bcdavis75

Updating the firmware solved that problem for me.

Hi All. I'm relatively new to the forum and have been gradually planning my migration away from Logitech Alert for about a year. Mine is a DIY home project that will likely never exceed 8 cameras. I've been gradually buying a mix of Hikvision models which I'm very happy with (price point v. features) so far. The thing I'm still struggling with is the software end. Milestone Essentials: I've been trialing it. (Thanks to Buellwinkle for answering 1000 questions) +Very stable and pretty intuitive. +Not resource intensive. In fact, I've been trialing it as a VM running on my iMac and and it's been rock steady with 4 3MP cameras streaming. I'll actually run it just like that if I go the Milestone route. Neutral: The mobile apps and web client are ok... not great. Playback I find counter-intuitive. I actually think the clip based approach that logitech uses (and other systems I'm assuming) for playback is much more intuitive then the Milestone mobile search methods. - My biggest issue so far is the number of Motion alerts I get that aren't things I really care about. They aren't "FALSE", just not relevant. I use on camera motion detection but there's nothing in xprotect in terms of analytics that would have thin out the alerts. -There's a lack of customization for the email alerts that's limiting. Ideally, I'd like to get a small transcoded video of the event. BI does this quite well. Failing that, I'd at least like to be able to specify the max size of the attached photos. They average about 800k. Takes to long to download them on a phone. Blue Iris: I've just started demoing this: +It seems like EVERYTHING is customizible. +The motion detection in BI is nice and very easy to fine tune. +I like the Idea of "Camera Groups" as it allows for a many to many relationships between camera events and camera recording. I don't think Milestone has this equivalent. Profiles are also a smart feature. -Upgrades are free? Nice. Also a good support community and a very engaged developer. -On the down side, it definitely uses a lot of processor and would require me to get a dedicated machine. This is, however, offset by the cost assuming I eventually max out at 8 cameras (no per camera licence cost like Milestone... I think). -More of a problem, I've had way more stability issues with BI then Milestone already... this could have something to do with running as a VM. I've also been unable to add certain cameras that has no issues in Milestone. -I have not been able to trial the mobile app because there's no demo version and I'm being cheap. -No simultaneous playback ( I think). I'd miss this feature. -The administrative menus are very deep and take a long time to get familiar with relative to Milestone DigiFort: Downloaded, have not yet installed. So the thing that interests me most about digifort are the advanced analytics. Specifically loitering and face/people detection. Note: I have attempted using face detection in the latest firmware of the Hikvision cameras but have found it extremely erratic. The thing that concerns me about digifort is that it's Brazilian and doesn't appear to have a lot of US resellers... in fact, I haven't really figured out how to buy it at all or get a clear pricing model (are anlaytics extra? Are there camera licences?). Secondly, I don't really see it being discussed often in forums like this which makes me nervous... Does anyone actually use it? I can find no reviews of the Analytic features specifically... although the high level review over at IPVM was helpful. So when I really think about what's important to me as a home owner who likes to tinker but doesn't have time to troubleshoot things constantly: *Stability *Intelligence around informing me of events that I should care about Such as: >Someone hanging around in my alley longer then they should be. NOT just walking through or driving through. >Someone entering my back yard >Someone entering my Front yard *Visibility of alerts. Email is ok but push alert via the about would be better. *OSX friendly... nobody is... except for Logitech oddly enough. But I can get around it with VM's and MOBILE apps for now. *Cost. None of these platform seem to be overly cost prohibitive. Anyway, that's my story... as always, I greatly appreciate anyone's input. Especially if you are like me and mostly DIY guy not looking for enterprise type features. Thanks!

While I've settled on the cameras I'll be using for my home, the software side is still up in the air. I'vr been trialling Milestone, BI, Digifort. I'm really interested in digifort because of the analytics components. However, I se very little chatter about digifort on these forums. Moreover, my requests to get authorization to access their message boards has been outstanding for several days for some reason. So i'm wondering... does anyone use it? Is their a decent support forum?

