Razer_SE

Yes, about three weeks ago I installed 5.09.15 on the vast majority of them. I'm starting to look that direction as many of the cameras had been up for months before the upgrade with no issues, and some have had to be rebooted two or three times since. I just checked one I know I've not had to reboot for a long time and it is running 5.06 firmware. I may look at rolling them back if this continues. I had not thought about it but I am having the same issues with a few of my 3911 hemispheric cameras too, and they are using the same firmware as the 5611 and 5211 cameras. I know I upgraded all of those to the newest firmware and I've rebooted three of them a few times recently for the same connection issues and a reboot of the switch fixed those also.

Yes, but this is a newer widespread problem, so I cannot believe it is switch induced. On the 300 series switch you can set power on individual ports, so the port for the 5611 is set to critical, and set to class limit, not port limit. Also, on several switches we are using the SF302-08MP and the same issues are there. Only one camera at any site is a 5611 or 5211, the rest are e31, 1111, or the like that all use way less power. Many sites right now have only one or two cameras, the one I power cycled this morning has only two cameras, one e31 and one 5611. Power used is not even close to limits. The one I just looked at has 4 cameras, one 5611 and three 1111 models. Current power being used, during the day, is 16w. 46w available. Three of those do go into night mode, and one of the 1111 stays in day mode. The 5611 is getting 15400mw power dedicated to it, and is set to critical power so it would be last to have power loss. Some of the 5611 cameras are never going into night mode, so no IR use to make the power go up? Lastly, the other brand switches are full POE power too and having the same issues. I had rare issues before the last firmware update and now they are happening all the time. Fixed another one this morning. Thanks for the reply Ando, I do appreciate it!

I use tons of wireless cards here in the states and they all work fine, the only catch here is that you have to get a static IP address from the cellular provider. This is true here in the states anyway, it could be different there for sure but I would ask the provider. Without a static IP they will not pass traffic through unusual ports. Drives me nuts but I deal with it!

I would but I'd have to RMA 30 cameras easy! I literally just found another one that needs rebooted. Sigh.

I have plenty of IP cameras and they are working fine, but I was wondering about using some PIR sensors in conjunction with the cameras to better work as an alarm system. I have Exacq servers with relays available so I can wire a sensor directly, or to a camera depending on the location. My question is what sensors would people recommend? I am looking at Optex sensors right now and they look pretty good but wondering if people have experience with them either good or bad. I am looking at something like the SIP-100 and the SIP-404/5 to cover a fence line as they have the long narrow beam. The SIP-100 is rated for example at 300 feet long by 10 feet wide detection. My worry is false alarms and the like, anyone know how good or bad these could be? I know one location we need protected has a ton of rabbits running around at night, would not be good if they set it off all the time. In a few locations I might hook an alarm output to a phone dialer to call and alert when something is detected, but of course I want minimal false alarms on that! I have to find a dialer yet too, but that is the thinking for now anyway. Anything else I should consider, other brands maybe, or is this not a good option to begin with? Thanks all, appreciate any info.

Thanks for the replies all, I've looked at bosch and they did not make the long narrow beam I was looking for but they have a few others that looked good to me anyway. I have ordered another model of Optex for a shorter run and I'm pretty confidant in it working as it is a shorter shot of only 50 feet or so, and that model has two beams that overlap multiple times so if both are not broken then it will not go off, so I'm hoping rabbits and such at least will not make it go off. I'd use normal motion alerts as someone else mentioned, but with 1000 cameras that would get old pretty quick so I'm hoping these have less falseing! I'll be trying these over the next few months and see how well they work out I guess.

At least some others have used them, I have them sending me a test system now so we can see if this will fit our needs at all. All I know is what we are using sucks, bad, so I'm looking for options. We'll likely never use cards no matter how much I want to. We would be adding and removing well over 1,000 users a month, and that is as we are now. If families and some businesses were not sharing codes we would more than double easily our users and be at 30,000 users I'm sure right off the bat. Not as secure as we'd like, but still good enough for our uses. One day maybe, but the number of cards we'd go through and the hassle is simply not worth it for now for us. We'd have to get cards for even the trash pickup guys and such. We're going to cards in our main office, but for remote locations where the customers are I think it will be years. I'll look at some of the other other options mentioned in the thread also, I do appreciate everyone's feedback!

I can tell almost no difference in my recordings overnight. I compared the same camera side by side with as close a time frame as I could get, shots from 11:40pm before upgrade to 11:59pm after upgrade shots and I could not tell a difference at all on the e31. In my absolute darkest camera there might have been some improvement, but not enough to call it a real difference, they still basically looked the same.

He never said, so I thought I'd try it as they use the same firmware when you download from ACTi and the version number seemed to make sense. They upgraded fine, no issues and are still working correctly for me anyway. Upgraded using the ACTi IP camera utility, one by itself to test I would not brick it, then the next 5 all at the same time.

