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This is the trade-off for the much lower prices on AE. You don't get the same support policies. If you're buying enough cameras, you can save enough on AE to buy a spare, but if you're just buying one or two, the savings can be eaten up if you need to return anything.

If I had to guess, I'd think it was the CPU they're using. Increasing resolution really cranks up the load on any internal image processing and encoding, and the CPU's probably one of the more expensive components, along with the sensor. Also, using the same CPU across a wide range of products lets you use the same code base. The other likely guess would be the sensor, but the sensor trend these days is towards more MP at full 30 FPS or better (at least, in the more expensive sensors). If someone knew what sensor they're using, it would be easy enough to look up the specs on it. Still, it sounds like an artificial limit, since it drops to 6 fps going from 2MP to 3MP. Many 3MP cams drop the frame rate at full resolution, and you'd expect it to go down in steps - 20 fps at 3MP, 15 fps at 5MP, and so on. ETA: I found this sensor - Aptina MT9J003: 1/2.3-Inch 10Mp CMOS Digital Image Sensor - that has some similar sounding specs. Hard to say if this is what ACTi uses, but it may be representative of this class of sensor. http://www.aptina.com/products/image_sensors/mt9j003i12stcu/ It's speced at 7.5 fps at 10MP and 30 fps at 1080p using parallel output, without any in-between specs. They cost around $30, which is reasonable for an inexpensive camera, and is probably part of the trade-off of performance and price in a $300 10MP cam.

I recently installed an inexpensive 3 LED IR illuminator, and the 3 LEDs are far brighter than the typical ring of dozens of lower output LEDs. I'm assuming the EXIR cams are using similar high output LEDs. Not only is the output brighter, but the LEDs themselves are visually much brighter, so they attract more attention than the on-board camera LEDs. Whether this is good or bad depends on your goals and location.

Those look great. Are you thinking about camoflaging the cams a bit more, like painting the enclosures black, or faux woodgrain to match the stands? Re-focus is the same - open it up, break off the glue bits, and you can adjust it. I used brake cleaner lightly applied with a fine paintbrush, then pried at the glue with a small screwdriver until it popped loose in one piece. Mine has glue on 2 sides, and there's a little recess in the lens housing for the glue to lock in. Without the glue, the lens is only a little loose in the housing; definitely tighter than most M12 cams. I usually put a wrap of teflon tape to keep the lens from shifting, but this made the lens too tight in the 2032 lens housing, so I used a small strip of teflon tape right where the threads engaged when focused. In general, it's a pretty big pain, and the risk of poor lens fit is high. It's definitely not something I'd recommend to someone who's not a tinker.

Nice! You've got a great place to install them, and the 12mm looks good for those distances. I suppose they'd be blocked if someone parked on the street in the line of sight. I've always got cars in front of my house, and am looking at ways to get around that. I swapped a lens on the Hik 2032 bullet this weekend (4mm to 6mm), and it was touch-and-go. As you say, you have to disassemble them completely to swap the lens, and on the 2032, you have to break loose the glue holding the lens in place. The new lens has a larger back focus length (BFL) than the original, so it focused when it was screwed in a lot less than the original lens. The original lens only had about one turn left before it hit the IR filter housing. Normally, this larger BFL is a good thing, but on the 2032, the lens was far enough out that it hit the front glass before the sensor board mount assembly was seated. Luckily, I got enough threads on the screws to hold it securely, but there's a small gap between the sensor assembly mount and the case. So, for Hiks, I'd recommend ordering them with the lens you want, unless you're comfortable hacking on equipment.

Could you explain CBR and VBR? And you need a name and password for the link. ftp://ftp.hikvisionusa.com Name: hikfirmware PW: Hikvision123 (note the H is capitol ) CBR is constant bit rate. The bit rate is the same regardless of the other settings. 4096k stays at that bit rate whether you're at 1 FPS or 30 FPS. If you have CBR, a high frame rate, and a small i-frame setting, video quality may degrade due to the large number of i-frames per second using a lot of the bandwidth. VBR is variable bit rate. The exact meaning depends on the camera's firmware. On Hiks, the bit rate setting is a maximum, I believe, so it will never go over that, but may go under it if the scene isn't detailed or if there's little motion. VBR has a quality setting, and lower qualities will reduce bit rate at the expense of image quality. With high quality setting, if there's a lot of visual complexity and/or a lot of motion, CBR and VBR are essentially identical, in that both use the max of 4096k or whatever your setting is. Other cams, like my old Vivoteks, will go above the baseline bit rate if there's a lot of activity, giving better image quality. In general, VBR reduces the bit rate to reduce bandwidth when there's no need for a high bit rate, and lets you set the acceptable quality. If you point it at a blank wall, you need a lot lower bit rate than if you're watching a constant stream of cars going by. I haven't seen a lot of difference with VBR in my environment, but I haven't tested it much, and only on high quality.

Doh! You're right; don't know how I missed that. No release notes, unfortunately, but those should show up before too long.

Dahua's factory support is terrible. You have to either get it from the vendor you bought from, or find someone on the web that has it.

