Solstice NVR - am I the Guinea Pig?

[TechPromise 0]

Hey Guys,

 

Long time reader here but this is my first post. I am an IT guy by trade that is getting sick of so called security guys still installing terribly outdated analog cameras. With some of the new low cost IP systems it breaks my heart knowing the customer could have got much better quality at near the same price. I am referring to the Q-See 720 4 Channel bundles that are well under a G note and provide excellent quality.

 

Sick of waiting for Ubiquity AirCam (I am beta for AirCam NVR, but I assume the pro level hardware is not going to be here for a while) to get their act together I installed 2 of the Q-see (re-branded dahua's as I leaned here) at my home and have been running them for 2 months now. The quality is outstanding but the software is a little rough around the edges and I have been looking for an alternative that will work with the Q-See's.

 

Today I came across an interesting product called the Solstice Mini Embedded NVR. The device itself is sleek looking, had 2 TB of storage and the sales guy claims and can do full 30fps at 1MP on 4 camera's through it's easy to use (and nice looking) web interface.

 

I decided to order one and try it out... hoping it will work with the Q-see's! Has anyone else used one of these devices before or will I be the first guinea pig?

 

[MOD: edited - this appears to be an advertisement so I removed the retailer reference]

[Q2U 0]

Nope. I think you may be the first person to sell one.

[TechPromise 0]

Nope. I think you may be the first person to sell one.

 

I hope they are good enough to sell! will see... It should arrive later this week, and I should get some time to mess around with it the following week

[Sifter 0]

From what Ive read and heard, the Costco Q-SEE cams only work with Q-SEE nvr's. For your sake, I hope Im wrong.

[GMaster1 0]

One network port, one power supply, one 3TB SATA, one year warranty for $800USD?

 

I'd be skeptical of selling/recommending it to clients. The price alone is out of this world compared to what you can alternatively get with the same amount of money. Little is universally known about support, history, vulnerabilities, proprietary engineering, etc. (It's great that you want to test it out and discover those things, but being on the frontier sometimes means nowhere to turn when things get ugly--especially if you're entering a new market.) I have no idea what else is out there for entry level NVR systems though and whether or not they address these concerns.

 

I built fully redundant enterprise 6 bay (15TB) NAS boxes for $445 (diskless) so perhaps my perception is skewed a bit. I would do some more searching if this NVR's software does not absolutely wow ya. Just my two cents

[tomcctv 190]

Nope. I think you may be the first person to sell one.

 

I hope they are good enough to sell! will see... It should arrive later this week, and I should get some time to mess around with it the following week

 

 

 

 

they don't give much away as in spec. but I see there is only a promise of a smartphone app.

 

Today I came across an interesting product called the Solstice Mini Embedded NVR. The device itself is sleek looking, had 2 TB of storage and the sales guy claims and can do full 30fps at 1MP on 4 camera's through it's easy to use (and nice looking) web interface.

 

 

well 1mp is not that great..........but cant call it cheap crap ..........have you seen the price .....expensive. for a 4 way

 

 

talking of 4 way what is all this about in the spec

 

No additional IP licensing fees or recurring annual license

fees are required to use the NVR; use as many channels as you want for no additional cost.

 

 

so what is the point of the $900 16 way if they state the above in the 4 way

[anthonyris 0]

Nah, I'll be the guinea pig! Just received one this weekend (4Ch, 3TB). I'm a Mac user and was looking for something that had Mac-compatible web access (no more ActiveX pls...)

 

Have it hooked up to a Vivotek FD8162 (2MP) running over my LAN. Actually, the Vivotek cam is connected to a small dedicated 802.11N access point via Cat5, and the AP then connects to my LAN wirelessly.

 

Been running a few days, no troubles.

- iPhone/iPad app works pretty well for streaming, but no access to settings/recordings via the apps

- Pretty nice Web UI works in Safari and FireFox (better in Safari).

- Able to see any of 4 live streams (my camera supports 1920×1080 and down with H.264 or MJPEG encoding.

- System streams fine at 20+ FPS. For security recording purposes, I only record the 8-10 FPS stream.

- Adding 2 more cameras next week.

- Easy to setup, discover camera.

 

Concerns:

- Don't know long term support/reliability/viability.

- Can't get the email SMTP settings to work. Saves fine, but never sends an email, just a cryptic error message.