I'd also note that I actually connected a flip camera - $120 for a decent 1080p flip camera. I connected it to stream directly to a TV full time and it lasted almost a year, the little flip out screen failed very early on and lost about 50 percent of the lines. Later the sensor started giving odd colors but it still worked. Then the sensor totally failed, though it was still powering up on the little bit of the flip out screen that was still functional. About a year total for $120, no night capability at all Used it as strictly a front counter monitoring device. I can get a great image on a $300 IP camera now from Vivotek and ACTi that lasts for years. Not bad to my thinking. I have found many cameras to be totally worth the money, I spend $250 on the low end IP up to about $700 for my higher end cameras. Above that I've not seen enough difference to make it worth it for my uses but then again I do not use PTZ cameras or anything either. Reliability is key, I have over 650 cameras connected as of today to my Exacq system - I don't have time for cameras failing all that often, and it is sure going to happen with that many anyway. Might as well minimize it with quality equipment. Obviously there is some real money to be made with these or there would not me so many competing at these high prices. Margins must be great lol!

While I totally understand what you are saying as I'm a tech person, you are missing an important problem. You notice that the super high megapixel phones do not always take great shots? I have a 16mp camera on my personal cell phone, look good to great during the day, but at night? Totally useless. Literally, I'd be better off sketching with a pencil and paper and I can't draw! My other work phone takes better photos at night by far, and it is 8mp. It is not the actual number of pixels, it is the size that make more of a difference. I'm sure any number of camera makers could come out today with a 16mp camera for a low cost, camera sensors for phones have to be dirt cheap. But if it only works during the day, then what good does it do you? Look at the ACTi 5211e camera, I have about 20 of those and it is 4mp camera. I use it as a LP camera, but it did not do well at all at night if the lighting was not absolutely great. Then there is the ACTi 5611 camera which is newer than the 5211e but only 2mp. I have 30 or so of those. The actual image sensor is larger on the 5611 than on the 5211 so though it is lower in megapixels it gives a tremendously better picture at night, many times not even going into night mode because it captures so much more light as the sensor is larger and captures more light. If they doubled the pixels the quality would actually drop. http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18ljrfg8f8w0pjpg/original.jpg Don't know if the image above will link or not, but it compares the new HTC One phone camera on the left to the new Galaxy S4 on the right. The one is lower mp, but I'm sure that is the image you would prefer. Here is another one, phone cameras are labeled. The far right image is the best, and that is only an 8mp camera, the others are up to twice as high in pixels yet look worse. In perfect daylight the 8mp camera will actually beat the higher cameras still in many shots, it is the lens, and programming behind that will make the difference. In CCTV situations the below shot seems as if that is the lighting I have to work with every time there is an actual event I need to look at, all my issues/breakins are 2am at night or dusk with rough lighting. http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18ljum1y7qzoujpg/xlarge.jpg Now, I guess a camera vendor could make and sell a super high mp camera and market it as day only, but who is going to actually listen to that, and how useful will it really be in many cases? I want more mp than anyone, but it truly is not that simple. And, seeing as camera sensor makers want to cram in more pixels as that is all people understand it must make sourcing a sensor with totally different requirements hard, and they are sure not buying in the bulk the phone vendors are! I do agree though that many cameras seem too high for what you get, but there are reasonable deals to be had also.

I just upgraded 6 of my ACTi E31 cameras and we will see what happens overnight tonight I guess. 5 of the 6 have very little light though they vary in how much. I'm tweaking a couple of them, the rest I'm leaving as is other than the firmware upgrade to see what it does by itself, if anything, on the E31.

Nevermind, I finally found dimensions online and see that this is just the 8332 with a new mount on the back and is much bigger than I was thinking from photos. Much bigger, it will not work at all. Thanks though! Tried to delete thread and did not see the option.

1/30th is a good setting and what you should strive for, but the AE setting is a little high by default in my experience anyway. I would lower it to something like 80 and set WDR to low or off and see what it does to it at night. During the day WDR did not make a big difference in quality, but at night it made most shots much more grainy in my lighting anyway. Play with the settings at night and see what looks good. Moving the shutter to 1/15th will double your light, but will be blurry so set it and record and walk around and see what it looks like for you. Some times it is fine, other times it is unacceptable. When you set the settings on the camera and are happy with final results be sure to save and reboot the camera or they will not always remember the settings it was at. Just something I have noticed with these, and all ACTi cameras really. The "reset" is not normal for ACTi cameras that I have, but it is normal on the e31 cameras so far. The new software in Exacq eliminated that problem for me so I'm not siue where exactly the problem lies, if it's firmware in camera or that NVR software has to be updated for the new chips that the new e series cameras are using.

I note that your camera does the same thing I used to have happening, where the video has that two or three second loop where you can see a visible "reset" in the picture quality. No idea of the cause, but it was really bad in my Exacq NVR software until the last update of the software that fixed it. Highly annoying when it was happening though! Is WDR off in the video? What is your shutter setting and auto exposure set to? Still looks grainier that I'm used to seeing on my e31 cameras, but it varies by location.

