Recommended budget/residential NVR software?

[thewireguys 3]

All those price lists are so outdated and incorrect.

 

If you budget is $200 then Avigilon is not going to be a good fit.

 

I have yet to have a pricing issue with Avigilon vs Exacq but if Exacq fit your needs then I am happy for you. Keep in mind I am mostly doing larger 10+ camera projects

[Kawboy12R 0]

Again to my point this forum is not Avigilon's target customers. Now can we please go back to Q-See / Dahua products.

 

Not a problem. I never thought I'd hear you say that though.

[Razer_SE 0]

@voip-ninja - Yes they do, free on both platforms, I use android daily and we also use iOS iPad and iPhone clients for a few users. Also, the web site itself works fine on Windows Phone platform without an app.

 

Exacq start is perfect for home users and is $50 a camera for a year license. $10 more per year per camera at time of purchase, so four years of license would be around $80 per camera unless you find someone selling at a discount.

 

Here is a list of ip cameras from their site: https://exacq.com/support/ipcams.php

 

I have purchased 30 full servers from them this year so far, and have bought licenses only on 10 more systems that I built. Very light on system resources, insanely so really lol. If you have questions feel free as I've used and learned a lot. I'm not a seller, just an end user and installer for our own systems. We will have 75ish systems running 7-800 cameras total when I'm done. We do all the work ourselves, cameras, cabling and all.

[lowpro 0]

The problem with that statement is that I started this thread asking for residential options for NVR software if I wanted to get something that was in some ways "better" than the Synology NVR that I am currently using, and as a point of comparison I mention that I tried to configure Milestone which has a 4-channel small business system license, including mobile server for about $199... and that's when the discussion of Avigilon as an alternative came up. I understand things are all secret with you guys, but if $199 is not in the ballpark then you are correct, it's not worth my time or that of some of the others here.

 

If $199 however IS in the ballpark then I think you are wrong, there are many residential users who would consider paying a bit more for what would hopefully be "superior" software to the real budget offerings that are out there.

 

For what it's worth, a 4 camera license pack on my Synology was about $125 which also puts it in the "ballpark" for home security enthusiasts like myself. So I'm very interested in what else is on the market that is in the $150-$250 type price range.

 

That's partly what irks me too. Most people here are residential users, but want to spend a little more. But reading bits and pieces here and there, "$3,000 per camera is a good budget....Oh yeah, don't forget license and server costs"

 

Really?

 

"Honey, can I spend $20,000 on cameras for the house?"

 

I'm glad to know that I'm not wasting my advertising time on here preaching to the little guys.

 

 

 

UPDATE: Talked to my wife and I did get approval for the $20k! She just said that I'll have to receive it over a 20 yr span.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Guest

[voip-ninja 0]

@voip-ninja - Yes they do, free on both platforms, I use android daily and we also use iOS iPad and iPhone clients for a few users. Also, the web site itself works fine on Windows Phone platform without an app.

 

Exacq start is perfect for home users and is $50 a camera for a year license. $10 more per year per camera at time of purchase, so four years of license would be around $80 per camera unless you find someone selling at a discount.

 

Here is a list of ip cameras from their site: https://exacq.com/support/ipcams.php

 

I have purchased 30 full servers from them this year so far, and have bought licenses only on 10 more systems that I built. Very light on system resources, insanely so really lol. If you have questions feel free as I've used and learned a lot. I'm not a seller, just an end user and installer for our own systems. We will have 75ish systems running 7-800 cameras total when I'm done. We do all the work ourselves, cameras, cabling and all.

 

Do they offer a demo? My biggest problem with these guys is the annual license fee.

 

//edit. I see they don't support the two Samsung cameras I just paid $575 a piece for, so no sale.

[Razer_SE 0]

@voip-ninja - Yes they do, free on both platforms, I use android daily and we also use iOS iPad and iPhone clients for a few users. Also, the web site itself works fine on Windows Phone platform without an app.

 

Exacq start is perfect for home users and is $50 a camera for a year license. $10 more per year per camera at time of purchase, so four years of license would be around $80 per camera unless you find someone selling at a discount.

