Need advice on a new system for vacation home

[CrownSeven 0]

Hello everyone, first timer here. You folks are the experts in my book which is why I'm asking for help here.

 

I'm putting together a system for my vacation home so I can monitor it while I'm not there. I'm trying to come up with something that will be reliable and was wondering if I could get away with not using a dedicated NVR and instead write out to the on board SD cards on the cams themselves. My reasoning - the fewer the components the more reliable it should be.

 

The gear I'm looking at:

 

3 - ACTI E84 Cams or 3 Axis m3024 LVE (not released yet so haven't made a decision)

1 - AXIS M5014 for indoors

1 - ZyXEL ES2108PWR

 

I've read that with the ACTI cams, viewing the video stored off of the SD cards can be a pain. Is that still the case?

 

Is Axis any better in this regard?

 

Or should I just throw out that idea and include a dedicated NVR?

[buellwinkle 0]

The only brands that do this right are Mobotix and Axis. Mobotix does it natively with everything included in the camera, meaning you can use just about any browser to view it, so if you have a Mac for example, it is a better choice. Axis uses an app that runs in the camera, like an app running on your smart phone. The app, Axis Camera Companion (ACC) takes care of all the recording to SD or NAS but it's not really natively accessible. You'll need to install the ACC software on Windows to view the cameras or recordings and make changes to settings, there's no web client, no real smart phone client and I found it a pain because say you have it installed at home, then you install it on your travel laptop and you have to export the configuration from the desktop to the laptop, but they are different because the desktop is on the LAN, the laptop uses WAN addresses and each camera has to be port forwarded for it to work remotely.

 

So beside Axis and Mobotix, there's several companies that offer SD card storage for recorded events including ACTi but it's not going to be as easy. Basically, you'll be presented with a list of recordings, download a few and play them on a PC. So depends how often you plan on doing this but if you check regularly, it could be a PITA to deal with.

 

With ACTi, you can use their free NVR3 software which is quite good and responsive from a remote location using a browser. It' slow to connect, sometimes taking 2-3 minutes, but once connected, even when we travel Europe, we have full access to the camera, the recordings, change settings and such. It's so efficient, you can run it on an a slower PC. We had it running on an Atom processor nettop for a while and then switched to an older user i3 based PC. So maybe a cheap or even re-purposed older PC and you are up and running with a commercial solution.

 

Also, for a mixed camera brand solution, BlueIris provides the ability to view the cameras and recordings remotely. From Europe the access was very quick to the live view in contrast to waiting a few minutes above, but you had a very crude web interface. The cameras displayed fine, but viewing recordings were based off a list of files with camera names. So click on the file name brings up the recording. It's $50 per server and requires a better PC, a least a modern day i5 for a few cameras you mention.

[CrownSeven 0]

Thanks for the great response.

 

I think the mobotix cameras are very nice but a bit out of my price range.

 

Quick question about the ACTI NVR software - can it easily connect to ACTI cameras and read off the SD storage? Or is it expected that whatever is running the NVR software, that is the unit that would handle the recording.

 

Sounds like SD card storage may not be worth it in the end.

 

Thanks again!

[buellwinkle 0]

The NVR software writes to hard drives on the computer that runs the software. The SD cards come in handy if the NVR computer breaks for whatever reason, you can have the cameras write to SD. I wish it did this automatically but not sure anyone does. I know Mobotix had it in their roadmap to do.

[CrownSeven 0]

I purchase an ACTI e84 to test out its capabilities. During the day fantastic picture, at night though I'm not very impressed.

 

I have this mounted in an area with very low light - and as you can see its hard to make out anything in the picture (pointing at my wood deck, and a table with a flower pot sitting on table):

 

 

I had an old monoprice camera there previously that did a much better job at night.

 

Is there something I can adjust on the camera to improve the night time setting? Or am I expecting too much from this camera. I have WDR set to 'highest' and noise reduction 'on'. The IR Leds are also on that shot.

 

At this point I'm starting to think I should just go pick up a pair of those Swann's from Costco.

[blake 0]

Looks like there is something on the lens.

[buellwinkle 0]

I have that very same camera and either you installed the dome cover wrong or that's one defective camera. Open a support ticket on their website, upload the images. I give them access to the camera so they can see for themselves.

 

The issue is called IR light bleed not something ACTi is known for. You can put the camera in Day mode and you'll see it goes away. Also, you can remove the dome cover and you'll see it go away. Make sure all is snug, that any rubber grommets on the lens or around the dome cover are installed correctly. If it persists, take the dome cover off, take a picture of the camera so I can see the lens and see if anything is missing compared to the one I have here.

 

I'm in the middle of reviewing that camera but I'll post one night shot to show you that it's not normal.

 

[CrownSeven 0]

You both are correct. I may have messed something up in the install. I removed the dome and the picture is much better.

