MaxIcon

Yeah, I struggled with this with an analog cam before I switched over, and never really got it under control due to being close to the eaves. I tried taping over the LEDs closest to the eaves, mounting a shield that stuck out 5" to keep the IR spread away, and it never helped much. It's one of the downsides of onboard IR. One of my Vivotek bullets has the same problem, due to reflection from a fence, and the solution is the same as yours - buy more cameras (or modify the field of view). It's worse with domes in general, though. It's pretty easy to change the lens, but you have to remove the IR board the first time. On mine, I removed the lens setscrew and wrapped the threads with teflon tape to hold it in place, which allows me to change or focus the lens without removing the IR board any more. The 8134 comes with a 3.6mm lens, so you'd probably want to go to a 2.8mm lens for a wider FOV. You want to check 3 things on the lens you buy: - Make sure it's IR compensated (not IR blocking), or the image will be out of focus when it switches to IR. If it's IR blocking, you won't see much when the IR switches on! - Get a 1/4" sensor lens. 1/3" or 1/2" will work, and the quality will be better since you're further from the edges of the lens, but a 1/3" 2.8mm lens gives a different field of view with a 1/3" sensor than with a 1/4" sensor, and it may not change your view at all. - It's a good idea to get a MP rated lens, since many of the inexpensive board cam lenses are designed for D1/VGA sensors, and don't have as good resolution as your sensor. This isn't an easy thing to be sure of, as vendors use all sorts of marketing terms.

Not sure what that fellow did but they work fine with BI as many here have stated. I have 3 in a BI with plans to add more. You have 3 of the QSee Costco versions? The Dahua branded ones work with BI for sure, but the review from the Costco web is for the QSee version, which may have custom firmware. I'm looking forward to someone actually trying the Costco versions and addressing this, since this is a great price. They do have 6mm lenses, but replacement lenses are inexpensive, as Buellwinkle pointed out.

Yes, it can be adjusted, and it's a real pain in the butt. You have to take the camera apart and remove the first set of internal screws, then pull out the sensor/lens assembly. It's then hanging loose while you make adjustments by screwing the lens in and out. It's got a locking nut assembly and you have to be careful that the focus doesn't shift when you lock it back down. Ideally, you'd be able to remove the front of the camera and adjust focus with it in place (like on the Vivotek bullets), but it appears this is part of the price you pay for a mini-bullet.

Can you put in a generic RTSP link? Here's what worked for me on my Avermedia NV6240 card, using a Dahua IPC-HFW2100N 1.3MP bullet. Different cams may have different RTSP links, but this was in the manual. Protocol: RTSP_RTP Model: TCP (UDP caused video dropouts) Video Format: Auto Channel: 1 IP Camera Site: rtsp://ip-address/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0 Port 554 Authentication - checked, ID and password entered

I have some IR cams that are fine out on the bench, but get a lot of IR fog when mounted due to the IR reflecting off of the walls and back to the dome. You can check if this is the problem by pointing it straight out from the wall (assuming there are no eaves close that would reflect it). If this makes the fog go away, wall reflections are your problem. If it's still there, it's more likely to be internal reflections on the dome. If the lens has anything on it (front or back element), like films or fingerprints, this can also pick up the IR and fog up the view, while looking good during the day.

I haven't looked at these yet (can't do it at work), but my 1.3MP Dahua bullet was very pixellated on the default MJPEG settings. When I turned the bit rate to max, it improved a lot, and looked much closer to the H.264, but with lots higher bandwidth (maybe 2x, if I remember correctly).

My browser reported this web site as unsafe, and it was attempting to load something that looked suspiciously like malware. Other people have reported getting viruses from the foscam.us site. Just saying...

Changing the lens shouldn't affect the IR cut filter. This is almost always between the lens and sensor, especially on inexpensive cameras where they want to use off-the-shelf items like lenses as much as possible. 2 things to watch out for: - If you're going to use it with IR, make sure the lens is IR corrected, or your focus will be off when the IR cut filter is out and the IR leds are on. - You should find out what the sensor size is, as this is important when you change the lens. A 3.6mm lens for a 1/3" sensor will give a different field of view with a 1/3" sensor vs a 1/4" sensor; the 1/4" sensor will have a narrower field of view. Whatever size sensor you have now, you should buy a lens for the same size. If you buy larger, it will work, but you have to calculate the new lens size based on the field of view you want.

