buellwinkle

I've emailed two different reps at Avigilon (interested in switching over from Mobotix, Axis, and ACTi) and have not received a reply from them in over two weeks...so much for them.

 

ACTi at least gets back to me same day. Even had an Engineer at ACTi respond directly with custom firmware written just for my application to solve a problem.

 

I guess Avigilon is doing so well, they don't need any new business?

Avigilon told me they are not interested in new dealers as they are full and if I wanted to buy/sell Avigilon, I would have to work through an existing dealer. That was so annoying, took a month only for the dealer they recommended to have lost our order. then a few more weeks until we got the camera. The camera was relatively unique being a telephoto vandal dome so we put up with it, but I would never put up with it otherwise.

I think you mean their Hikvision Darkfighter - DS-2CD6026FHWD-(A) and I would bet it's over a grand with lens and outdoor housing and only 2MP.

You can use a Veracity Pinpoint which splits the PoE so you can use your laptop on the same connection as the camera. The problem is most cameras, even bullets these days don't have exposed Ethernet connectors. We use 2 guys and a pair of cell phones with a little to the right, a little to the left, blah, blah.

If it's in your home and you have WiFi, that would help in theory, but a little harder if using NVR's with PoE built in, you have to log into the NVR to see the cameras.

Is there are reset button? Don't see it in the pictures.

I just hope they keep making the ds-2cd2032-i as I truly hate that pigtail. Certainly not as huge an improvement between as the ds-2c2132 to the ds-2cd2132f.

As for putting a sleeve over the camera, not sure that's wise as these cameras run very hot and putting something on that may impede cooling may shorten it's life.

I do it with shell scripts like on an Arduino or Raspberri PI using the curl command with the XML. I had it working to take the temperature using a temp sensor and update the OSD with the temperature.

Check out Brickcom cameras. The modes that start with a W for wireless. They have cellular radios and you stick in a sim card for remote access. Of course you will still need power as these don't take the magical 9v batteries AK357 has.

There's always hope that they will gain their technological dominance once again, but from what I've seen, they remind me of Mercedes Benz. A while back, when you bought an MB, say back in 2004, the car came with a cassette radio. At the time, cassettes were not even being made and the world has switched to CDs, so they were maybe 10 years behind the times. Then they finally came out with CD players in their cars as the need for CD players diminished. My guess is that Mobotix will have h.264 in their cameras when h.264 is no longer relevant.

My theory is there's companies out there that work so hard on their product and believe in it so much that they do not feel the need to try competing technologies or follow industry trends, why would they, they had one of the best products many years ago, what could have possibly changed in the world of technology?

It's not an activex plugin, but a plugin nonetheless, works with most browsers but only works on Windows or Mac. So you have three choices;

1. see if there's some sort of app for IP cameras, similar to a smartphone app to view the cameras

2. get cameras that run anywhere like Axis.

3. replace the chromebook with one of the new low cost Windows laptops in the same price range.

What I would do is have 4 cameras minimum which is what we have at each our gates. You can not count on a LPC camera to do double duty for any other purpose, so it is what it is, for LPC, one dedicated camera, the trick will be where to mount it. The other camera that's critical is to capture the action, what went on, did someone try and crash the gate, some trying to climb the gate and that's an overview camera, mounted higher up and seeing the entire picture. The last two are close-up cameras, one on each side of the gate on opposing sides. This is capture details of the car, person, driver. Specially if you have some sort of card-key/fob access where the person has to open their window to see, perfect time to get their face.

Do you have an entry dialer kiosk, like for a guest to dial someone's home to request access to the community? If so, you can put a pinhole camera in there. To me that's the best because you get a perfect image of someone's face when they are dialing.

As to brand, quality and such, don't know what's available in your area in terms of support and service and what you pay for these cameras, for example, an Axis Q1614-E in the U.S. may be $1,200 but could cost something totally different in South Africa. Also, that price for a 720P camera is so contradictory to the low end network components I wouldn't never use in a commercial install. Before you settle on camera brand, first pick the requirements for resolution, supplemental lighting, lens choices and such. The worry about brand last. Q1614-E may be a nice low light camera, but considering the shape and size. When you have such heavy duty gates topped with barbed wire, do you really want a camera that's not vandal-proof?

