buellwinkle

And more importantly, without the hassles of port forwarding.

Dahua is getting way too much love here. Let me interject with my Hikvision mini bullet with a factory 12mm lens. I got it for a specific purpose but threw it up at my house pointed down the street until I get up to our weekend home this weekend. The license plate is readable at about 90' away, not too bad.

Interesting. I've been using Synology with an ACTi E32 and it worked fine, played video fine but I was doing it from a PC, not my Mac. I have not seen this option on the web interface but that does not mean that you can't set that, typically done via an URL command. I don't see one in their manual to do this but maybe support can provide you a command to set this. Also, it may be possible to get 5.1 decoders on the Mac, like from these guys - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24173/x264encoder

I can tell you that the people selling it cheap like B&H are selling below U.S. wholesale prices and it's against ACTi policy, so you risk not having a warranty. Also consider shipping as the cheaper places don't include free shipping, also some larger outfits charge sales tax in all states, some only the selling state. Also, if you ordering a bunch of cameras, let me know and I get you the project pricing form from ACTi. Basically a form you fill out and they ACTi drops the price to distributor which drops the price to the reseller and drops the price to you. To get project pricing, the deal has to be bigger than $5,000 (list prices).

You can just look at them and say, hmm, that one looks old. Here's a picture of the two, see how the rubber gasket on the right camera on the lens is large and blocks half the IR LEDs, that's the one to avoid. If there's build date, look for something made in July or newer.

Bullets are way easier for a novice to install. Basically attach the camera mount to whatever you can mount it too and point it. I use all bullets at my house as I have not found a dome I really like as much as domes have issues with sunlight reflection and such that bullets with flat glass do not. I just did a big project replacing Axis PTZ domes with Dahua PTZ domes because the customer was just sick of the dome reflections and dome imperfections and the Dahua PTZ uses flat glass. Those are $4,000 Axis cameras. I use the E32 which has worked well for me, 3MP IR bullet, but the D32 is the same camera without WDR and frankly, I have WDR turned way down anyway because WDR in many cameras adds to nighttime image noise, so it's a trade off. For a dome, the D72 or E72 are the equivalent of the D32/E32. Nicely made aluminum, 3-axis, clean image. Domes are harder to install because you have to take them apart, screw the body in place, then use the 3-axis adjustment to point and level the camera, which is more tedious than a bullet. The advantage of the dome is they are considered vandal resistant, meaning they can't be tampered with like a bullet, for example, someone could get a broomstick and push a bullet around, not a dome, so trade-offs to consider. Certainly not a good idea to stick a dome in a tree, LOL.

There are cheaper online resellers but not authorized by ACTi and voids your warranty, so buyer beware. So it may pay to spend a little more for the comfort of having ACTi support, warranty and service, one reason people buy ACTi over say Dahua. http://www.acti.com/news/Announce/Caution_to_Customers_Regarding_Unauthorized_Resellers

The reviews are correct, the domes are a piece of poo. Hikvision did revise the product and the new ones are great, but the ones being shipped with this deal are the old version. I asked for a retrofit repair kit but there isn't any. You can use them in a reasonably lit area and put them in day mode (no IR) and they work fairly well. You can also buy the new Hikvision domes separately, just an option.

You can do well with the $300 budget per cam with ACTi because the NVR software is free and quite good and can run on a slower cheaper PC. Their newer cameras can handle -20C according to the spec, and at least here in So Cal, it doesn't get that cold, even at the ski resort level. It does this without a heater. There are cameras that go to -40C like Axis P33 domes, but not sure they would be anywhere near your budget. The D32 bullets or D72 domes are 3MP, IR and about $300ish, a little less if you want 1MP.

Look what you guys did, you made him up his ante to 10,000 cameras.

You can laugh but maybe some day you may be buying Tong Mania cameras.

It's hard to say the exact model designation because each distributor has their own but I can find out.

Just get the Hikvision 16 channel NVR, pretty cheap, under $400 shipped.