If you're using CBR, it only depends on bit rate and motion detect. Resolution and frame rate don't make any difference. VBR won't usually make much difference until it's dark, and then noise can keep it from dropping much. It looks like your bit rate is 4096 kb/s (bits). Divide by 8 to get 512 kB/sec (bytes). That gives you 30MB/minute, 1GB/hour, etc. Using this calc, your 9 minutes would be 270MB, which is pretty close to what you see. Reduce the bit rate to cut the file sizes, but you might lose detail in scenes with a lot of motion and/or fine detail. Here's a link to Hik's recommended bit rate technical bulletin: ftp://ftp.hikvisionusa.com/Technical%20Bulletin/2014/IP%20Camera%20Recommended%20Bitrate%20v2.0_20140219.pdf

That should be: http://www.hikvisioneurope.com/portal/index.php?dir= and they don't have 5.1.6 yet. 5.1.2 is the latest 2 series firmware on the US and Euro sites as of today.

So, that Joshua MB has 4 x SATAII 3Gb/s connectors, all color coded, whatever that means. 2 will be used by the HD and DVD. If it's got an unused card slot, you could get an eSATA bracket, install it there, and use an external eSATA drive. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/175-7309109-6449601?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=esata%20bracket&sprefix=esata+bra%2Caps You could also just run a long SATA cable out with a power extension and run a naked hard drive, but that's not a very robust solution...

Is this the one for HDW + HFW4100S PAL? From the release notes in a previous post: Support models •HX5xxx series：HDB(W)5100、HDB(W)5200、HDB(W)5100-DI、IPC-HDB(W)5200-DI、HF5100、HF5200、HFW5100C、HFW5200C、、HFW5200-IRA、HFW5100-IRA、HFW5200D HFW5100D、 •HX4xxx series：HFW4100S、HFW4200S、HFW4300S、HDW4100S、HDW4200S、HDW4300S、HDB4100C、HDB4105C、HDB4200C、HDB4300C One of the cam's configuration screens shows if it's PAL or NTSC; there's a dropdown that doesn't have any other choices. Why they do this is beyond me; most other manufacturers let you choose in the config. ETA: It's on Setup/System/General/Video Standard.

Do you have a link to the 5.1.6 file download?

Does it have SATA? It's pretty easy to add an external SATA device with eSATA. My eSATA setups are just dumb connectors on brackets that let you plug in an external cable, which is better shielded than the internal cables. The PC has no idea whether the drive's internal or external.

I'm not familiar with that cam, and it's not in the 2/3 and 4/5 series we see a lot of posts on. If you have a firmware file for it, try googling for variations of it. For instance, for the 4/5 series, I'd search on "General_IPC-HX5(4)XXX" to see what showed up. The quotes are important, or google will break it down into smaller phrases and find lots of irrelevant hits.

I haven't read the whole thread, but if you've got a Windows box on your network, you might want to run SADP and use that to set the camera's IP address. It worked for me with 2 cams, both using the Hik default IP, and let me set both of them to the subnet I wanted. If you've already tried that, never mind!

It looks like GB28181 is a Chinese government mandated standard. Not much detail out there on a quick glance, but it appears to be the Chinese version of ONVIF, probably with a few extra back doors to make sure you don't step out of line. Do you have a need for this? If it were mine, I'd disable it, but that's just me.

Looks like there's yet another new PAL version for the 4300s and similar at ftp://ftp.wintel.fi/drivers/dahua/cam-fw/IPC-HX5(4)XXX/: General_IPC-HX5(4)XXX_Eng_P_Stream3_V2.420.0000.0.R.20140419.bin There are no release notes. I don't know anything about this one; as always, use at your own risk but post how it works out!

Here are some questions to ask: - How is the technical support? - How is the warranty support, including shipping costs for warranty returns? - What's the availability of firmware and software updates? - Is this camera supported by the software you want to use? Firmware or compatability issues with no-name cameras can reduce them to expensive paperweights. Long-term support is also important. I'd recommend avoiding no-name IP cams in general, as firmware is far more important than baseline specs in terms of keeping you from tearing your hair out. Stick with name brands, like Hik or Dahua, and worry more about good support than high resolution. This is something most of us figured out the hard way.

You're most likely reflecting IR off of the eaves. If you can move it forward so the lens hood sticks out past the eaves, that should fix it. Alternately, moving it lower will reduce the problem, but may not fix it. I had a camera recently that looked along the side of the house, and I couldn't get rid of the reflections, so I disabled the on-board IR and put in an external illuminator. It made a huge difference. http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=7429.0 It's also possible you're getting IR leakage inside the camera. An easy way to test that is to remove the camera and point it so the IR isn't hitting anything nearby, like straight up into the sky, and see if it's clear or foggy.

These cams can all be updated to English firmware with TFTP, right? That seems easier than the patched file update. I'm finding it hard to follow all these variations!

I don't know anything about Zoneminder, but my Dahua 3300s came with default logins of admin, admin, and you show a login of admin, 123456. If you changed the default password, never mind!

Thanks. The instructions were specific about which one went where, including having color-coded network cables, probably due to the POE aspect. Other posts indicated the NA750E bridge is essentially the same thing as the NA200; that is, a powerline adapter with no POE, but that's not an easy thing to verify. I'll be hooking up several of the NA200s later today, but haven't picked up any LA700s yet.

First things to check would be the day/night profiles, day/night settings, and IR enable/disable settings. It might be a good idea to reset it to the default settings, which should enable day/night switching.

Yeah, in that pic, the plates are about 25 pixels wide. In California, motorcycle plates are 7" wide, so that's about 43 pixels per foot. In bright light with good resolution and no motion blur, that might be barely enough to read the plate, but at night, with reduced resolution and motion blur, there's no chance. You'd probably need 2-3x the ppf, and a faster shutter speed, as BW describes. For any decent chance with plates, you'll need a dedicated plate cam, in addition to your general purpose cam that shows what's going on in the overall scene.