pounce

I have an alley that has some Hikvision cameras on it. At night I get way too many events from flying bugs and actually rain at times. I'm looking for options like trip beams or some PIR sensors in the locations where people would have to pass into the space where cameras are pointed. I'm hoping that I can detect motion near where the motion is happening vs in camera detection from two stories up. Does anyone have some suggestions? I looked for IP based PIR sensors etc, but didn't find a lot. There must be a better way that i'm not seeing. I have xProtect running at the moment.

If you have cameras and NVR hardware that supports the features you can obtain the firmware from Hikvision. Please see the Hikvision download page for your region by googling Hikvison. License plate features are in the EU NVR firmware, but not in the US firmware. If you do not have cameras and NVR from Hikvision designed and supported for this feature .... asking the general question will get you responses like the above.

Like the other poster I would say it doesn't matter. POE is a standard with various flavors. The standard doesn't have anything to do with whether this camera or that switch can handle the cold. You need to look at the ratings for each piece of equipment. Yes, if there is heating it requires more power, but POE can do that. You just have to look at the rating, distance and load etc. If you really have doubts run low voltage cable at the same time.

http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10510_i7599.html I'd consider the Hikvision cubes. They are POE They have decent sound SD card for local recording Can be surface mounted or wall mounted. Don't generally look like security cameras when mounted on a shelf etc Can be wifi The IR and PIR work well Different lense configurations available I like these because you can move them around. Easy to detach and put in a drawer.

I buy my US authorized Hikvision equipment from AV Supply http://www.avsupply.com/MFG/hikvision-surveillance/hikvision-surveillance.html They don't post prices. They will quote you prices on anything you ask about in email. They are very friendly and the pricing is comparable to what you find in the gray market. Darlene typically helps me. If you know what you want this is an easy process.

Another option might be to use a router with VPN capabilities. Join the networks. Rather than exposing any ports etc for direct access and relying on application security you could just VPN in and use whatever you want like you are on the network. Its just another way to do it. This may not be possible if you want to use mobile clients.

thewireguys, thanks for the guidance. It pushed me in a good direction. I might play with and axis unit: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_p8221/index.htm buellwinkle, I was also thinking along those same lines. I have a drawer full of arduino. Was looking at BLE chips. They can run a year on a coin battery. If I knew how to send an http event/alarm to xprotect I'd go down this path. My google-fu wasn't finding much. Next step was to get the Milestone SDK and dig through it. Another thought is to leverage insteon devices. Thank you both.

I only have one camera that has the i/o and its not an outside camera. Its one of the bricks. I thought the S was sound, but maybe with sound you get i/o also. I know I can turn off IR. Its sort of a shell game. I like the on camera IR for the most part and it works pretty well. I don't want to buy more IR projectors if I don't have to. Yes, I''m considering it as an option. I just don't want to have to wire up more power and hang more stuff. The clutter of having cameras and IR lights and floods is not attractive. I cant go with floods for the area for a few reasons. It needs to stay more or less dark at night. Doesn't anyone sell a relay that can simply send alarms or events based on tripping a circuit... without having a camera? How does one normally integrate an alarm system with a camera system so that the alarms start recording? I'm sort of investing in finding a solution for this because I think I can use the solution in more than one place or for other needs. A simple use case is that I want to use an event or alarm to start recording on more than one camera. The event or alarm goes to xprotect. Xprotect manages the event or alarm and records from the cameras.

Thanks for the replies guys. I know I don't have that option on my Hikvision cameras. I'll have to check the firmware version. I have US cameras from an official dealer so I guess I can get upgrades somewhere if I'm simply behind. The issue I have at night is that the IR attracts so many bugs that the cameras are recording way too much. I'm not sure if the traversal approach would work for bugs or not. They fly in circles. I'm sure they would fly right over the line. I'd really like to use some sensor near the ground to start the recordings. I see in the other link that sensors like door and window can be used, but how to translate open/closed circuit to IP events?

I have a DS-2CD2632F-I set up with an SD to run solo for a while. I'm testing out the local storage and ability to run without an NVR. I'm still messing around with the motion sensing. I get too many events from the bugs that just love the IR at night. Because of the number of bug events I'm finding it pretty tedious to review the activity. I see that I can set up stills for the event. The default looks like 4 images. I was thinking I could very easily view a lot of stills in a short period of time vs chugging through a bunch of video. However, I'm not seeing a simple way to view the stills from the camera. Anyone have any tips?

