Testing Milestone - internet access issues

[SergeyNoptix 0]

For me it had a nice interface and found all my cameras, but only 2 out of 8 worked, the biggest problem was it had trouble with cameras not using port 80 and older ACTi cameras that were on port 80. Also, with the 2 cameras it did work with, it used up 50% CPU which to me is high and concerned that with 6 cameras it would be 150% CPU.

 

If you want we can take a look on CPU usage.

I'm are willing to support...

[vin2install 0]

Your CPU usage shouldn't be that high for only two cameras on HDWitness. Check how much bandwidth those cameras are consuming by clicking on the "I" on the top right of the cameras.

[buellwinkle 0]

Did you get the xprotect mobile server working?

 

Not yet, I had to travel today. Will work on it more tomorrow.

[voip-ninja 0]

So another interesting factoid. I re-installed XPRotect today on a box I just finished setting up. Was an old EX495 Windows Home Server. I upgraded it to a 2.93ghz C2D CPU (20% faster clockspeed than the CPU on the box I was testing with), put in 4GB of RAM and loaded it with WHS 2011 (basically a slimmed down version of MS Server 2008).

 

Not sure if it's related to my loading the x64 flavor of the Mobile server, or if it's that server 2008 is less efficient, but I do observe that the CPU utilization is a little higher on the mobile server. With it display a view of 4 cams on a tablet the CPU goes to about 30-45% and stays there. If I go to a single cam feed it drops to about 10%.

 

Just thought I'd mention it.

[TechPromise 0]

It doesn't let you put in the IP, it just shows you what it auto-discovered. If I enter the camera manually I can put the port in, but doesn't find it. I tried changing the port on the Q-See to 80 but it doesn't let me, it changes it back to 85, weird.

 

So I installed Milestone and I have the opposite problem. Found only the Dahua cameras and they work great. Did not find the Hikvision or any ACTi. I added the ACTi in manually and takes the old ones, but not the new one, the E32 that HD Witness found. The E32 is on their support list. It even displayed the image from the camera briefly, changed my frame rate from 15 to 5 but says connection failed. Time for Milestone support. Not sure if I should install the device packs and if so which one as there's two.

 

I was actually able to get both milestone and HD Vision to recognize my Costco QSEE Bullet cams by specifying port 9988. JUST got it working after much trial and error, still have much testing to do. The are the QSEE QCN8004B Cam. Hope this helps

[voip-ninja 0]

Anyone else upgrade to the new versions of Milestone?

 

I completed the upgrade and overall pretty happy. They've introduced a new more accurate motion detection algorithm to use with cameras that seems to work pretty well and there have been some performance improvements to the mobile server 2.6a. With four cameras and a couple of mobile clients connected I am seeing CPU usage down to around 10-15%.

 

I do have one problem though and curious if anyone else upgrades if they see it. With my Mac, using either Safari or Firefox I am not getting great behavior with the web viewer. It doesn't seem to be able to execute whatever scripting it does to resize the camera windows and fit them into the browser frame.

 

I'm suspecting there is some permission, etc, for the script to be able to do it's thing, so probably a setting change is needed, but I'm not sure where that setting might be at.

 

I've also noticed with both Mac and PC that sometimes the camera and events views in the web viewer are really slow to refresh compared to the previous release. Hopefully they get that fixed.

 

Potentially I will need to open a case with my partner for some support on this. Other than that pretty smooth sailing with the latest version.

[buellwinkle 0]

I'll try the upgrade later today. Do you just download and install over the existing version or uninstall the old and install the new?

 

Also noticed the new device pack now supports the Hikvision bullets/domes without ONVIF, meaning they now take motion detection from the camera.

[voip-ninja 0]

I'll try the upgrade later today. Do you just download and install over the existing version or uninstall the old and install the new?

 

Also noticed the new device pack now supports the Hikvision bullets/domes without ONVIF, meaning they now take motion detection from the camera.

 

Unfortunately it's not quite that easy. This is considered an "upgrade" and not a dot release so you will have to get new licenses for it.