As for recording. I started off with only 2 cameras 7 years ago with recording to NAS and that was fine, but as that system grows, managing several cameras will be a pain. I understand Axis Camera Companion, but it's a client built on top of edge recording, so if you only have one access point, it can work. If you have a few people needing access, it becomes difficult to manage. It's not a good web browser interface you just assign someone a user/pw. You have to do some magic to copy the configuration from one ACC install to another and if it changes, then what. ACTi has similar setup, but I would use ACTi's NVR software any day. Also, have been starting to use more Dahua and Hikvision in installs, the products from China are built better than a few years ago.

Just get NVR software to do that. Some manufacturers provide that for free as long as you stick with one brand, like Dahua PSS. If expect multiple brands, BlueIris is a low cost way to go, about $40 or if you want something higher end, Milestone XProtect (they have a Go version that's free, but has limits).

I checked two cameras, one unhacked, one hacked to English, both same model, same batch of cameras. The kernel MTD9/10 files were identical, the MTD11/12 are different, so for now, I feel the keep to making the day of week English is in the MTD11/12 files referred to in the MTD mapping as rmd_pri and rmd_sec but they are identical to each other. So need a closer look at the hroot.img file.

What's interesting is that while most files end up in the /dav directory on the camera, there's 2 additional files not in that directory on the camera and that's himage and hroot.img.

What I can see is that;

himage correlates to MTD9 (krn_pri) & MTD10 (krn_sec), not exactly the same but comparing two different cameras because already had MTD dumps of this camera.

hroot.img correlates to MTD11 (rmd_pri) & MTD12 (rmd_sec)

krn_pri I assume means kernel, not sure what rmd is.

Was able to modify files in the firmware, create a new digicap.dav file and install it and kept the changes. You were right iTuneDVR, it is easy to do this with just Windows, no Linux needed.

Awesome stuff. It works great to show the firmware version, change language and split the firmware into files. The only thing I'm having a problem with is the "create" option. If I give a new filename, as in hiktools.exe create digicap2.dav 525firmware it tells me "unable to open dav file". If I give it an existing firmware file, it does nothing, does not update it. Am I using it wrong?

For those first trying it, it's not a Windows program so you have to run it in a Windows command window.

CORRECTION: Didn't see that it did create a new firmware file with the same name as the directory, so 525firmware.dav and included a test file I put in there.

There's something to be said for the service and support he will get with Axis that will never happen with a Chinese camera. A happy medium may be ACTi with the same level of service and support as Axis but for about half the price.

It's not that the cheap illuminators don't work, they will work, sometimes a month, sometimes a few months.

I'm generally not a fan of NVR's, but the Dahua NVR is pretty decent. The web interface is pretty good and works with other brands of cameras, like Hikvision. I have one and a Hikvision side by side, and Dahua is better.

Use cameras with "corridor" mode that lets you flip 1080P 90 degrees to cover a long narrow corridor or in your case an aisle.

There's some nice little dome for retail you should look at. Bosch makes a tiny 5MP dome, day only but the store is lit I'm sure and it's under $200. ACTi also makes some cool hi-res domes for this situation.

This industry goes through improvements on a regular basis. I have Axis cameras that are 3-4 years old and newer Dahua's are way better, so it depend on age, they may see a big improvement.

It would be an interesting concept that a government operation would support local manufacturers.

Axis, now Canon, announces products with availability several months out. Then they release it in certain Euro markets. It could be 2-3 months before a camera they say is currently available until it ends up at U.S. distributors. Frustrating when you need a camera now knowing that the next big thing is just around the corner. Like computer processors, monitors, TV's, anything tech.

Download and try the Dahua software, you may or may not like it and have nothing to lose. Since you are using Milestone for access to the cameras, getting Dahua cameras is fairly safe, there's no direct access to the cameras. Just be careful and set passwords for admin, 888888 and 666666 accounts as the defaults are pretty easy to figure out that the password for 888888 is 888888.

Come to the show, I can get you free passes if you are in the industry and the correct answer is yes to that question Frankly, I'm still waiting on stuff demo'ed from last April, LOL.

He deleted his account here.

I agree with Don, this was a crazy idea and they nixed it, so the new cameras I've gotten from them do not have this and if they did, I would dump them on Amazon too, LOL. You should get official U.S. Dahua cameras, better support, not much more money.

You know who has a crazy idea too, Hikvision, the new ds-2cd2032f-i are coming this way. I just hope they still offer the ds-2cd2032-i as I could care less about sd card slot, but care about that insane appendage to the cable. Actually a good time to consider Dahua for their bullets without this