Some questions about acti nvr, and a indoor cam

[spork947 0]

Hello Everyone,

 

I'm currently running a 4 cam setup with acti d32's , and DS-2CD2032-I on xprotect go. For inside I have a dropcam. I'm going to list my DS-2CD2032-I on the classifieds this weekend. My plan is to switch over to the acti software and stay with their supported cams. I was also looking into one of their nvr's like the enr-1000 and was wondering how those are? I didn't mind xprotect but this way seems like a simpler setup.

 

I would like to see more companies start supporting linux. I think a bundled o/s and nvr software would be cool so you don't need a windows license but a standalone nvr seems like the only other good option.

 

My last question. Is there a indoor wifi cam fully supported by acti? I'm not looking for a dome just something like the dropcam. This would complete my simplification process and I would no longer have to pay the yearly cvr fee which seems silly when I am already running a home nvr.

 

thanks!

 

Edit: Or I could go with another option. If dropcam ever releases a outdoor model I could buy a couple of those. I'm fine with only 2 outdoor cams so the bandwidth usage shouldn't be so bad if I put them on a schedule.

[buellwinkle 0]

Actually Sony was coming out with cloud cameras soon if not already where you can connect a non-cloud Sony camera to the cloud one. But I'm not a fan of cloud, I can't get decent internet speed where I am, maybe support one camera at best. it's funny but we have a condo in a building that has 200Mbps upload/download, but not cameras and where I have cameras I'm lucky to have 1.5MP upload which is maybe 1080P at 3-5 fps.

 

ACTi NVR 3.0 software is very good, i can see where you are going. Their NVR has a similar interface, actually does run on Linux, but their software has advantages but runs on Windows. I have not tried it yet, but they should support the Hikvision cameras by now. If you are interested, i can ask, but it's not free and my best guess is for non-ACTi cameras it's about $50/cam but may be cheaper than selling the Hiks used and taking a possible loss.

 

As for Windows, really it's not like it used to be. I've haven't had an outage on my NVR PC since new. The best buy in Windows if you need to pay for a license is Windows Home Server 2011, about $50.

[spork947 0]

thanks for the info,

 

AFAIK acti nvr still does not support hikvision cams.

 

I also may look into camcloud by axis. They limit you to 1 day of video with the basic plan. I would be fine with that if it over writes itself once your at the limit so you don't have to manually delete it. Only uploading on motion would be important as well. Not sure how it really works though.

 

Either way I don't think the hikvsion cams have ssl which is a requirement for me if I open them up for something like camcloud.

[buellwinkle 0]

What do you mean Hikvision doesn't use SSL. I can access the camera using HTTPS which is SSL.

 

Let us know how the cloud thing works, looks interesting.

[spork947 0]

your right of course. For some reason I thought ssl was not supported.

 

I signed up for the free service. Its all based on ftp. I can get image uploads with my d32 when pressing the test button but for some reason when I set it to video I get nothing. I've changed resolution and codecs but nothing works. I don't know if its a problem on their end or if there is another setting for it to work.

[spork947 0]

I'm still tinkering. As for the acti nvr software I just realized that it only support IE for remote access. This spoils my plan of ever wanting to purchase one of their boxes. Is there any chance they will ever support firefox or will it always be IE? That is kind of silly and so is using a quicktime plugin when viewing the cam in a browser. Maybe hikvision would be better if I was going to stay with a specific brand. I guess you could always use something like team viewer if you stay with the pc setup.

 

I was also a little disappointed to learn none of their cube cameras have any kind of lighting. I'm still struggling to make up my mind if I want to switch out my dropcam and integrate a cube into the rest of my cctv setup. I like being able to access earlier footage from the indoor cam if my power or internet connection goes out (which just happened recently) so not sure if I would regret getting rid of it.

 

At the moment I'm back to where I started using xprotect go and I think the extra power usage for something like blue iris would be worth it over the limitations of the acti software. I haven't had time to play with ivms from hikvision.