ACTi KCM-5311E: Weak IR?

[PeteCress 0]

Are ACTi cams noted for sub-par IR?

 

I had been burning in my 5311 next to a FosCam with both cams aimed at the same place - so I suspect I never noticed that the ACTi was mainly working off of the FosCam's IR.

 

The other day, I accidentally nudged the test bed so they were pointing in different enough directions that it became obvious that the ACTi's IR was very weak. I can see the emitters glowing, so they're on... but the amount of illumination is very, very low - virtually useless.

 

This is moot for the camera's application, which will be 100% daylight use... but I have to wonder.

 

Is it just me?

[buellwinkle 0]

On their website, they don't say the spec for the working distance and they do the same for the KCM-5211E and when I asked, they said 2m. Why 2m, because the camera was maxed out on PoE power and they couldn't put in more powerful LEDs. They must have worked it out on the replacement for the KCM-5311E, the KCM-5611 because it has IR illuminators with a working range of 20m and as you can see from the review on my blog, it works. I knew it was not an issue for your use case or I would have said something.

[PeteCress 0]

... 2m, because the camera was maxed out on PoE power and they couldn't put in more powerful LEDs. ... I knew it was not an issue for your use case or I would have said something.

 

Thanks. I had a vague recollection that somebody, somewhere commented on short IR range, but could not dredge up the detail.

 

As you observe, moot for my case. It's just that the cam seems to have spontaneously reset it's resolution a few times so far and I had to wonder if something larger was afoot.

[buellwinkle 0]

One quirky thing about ACTi is you have to do a save & reboot option after you make a change. If not, you'll make a change, maybe move the camera by unplugging it and the change is gone.

[PeteCress 0]

One quirky thing about ACTi is you have to do a save & reboot option after you make a change. If not, you'll make a change, maybe move the camera by unplugging it and the change is gone.

How I see it:

Setup | System | Save & Reboot

Never did that. Not even one time...

 

Probably explains the cam's reverting to full rez and losing the zoom presets.

 

I think I've seen at least one other thread where the owner said his 5311 was "Resetting"... and I bet that's the explaination.

 

Thanks !!!!

[buellwinkle 0]

In some cases, you can change two parameters on different windows, do save save & reboot, and it only saves the last change so I save after each change to be sure. Another camera that does this is Mobotix, you make changes and you think you are done, but you have to save them to make them permanent.

[PeteCress 0]

... because the camera was maxed out on PoE power and they couldn't put in more powerful LEDs. They must have worked it out on the replacement for the KCM-5311E, the KCM-5611 because it has IR illuminators with a working range of 20m and as you can see from the review on my blog, it works. I knew it was not an issue for your use case or I would have said something.

 

It's not that bad with supplemental visible illumination. Although, as before, that's totally moot bc this one is going down to the shore for strictly daytime duty.

 

Here's a clip from last nite:

 

I will be interested to see how the clips look when I swap out the Sony at the shore and mount it on the side of the shed - so it's facing in the same direction as one of the floods.