Camera Brand Advice, Pelco, Avigilon, or another?

[threed 0]

We are going to be ordering a large number of cameras for a school setting. We currently have pelco but have had problems with the server stopping recording. I want some advice on camera brands that are good quality that i should look at. I have seen avigilon software that i like but havent heard of the company until now, any advice?

[thewireguys 3]

Where is your school located?

[threed 0]

Idaho. I see your an Avigilon guy, we are thinking of going with them after seeing their high mp camera and software. How long has the company been going? Are they a big company and is their software reliable? The pelco software we are running with the other schools keeps crashing, i havent been involved in any big installations of cameras until now so im not familiar with what companies are popular.

[thewireguys 3]

I strongly recommend Avigilon. Normally what we do for our new customers is install a demo system for a week or two for them to kick the tires. We haven't lost a project yet when we do this. If you need a local Avigilon dealer let me know I can get you in contact with someone. How many total cameras are you looking at?

[threed 0]

Around 100-130, we have talked to a dealer from utah but because i dont have a lot of experience in this area im trying to explore the options. We will most likely install them ourselves, but administration is leaning towards having someone draw up a plan of how many cameras to install and what types, in what location etc. The area that our last install lacks in is the outdoor cams. We are thinking about getting a higher Mp camera for those areas.

 

Right now we are using pelco 1.3 mp 8 ips cameras, how does avigilon compare price wise to pelco?

[bpzle 0]

I would sure hope that your intentions are made clear to any potential installers... It takes a substantial amount of time to properly bid a job and ethically, it's just wrong to use a quote for in house installation.

[threed 0]

Thats partially why im on this board and looking online, if we have the Avigilon group do the plans we will be paying for that as a seperate item and then we would get bids depending on their recommendations. I agree that its wrong to have a sales group do the heavy lifting and then go low bid at the end, thats why we are up front with them and have already gotten a quote from them to create a plan.

 

My worry is about getting cameras/vms that is going to have problems like our current pelco setup, so im trying to get recommendations on manufactures before we have a plan created with a company that people say to stay away from.

[indboonies 0]

I am with a large school district in MS. We have over 1000 cams county wide. The county did invest in integral (who where bout out by pelco 3 years later and went straight down hill) DVR's about 6-8 years ago. They are starting to go by the way side fast. On our newer sites we have been installing full Exacq IP systems with about 60 IP cameras per site. Older schools with preexisting analog systems I have been installing the Exacq Hybrid systems witch covers my existing analog cameras and leaves room for growth with IP cameras. I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch. Some of their licensing fees bother me, but I guess you get what you pay for.

 

I do have an Avigilon rep coming in next week to show me some of their product line. I too have only heard of them recently.

[ak357 0]

Thats partially why im on this board and looking online, if we have the Avigilon group do the plans we will be paying for that as a seperate item and then we would get bids depending on their recommendations. I agree that its wrong to have a sales group do the heavy lifting and then go low bid at the end, thats why we are up front with them and have already gotten a quote from them to create a plan.

 

My worry is about getting cameras/vms that is going to have problems like our current pelco setup, so im trying to get recommendations on manufactures before we have a plan created with a company that people say to stay away from.

 

If you ever find product and VMS better then Avigilon

please let us know

So far I can not

but on another hand

I am not really looking

Avigilon rocks

[ak357 0]

I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch.

 

I am really curios to hear your opinion after u play with Avigilon

so far I convert few customers from Exacq to Avigilon

takes about 5 min to convince

[indboonies 0]

I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch.

 

I am really curios to hear your opinion after u play with Avigilon

so far I convert few customers from Exacq to Avigilon

takes about 5 min to convince

 

 

I will give my honest opinion....

No candy coating here.

[thewireguys 3]

I am with a large school district in MS. We have over 1000 cams county wide. The county did invest in integral (who where bout out by pelco 3 years later and went straight down hill) DVR's about 6-8 years ago. They are starting to go by the way side fast. On our newer sites we have been installing full Exacq IP systems with about 60 IP cameras per site. Older schools with preexisting analog systems I have been installing the Exacq Hybrid systems witch covers my existing analog cameras and leaves room for growth with IP cameras. I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch. Some of their licensing fees bother me, but I guess you get what you pay for.

