Help with first purchase!

[binaryoption20 0]

Hi all,

 

I'm hoping you can help as I'm confused by the sheer amount of choices available. Quick background: I'm setting up training room and my colleague will need to monitor participants in order to make notes and check on their progress throughout the team building tasks. Our needs are as follows:

- Cameras operating in two rooms each roughly 4 x 5 meters - they are well lit offices but camera should have low light capability;

- Mic capability is absolutely must as we need to be able to hear roughly what the participants are saying;

- Wide angle so we can see as much of the room as possible;

- PoE or Wifi - easiest setup is obviously preferable - camera being discreet is not required;

- Reliability - it will be my colleague running the training sessions and she is not technical at all so need something that will work majority of the time without issues, particularly during training sessions as group dynamics change otherwise;

- We will not be using these cameras outside of our premises so they need to run on local network, Ethernet or wifi.

 

Looking at various cameras, one that stood out to me was Axis M1054. Budget is around £250 per camera, less would be awesome as we are just starting up. Can do more if reliability is serious issue for anything below that price target.

 

Any suggestions? Thanks for reading and your help!

[buellwinkle 0]

Sure, the Axis M10 series are good. Look at what are called Cube cameras, these are small indoor cameras that have mic & speaker built in, easy to place where you want or even on a wall/ceiling and most have wide angle lenses. This is a list of ones I've used with success except the Brickcom;

 

White Light LED

- Axis M1031-W (same as 1054 but is WiFi but only VGA resolution), poor low light capability

- AVTech AVN812 or 813 - 1.3MP, WiFi, 813 can record on SD card, not PoE, decent low light capability

 

IR Light LED

- Hikvision ds-2cd2432f-iW - PoE or Wifi same camera, SD card slot, 3MP or 1080P, record/playback on camera, good low light capability

- Brickcom WMB-300AP - 3MP or 1080P, WiFi or PoE models, SD card slot.

 

NO LED

ACTi E12, 3MP, PoE, Microphone

[drocer 0]

How far away? Two 1080p USB webcams + two long usb cables?

[binaryoption20 0]

Thanks drocer and buellwinkle for taking the time to reply - much appreciated. I think I'm going to go with Hikvision - need to check how much it costs, etc.