 

Here is a list of ip cameras from their site: https://exacq.com/support/ipcams.php

 

More precise link - https://www.exacq.com/support/trialkey.php?product=startServer

 

I have purchased 30 full servers from them this year so far, and have bought licenses only on 10 more systems that I built. Very light on system resources, insanely so really lol. If you have questions feel free as I've used and learned a lot. I'm not a seller, just an end user and installer for our own systems. We will have 75ish systems running 7-800 cameras total when I'm done. We do all the work ourselves, cameras, cabling and all.

 

Do they offer a demo? My biggest problem with these guys is the annual license fee.

 

//edit. I see they don't support the two Samsung cameras I just paid $575 a piece for, so no sale.

 

 

They have a free demo - go here: https://exacq.com/support/tryexacqvision.html

 

I see they support Samsung pretty well, I would try it. They will not go on the supported camera list until they personally try the camera. I have added ACTi cameras and Vivotek cameras with no issues that were not on the list. If the brand is supported you have a pretty good chance. It's free, worth a shot right?

 

The product itself is great, and it's updated several times a year. Yes there is a yearly fee, but the cost is pretty low and the product seems to be worth it to us anyway. I but several years up front, in 3-4 years we can reevaluate our options and renew or let it expire and just replace the whole system if it dies. Waiting to see what we want to do in a few years.

[voip-ninja 0]

The problem with that statement is that I started this thread asking for residential options for NVR software if I wanted to get something that was in some ways "better" than the Synology NVR that I am currently using, and as a point of comparison I mention that I tried to configure Milestone which has a 4-channel small business system license, including mobile server for about $199... and that's when the discussion of Avigilon as an alternative came up. I understand things are all secret with you guys, but if $199 is not in the ballpark then you are correct, it's not worth my time or that of some of the others here.

 

If $199 however IS in the ballpark then I think you are wrong, there are many residential users who would consider paying a bit more for what would hopefully be "superior" software to the real budget offerings that are out there.

 

For what it's worth, a 4 camera license pack on my Synology was about $125 which also puts it in the "ballpark" for home security enthusiasts like myself. So I'm very interested in what else is on the market that is in the $150-$250 type price range.

 

That's partly what irks me too. Most people here are residential users, but want to spend a little more. But reading bits and pieces here and there, "$3,000 per camera is a good budget....Oh yeah, don't forget license and server costs"

 

Really?

 

"Honey, can I spend $20,000 on cameras for the house?"

 

I'm glad to know that I'm not wasting my advertising time on here preaching to the little guys.

 

 

 

UPDATE: Talked to my wife and I did get approval for the $20k! She just said that I'll have to receive it over a 20 yr span.

 

Well, for someone with a million dollar home and over $200,000 in personal property that kind of investment might not be unexpected.... it also comes down to what your goals are. In my case I live in a very safe and secure neighborhood but we do have a lot of people who come and go, as well as various people with access to the property (house keepers, dog walkers, contractors, etc)... so, for me, the security system is a little less about being able to get photo ID of "perpetrators" and simply keeping an eye on the place when I'm not around as well as being a general theft deterrent.

 

Now having said that I probably could "get by" with something like the tacky Dahua cams with NVR for $800 that's available at my favorite big box retailer... however, I crave something a bit "better" and want better night time performance so instead I have spent about $1800+ on cameras and licenses.... so, spending another $200-$350 on better NVR software is not out of the question.

[camera-newbie 0]

Boy.. I guess I missed the good conversation here -- been away too long.. Hope I don't get anyone pissed for resurrecting this again..

 

I will admit that I've got an Avigilon installation and have had it running for quite some time now (since this past Mar/Apr).. Anyway, I've never had the software crash and it works REALLY well IMHO! I, as a residential user, did NOT find the pricing out of line..and firmly believe that you get what you pay for. I did buy not only the core license (as I recall) and the gateway which allows remote access via their ipad/iphone apps and they work great but could use some additional features -- specifically revolving around time selection when reviewing existing video footage remotely. I do find it a bit painful to control IF you're using something like VNC to remotely connect to the server running Avigilon and use the Avigilon client that way.. Unfortunately for me, I run a house full of Mac's and their client is only a PC app at this point and even using a hard wired ethernet drop selecting frames to watch at the bottom of the screen is laggy -- this is NOT an Avigilon issue as much as just a remote/VNC issue due to the amount of data being transferred over an ethernet link.

