Indoor Camera Selection

[marley1 0]

So I don't get it, I am looking to add camera to house and was decided on Acti. However the wife wants a few camera's inside so I started looking at Cube Camera or Mini Dome from Acti. Why do none of these units have IR in them?

 

I looked at Hikvision as well but same issue.

 

So does any manufacturer have Cube or Mini Dome with IR?

 

Or how do the ones from Hikvision or Acti work in a house after midnight with no lights on?

 

I ideally was trying to use Acti so I could use their NVR 3 program but I guess I can do Blue-Iris.

[blake 0]

I have the AVtech avn813 which doesnt have ir but it has a white led. Your options are to atleast have a night light of some sort on at night, or what i did was set the white led to come on with motion and pir after a certain time at night and disable in the morning.

[blake 0]

I also looked at the AVN805 to install in the ceiling since it's really low profile and has ir, but it's not poe.

[buellwinkle 0]

Your best bet is to get a dome with IR illuminators and install it properly for a nice clean look. The ACTi indoor domes in the D series are a good buy. Also, you can take advantage of their free NVR software. Have an electrician run the Ethernet cable back to central spot like near your computer, it's not that expensive. My electrician charged me about $50 for simple runs, maybe $100 for really long runs. I've had my older ACTi indoor domes for a few years, work great, I can keep an eye on the dogs and dog sitter when we are away.

 

I have AVTech and Axis cube cameras at our vacation home, but I don't live there so I don't care that that the bright white LED is on all night but when I'm there they are unplugged because they are annoying but work really well otherwise. I don't know of any cubes that have IR other than really inexpensive stuff.

 

As for Hikvision, good little bullet but the IR dome needs a little more work and it's 2-axis, so it has to be ceiling mounted in most cases, not wall mounted.

 

Dahua has their little dome with flat glass, and I thought that would be so cool because no dome related issues and nope, it had IR light bleed like other Dahua domes I tested.

[marley1 0]

The acti domes are like 4" so was trying to avoid that thing sticking out.

 

Is the Ir visible? I know with the vivotek models you can still see the red ir led. Would drive me nuts.

[buellwinkle 0]

You don't see the IR light itself, you just see the red glow on the LEDs. The problem with covert LEDs in the 940nm range is they are only about half as effective as the the standard IR LEDs just about all cameras use. You can buy separate IR illuminators with 940nm IR LEDs, but it will probably cost as much if not more than the camera and look worse because now you have two devices.

 

Some people have put filters over the LED to give you the covert look. The best thing I've heard for this is exposed print film. People cut it and put it over the LEDs making them invisible while still providing a good portion of the IR light, I've heard about 80% effective.

 

As for the dome being 4", actually it's considered a 3" dome which is about the smallest with IR LED ring. There are smaller domes but they don't usually have IR LEDs, so it's the nature of the beast. Even if you got a smaller dome without IR LEDs, like a Dahua 1.3MP indoor dome which is tiny, it won't be day/night so you can't use it with any IR light.

[marley1 0]

Any issue with IR bleed on Acti domes?

 

I will be doing indoor ones. Probably 2 exterior domes, and then a few bullets. Gonna stay with the more cost effective model.

 

Also with the dome and bullets can I just plug in te cable or do I need to use te coupler?