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According to the web page, the starlight cam only goes to 1/60 second shutter speed, which is pretty fast for very low light. If it could go to 1/30, you'd probably see some improvement with minimal motion blur. Below that, the image quality will generally improve a lot, but motion blur becomes a problem. A 1/2" sensor camera with a fast lens would help, but would cost a good bit more. It's not easy to get great low-light performance without throwing some money at the problem or going with IR (which has its own issues, as you'll find out). Motion detect security lights can be a good compromise, if they're practical.

I recently installed an older non-POE Vivotek with the TP-Link TL-POE10R POE splitter, and it's working fine. The splitter is adjustable for 5, 9, or 12Vdc, and draws about 1W idle with nothing connected to it (9W with the camera in my case). I run it from my POE switch. This is just the camera end, and runs about $18 shipped from newegg. For about the price of the Vivotek pair, you could get an inexpensive POE switch and the TP-Link splitter, and have room to grow.

CS mount lenses have the same issues - you generally will pay more for MP and IR, or less for generic ones. This is particularly true for inexpensive older lenses, which were mostly used on D1 cameras with low resolution sensors. MP cams have raised the bar on lens quality overall, but it doesn't really matter for a lot of applications. However, it's true that there's a lot wider variety of CS lenses out there, with a huge range of prices, and the quality's often better overall on CS, since there's a lot more design room to work with. It's rare to find board cam lenses over $40-50.

Yes, "board lens" is the generic term for M12, or 12x0.5mm threads. The Vivotek has a 1/4" sensor, so any lens will work, but if you ever need 1/3" or more, you have to make sure they specify that, as many don't. I accidentally bought a 1/4" lens for one of my 1/3" cams that way. IR focusses at a slightly different focal point than average visible light, and can result in images where focus shifts between day and night. An IR corrected lens is designed to focus both the visible spectrum and IR at the same point, so you have the same focus in both modes. Here's a link that discusses this: http://www.cctv-information.co.uk/i/Resolving_the_Problem_of_Focus_Shift You can google ir coating lens cctv for lots more info if you want. Some lenses have IR blocking or filtering coatings (mostly photography lenses, but some cctv lenses as well), so you'd want to avoid this. As for MP ratings, that's hard to say whether it's marketing or what. My assumption is that MP rated lenses from reputable vendors are going to be higher quality (many of the really cheap lenses are plastic, for instance). I don't know that it really matters with the Vivotek so much, especially in your application. For the most part, you'll lose resolution starting around the edges as lens quality goes down. I tried getting some rough TVL readings from an ISO 12233 chart as I swapped lenses, but it's pretty hard to get meaningful images with a wider-angle lens. So, I ended up looking for IR and MP rated lenses, or alternately including "glass" in the search. The people at RageCams are pretty responsive to questions, so you might send them an email asking about what lenses they have that they'd recommend.

I keep an eye on products in that range, and there's not much there these days, except for no-name import cams. The Vivotek FD8134V is a decent outdoor dome camera, but runs $320-ish minimum, and is 1280x800, slightly above 720p. That may be the cheapest name brand out there. The Rainbow IPV1V3 is around $250, 1080P, IP66, but it's an orphan - Rainbow's out of business. The Rainbow IP cams have good performance for the money, but any problems, and you're out of luck. Anyone has any other suggestions, I'm also interested!

The Vivotek's lens threads into the IR cut filter housing, which is plastic and held in place by some snap-in tabs. If the filter housing isn't firmly snapped together, the lens can move around, losing focus. It's possible the heat has caused the plastic housing to loosen up. The only way to tell would be to open it up, remove the IR board and lens, remove the rubber cover for the housing, and see if it's stable. Also, if anything's getting on the glass (either inside or outside), that will soften up your view. Older IP8332s didn't have a setscrew for the lens, so it may have vibrated loose if there's any motion where it's mounted. A layer of teflon tape on the threads will help keep that from happening. Sounds like yours may be too new for that, though.

I haven't changed them on my Vivoteks, but changed one recently on my Messoa, and it took a bit of time to find one that was both IR and MP rated. It's a bit of a jungle out there for inexpensive 12x0.5mm board cam lenses. I found 2 ebay vendors with decent selections and reasonable prices: MOTechnology - http://stores.ebay.com/MOTechnology RageCams - http://stores.ebay.com/RageCams-Wholesale-Outlet

I had something very similar on one of my IP8332s just a few days ago, and it turned out the IR cut filter wasn't switching out of night mode every time. Switching it manually through the web page, you could hear a distinct click when it was switching correctly. When it was bad, it made 2 softer clicks going from night to day (trying to switch, then dropping back into night position), then no click going from day to night. It would also work better upside down than rightside up. Mine's not under warranty, so I took it apart and reseated the two panes that switch between IR filtered and unfiltered, and it's doing OK now.