 

If you're wondering, I've got one of the Avigilon 4 channel Analog encoders monitoring a pair of CNB analog cameras (one avigilon license there) and have external triggering setup for the encoder care of one remote PIR sensor (Optex HX40 wired to a wireless radio care of Inovonics) and also use a pair of Raytec Vario Infrared lights for night monitoring.. Overall I've been very happy with the system! Interestingly enough the server itself does not seem to consume much of the server's horse power -- very little really which is nice since it's doing other tasks as well..

[voip-ninja 0]

Thanks for the input on Avigilon.

 

What's the name of their iPad/Android app? I'd like to take a look at it to see what kind of reviews, etc, it gets.

 

The lack of a Mac Viewer is a problem for me also, I have all Macs in my house.

[camera-newbie 0]

Thanks for the input on Avigilon.

 

What's the name of their iPad/Android app? I'd like to take a look at it to see what kind of reviews, etc, it gets.

 

The lack of a Mac Viewer is a problem for me also, I have all Macs in my house.

 

The iPhone/iPad viewer is called "ACC mobile".. I've not looked at the reviews to be honest but have used it when we were out of town over the AT&T 3G network and it worked fine.. I just find that the interface to select video footage for captured content is not the greatest .. It works just fine but you really need the time/date line like you get with the full client where captured video is showing and you can zoom in/out on the time/date bar to select individual events.. Right now the mobile version allows you to select a 15 minute window and it will check with the server to see if there's anything that happened for that timeslot -- unfortunately it doesn't have a way to list when events occurred -- you're left trying to find them on your own.. Using the full client on a PC it's 10000% better and works awesome IMHO!

[thewireguys 3]

Our customers that have Macs use Parallels without issues.

[camera-newbie 0]

Yeah, I've got media for that lying around somewhere.. Interestingly enough I was able to run the installer under WINE w/o issue but the resulting 'installed' client would not run unfortunately -- it didn't crash but it did not run either..

[camera-newbie 0]

duplicate - please delete

[lowpro 0]

Boy.. I guess I missed the good conversation here -- been away too long.. Hope I don't get anyone pissed for resurrecting this again..

 

I will admit that I've got an Avigilon installation and have had it running for quite some time now (since this past Mar/Apr).. Anyway, I've never had the software crash and it works REALLY well IMHO! I, as a residential user, did NOT find the pricing out of line..and firmly believe that you get what you pay for. I did buy not only the core license (as I recall) and the gateway which allows remote access via their ipad/iphone apps and they work great but could use some additional features -- specifically revolving around time selection when reviewing existing video footage remotely. I do find it a bit painful to control IF you're using something like VNC to remotely connect to the server running Avigilon and use the Avigilon client that way.. Unfortunately for me, I run a house full of Mac's and their client is only a PC app at this point and even using a hard wired ethernet drop selecting frames to watch at the bottom of the screen is laggy -- this is NOT an Avigilon issue as much as just a remote/VNC issue due to the amount of data being transferred over an ethernet link.

 

If you're wondering, I've got one of the Avigilon 4 channel Analog encoders monitoring a pair of CNB analog cameras (one avigilon license there) and have external triggering setup for the encoder care of one remote PIR sensor (Optex HX40 wired to a wireless radio care of Inovonics) and also use a pair of Raytec Vario Infrared lights for night monitoring.. Overall I've been very happy with the system! Interestingly enough the server itself does not seem to consume much of the server's horse power -- very little really which is nice since it's doing other tasks as well..

 

So what did you pay? Inquiring minds want to know.

[voip-ninja 0]

Our customers that have Macs use Parallels without issues.

 

So I have to run windows on virtualization software? That's kind of a non-starter for me, I want a native app/web-viewer for my Mac. Honestly the lack of a working Mac viewer is one of the reasons that I have looked away from Synology.... their Mac viewer has been very hit or miss due to their reliance on Java, and currently they simply don't work on the Mac at all due to their reliance on Java-32.

[voip-ninja 0]

Thanks for the input on Avigilon.

 

What's the name of their iPad/Android app? I'd like to take a look at it to see what kind of reviews, etc, it gets.

 

The lack of a Mac Viewer is a problem for me also, I have all Macs in my house.

