Bestrafung

I have a really tight budget and it is nearly impossible to find the features I need in an outdoor PTZ camera within budget. I can easily get all of the features I need in an indoor model for a fraction of the cost possibly allowing for the purchase of an outdoor housing while staying within budget. Ultimately I need a 1.3-2MP PTZ with IR for night and under $600. IR distance isn't really a deciding factor but at least 10 meters would be nice, more if possible. I don't need a strong optical zoom which seems to be standard on all of the outdoor models I've seen. Could anyone suggest a camera and replacement housing or a universal housing? Any help is much appreciated.

I've been looking at the Dahua you mentioned and I see that the minimum illumination is 0.0005 lux@F1.2 (B/W). I saw the demo video for night mode and it seems pretty decent for the price range. My only concern is there was a fair bit of light pollution in the video and I'm curious how this performs in a residential area where there isn't quite so much light pollution from offices and street lamps and so on. According to Wikipedia 0.002 lux is a moonless night with airglow but a full moon is .27lux on the low end. Does anyone have experience with this to know how it will perform? If needed I may have to suggest the installation of a flood light to make up for the lack of IR. I understand IR would up the cost of cameras but the extra cost seems high to me and makes them outside the budget window. By the way, I really liked the iSpyConnect. The program is well put together and is easy enough to use if your camera is already supported. I had a Vivotek PTZ camera that wasn't supported but it only took me about 15 minutes to make a new XML file to support it. My only issue was that the video feed was choppy and even though it was running at 25 fps it looked more like 10 fps. The CPU usage was high but not too terrible so I think the software was to blame, not the hardware. Edit: Nevermind, unless it's a typo I see that they list the min. illumination at 0.0005 not 0.005 so it's a big difference, I must have read it too fast. I'll have to hope it works.

I'm new to IP cameras and after some trial and error found some Amovision AM-C7325 cameras that fit our budget and seem to do really well, especially in low-light conditions. I'm on a very tight budget and am trying to make everything work with free or included software. The problem I now face is I need an outdoor (IP66) PTZ camera that will work in low-light and will either work with the Amovision software or includes software that both brands will work under. My budget only allows for at most $600 for the PTZ camera which makes this difficult. I don't need a fancy 18x or higher optical zoom, just a ~2MP camera that works in low-light. I tried the iSpy Connect opensource software only to find it's not very friendly and the video stream is not as clear as using the built-in web viewer or Amovision software. I've heard there are some good software choices available but again my budget is pretty tight. I'd appreciate any recommendations regarding camera and software to help get this setup. Thanks in advance.