 

Assuming you have license upgrade protection then what you will need to do is log into the license manager, request an upgrade for your license, and then request that the license manager email you a new .lic for the software.

 

From there you can do the upgrade, point the software at the new .lic file you received from Milestone and then upgrade.

 

Once you are upgraded you will need to re-license your cameras (you will see that they are back in 30 day license mode). You can activate them online, and each camera (as before) will consume one camera license when it is activated).

 

The good news is that when you upgrade the Milestone software it should include the component for upgrading the Mobile Server also, so one less step to worry about.

 

Be aware that if you are using any port other than 80 for the Milestone server that you will need to re-direct the mobile server to the correct port (in my case I was using a totally different custom port) and you will need to potentially re-enter any credential information too.

 

It's also worth mentioning that Milestone have rolled out a new portal/license manager called "my milestone" and at some point you will have to agree to migrate your stuff over to that. For me, after submitting it nothing ever seemed to happen so I finally emailed them and they put me into the queue manually and I was migrated over to the new system pretty quickly.

[buellwinkle 0]

Looks like I'm stuck on installing the new version as it's 64-bit only and I have 32-bit Windows installed.

[voip-ninja 0]

Looks like I'm stuck on installing the new version as it's 64-bit only and I have 32-bit Windows installed.

 

Wow, I hadn't even noticed that... I am running a 64 bit Windows OS for my CCTV server so was not a problem.

[voip-ninja 0]

OK, I figured out the weird Mac browser behavior. I can actually reproduce it on a PC too.

 

What Milestone now does is they look at the browser width and height and use that to determine what size they need to use when they re-size the camera feeds dynamically. In older versions the camera feeds were always thumbnails and were not resized.

 

If the browser is narrow but tall (as it is for me most of the time) Milestone figures that it has more real estate than it does and it over-sizes the camera feeds. Grabbing the bottom of the browser window and sliding it up causes Milestone to re-calculate the browser size, it resizes the windows and it fits them in to the browser properly.

 

Still playing around to see if the "slow loading" problem I have seen at times with the cameras is also related to a particular browser behavior.

[FastEddy 0]

Unfortunately it's not quite that easy. This is considered an "upgrade" and not a dot release so you will have to get new licenses for it.

 

Confusion about the upgrade vs. dot release situation is keeping me from buying XProtect. Please, what version did you have and what version is considered to be the "new" version? All I see is a 2.5a to 2.5b revision for the Essential/Go packages, and similar revisions in the other packages.

[voip-ninja 0]

Unfortunately it's not quite that easy. This is considered an "upgrade" and not a dot release so you will have to get new licenses for it.

 

Confusion about the upgrade vs. dot release situation is keeping me from buying XProtect. Please, what version did you have and what version is considered to be the "new" version? All I see is a 2.5a to 2.5b revision for the Essential/Go packages, and similar revisions in the other packages.

 

My understanding is that pretty much all releases other than fixes (patch type loads) require an upgrade key.

 

The easiest move to make, especially if you are getting Essential or Express version is to buy 2-3 years of upgrade protection. It is very inexpensive and then all of your upgrades are handled.

[FastEddy 0]

Ok, thanks! There is some misinformation about this, even from the resellers, so I'm gonna sit on the fence for awhile...but thanks!

[buellwinkle 0]

Took me a while but installed 64-bit Windows to upgrade to the new version. No upgrade path from 32 to 64, so started from scratch. Then installed the new release from scratch and latest device pack.

 

Some people had questions on using Smart Client from another PC. You have to open up the HTTP port on the Windows Firewall, here's how I did it.

 

a. run wf.msc

b. scroll down to "View and create firewall rule"

c. click on "Inbound Rules"

d. click "New Rule..." under Action on right side

e. select "port" and click "next"

f. "specify specific ports" enter 80 and click "next" THREE TIMES

g. give it a name and click "Finish"

 

I can see why they did it that way, not allowing remote Smart Client connections unless you yourself open the Windows port. Might be in the manual, but I couldn't find more than see your administrator.