One problem I had was that by default, the arming schedule for those events in the Hikvision admin setting is empty. In other words, it was never armed. Once I figured that out, I got it working however, I have found it to be very flaky and not particularly useful... yet. PS I am testing via Milestone.

So is the general consensus from people that these new feature work? On my 2732, it worked out of the box and then mysteriously stopped. Today I did a fresh install of Milestone to see if that was issue. No go. Then I set the camera back to factory default. And Voila! Then, I started playing with image settings to see exavtly what was causing it to start failing. I changed quality from medium to High and notifications for face detection stopped working. So I figured I'd found the issue--quality must be set to medium or below.... EXCEPT, when I set it back to medium, Face detection was still not working. I even tried reseting the camera again. I managed to get 1 notification before it once again stopped working. It's too bad. I'd love to trigger notification on Face detection instead of email... I'm impressed with both Milestone and Hikvision but the flood of emails is overwhelming.

How can I blow away my Xprotect essentials configuration and essentially start from scratch?

I've been testing out Milestone Essentials as I migrate away from my old Logitech system. There were a couple feature on the Logitech that I'm finding I miss; and I'm curious if there's a way to recreated them. First, you could limit email notifications to situations based on the amount of time the motion occurred. For example, you could say 3 seconds of continuous motion required before an alert email is sent. meanwhile, any motion is causing recording to happen. I found this greatly limited emails I didn't care about. Also, you could set the minimum internal between emails differently for different cameras.

Ok. Well the upgrade went well. However I continue having trouble getting Face detection to actually do anything. I tried setting up email alerts directly on the camera to see if the problem is in milestone but I got stuck there with this error message: The network gateway is not configured, and this may cause the failure of email sending. Is there a way in milestone to verify that events are actually being received? Likewise, is there a good way on the camera to veryify it's creating an event? Incidentally, motion detection works fine on the camera and Milestone. I have already tried deleting an re-adding the camera. No love.

Sweet. Thanks.

Sorry if this is a dumb questions... but how do i know if I have the English version of the camera OR the Chinese version (which is also English language). I have 5.1.6 on 1 out of 4 of my cameras... I'd like to upload it to the rest but I'm afraid to upload the wrong one and brick it.

But that wouldn't cause the notification in milestone to stop firing right?

Oddly, the option is only available in my Hikvision 2732 Dome. Not in my bullets or mini dome. However, it looks like an event option for all camers in xprotect... then again, I can't seem to get to fire anymore

I had been using using it and then it rather suddenly stopped working. I haven't had time to dig into why. While it WAS working, I thought it was pretty cool and seems to function well.

Hi. I'm in process on my system. I'll be using between 5-8 Hikvision 3MP cameras. I'm having a PC build for me to run the VMS which will most likely be Milestone xProtect Essentials. My question is on the PC, Milestone sent me a spec from their requirements calculator that included an Intel i3 processor given those numbers of cameras. Is it worth bumping to an i5 for a little headroom? Or do these i3 processors have more then enough gas for the task? Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor v Intel Core i5-3570 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 Desktop Processor

Hmmm. Well do you have an NVR to suggest that solves this particular issue? I'm not opposed to them but they're a little harder to Demo. I'm not too concerned about stability. There's nothing I've encountered or read about Milestone that would lead me to believe that's an issue. And the features is DOES have work well. The problem is this particular feature which it lacks.

Hey All. I'm the process of designing my home surveillance setup. I'm migrating away from my trusty but aging Logitech Alert setup. Anyway, I've been pretty focused on Hikvision cameras (already bought a couple) and have been demoing Milestone Xprotect Essentials. So far, I'm finding Milestone extremely flexible and relatively easy to learn. I did run into a road bump though; namely the mobile app and the web client do not appear to support audio. We've become accustomed to that feature from the Alert system and it's come in handy before. While I'm not super excited to devote the mental energy to demoing an entirely different platform, can anyone recomment one that's on par with Xprotect essentials but also has mobile audio support? I've tried to find documentation on exacqvision but no success determining if they do or don't have it. My system (Most likely) 6 3MP Hikvision Cameras