choosing IP cameras for CCTV

Hi.

I am beginning a CCTV project for a factory and I'm searching some advice. I will need between 6 to 10 outdoor IP cameras with:

- 720p minimum / H.264 (with configurable bandwidth)

- PoE (802.3af)

- very good image quality

- true day/night with IR and good WDR performance (color at day, but at night it can be B/W)

- distance: 20 mts min

- motion detection

- alarms (e-mail, etc)

- nice firmware and client support

- IP66 certification (cameras will have to suffer with heavy rain sometimes and temperatures within -5ºC/40ºC range).

- mobile app

1- Which are the most reliable brands in the market? I've heard about Sony, Axis, Bosch, Panasonic, Mobotix, but I'm no expert in the matter. Can you point me to some cameras of the best available brands within the $300-$500 range (even if not from the above brands)?

2- The option for dome or bullet is purely client's taste? Or it's for disguise and/or PTZ needs?

3- It is a good practice to buy a NVR from the same brand as the cameras? Or it can be another brand if it is ONVIF compatible? Can you advice

I still don´t know the budget available for this project, so maybe things could not be as good as I would like to, but is always nice to have a perspective.

Thanks in advance.

Super

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1- Which are the most reliable brands in the market? I've heard about Sony, Axis, Bosch, Panasonic, Mobotix, but I'm no expert in the matter. Can you point me to some cameras of the best available brands within the $300-$500 range (even if not from the above brands)?

Mobotix claims to be the most reliable because they have no moving parts but totally out of your price range. Having personally had several brands including Mobotix, any can fail and not sure there's a big correlation between price and reliability or if the extra reliability is worth the premium. For example, if a reliable camera lasts 10 years and a mediocre camera last 5 years, does it matter because in 5 years you'll want the latest anyway. The brands you mention are all going to be at the top or even over your budget for outdoor, HD resolution. For example, a Mobotix day/night dome is $1,628 list, an Axis lowest end IR 720P dome is over $500. Sony, Bosch & Panasonic will also be up there. In your price range and bang for the buck, camera brands from Taiwan may be your best bet, ACTi, Geovision, Vivotek, Messoa or Korean brands like Samsung, their Wisenet III 720P is sweet camera and getting 1080P is within your budget. On the bottom end of your budget is Dahua and Hikvision, two great brands from China, don't let the low price fool you, they are as good as anything out there.

2- The option for dome or bullet is purely client's taste? Or it's for disguise and/or PTZ needs?

Bullets are way easier to install but are not vandal proof, meaning anyone with a broom stick can tap it and point it elsewhere. In the industry they are referred to as Piñatas but I love them nonetheless. Outdoor domes are commonly referred to as vandal domes have advantages, for one being vandal proof as they can't easily be moved or damaged. They are harder to install and are subject to glare and if they have IR LEDs, are subject to IR light bleed which is LED reflection off the curved surface of the dome.

3- It is a good practice to buy a NVR from the same brand as the cameras? Or it can be another brand if it is ONVIF compatible? Can you advice

If you go lower end as you budget suggests, you would be best served by sticking to one brand for all the camera and the NVR. Good quality NVR's for commercial use that supports many camera can cost a lot. An alternative is to not use an NVR, but have a server with NVR software. For example, you can buy a server for about $500ish from say Dell, put hard drives in, and run NVR software ranging from free, to cheap, to moderate to crazy expensive. That gives you future expandability and compatibility with many camera brands. There some ONVIF only NVR's coming out China, don't know much about them. I ordered one last week just to play with to see if they are any good. The problem with ONVIF is that's its a big complex standard with many features and cameras companies will say they are ONVIF compliant if they only support very basic functionality. They can even say they support say the 2.2 standard, but that means nothing because they may have not implemented the entire standard and there's no policing of the standard, so while it's getting better every day, it's not perfect.

One thing I learned when starting out, when you don't know what you are doing, go with something proven or you won't know if what you have just doesn't work or if it's you doing it wrong. This stuff is complex, you don't need to make it harder, LOL.

One thing I learned when starting out, when you don't know what you are doing, go with something proven or you won't know if what you have just doesn't work or if it's you doing it wrong. This stuff is complex, you don't need to make it harder, LOL.

+1 on this! Lots of people try to save some money and go with little known brands, or brands with poor support, and end up paying much more in time and tears.

Stick with name brands that are well supported both by the manufacturer and on forums like this.

Thanks buellwinkle for the detailed answers. Thanks maxicon too.

I know it's better to stick with known brands with good support. I will do my best to stick to a known brand within the available budget.

But I still have some more questions:

2- I've read somewhere that IR is prone to insects/bugs at night difficulting camera vision. Is it advisable to use separate IR illuminators and outdoor cameras without IR? I would want to go for dome cameras (which already suffer IR bleeding).

3- When I talked about NVR I was asking advice on NVR software. Like buellwinkle advised I was thinking of buying a dell/hp server with raid and some disks and put a good NVR software on it. Maybe at this time, if money is a problem, I'll stick with software from the camera manufacturers. But I am asking for good NVR software to manage cameras from different brands (don't know if in the future will buy other camera brands). Good software includes nice alarmistics, storage saver, fine web and mobile clients, and so on.

Hope this thread helps other people with the same questions. Feel free to add your questions here.

On-camera IR will definitely show up anything close up at night. Spider webs, moths, raindrops, etc, all glow very brightly when close to the camera, and can trigger unwanted motion detection.

External IR will definitely help this, as the small objects close to the lens are outside the IR area and don't get lit up.

If you want this option, be sure the cameras you choose allow you to disable IR with night mode enabled, if they have built-in IR. Some don't, and the only way to turn off the on-board IR is to put it in day mode, which puts the IR filter in and prevents you from using illuminators.

Best bet with software is to install the various test drives and see how they work for you. I'm a fan of Blue Iris, but it's CPU intensive, especially with a lot of MP cams, and doesn't have some of the features that you'd want on a corporate system.

Other people can recommend what they've used. Milestone Xprotect is popular.

Thanks for your considerations MaxIcon.

I think I'd rather go for external IR and use cameras (dome preferably) with night mode, if does not exceed the budget by much. It seems a more reliable (and clean!) choice. Maybe in some important areas they will put a low energy light also, instead of IR illuminators. I will know only when the project starts.

My experience with software is with Nuuo (version 3.2.2.0, now it's in v5.0) that came for free with a rack computer (scb5004) with a analog DVR card (4ch from hikvision i think). It's a nice software with many features, but the GUI should be more polite and unified (it has 3 different apps to manage, view recordings and remote desktop). Maybe now it changed, i don't know.

I've heard good things about Milestone Xprotect also. I have to search a bit more on this side.

Regards.