Hi guys. My name is Katie. I am new the forums but have been reading for months. I'm a professional photographer, putting together an IP camera system for our remote mountain home. I know cameras well, but only a little about IP.
1. Need help choosing equipment that is reliable and will boot back up after a power failure. Power goes out a lot in the winter, but good solid internet when the power is working. Currently we have 3 different Foscams about 4 years old. The quality sucks (dynamic range terrible), when they reboot after a storm, only some come back online and we have to power cycle the camera to get it to reconnect usually. That doesn't work since we live 4 hrs. away and we loose camera connections for a month. I read the beginner sticky that said Foscam is not a forum favorite, now I see why.
2. New system! Budget $800-1000, wireless is preferred but can be talked out of this is its a must, Need an NVR device that I can access remotely and check the footage on our Mac or iPhone, only need to record maybe 4 cameras for 7 days, mostly for checking on the house and weather, no valuables to protect in the cabin, but also to make sure there isn't unauthorized guest on our dock, outdoor cameras need to handle -10F and lots of snow in winter (can mount under eve). Don't really want to the revolving cost of cloud storage.
3. Now given my budget, I have been eyeing the Foscam FI9828P the optical zoom would be so nice to checking on the lake conditions and looking around. Or maybe the Sunba 1080P would be better with PPOE to run a long ethernet through the trees to the house, or can you add a wireless adapter? And the Foscam FN3004H 4 channel NVR for recording but not sure if I can access the footage remotely easily with a Mac. No windows in the family. But I don't know if any of these would be reliable enough for our needs? I know you guys don't favor foscam but I don't see other cameras on the list that fit my budget as well.
Experts, please chime-in and help a girl out!!! What do you recommend with my budget and ability to access recordings remotely?
Here is the quality of our current system. I do like EvoCam for checking and recording, but I don't have a dedicated computer to record it all. Rely on email alerts and the neighbor's phone calls.