 

I do have an Avigilon rep coming in next week to show me some of their product line. I too have only heard of them recently.

 

Are you happy with Exacq's ability to search video on your megapixel cameras? How long does it take you to search a weeks worth of video on 8 cameras?

[threed 0]

It seems that Pelco has taken a old vms system and changed it to work with ip cameras. It doesnt seem as clean and user friendly as avigilon. Ive also noticed that pelcos software uses a lot more resources to run on client machines. I will look into Exacq and see how their stuff compares. \

 

As far as functionality, avigilon and pelco cover all the same basic needs in searching and recording. Avigilon is better having a ipad app but that is more of a toy than a essential piece of the system. It does make me lean towards avigilon though because they are developing stuff like the ipad app ( rather have a android app but thats a personal preference) and the fact that it looks like they created it for ip, not just adapted a old tech.

 

I haven't done side by side testing but the searching etc seems to be similar on both systems, but avigilon is faster if i had to guess.

 

What about cameras? Any preference on price/performance ?

[thewireguys 3]

The difference is Avigilon was deigned from the ground up for HD megapixel video where 99% of the other VMS's have come from the analog day.

 

I have found the Avigion cameras to be very good and when they are used with Avigilon's VMS they make for a very powerful solution.

 

Avigilon's cameras are priced very well but when your looking at a system of your size you should look at the whole solution's cost including the yearly "upgrade fees". Which Avigilon does not have.

[indboonies 0]

I am with a large school district in MS. We have over 1000 cams county wide. The county did invest in integral (who where bout out by pelco 3 years later and went straight down hill) DVR's about 6-8 years ago. They are starting to go by the way side fast. On our newer sites we have been installing full Exacq IP systems with about 60 IP cameras per site. Older schools with preexisting analog systems I have been installing the Exacq Hybrid systems witch covers my existing analog cameras and leaves room for growth with IP cameras. I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch. Some of their licensing fees bother me, but I guess you get what you pay for.

 

I do have an Avigilon rep coming in next week to show me some of their product line. I too have only heard of them recently.

 

Are you happy with Exacq's ability to search video on your megapixel cameras? How long does it take you to search a weeks worth of video on 8 cameras?

 

 

 

First off I have no need to search a weeks worth of video on 8 cameras. Would not have time to search through all that. Would go through them by 2's or 4's. I cant set and try to watch 8 camera playback at one time.

 

I would not even know how to guesstimate that. Takes about 1 minute to pull up video on 4 cameras in a 3 hour time frame.

[threed 0]

The ongoing costs are important for us, thats what eliminates a lot of other vms's. Pelco does not have a annual fee and include free upgrades. I doubt we would go with any vms that did charge a annual fee.

 

What type of server does avigilon recommend? Or do they have their own hardware?

[thewireguys 3]

I am with a large school district in MS. We have over 1000 cams county wide. The county did invest in integral (who where bout out by pelco 3 years later and went straight down hill) DVR's about 6-8 years ago. They are starting to go by the way side fast. On our newer sites we have been installing full Exacq IP systems with about 60 IP cameras per site. Older schools with preexisting analog systems I have been installing the Exacq Hybrid systems witch covers my existing analog cameras and leaves room for growth with IP cameras. I have been very pleased with the Exacq systems and their Tech support is top notch. Some of their licensing fees bother me, but I guess you get what you pay for.

 

I do have an Avigilon rep coming in next week to show me some of their product line. I too have only heard of them recently.

 

Are you happy with Exacq's ability to search video on your megapixel cameras? How long does it take you to search a weeks worth of video on 8 cameras?

 

 

 

First off I have no need to search a weeks worth of video on 8 cameras. Would not have time to search through all that. Would go through them by 2's or 4's. I cant set and try to watch 8 camera playback at one time.

 

I would not even know how to guesstimate that. Takes about 1 minute to pull up video on 4 cameras in a 3 hour time frame.

 

The video is available instantly on Avigilon. No waiting for the video to be downloaded to the client machines. You can review/search months worth of video in seconds.

[thewireguys 3]

The ongoing costs are important for us, thats what eliminates a lot of other vms's. Pelco does not have a annual fee and include free upgrades. I doubt we would go with any vms that did charge a annual fee.

 

What type of server does avigilon recommend? Or do they have their own hardware?