Was trying to think, what's the least expensive camera with ABF and at OEM prices, probably in the $150 range. He can easily contact Dahua or Hikvision headquarters in China and get OEM agreements drawn up and make his purchase, why ask us?

It's been a concern with people that have Swann or Lorex products and not been able to get firmware updates as quickly as people with Hikvision cameras. Some of then even installed Hikvision firmware but that may invalidate your Swann warranty and the issue was it was not possible to go back to Swann firmware.

Most network cameras allow you to send an email alert directly from the camera but in real life, this can be annoying because outdoors shadows, clouds, trees/bushes swaying in a breeze, car headlights can trigger false alerts. Also, not instantaneous as it has to generate the email and send it your SMTP server and on the receiving side there may be delays. Which ones to buy depend on your budget per camera, vandal dome or bullet. I typically recommend ACTi because of their service and support and lower price for a name brand camera. If budget is tight, there's Dahua and Hikvision, some are happy, some get frustrated with support but decent cameras. On a higher end, we use a lot of Mobotix and Axis for commercial projects. All these brands are available through wrightwoodsurveillance.com and they are authorized reseller for a wide variety of brands. As for a PC, it can be used with NVR software to do recording and notifications. If you buy mostly ACTi, they provide free software that's quite good. Axis has a solution where you can write to an SD card on the camera or a NAS, no PC needed. Mobotix, same thing, they can write to a NAS or SD and view recordings from the camera. Dahua and Hikvision offer software for free, but I have not been able to get them to work but some here have. To me, at the moment, the best PC based generic NVR software is Milestone because it supports such a huge variety of cameras, they have really good free smartphone apps, remote web access supporting various browser, can use the camera's motion detect so lower CPU usage over some products and various versions that take you from up to 8 cameras for free recording for 5 days with their Go version (can't beat free) to Essentials with I believe supports 2 dozen cameras for about $50/camera and way up to the corporate level supporting huge amounts of cameras.

Their other bullets specify motorized focus/focal length but not this model but if it is motorized, it should give you menu item to focus. What did Swann support say about how to set the focal length and focus these cameras?

Manufacturers in this space do not like dealing with end users, heck, many don't even like working with resellers. I tried finding the bracket you asked for and it's not even on my distributor's price sheet.

The problem is the U.S. distributor ran out and has more on their way but that should free up in the next week or two, but www.wrightwoodsurveillance.com will have them soon. Not sure the price in China is all that cheaper because of the shipping costs. DHL may cost $40 per camera.

That's sounds like a great solution. My daughter has shared internet in her building and can't port forward, so that would be great. Will this work only with the NVR or with the cameras too?

The resellers on aliexpress are subject to the same tariffs and duties in all countries. You don't see it because the 1.9% for the U.S. is just factored into the price. As most, I can barely keep up with our own tax system, so you would have to know what Normay's duties are, but getting them from Costco would mean the 1.9% from China to the U.S. was paid and then the duty from the U.S. to Norway would then be paid. I've had U.S. Customs send me a letter for duties on larger orders, so the size of you purchase may dictate if your government gets involved.

They have some cost effective indoor domes. I've been using their older version for about 3 years and no problems, clean picture, much cleaner than outside because you're in a confined space. Whether to get D or E depends on your needs. If you have a bright window that overwhelms a shot, the E series with WDR may help, if not, the D series is less expensive. I don't have WDR because my cameras are older and I see no reason to get WDR if I ever replace them.

Not going to tell you that their solution is perfect but here's how it works. You can have one large area but the sensitivity is a percentage of the area, so the larger you make one square, the less sensitive it gets relative to your settings. I basically make 3 rectangles in most cases of about the same size.

Not as many as Vector18, but had a few Dahua's for a while now, a full year for the first and didn't have one fail yet or have an LED go out. Good thing you got it fixed.

We use all HID Global products, especially the Edge and VertX line because there are so many software and cloud provider choices. Also, Honeywell is well known in this space and what's used in one of the high rises where own property. One interesting system is Bright Blue from Ingersoll Rand which has some cool wireless choices that one community I've worked with liked that may apply to your old building.