metafizx

Right now I am corresponding with "Marge". The thing that annoys me, is I have opened this case atleast 4 times now, and each time they tell me the same lame things, and then close the case. "Marge" claimed she escalated it, but so far no evidence of that. I originally purchased 3 of the 207w's for my customer, and after a long period of wrestling with this problem, I bought 2 more for testing. Awhile ago, I did find some interference (using WiSpy) that was slowing the frame rates down, and have eliminated that problem, but have never been able to pinpoint the lockup issue. Even with the interference, the lockup should not happen IMHO. Crazy that I am having this problem, seems like others would be having the same issue, but getting no reports of such (search engine pulled up 1 account of a 207w lockup but it was kinda old). Another thing was that two of the test cameras had 4.40 firmware, and I did upgrade that to 4.40.1, so it is the latest. I am waiting for them to lockup again before I proceed. I just wonder if it is a spike coming though the power supply ?

What's weird is my test case has the cameras within about 15 feet of the AP. If there was interference causing it, then all the cameras would choke. But what happens is one of the 3 cameras will just stop working and won't respond. Once I power cycle the camera, it works fine for day(s). And let's say there was intermittent inteference, the camera should still attempt to keep responding, and not lockup, right ? When the cameras are up, the frame rates are high and the RF environment is pretty clean (I do have WiSpy 2.x). I've tried all kinds of routers, AP's and antennas, this problem just won't go away !! ARGH!

I am trying to get Axis to help me solve this lockup problem with the 207w. With my test case the cameras tend to lock up after about a day or two. Difficult to pinpoint why or what causes the lockup. The camera just stops responding all of a sudden. The camera wont respond until you reboot it. I have the latest firmware in, so it's not that. Hopefully Axis will be responsive with this issue, it's been over a year now.

so even though I found a major source of interference and got rid of it, the 207w's still go off to sleep sometimes and don't recover until you power cycle them. It has been a very frustrating situation, I've been round and round with Axis, and no solution. I would suggest highly that you don't put one of these cameras in for a real situation, they aren't reliable.

good info ! obviously frame rate & bandwidth needs to be taken into account as well.

Bikal Eyesoft looks identical to Novosun Cyeweb when looking at the screenshots. Wich is the original? from looking at the two websites, Bikal looks to be a "solutions" provider, and NovoSun Cyeweb must be the original application, rebranded for Bikal. Just my thought...

is there anything that works good for LPR that doesn't break the bank ? My silly attempt at LPR made me realize that the camera has to deal with: 1. varying light intensities (outdoors) 2. glare off the license plate (also plastic plate covers) 3. off angle camera view 4. varying speeds of cars 5. IR at night and daylight require different approaches my situation involved trying to get LP's on a private road, where cars can be travelling from 5-20+ mph. Where 20 mph is way too fast, but people probably do it. the camera is mounted looking at the street from an angle (about 30-40 deg), and the FOV is about 60 deg. We basically gave up on pursuing this part, but I still would like to know what would work well. maybe nothing ?

the picture looked good to me day or night, this is the product I purchased: http://www.wilife.com/Products/PartsAccessories.aspx note: they were bought out by LogiTech !

Hi, made a cheap housing for Axis 207w. To my knowledge there are no housings available for this camera. There is one for the 207 (non wireless) cam but unless you dismantle the antenna, it wont fit. Anyway, it looks a little home brew, but hey, it didnt cost much. Uses a standard PVC outdoor electrical box w/ one inlet hole (for the wires). I had to cut out the top two posts to get the camera to fit. The rest is a simple hole for the lens area, and mounting hardware. I added the IR lamp on top since it fit nicely up there. I glued the clear plastic window on with AquaSeal (super tough marine quality cement). Silicone probably would be ok as well. also I cut the little notch off the bottom of the antenna so it could swivel down. sharp razor blade does the trick. and used a piece of teflon tape to keep the lens tight. there is a rubber grommet in the bottom to allow the power cord through, but keep out the anything else. The kit for the IR was $60 which includes the IR lamp and wide angle IR lens. it's from Lukwerks (wilife). For a little under $400 you have a nice outdoor cam with IR. I wouldn't trust this housing in direct exposure to rain, but it should keep out most weather conditions.

can anyone put up review / images from ACTi ACM-5601 ?

nice looking camera, but this isn't an IP cam...

The kit for the IR was $60 which includes the IR lamp and wide angle IR lens. it's from Lukwerks (wilife).

Visec has a LPR module. Has anyone tried that ?

not sure what you consider "inexpensive" but the cheapest thing that I found to work is Active WebCam. There are other cheapie programs but I haven't tried them, such as BlueIris (never tried). Active Webcam is a bit buggy but for a cheapie piece of s/w it works ok. Support is not very good, but they do come out with new versions. It actually has better features than many of the other programs I tried that were more costly. I have it working with Axis 207, 221, and Panasonic CL-30 no problem. Overall it works pretty good, I have had a few issues with it, but for the money there isn't anything I know that works better. The motion detection works pretty good, but the frame rates seems to max out at about 8FPS and I can't get it faster. So for this reason, I am actually moving to Visec. Visec isn't as cheap but still low cost, and it works a lot more efficiently, I get almost 20+FPS on a regular PC w/XP.