 

All the server specs are on the website. You can buy Avigilon servers if you like they are Dell's.

[indboonies 0]

I haven't done side by side testing but the searching etc seems to be similar on both systems, but avigilon is faster if i had to guess.

 

What about cameras? Any preference on price/performance ?

 

 

We started with Ganz Ip cams not sure of the pricing on those as they were installed under budgets of new schools. The Exterior Ganz 2mp work great. Not the best in low light settings but ok. The interior ganz 640x480 ip cams were a mistake to buy. Wish we could throw them away and start over from scratch.

 

Have been using IQeye IP exterior and interior cameras as of late and are very pleased with there performance. Cost ? Interior 450 for a 1mp and exterior around 750 for a 3mp

[threed 0]

Rory, i hope you didnt loose much sleep over me posting in the wrong section of the website. Its my first time here so the general forum looked appropriate, next time it will be in the other section. Its funny, your the only user i recognized after reading through other posts, but ive only seen comments chastising people, none giving advice.

 

What about reliability of the servers, is 100% uptime obtainable or do all vms systems go down occasionally, partially because of the amount of video they process constantly?

 

We have been on 24x7 recording because we havent been able to tweak the motion sensitivity to a level that gives us good results on recording, is this normal or do other cameras have better motion activation?

[thewireguys 3]

Theed I am more then happy to help. Please PM me if you have anymore questions.

[Soundy 1]

Thread cleaned up and moved to a more suitable forum... let's keep it civil, folks.

[Soundy 1]

Rory, i hope you didnt loose much sleep over me posting in the wrong section of the website. Its my first time here so the general forum looked appropriate, next time it will be in the other section. Its funny, your the only user i recognized after reading through other posts, but ive only seen comments chastising people, none giving advice.

Don't worry about it - your question certainly falls under "General Digital Discussion". I've moved it to the "IP Cameras" section anyway.

 

What about reliability of the servers, is 100% uptime obtainable or do all vms systems go down occasionally, partially because of the amount of video they process constantly?

I can't speak for Avigilon specifically, but keep in mind that *in general*, the VMS (video management system) is just the client-side software and would normally just be used for playback. The NVR side typically doesn't need to do a lot of processing, as all it has to do is receive the video stream and write it to disk. If your NVR and VMS are on separate systems, then any heavy processing required by the VMS shouldn't impact the NVR's reliability.

 

We have been on 24x7 recording because we havent been able to tweak the motion sensitivity to a level that gives us good results on recording, is this normal or do other cameras have better motion activation?

Some cameras have their own built-in motion detection... some even have built-in analytics, and can be configured to only SEND video when the defined conditions are met.

[ssmith10pn 0]

What about reliability of the servers, is 100% uptime obtainable or do all vms systems go down occasionally, partially because of the amount of video they process constantly?

 

Avigilon Servers are Enterprise class servers with Hot Swap RAID arrays and Hot Swap power Supplies available.

 

Here is a screen shot of a server with (20) 1MP cameras, (7) 2MP Cameras, (6) 5MP cameras, and (12) 4 channel encoders.

 

 

 

 

Here is a screen shot of (19) 5MP cameras.

 

 

[thewireguys 3]

Rory, i hope you didnt loose much sleep over me posting in the wrong section of the website. Its my first time here so the general forum looked appropriate, next time it will be in the other section. Its funny, your the only user i recognized after reading through other posts, but ive only seen comments chastising people, none giving advice.

 

What about reliability of the servers, is 100% uptime obtainable or do all vms systems go down occasionally, partially because of the amount of video they process constantly?

 

We have been on 24x7 recording because we havent been able to tweak the motion sensitivity to a level that gives us good results on recording, is this normal or do other cameras have better motion activation?

 

The only time our servers are down is when we upgrade the VMS software which takes about 3 minutes.

 

Avigilon can also do fail over recording up to 2 backup servers and redundant recording. You can also backup recorded video to a NAS or other storage device.

 

I have found Avigilon's motion detection to work very well. Out

doors you can have some issues with ANY pixel based motion system when object are far away but with Avigilon you can do "ramp up" recording so you don't miss anything. Record 1 image a second and ramp up to 15FPS when there is motion.

 

All Avigilon servers are enterprise grade with Dells onsite warranty.

Edited December 8, 2011 by Guest