- PTZ controls don't do anything. Cam has a digital PTZ (at 2MP, it's actually useful) and I can pan/zoom from the cam's UI, just not from the Solstice.

 

All in all, nice little unit. Enterprise grade? Not likely, but works for my purposes. Wished the thing had a simple IP Decoder and HDMI out, so I could just have it attached to a TV as well...

[anthonyris 0]

Update on the following issue: (still can't access the PTZ controls, tho.)

"- Can't get the email SMTP settings to work. Saves fine, but never sends an email, just a cryptic error message."

 

Well, I did get the email sending to work. And wow, what a bizarre way to set up email...

 

- I noticed in the log that there was a sendmail failure: sendmail: 554 5.1.8 - Domain of sender address root@MYNVRNAME.MYNVRDOMAINNAME does not exist

- Weird, as I had set up my email settings/smtp/sender address correctly. But I recognized the MYNVRNAME as something I set elsewehere...

- the MYNVRNAME is what i set in the Solstice Network Config as my Hostname and MNVRDOMAINNAME is what I set under Domain.

- those two settings, for people familiar with routers, arte typically used as an easy identifier on a LAN, and nothing to do with an email address (or even an actual domain, for that matter in most residential uses, as it is for running local DNS).

- the NVR's sendmail system was ignoring what I entered on the Email settings page and pulling in the Hostname and Domain from the Network config.

- to fool it and make email work, I put my ISP email address Domain in Hostname and the ".com" in Domain. For example, if my email address was mickey@disney.com, I would put "disney" in Hostname and "com" in Domain. No periods.

- Solstice sendmail then concatenates the two fields and presents them to the SMTP server as a valid domain name.

I then started getting emails from admin@disney.com (note: that's not the real email address).

 

Wow. Bizarro. If I would have put something nondescript in the Hostname and Domain fields, don't think i would have ever suspected that setting for the email failure.

 

Have a few triggers set up (Motion, camera disconnect). Works fine. Can customize the email that is sent. Plain text.

However, haven't found a way to email me the snapshot or video clip from the camera when motion was activated.

[Acaps 0]

Any Updates on the Solstice NVR? I'm looking to replace a Milestone server with something like this so I don't have to maintain Windows Updates etc.

 

Are you running the latest firmware? Have you had any troubles updating? Have you used their support?

 

How was the camera compatibility? I've got several Toshiba PTZ Cameras that I'd like to use with this.

 

Thanks,

Andy

[msecure 0]

Any Updates on the Solstice NVR? I'm looking to replace a Milestone server with something like this so I don't have to maintain Windows Updates etc.

 

Are you running the latest firmware? Have you had any troubles updating? Have you used their support?

 

How was the camera compatibility? I've got several Toshiba PTZ Cameras that I'd like to use with this.

 

Thanks,

Andy

 

It is actually a rebranded Koukaam. The url is here http://ipcorder.com/

[jeme 0]

Hi anthonyris,

 

has you some update of your test with solstice?

 

Regards

[zjk 0]

Yes you are so am I,

the software is very unreliable, it keeps locking up and returns with error messages every 30 minutes or so,

I am still having best results with analog systems, sorry to say so.

I purchased the nvr in July 2013 hoping to be a good product, but with error after error I wouldn't dare to install it for my customers and receive a service call every 2nd day

The 3S IP cameras are as "good" as the nvr

[trauts14 0]

Does the Solstice NVR "play nice" with many types of IP cams? I assume it is ONVIF compliant?

[anthonyris 0]

Been using the Solstice for a year now with 2 HD Vivotek's streaming to it.

- Been pretty reliable, easy to use, small form factor.

- No hangs, lockups

- UI for accessing the stored video is pretty straightforward. Java applet a bit of a memory hog, but that's Java...

- **Can't access stored video from iPhone/iPad, can only see the live stream.

- would love it if it had an HDMI output so I could easily have it show on my TV

- SMART drive diagnosis reporting a failure in disk integrity, but NVR still working fine. Tried to reset the warning diagnostics, but the fault report persists. Have to figure that out.

- New Firmware was recently released, so shows some ongoing commitment to the product.

 

All in all, not sorry I got it as most of the IP NVR products are either way too physically large, or are meant for commercial 10+ camera installations. Nothing else terribly interesting in the home IP security market. At least that I know of.

 

This is a good, solid product for the home security market.

 

Hi anthonyris,

 

has you some update of your test with solstice?

 

Regards