Update the firmware first off, then turn WDR off totally for testing. Then in exposure and white balance reduce the AE reference target to like 50, then adjust around until you find the best setting for your lighting. I use WDR only when needed and then only at low, it is usually making the images much worse in my e31 cameras so far anyway. Out of 60+ installed it has only been useful on maybe 10 of them. Shutter speed is usually at 1/30th for my cameras, but you might play around with the settings to see what works best for you again. It will go clear down to 1/5th, but it will sure be blurry for motion then! I get MUCH better images on my e31 cameras, so it is possible even in low light situations like most of mine are.

No video of that as of yet anyway as it has only been overnight and no one was there last night, I want to see it too. Usually these are in a better lit location, or totally lit all night so it's never been an issue before these two cameras. Nice part for us anyway is that once they are done here there will be lights kicking on when someone enters the hallway automatically so I'll have more light to work with when people are in there. At least it's not recording all night when noone is there. The image during the day looks better to me also, less artifacts and generally looks sharper to my eye. Take what I can get. I'm also working with Axis m3007 cameras right now and I think in the end the axis will be better for the same money. Still testing my first one of those but I really like it so far and it will likely be my go to for hemispheric in the future from what I've seen so far.

Weird, I've never had any trouble with them at all, and I have purchased from them quite a bit too. Always been responsive and I have no complaints with the service I've received so far anyway. Here's hoping it stays that way!

So, not exactly related to the cameras mentioned, but new firmware and ISP firmware is out for many of the ACTi cameras like the 5611, 5211e, and the 3911 hemispheric cameras. I installed it om my hemispheric cameras and found two huge features, first you can now record the entire non dewarped fisheye view! Man, it is about time on that one. Second, the night images are night and day better, I mean truly amazing and or shockingly better in my case anyway. I cannot believe the changes, I just installed two in hallways a couple of week ago and there is almost no light there and they have been recording all night long since they were installed. Looked pretty bad actually so we were going to install another light. Installed the update yesterday and changed nothing else on the cameras other than tweaking the motion some more and they did not record, and the few seconds I did get recorded were much better, I actually called someone else into my office to show them the difference it was so big lol. Whatever, I'm happy. I'll try to attach an example of what I see as the difference. Installed it on 5-6 of my 5611 and 5211 cameras today to see if the new ISP makes any difference there at night.

Thanks for the review, I may pick up one of them to try after seeing your video. I have been using a ton of the e31 cameras with great results so the 3mp version would be nice for areas where I require the extra resolution. Night video does not look quite as nice as I usually want, and though the e31 has WDR I have found that I had to disable it in most locations as it made the picture worse and not better. I end up with strange looking video if the ground is slightly wet for example, I know it's WDR but my higher end cameras do not act like this. The artifacts from the WDR even during the day were at times bad enough to trigger motion detection so I had to disable it by default on all my e31 cameras. I'm still playing with it, but overall I get much better image results with it off. I have about 100 of these e31 cameras up now, and 40 more in the box here getting ready so I really do like them, but the WDR is not what I was hoping for.

Yesh.. That would add up quickly! Would want to keep that in house for sure I'd assume! No idea how they charge for that use as of yet. Waiting on a call from my Koorsen rep to get pricing from him and some more details. We are only controlling a main gate, but we have over 13,000 people/accounts to keep track of currently, and growing all the time. That is why we are using pin numbers and not access cards - for us, in our business, it makes more sense at this time anyway.

Get a static IP address, then ports are not blocked. We use Verizon air cards with cradlepoint routers, and nothing at all works without getting a static IP and I thought ATT was the same way but I could well be wrong. In fact they somehow made one that was static dynamic yesterday and now we cannot access anything at that site. Grrrr.

I deal with that site a lot, and have been super pleased with the customer service and communication. I actually contacted them a while back and now special order all my analog cameras from them as I need a design that is not standard for them so they don't stock it. I have ordered well over 200 analog cameras from them now I believe. They used to have a catalog, and no prices at all online, but they recently changed to the new site. I still just email directly them for my orders actually. I would recommend Empire as a place to purchase for sure.

Yes, they are a hosted solution, or if you want you can keep it all in house also as they have an option for that too. The hosted price is very low though, roughly $15 per month per reader/keypad what I was quoted, but for me I only have a single keypad at each location so $15 a month per property is not all that bad really. Not checked or asked how much the server they sell is so we could keep it all in house, but really the hosted price was not that bad and the security of already having it backed up and off site redundant is pretty nice. The site has fluff, but also has the data sheets on the hardware and such there. Look here and scroll down and you'll see the information on the actual hardware they have, and they said they work with most keypads and readers. http://www.brivo.com/products/datasheets I think the main reason there is little real info is they they do not sell direct, and they don't even sell through distributors, it has to be through a security company. That hurts us as we do all our own work so I would greatly prefer to just buy the equipment at a discount and skip the middleman, but they need money too I suppose. At least whoever would sell to us will have it easy, sell take the cut and move on lol! I think the security company gets a cut of the monthly revenue also from what I've read, but not sure. The MSRP on the boxes that I was looking at is $2020, and on ebay I've seen them for $600 so there must be some large markup somewhere.

We are currently using PTI and looking at options for the future, long ways out yet but still looking now so as to be ready. Brivo seems pretty new, but I really like what I've seen online about them so far anyway so I thought I'd ask to see if anyone has personal experience with them.