Here's a thread with some javascript examples for viewing directly from the cams, if that would work in your case: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=23345

Yeah, that might help. I'll check it out with the meter and see what the outputs look like. Given the small size, cramped and fragile enclosure, and my fondness for POE, I'm more likely to take the path of least resistance and stick it onto a larger metal mounting plate. A few quick tests show this helps cool it down a good bit, but I don't have hard data yet. If it's another hot weekend, this'll be a perfect time to check it out.

OK, a little leveling here on the heat thing, now that I've had a chance to get more data. Turns out my Vivotek FD8134 runs just a little lower - about 120 deg F - in the same situation. This is pulling just under 5W with the IR on, and it's mounted to a stamped sheet steel baseplate, compared to the aluminum plate the Rainbow's got. The guts of my latest IP8332 also run over 100 deg, though the heavy bullet body helps distribute the heat better, and the larger area surface keeps it cool overall externally. It sounds like a fairly small difference, but 120 deg is "Hey, that's warm", and 133 deg is "Ouch! #$@@#!!". Most of this heat is generated by the POE power conversion circuitry, which is taking the 48Vdc and converting it down to the voltages the camera and network circuits need. There's a power MOSFET and a transformer in each of these cams that's the source of the heat. I may try the Vivotek on a DC supply to see if it reduces the heat any, just for comparison, but the Rainbow (and many modern IP cams) doesn't have the option of running separate power. The good news is that these components are made to withstand high temps over time, but it does raise the temp overall, which can reduce the life of the other circuitry. The IPM14 runs a lot cooler with the cover off, as you'd expect, so I've got a few ideas for managing the temp on this cam, as well as FD8134, which I haven't permanently mounted yet. I'm going to be mounting bumpers on these cams - probably plastic stick-on style - to keep an air gap between the baseplate and mounting surface for better heat flow. I'm also thinking about putting a few holes in the Rainbow's thin, delicate plastic cover, which should be fine if it's not mounted out under the eaves, or mounting it to a larger metal plate which will help dissipate the heat.

Did you get one of those? I put a casual bid in, but was running late and didn't have time to watch the auctions. They went for reasonable prices.

Yep, that was them. Best price, fast shipping, no problems. The BI forum has a post that says the baseplate is aluminum (it feels like plastic to me, but I haven't spent much time with it). I'll be taking it apart over the weekend to see what can be done about heat dissipation. I'm thinking a couple of stick-on bumpers on the base would be useful before mounting, so it leaves a small gap to help with air flow.

I ordered one of these a few days ago to use with my new/used IQEye 832N, which has nice low-light performance but no built-in IR. I'll probably mount up the IQEye this weekend, and will put the illuminator up whenever it gets here (often a couple of weeks from Hong Kong or wherever). I'm thinking I'll leave the current Messoa up in that spot and use its IR for testing and illumination until the dome arrives. I've also got a cheap Amazon IR bullet that'll be a good test subject, but it's more of a spot instead of a spread light. Next problem is power. I already pulled down the siamese cable from the analog camera that was there before (doh!), and am thinking about either running baluns with cat5, or a POE power box, at the cost of my dwindling POE ports. Looks like it pulls about 7W, so I don't think I can split the power from the IQEye with my current POE switch. Time for a 24 port switch!

I don't have first-hand experience, but another user said he had trouble after buying from Surveillant (who have really good prices), as they weren't an authorized vendor and the manufacturer woudn't provide support. Not all manufacturers are this picky, of course, but some are, so it's worth looking into before buying expensive gear from them.

That sounds like such a good idea, somebody surely has done it - googling powerline networking poe: http://www.aceex.com.tw/L3PLP85.html Dunno about powerline networking compatibility and standards, though.

I like solder suckers, myself, but they can suck the traces right off the board if you're not careful! Another option is to follow which pcb traces the power leads go to, find a straight stretch, carefully scrape the coating from a short distance of the trace, and solder the wire directly along it. I've used this trick to fix a variety of boards where the holes are messed up, the traces are burned, or there's just not enough room to go in from the top.

What's the cause of the failure to read compared to the ones that you can read? Not enough resolution, motion blur, poor contrast? It it clearer when viewed live vs recorded?