Hikvision has a WP8 app: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/ivms-4500/1952d6a8-d711-4d51-9eea-a412d8b52007

A con might be ...just more items in your install. You also have more cables because you would need to run a cable from your switche(s) to the POE injector. It's minor, but its a difference. It was important to me that I could use any switch I wanted for my network and that I didn't have to have a special switch just for the cameras. If someone just wanted a simple inexpensive solution at their home using a passive injector with a standard router plus perhaps a really cheap switch to expand ports can get you a long way.

I'd actually challenge you on that statement. I don't think those numbers are factual. At the very least you can't make a general statement on the method without considering the manufacturer or product.

I decided to use passive POE switches like these: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0086SQDMM The reason was they are silent and I can have my actual switch elsewhere and more than one of them. It just seemed more flexible.

So my wife wants to get an Xbox One so that we can use the Skype video group chat with the families since we just had our first child. To me this seems like a very expensive solution for Skype, but I'm warning up to it for some of the other features like Netflix and such (even though we also have a Roku). The one thing that might put me over the edge is if we can easily view our exterior cameras on the Xbox while watching Netflix or using Skype etc. I guess there is a way to multitask with the thing so you can switch views easily. Anyway, is anyone using an Xbox One to view cameras? Any thoughts of what works or doesn't? The house with the prospective Xbox one has Hikvision cameras. Its not critical we make this work, but I haven't seen any discussions on the topic when doing searches. Clearly I'm not a gamer or I'd buy one anyway

Thanks. That's some serious detail there Don. You are very thorough. Good stuff.

Cost isn't much of a factor when its about making life easy for my wife with the newborn... I would probably use it for gaming. I just don't call myself a "gamer". I wish the Xbox One was a media extender for WMC, but I don't think it is. We have plenty of skype capable devices around. Just really wanted to know if anyone uses the Xbox One and if there is a nice options for viewing cameras on them.

I understand there are some options to stream without plugins. The reasons to consider an xbox over a laptop for Skype are: The Kinect camera sits on the large plasma TV in a comfortable area so we don't need a laptop. This makes it more likely to use since are already sitting in front of the thing. We can use a remote or even talk to the thing to work it. It does other things besides Skype We can use our laptops for other things while using Skype. I work remote some days. etc

I bought from AV Supply. You can find the link from the Hikvision site. Prices were not all that different that buying from China or unauthorized. I thought getting a warranty was worth it. I did buy some of the higher end cameras though. AV supply was very friendly.

I'm not sure if this has had any visibility, but I just noticed Cannon bought Milestone recently. http://www.milestonesys.com/Documents/Press-releases/2014/20140613---Canon/ I don't have a thought of whether this is good or bad for the rest of us. I only noticed because I was getting ready to make some license purchases and was reading through their news feed to see if I was missing anything...

Cool. Are you using the one with the 2.5 drive support or the other one? External drive? Curious how well the storage works with multiple streams.

You have no idea. Its what you get when nobody qualified wants the job.

What's the installed base of Milestone and how many cameras in the field running? I'd imagine that if Cannon is thinking about improving its products and going after this market a tighter integration with perhaps enhanced proprietary functions available to Milestone users could maybe sell cameras. If Milestone software creates "stickiness" for the customer base then camera upgrades are a good angle. Pair a camera system with a smart thermostat, alarm system, power monitoring and entertainment system and you have ...oh wait

I think you guys have inspired me to take another swing at the HOA to put the cameras up. As you both suggest perhaps having a 3rd party install and manage just gate cameras while providing clear disclaimers about their use would solve the issues. I'm not sure they quoted the cost of doing this kind of thing, but they have had 20k in gate repairs lately so I certainly see the value.

Our HOA board is not the greatest. The gist of the explanation was that if cameras were placed there would be an expectation of availability for evidence in a crime. If for some reason the cameras were not functional and no evidence was available for something like an assault then the cameras gave a false expectation of security.... Thankfully, I am not an attorney and were I actually live is not in an HOA. I just own some HOA units. Running into the gate due to tailgating is the biggest expense. I suggested that a unit owner near the gate could have a personal camera that might inadvertently capture gate activity....