VST_Man...sure, but what do you mean here ?

well my test case customer has 5 IP cams. All are D1 MJPEG res, and desired frame rates would be 10, with motion detection. I have another customer with LuxRiot, has 6 IP cams, D1 MJPEG, at only 2-3 FPS. It pretty much bogs the server, but to be fair the server is nothing great. No motion detection. I find that motion detection is usually the bottleneck....

now that I know it was interference causing the failure in the wireless system, I guess the reason for the original problem in this post is that the 207w's just never had enough free bandwidth to send data. they were essentially were "drowned" out by the beacon blasts of hell from the analog wireless cam. since the analog door cam was not always transmitting (motion detector), rebooting the 207w's would get the system going again. until the next blasts occurred. I'm still not exactly sure why the 207w's would stop responding after awhile, but maybe they give up after awhile if they can't "talk" back to the AP. That doesn't quite make sense to me...something to still look into.

wi-spy was awesome. I purchased the 2.4x model, which is a bit more $ than the basic one. easy to understand the graphs, and it seemed to work really well. pretty low noise floor, at -110dBm attaching 2 of the jpg's from the testing. you can see where the door camera was turned on and off

can anyone comment on how efficient exacqVision is ? will it run on an average PC without bogging it down too much ? I know that depends on what cameras, frame rates, frame sizes, how many cameras...etc. for example I have been running Visec with 5 ip cameras, Axis 221, Axis 207w, on a basic PC (good cpu, XP, and plenty RAM) and it seems to work pretty well.

just to follow up on this thread... I bought a Wi-Spy RF analyzer and was able to track down the main interference problem to a simple analog wireless camera that was being used at the main door about 150 feet away. I never thought a simple little camera would generate so much RF. The analog camera signal was atleast 20db higher than the 802.11G channel (-70dbm), and I was sitting right next to the DLink wireless router. simple solution, unplug the wireless analog camera, and wire it in. now the 802.11G setup is working well, with the 207W cameras operating as expected. if anyone is interested I can post the wireless test results (jpg's) from the Wi-Spy

I like VST_man's suggestion with the 1304 Avermedia & std CCTV cams. The 1304 is only around $400 (no HDD) and the cams are cheaply replaced if damaged. Note the 1304 is only a 4 port system, if you need more cameras, you will need more 1304's ganged together. Obviously you need a spot where the 1304 and cameras can get power. The 1304 will need to be in a sheltered spot. The 1304 will plug into a wireless bridge, which has a good directional antenna. Spend your money on a good wireless setup, because 300m is a long distance to make the wireless work well. hopefully it is a clear LOS (no obstacles). You can later plug in IP cams if the 1304 setup is not enough resolution for you. All you will need is a switch that plugs into the wireless bridge. On the other end, you have a wireless router and a good quality directional antenna. Most likely you will need a Yagi's or high gain directionals to get a good signal between the wireless bridge and router. The router is the only thing you need the DDNS to work. The modern routers have that. Granted this is only needed if off site internet viewing is required.

to answer your IR question, usually it is just the lens that is the blocking factor...make sure you can put in a IR lens and it should work. Infrared Lenses are designed for use with Day/Night cameras. They eliminate focus shift in night mode, especially in the presence of IR lighting. as for my comments on wireless, if you go this way do not skimp on equipment. wireless can suck in huge ways. do a site survey first...most likely in your case it is clear and a good candidate...but it will never be as good as direct wire.

for the open IP s/w, it's all capturing MJPEG streams. some prgrams allow control of the IP camera functions. I don't think the camera chipsets come into play however..wrt the recording sw. That confusing me. For example, I find Axis offering MJPEG and MPEG-4 picture, Vivotek offers MPEG-4, etc ... for recording purpose and monitoring only, it seems reasonable to capture only the video stream based on certain industrial format. However, the controlling, e.g. set the frame rate, set password, etc... I do believe they're more platform dependent. Moreover, a software with only viewing function without controlling function seems in-completed. The consideration for me is that while there are software compatible with so many ip cameras from multiple makers, are they actually using similar structure, e.g. chipset? Just it. Just my personal point of view. I don't know of any open ip s/w that can record using MPEG-4 they all are using MJPEG, as far as I know.

for the open IP s/w, it's all capturing MJPEG streams. some prgrams allow control of the IP camera functions. I don't think the camera chipsets come into play however..wrt the recording sw.

yes wireless IP cameras have WEP...Axis 207W, 207MW for example. For lower cost systems, the self contained wireless IP cameras would desired.