 

The iPhone/iPad viewer is called "ACC mobile".. I've not looked at the reviews to be honest but have used it when we were out of town over the AT&T 3G network and it worked fine.. I just find that the interface to select video footage for captured content is not the greatest .. It works just fine but you really need the time/date line like you get with the full client where captured video is showing and you can zoom in/out on the time/date bar to select individual events.. Right now the mobile version allows you to select a 15 minute window and it will check with the server to see if there's anything that happened for that timeslot -- unfortunately it doesn't have a way to list when events occurred -- you're left trying to find them on your own.. Using the full client on a PC it's 10000% better and works awesome IMHO!

 

Okay, thanks for this. Sounds like the Synology mobile app for android/ios and the Milestone app both might actually be a bit better in this area.

[camera-newbie 0]

Okay, thanks for this. Sounds like the Synology mobile app for android/ios and the Milestone app both might actually be a bit better in this area.

 

That's not to say that the upcoming ACC 5 release doesn't address this shortcoming -- it might but I've not looked into that yet.. it's on my pile of crap to do..

[thewireguys 3]

Our customers that have Macs use Parallels without issues.

 

So I have to run windows on virtualization software? That's kind of a non-starter for me, I want a native app/web-viewer for my Mac. Honestly the lack of a working Mac viewer is one of the reasons that I have looked away from Synology.... their Mac viewer has been very hit or miss due to their reliance on Java, and currently they simply don't work on the Mac at all due to their reliance on Java-32.

 

Again most business run windows even when they are using a Mac. Also with Parallels you get to add the Avigilon icon to your desk and it will launch just like any other Mac program. So no extra steps to launch Avigilon on a Mac or PC.

[voip-ninja 0]

Our customers that have Macs use Parallels without issues.

 

So I have to run windows on virtualization software? That's kind of a non-starter for me, I want a native app/web-viewer for my Mac. Honestly the lack of a working Mac viewer is one of the reasons that I have looked away from Synology.... their Mac viewer has been very hit or miss due to their reliance on Java, and currently they simply don't work on the Mac at all due to their reliance on Java-32.

 

Again most business run windows even when they are using a Mac. Also with Parallels you get to add the Avigilon icon to your desk and it will launch just like any other Mac program. So no extra steps to launch Avigilon on a Mac or PC.

 

I work for a very large company and Macs are everywhere. In more and more of the other businesses that I work with they are deploying more Macbooks than Windows laptop.

 

You are right, there is a workaround if someone has a Mac and a software company decides not to support it, they can run virtualization software ($49) plus a copy of Windows ($99-$299) in order to run apps that don't have Mac support.

 

If Avigilon is as good as you guys say then I have to question why they don't offer a stripped down basic web browser based monitoring tool like Blue Iris, Milestone and others.

[camera-newbie 0]

To help you out, I specifically asked Avigilon tech support about a Mac client and this is the response I got late last night :

Good morning.

Unfortunately the new v5.0 of ACC Platform does not have available a client software for MAC OS, Safari or Firefox web browsers.

There is no ETA for do it but our Developer Team is thinking on the possibility of a browser based client that is compatible across multiple OS types.

 

I also asked separately about whether the ACC Mobile 'app' would be updated with new features for ACC5 and was told 'no' but that the gateway would be updated since it communicates with the updated server.

[voip-ninja 0]

To help you out, I specifically asked Avigilon tech support about a Mac client and this is the response I got late last night :

Good morning.

Unfortunately the new v5.0 of ACC Platform does not have available a client software for MAC OS, Safari or Firefox web browsers.

There is no ETA for do it but our Developer Team is thinking on the possibility of a browser based client that is compatible across multiple OS types.

 

I appreciate that, thanks.

 

The way that Milestone did it was their mobile server (which is free assuming you have their licensed software) provides a stripped down basic (and fairly poor resolution) "web feed" that will pretty much work on anything. The mobile server also provides client access to Droid and iOS devices with dedicated apps and can do things like allow for review of recorded footage.

 

I had a few minutes yesterday and tried to turn up ExacQVision, and it was a mess. It did not have a module for Samsung and trying to add the Samsung cameras as ONVIF failed. They did email me asking if I needed help getting the demo working so I might inquire on that.