Search ebay for MPL4, and you'll get hits on 2 Arecont brand 1/2" lenses - their 4mm fixed focal for $70, and their 4-10mm varifocal for $97. I have the 4-10mm, and it's a decent, solid, fairly compact lens, if not the fastest around. It's hard to beat it for the money, is rated for use with their 5MP cams, and it fits in most of their housings, if that matters.

Here's the post I just put up over at the BI forum: My IPM14 arrived, and I haven't had time for much testing, but yes, it's normal to get alarmingly hot. In my 70 degree garage, sitting on a towel, the base gets a hotspot that's 133 degrees! I can only imagine how it will get on a hot summer day. Too bad the baseplate is plastic; maybe some heatsinking, or a metal baseplate, will help with this. I'll dig into it a bit more on the weekend. It's only drawing about 4.5W, according to my POE switch, which is typical for a modern IP cam. Aside from that, it's a pretty awesome camera for the money - definitely the best $100 IP cam I've seen. The BI frame rate hits 28 fps at 1080p, and hits 30 with no trouble at all other resolutions. Like all MP cams in BI, it eats up the CPU cycles at high frame rates, running 30% with no motion and 60% with motion detected at 1080p, 28fps. Turning it down to 15fps drops it to 18% at 1080p and 10% at 720p, which is a lot more manageable. This is on an i3-540 (2GB vs 8GB RAM didn't make any difference to BI on this box). The well-lit image is pretty durn good, and the low-light image gets noisy and sparkly, but with a more ambient light, it improves steadily. It's also a lot less noisy at 720p. I've got the minimum speed set for 1/30 second to avoid motion blur, but at the default of 1/4 second, the low-light image is much better, though the frame rate drops to 4fps. The setup has lots of options and flexibility, and the ActiveX web page is responsive, with good feedback on FPS, resolution, and bitrate if you double-click on the image. The software is better than most of my other cams, and even beats out my favorite Vivoteks in overall flexibility. The size is great - very compact (maybe part of the heat problem), though it's one of those domes that only faces in one direction. The mic works nicely, (unfortunately, there's no switching IR filter, despite what I posted earlier), and the design is clean. The only downsides I've found are pretty minor (aside from being an orphan) - there's no DHCP and the default is 192.168.0.250, so you have to switch a PC to 192.168.0.xxx to change the IP if that's not how your network is set up; the user name is case sensitive (Admin, not admin - who does that?); you can only get FTP/email images with MJPEG enabled, which you can't do with h.264 1080p, you can't have more than one stream at 1080p, and probably some other minor stuff. If it didn't run so dang hot, I'd buy a couple more just because the performance for the money is so great, but the heat has me worried about the long-term reliability.

This is true. I have a camera with a built-in mic watching the front door, and when using the web interface, the audio is automatically on. Sometimes I forget and there's this overall increase in background noise around the PC, until I hear a car go by (or crickets at night). That reminds me to go mute the mic, and it's so much quieter, I laugh at not having noticed sooner. I never record the audio, due to the potential legal issues, which vary from state to state in the US.

I found 2 that look just like it from different vendors by searching on IR illuminator dome. They sell for $55-60 shipped, so if you sort by price, they pop up in that range. A search on outdoor ir illuminator gets the same hits, as well as a number of others. I'm not sure if it's ok to post ebay links here; if so, here they are: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Outdoor-Waterproof-Dome-IR-Illuminator-for-CCTV-Camera-/230547007727?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35adac28ef http://www.ebay.com/itm/Indoor-Outdoor-Waterproof-Dome-IR-Illuminator-for-CCTV-/220426861129?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335276fa49

There are lots of inexpensive outdoor dome housings on ebay, but it's hard to recommend any without trying them out. They start under $10, which is not a confidence-inspiring price, but as you go up you might find something that will fit and looks like decent quality. Search on phrases like outdoor dome housing, ip dome housing, etc, and sort the results from lowest price up. You can also use the same search on amazon and find a few of the same or similar domes, with reviews, that will highlight why inexpensive domes are cheaper than expensive domes...

This is one of the things I'd like to see vendors program into the firmware on every camera. That is, when you go to the web page for management, the network or stream settings page should show what the strings are for each stream, as well as what the ports are currently set to. I'm running a handfull of different cameras and have to keep notes on each in my phone so I have them when I need them.

I've seem color halos on rifle scopes and binoculars from an effect called chromatic aberration (essentially, multi-element lenses focusing the different color wavelengths at slightly different focal points), but it doesn't look quite like this. It's usually a purplish or reddish fringe along contrasting lines. I'd try swapping lenses between a good camera and a bad camera, if they're easy to get at, to see if it's a lens issue vs a sensor issue. I could see either lens element alignment or sensor alignment causing this kind of problem.