 

BTW, my upgrade worked using the old number, but YMMV.

[thewireguys 3]

I received a error with the lic file. I didn't feel like waiting for support so I just spun up a new VM and I will install from scratch.

[voip-ninja 0]

Weird. Mine specifically asked for a license and rejected the old one.

[buellwinkle 0]

All seems to work well. CPU utilization when viewing from my mobile app is down in half. The install process is easier, no more having to setup the mobile server and mess with a lot of annoying things to get it working as one would expect. The interface looks cleaner. Their camera scan still doesn't work for me, don't know why, only finds Dahua cameras, not ACTi or Hikvision which is ironic because it has native support for ACTi and Hikvision and not Dahua.

 

The only gripe I have is I used to leave Smart Client running on my desktop in a small window with all the cameras showing, but now the minimum size for each thumbnail is larger and won't shrink as much as before. Maybe it's an option somewhere.

[voip-ninja 0]

All seems to work well. CPU utilization when viewing from my mobile app is down in half. The install process is easier, no more having to setup the mobile server and mess with a lot of annoying things to get it working as one would expect. The interface looks cleaner. Their camera scan still doesn't work for me, don't know why, only finds Dahua cameras, not ACTi or Hikvision which is ironic because it has native support for ACTi and Hikvision and not Dahua.

 

The only gripe I have is I used to leave Smart Client running on my desktop in a small window with all the cameras showing, but now the minimum size for each thumbnail is larger and won't shrink as much as before. Maybe it's an option somewhere.

 

I observed that also. You will notice if you make your browser window rectangular (taller than it is wide) you will actually get the cam feeds to spill off the side of the browser. I mentioned this to them today.

 

Also with Safari I have been having some problems where I get a "black screen" instead of the Milestone login screen.... killing and re-starting the browser clears it. Not sure what is going on with that, if it is Safari specific or affecting other browsers and OSs.

 

A nice new trick with the iOS application is you can now mark a server as "favorite" and set it to auto login to that server... which is nice!

[ilkevinli 0]

Has anyone been able to get the "email on motion" working on the new version ? The test email works for me, but the email on motion doesn't get sent. I'm not sure if I'm missing something because they have changed how they do things in this version. Thanks.

[voip-ninja 0]

I've noticed some performance issues with the Milestone Mobile server, such as memory leaks which result in the process ballooning to around 200MB or more with just a few cams in use.

 

I've also observed slow loading/refreshing when changing mobile views with Firefox.

 

I've also observed a bug with Safari that Milestone technical support have confirmed but won't be fixing as they say they don't officially support Safari.

 

I did glean a few things on the support call with them.

 

1. They are aware of a couple of the bugs I pointed out to them, saying the memory leak would be fixed in a patch version available as soon as later this week.

 

2. They are aware of some of the other problems I mentioned and vaguely said a version near the end of the year or very early next year would resolve them.

 

3. The rep hinted that a Mac client viewer application is coming sometime in 2014 but didn't want to commit that they would get it out on time or that it was a for sure thing in the pipeline.

 

Overall tech support is not bad, but they are not especially tech savvy. With the Safari bug I observed they kept insisting it was a firewall problem when clearly it is a caching problem that is on the server itself.

[buellwinkle 0]

I did notice that the new version uses more memory than before, wasn't aware of the leak with Milestone Mobile, just thought it was a 32-bit to 64-bit issue since the old version was 32-bit and the new one is 64-bit so I had to re-install Windows. I went from 2GB to 4GB RAM and that cleared that up.

 

Also noticed that it takes a bit longer for Smart Client to connect than it did before.

 

Look forward to that software update. I've worked for many software companies and to me it's just the norm to discover a bunch of issues when a release comes out and then send out an update in about 30 days.

 

Did you see my Milestone 2013 review, I published it this morning.

[voip-ninja 0]

Very good review. I've made some comments. One thing I wanted to ask you is, I signed up for 2 years of SUP, do you know what it would take to extend that out another year or two?