 

I've noticed that when I put the dome on, the rubber cushion around the edge of the lens is butting up against the dome. Is this normal?

 

I'll take some pics tomorrow during the day of how I have it set up, I may have definitely done something wrong.

 

Thanks again for the help!

[buellwinkle 0]

No worries. I have to swap out cameras, maybe this morning if I have time and I'll take a picture of a brand new one out of the box and do unboxing shots so you see how it goes together. It's really a nice camera, once you have it setup right, you'll be happy with it. Also, ACTi is working on improving it so I expect to get even better when they release the next firmware upgrade.

[CrownSeven 0]

Thanks buell.

 

I went out took a few pics of how I have it setup in case it helps.

 

 

 

 

[MaxIcon 0]

You may be getting IR reflections from the area around the camera back to the dome, if cleaning the dome doesn't fix things up.

 

A possibly easy way to check that is to point the camera straight up into a dark sky and see if there's IR bleed. If so, it's coming from the inside of the dome. If not, it's coming from the environment.

 

That's assuming it's easy to pull the camera, of course.

[buellwinkle 0]

Here's a brand new D82, same physically as the E84. I have the E84 setup under my eave, same orientation as you and you saw the image straight from the camera above.

 

 

 

[CrownSeven 0]

An update.

 

I pulled off the dome, cleaned it out well, and rotated the camera 180 degrees so that the majority of the ir leds we're on the bottom, instead of the top. This seems to have helped quite a bit. The picture is much improved now at night although it looks like for my use, the IR's beam pattern is not spread out enough. I took snapshots at different times as the night came.

 

 

 

 

This next shot was after setting the shutter to 1/15 from 1/30 and is the best I could get it.

 

[MaxIcon 0]

Those circles around the edges look a lot like the rings around the lens reflecting ir back onto the inside of the dome.

[CrownSeven 0]

They could be. I think at this point I'm going to ping Acti and see if they have any advice. Thanks for the help folks! I'll let you know what they say.

[buellwinkle 0]

I'm seeing the same issue on a few of their cameras, something ACTi has to fix.

[CrownSeven 0]

Contacted Acti. I think they may have misunderstood my issues with the camera. They logged into the camera and played around with some of the night settings to increase the brightness - which of course won't solve the issue. I'll try them again tomorrow.

[PluffMud 0]

Poor night vision appears to plague ACTi cameras at the moment (the KCM-5611 is the exception from what I can tell). I bought an E31 a while back and the video quality at night is poorer than my 2yr old standard definition Foscam.

 

Should we be confident that this will/can be fixed I wonder? This has been the one thing really holding me back from ACTi although their current camera offerings and prices are great!

[CrownSeven 0]

Poor night vision appears to plague ACTi cameras at the moment (the KCM-5611 is the exception from what I can tell). I bought an E31 a while back and the video quality at night is poorer than my 2yr old standard definition Foscam.

 

Should we be confident that this will/can be fixed I wonder? This has been the one thing really holding me back from ACTi although their current camera offerings and prices are great!

 

I've been going back and forth with their support which has been very responsive - not very helpful though unfortunately. What kills me with this camera is, the day picture is fantastic, and just before full dark hits, the picture is still very good. Its once there's no ambient light around that the camera really suffers, even with the build in led's. Maybe I was expecting too much. I'm sure getting some external led's would take care of the issue, but I was trying to avoid doing so.

[buellwinkle 0]

They have an issue with the newer varifocal lens IR cameras. I tested a few and all of them are the same, doesn't matter dome or bullet. When you have the camera at it's widest angle, the IR only lights up maybe 25% of the image and what I heard back is that it is what it is, they don't see it as a bug. If you zoom out more, at least half way, you'll see it gets better. I don't believe the fixed focal lens camera have this problem, not the ones I tested, so that may be a way to go.

 

The problem with the E31/E32 is that the web browser interface shows more noise at night than you actually get in still shots or recordings, don't know why. Try clicking on the snapshot button, you'll see the image is much clearer.

[MaxIcon 0]

Makes sense - seems like all varifocal IR cams would have the same problem. There are a few ways to have IR cover the entire zoom range, but some are complicated, and I don't know if any manufacturers cover this well yet.

 

- Have the IR spread designed to cover the widest angle. This will waste a bunch of illumination when zoomed in, and reduce the throw on the IR, but you wouldn't have the hot spot when zoomed out.

 

- Have a movable IR lens that changes the IR to match the lens setting. More moving parts, possible alignment/calibration issues, but certainly do-able.

 

- Have additional IR LEDs that are turned on as the lens zooms in, providing wider coverage. Not really any different than having the IR spread in the first place, except for low power use and heat when zoomed out.

 

Avigilon has adaptive IR, but I'm not sure how they control it.