Are those lenses IR corrected? It doesn't mention it in the specs, but it would be obvious if they aren't when it switches to IR mode.

Some cams have the light sensor for switching between day/night on the IR LED board (like Vivotek), so you can't disconnect the IR board without losing the photocell as well. If yours doesn't have a photocell, or if it's mounted separately, it might work. Other options would include putting something over the LEDs, cutting the trace on the board, etc. If the IR bleed wasn't there before you mounted it, you might be reflecting off of the wall and back onto the dome. I have a cam that works fine out in the open, but gets terrible IR hazing when mounted near a wall.

I spent a good bit of time wrestling with this, and the best bet I came up with was using an inexpensive tablet as a cam viewer. The cam I wanted to view used active-x, so that limited the selection quite a lot, and the tablet I tried didn't have a setting that would allow it to run indefinitely without going to sleep. However, after using IP Cam Viewer Pro on the iPhone, I believe the best bet would be to get an Android tablet, in your budget range and in the screen size that works for you, that will run IP Cam Viewer (or any dedicated viewer that will run without going to sleep). Mount that at your viewing point, connect directly to the camera on the network, and you should be good to go. If you want to view BI directly, the tablet would have to be able to connect to the BI server, and that would have to be tested, but IP Cam Viewer supports a huge list of cams, and runs on lots of Android versions. There's a huge selection of inexpensive Android tablets out there, and the one you choose only needs to be good at one thing.

Here are the settings that worked for me: Protocol: RTSP_RTP Model: TCP (UDP caused video dropouts) Video Format: Auto Channel: 1 IP Camera Site: rtsp://ip-address/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0, port 554 Authentication - checked, ID and password entered The recordings look pretty much as good as the camera - very good in the daytime, decent at night. I've been getting some network errors on it, but that may be related to other network problems; my Blue Iris connections to this one are solid with no errors. ETA: I was getting a 4 second video loss every 90 seconds with the model set as TCP. Changing it to UDP has gotten rid of that problem. The software's not really mature, and it's not as reliable or tweakable as my Vivoteks, but it's pretty durn good for the money. I've got some screen grabs where I had it mounted next to one of my Vivoteks, and will try to post them over the next few days.

Is this an IR cam, and does your daytime focus look sharper than that? This is what my IR cams look like when I use a non-IR compensated lens on them. They can be crisp and beautiful in the day, and when the filter switches out and the IR comes on, it all goes blurry like that. If the daytime shots are blurry as well, yeah, it just needs focusing.

I have a Dahua HFW2100 720p mini-bullet working with an NV6240, which so far has used the same camera setups as the NV5000 I replaced. It took a little fiddling to get it working, as they don't have Dahua support by brand name, but it's doing fine now. I don't have the connect string in front of me, but will post it later.

My comparison is with the mini bullet, as it's very similar in specs and functionality to the IP8332. My cam came from empire security, free shipping. I don't know how their price compares to the China direct prices. Who do you order from? I'm looking at some of their 3200 bullets to beef up the resolution on some of my locations.

Looks like Empire's got them back in stock again. I'm testing a 2100 against a Vivotek IP8332, and it compares pretty favorably in terms of image quality and low-light response, but the software's not particularly mature yet. Still, the 2100 appears to be the new sweet spot for a mid-range outdoor IR cam.

If you've got a complex area to cover, more cameras will do better than fewer that are higher MP. I've replaced all my analog cams with 1-2MP cams, and found that using a 1MP cam instead of a D1 cam with the same field of view was a huge improvement, since I got a lot more detail (and now I want more). Still not enough at the longer distances, but much better than analog, even at night. For covering a wider area, a higher res cam will let you use a wider angle lens to still get the same pixels/foot, but you're limited by where the center of the field needs to point in order to cover the edges. This is especially important if you go for onboard IR, as it's always pointed at the center of the field of view. If you're using extra wide angle to get more coverage, you'll find most onboard IR is designed for long throw, not wide area coverage, and the edges won't be illuminated much. Going to separate IR illuminators will fix this, but adds more complexity, gear, and cost. Also, less expensive lenses have poorer resolution near the edges, so this can also reduce the quality of your coverage. I find that multiple cameras allow much more flexibility in positioning, lens view selection recording sensitivity differences, etc., while adding more gear and connections, so it's a tradeoff.

