for multiple cameras and liked it. I just switched last week and have been very happy with it. I have not noticed a drain on my PC and the videos it captures are very smooth. They also now have an Andriod app where you can view your cameras and the clips it captures. Their software also pushes an alert to the app when motion is detected. Here is video of some motion it capture this morning that I just uploaded to YouTube. Greg

You might also want to check out http://www.sighthound.com/. I'm currently using Blue Iris but it uses a lot of CPU. I demo'd Sighthound and really liked it. It's motion detection was very good. I haven't had a lot of luck with the ACTi motion detection.

You might try resetting the cameras.

Thanks. That is what I tried but no luck. I asked ACTi too and they said the same thing just listing the user name and password as part of it. I've gotten with Ryan at Sighthound and he had me check the URL to see if it works in VLC and it did so then he had me send him a bug report. Hopefully he can figure out my problem so I can check it out.

I don't see where it supports ONVIF. It does do RTSP and there is a stream path field. Do you know what it would be for an ACTi E series camera?

I would like to try the beta version with my ACTi E42 but can't get it to connect. Does anybody kniow how to connect an E42 to it? I think I need the direct URL to video feed but don't know what it is. Thanks

They told me the beta version includes a Pro license until 10/31 so give that one a try for us Buellwinkle.

I have this one. It does a good job of throwing the light out pretty far. If I remember I will take a screenshot of it tonight for you. Here is a shot of my backyard using this illuminator. The house is a walkout in the back. The camera is mounted under the eve above the first floor and the illuminator is mounted below it on the deck framing. I am using an ACTi E42 camera and it is at the widest angle which is 3.3mm. You can see that the angle of coverage is not as wide as the camera but it is much brighter back there than what the built in camera illuminator was doing. Hope this helps.

I have this one. It does a good job of throwing the light out pretty far. If I remember I will take a screenshot of it tonight for you.

I was having issues with my E42 cameras sending mail. Been working with ACTi and they got in last night and updated my firmware. Then this morning during breakfast I probably received over 200 emails in a short period of time. Sometimes I will get multiple emails from the same motion detection zone at the same time period. I wish there was a setting to stop that. I went in and turned off the notification for now. Maybe you should open a support ticket with them. I oprobably will once I get another problem with 1 E42 I haev resolved.

Definitely less CPU usage. I've been using it with some Foscam cameras but now that I have ACTi I can't use it because of the load it puts on my CPU. Had to start using the ACTi NVR but I liked how BI would send me a video in the email from motion detection. How about making the video that gets emailed a little longer with more pre-frames? When I was geting them I would always get video with a car already parked and not pulling into the frame.

Yeah I saw that in the latest ACTi newsletter. The Zyxel passes. I'm going to check it out this weekend. Weird thing is I can ping the camera and see the IR lights from another camera at night.

Did you walk out and make sure your IR was on?

Since mine is only 1 camera and it's the farthest from the switch I might get a PoE injector and use that so I'm sure it's getting enough power.

I hate to have to replace a switch I just bought. I was just thinking. The one camera I am having problems with is located in a detached garage. I'm guessing but I probably ran 160' of CAT6 cable to get to the location. I'm using a Zyxel 16 port unmanaged switch. Could it be that the power to the switch is being reduced too much over the distance? If yes, what would I need?

That's pretty similar to what I can do with Insteon. On my way down to my lake house I can turn on the water heater and change the temperature on my thermostats. I also have an ISY that runs programs so the lights come on and off but I can also turn them on and off with my smartphone. I'm not sure what the deal is with mine. I went into a PC I have down there and I can ping it's IP and I get a response but the camera won't come up. I guess when I go down I will try disconnecting the CAT6 cable first, checking connections, and see if it comes back up. I have changed the port numbers so I may have to reset the camera if that doesn't work. 2 other E42's are working fine. What model are you having problems with?

I've got one offline now and it is at my lake house so I have to wait until next time I am down to figure out what is going on. I think I may have to figure out a way to be able to remote power cycle my switch just in case. I use Insteon products so may be able to do something using an Insteon outlet.

Hey all, I've been really disappoint with the coverage of the IR LED's on my ACTi E42 cameras at night. I have a motion light on the side of my garage so was wondering if anybody has tried something like this. http://www.ebay.com/itm/LIGHT-BULB-940nm-120-IR-Infrared-IR-led-ILLuminator-Invisible-Glow-/150721373553?pt=US_Security_Cameras&hash=item2317b1a571 The camera is not mounted right where this light would be coming from and I didn't know if that mattered. Would it work or would I still be disappointed? Would I need the light to come from pretty much the place the camera is mounted? I also saw this so I could try this one. http://www.ebay.com/itm/INFRARED-ILLUMINATOR-940NM-NIGHT-VISION-NO-RED-GLOW-WEATHERPROOF-USA-/221217036800?pt=US_Security_Cameras&hash=item3381901a00 Thanks

Good to know about 940 vs 850. This might be better then. http://www.ebay.com/itm/140-Led-IR-Infrared-Lamp-Illuminator-Light-850nm-for-CCTV-Camera-High-Quality-/350783096543?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51ac4d46df If I have a house and a detached garage facing it and a camera on both, would the illuminator mounted on the garage shining between the buildings assist a camera on both the house looking out and the garage looking back?

I was trying to get my E42 camera to be able to email out on motion detection. I can't use Gmail since it requires SSL. I tried another account I have somewhere else that doesn't require SSL and I use on some other products but no luck. What are people using for a service that works with the ACTi settings?

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. Yeah I tried using ACTi software but I wasn't getting good results with the motion detection. Even if I had the settings low and went and jumped around I got no emails saying there was motion detected. Especially on one camera. I have a ticket in with ACTi and I'm waiting to hear from them.

He said his review would be out soon so I was waiting for that too. I was only questioning my PC because this morning I had remoted in and it was very slow. I'm still trying to get BI to see my cameras. I checked and the processor was at 100% with BI using 95%. I made some changes and finally got it down to 55% and that is with 3 cameras having no signal and only a Foscam with a signal. I was thinking of going ahead and going with an i7. I spec'd building one at Newegg but it ended up around $740. I may look and see what I can find already built. Good idea about WHS.