Some of the Dahuas support SD card recording. They've probably got the best performance for the money right now, and are challenging Vivotek for the mid-end throne. In some preliminary tests, I find my Dahua HFW2100 performs better than my Vivotek IP8332s in low light and at night, but the software is still not very mature, and software support is completely dependent on the vendor (so pick a reputable one). For example, on my Dahua, responding to big changes in exposure settings, or switching between day and night mode, takes about 5 seconds when a light goes on or off, while on the Vivoteks it's about a second. That extra 4 seconds is a long time when something's going on that you want to see. Likewise, you can't completely turn of the IR on this cam. I'm assuming these things will be fixed as the software matures, but you never know. The SD recording setup is one thing I hate about the Vivoteks. I have SD cards in all of them, and have never bothered to get them working. The HFW2100 doesn't have an SD card slot, I don't think, but other models do.

Yeah, I could be wrong about that - I believe it grabs JPG snapshots, but have never used it, so don't know about the settings.

All the i3, i5, and i7 processors support SSE4.2, so it comes back to whether hyperthreading is important to the software when deciding between i5 and i7, since most i3s are only dual core. I found quite a big improvement in CPU utilization going from a first gen i3 to a second gen i5, and the new 3rd gen have even better performance. My i5-2500k runs twice the MP at half the CPU utilization, compared to my i3-540. I don't have an i7 to test, but general benchmarks show that the i7 isn't a huge improvement over i5 unless the hyperthreading comes into play, so the software will determine that.

There's a big collection of RTSP links here: http://www.soleratec.com/rtsp/ If yours isn't there, be sure to add it when you figure it out!

Yeah, I'm running comparisons on BI CPU usage, and have found that going to a 2nd gen i5 or better gives a huge performance increase. My first gen dedicated i3-540 box can run 6-7 MP at 10fps, motion detect, one client connected, at 75-85% cpu, and that's it. Add another 1MP or connect another client or two, and it hits 100% cpu, with the performance problems that go along with that. My 2nd gen i5-2500k non-dedicated box will run 12 MP with the same settings and only hit 60% CPU or so, while running other general purpose apps as well.

Most of my cameras - Vivotek, Dahua, Messoa, and IQInvision - let you set the frame rate, but I don't know if they'll all go to 1 FPS or less. Updated - My Areconts don't set the frame rate. Note that h.264 doesn't necessarily provide a lot of benefit at that low a frame rate, as it's designed to send a keyframe, then only the changes until the next keyframe, and is meant to work at higher frame rates. With a super low frame rate, there may be a lot of changes from frame to frame, so you'll still be sending a lot of info per frame. Still, the compression may be better than MJPEG, depending on the codec. I'm pretty sure you can configure Blue Iris to request a single snapshot on a once per few seconds timeline, but I haven't used that feature. You might want to ask over at http://www.cam-it.org, which is where the best grassroots BI support is.

I just retired an XP system with an NV5000 running 7.7.0.0125, and it worked fine. No problems, good long-term stability. I also just installed an NV6240 on Win7 using the latest software from Aver's site (7.9.0.0029), and it's working fine as well.

Most MP cameras will let you set the stream resolution lower than max, and you can then record that. Likewise, some NVRs will let you record at lower resolution than the camera is putting out, while others just record what they get from the camera. Some cameras, when you lower the resolution, reduce the field of view as well. My Areconts do this - going from 5MP to 2MP reduces the view size, rather than keeping the same view with fewer pixels. This is essentially a digital zoom. My Vivoteks allow you to set both the view size and the image resolution, so you can emulate the Arecont style if you want, or show the full view at a lower resolution.