IP Cameras

[nicholasfd]

I'm looking to put up a couple IP cameras on my house. I was looking at the Honeywell H4W4PER3 or possibly something hikvision if I was going to do a mini dome PTZ, I'm not sure what I want yet. I was wondering if anyone knew if these cameras were any good. I would like to stay around $150-$200 per camera, if anyone has any other recommendations. I was looking at bosch, but they're just too expensive. I was looking at honeywell cameras because honeywell is a fairly well known brand, they're not too expensive, that one has IR, which I need, and know the brand isn't going to disappear next week, and I installed about 20 hikvision PTZ and bullet cameras about a year ago on my old school, and they are still running strong, so I wouldn't mind going with a couple of those, just in mini dome form. I also installed Reolink cameras inside, but those were junk, out of about 40, we had about 5 dead out of the box, and another 10 or so die within a couple days of use, so I'd like to stay away from them if I can, if I'm just going off of price alone, I'd like to stay away from cheap consumer grade cameras. I also wasn't going to go with a standalone NVR, I was going to run Blue Iris or some other software on a VM on my server, if that changes any opinions on the cameras, or if anyone knows of any better ip camera monitoring software with a web interface, feel free to let me know, I was looking at iSpy, but they don't really have a web interface, and what they do have isn't free, so I didn't really want that.

 

Thanks

[exetras]

For pro grade stuff you are looking at 300$ plus per camera for sure, Honeywell is a great choice.

 

Check out Synology's compatibility list: https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility/camera  Most of the camera's there are Pro grade. But personally I recommend Panasonic or Sony if you can afford it, they work with pretty much every system.

 

The biggest issue I see with IP cams is retention time, most people or companies don't realize how expensive it can be to hold months of video data.

[Stea1th]

probably not what you are looking for, but i've been using a few wyze cams at my house and it's been working great. Not to mention they are SUPER cheap.  You have 2 options...you can use the standard firmware and just throw in some high capacity micro SD cards to store video of a few days and use their APP to control and view recordings.  Currently that is what i do, I don't personally think I need to have the recordings last for longer than a few days, if something was to happen, i would have the recording and just save it to my PC. They also provide free storage for events, Movement it detects and stores them in like 10 second clips. I will admit, that method doesn't always work. There are plenty of times the motion doesn't get detected. However, because it records 24/7 to the SD card i can just go back and look at whatever time i want. 

 

If that isn't something you want to do your second option would be to install the RTSP firmware on the cams and than use a 3rd party software to keep the records and than have it store or save the recordings to a cloud service.  This is obviously to save money because the cams are so inexpensive, you can pretty much by 10 of them for the price of a normal one.  Even with the outdoor cases they have it ends up being cheaper. The only downside for them is they require micro USB to be powered, which is my only problem with them. I wish they were POE powered, but whatever. Can't really complain for a cam that is so cheap. 

[nicholasfd]

49 minutes ago, exetras said:

For pro grade stuff you are looking at 300$ plus per camera for sure, Honeywell is a great choice.

 

Check out Synology's compatibility list: https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility/camera  Most of the camera's there are Pro grade. But personally I recommend Panasonic or Sony if you can afford it, they work with pretty much every system.

 

The biggest issue I see with IP cams is retention time, most people or companies don't realize how expensive it can be to hold months of video data.

Thank you, I don't plan on holding months of video data, just maybe a few days, or a week at most. I live in the middle of the country, and we aren't really too worried about security, as there isn't really any crime in my area, never mind break ins, they are just for some peace of mind, and so we can see who is pulling in and out of our driveway and walking around our house. Some of those sony and panasonic cameras are a little bit outside of my price range. I can get those honeywell cameras from jmac supply for about $140. I can also get a 1000 ft box of cat 6 cable for $135, also honeywell wire from jmac supply, I have used it before and like it a lot. I really didn't want to spend more than about $500 on the whole project. I'm an electrician, so I can run and terminate the cables by myself. The only other expense I was really planing on was $70 for blue iris software, and a couple poe injectors. I have a dell poweredge R710 with vmware ESXI, so I can just create a new windows vm and run blue iris on that, and save the footage to the server. I have a 1TB hard drive with practically nothing on it, I could partition half of it for footage from 2 cameras, and that should be plenty. If not, I still have the other half.

[Astrum]

I use 3 Hikvision DS-2CD23 4MP   stored on my synology and runs like charm. had them for maybe two years so far and no issues. 

Ive installed various hikvision installs at people houses. i think most on a single house was 15. the larger setups  they've had to reboot the POEswitch once or twice a year to get a camera back up but im pretty sure it has to do with the switch power it outputs. Ive noticed they sometimes pull more power  then manual says and that prob either pushes the single port poe wattage or the total wattage rated for switch gets maxed and a camera will disconnect. never really looked to much into it cus happens rarely and just do a remote switch reboot or if u know which port its connected to just a nice plug out and back in. 

 

[nicholasfd]

9 minutes ago, Stea1th said:

probably not what you are looking for, but i've been using a few wyze cams at my house and it's been working great. Not to mention they are SUPER cheap.  You have 2 options...you can use the standard firmware and just throw in some high capacity micro SD cards to store video of a few days and use their APP to control and view recordings.  Currently that is what i do, I don't personally think I need to have the recordings last for longer than a few days, if something was to happen, i would have the recording and just save it to my PC. They also provide free storage for events, Movement it detects and stores them in like 10 second clips. I will admit, that method doesn't always work. There are plenty of times the motion doesn't get detected. However, because it records 24/7 to the SD card i can just go back and look at whatever time i want. 

 

If that isn't something you want to do your second option would be to install the RTSP firmware on the cams and than use a 3rd party software to keep the records and than have it store or save the recordings to a cloud service.  This is obviously to save money because the cams are so inexpensive, you can pretty much by 10 of them for the price of a normal one.  Even with the outdoor cases they have it ends up being cheaper. The only downside for them is they require micro USB to be powered, which is my only problem with them. I wish they were POE powered, but whatever. Can't really complain for a cam that is so cheap. 

If they can't be powered by poe, I don't think I am going to use it. They are going outside, and I'm in new england, so leaving a usb cable outside is not an option with our harsh summers and winters, I wouldn't give it more than a few months before I started having issues with it, not to mention, that I'd have to put a plug out there, and they're going under an overhang, and the only way to get power out there is to cut into the sheetrock in my garage, which isn't and option. I can fish a cat 6 cable through a vent to the attic, but not power. Once I'm in my attic, I can get to anywhere on the top floor of my house, and have the poe injectors near my switch. I also looked into the wyze cameras, and they're not quite what I was looking for. These are getting mounted on the overhang, and a dome camera is what will work best under there. I appreciate the insight, but I wanted to stay away from consumer grade products. I don't have the time or patience to deal with them, especially if they fail in the middle of the winter. I like the ruggedness of the commercial grade products, I was in charge of the installation of a decent sized camera upgrade project, we were removing a an old analog bosch system, and putting up a mixture of hikvision and reolink cameras, and they just felt like kids toys compared to the bosch ones. Reolink had reliability issues, and the hikvision ones were made out of really cheap aluminum, compared to the aluminum and steel of the bosch cameras. If I was somewhere with a much more stable weather pattern, I might consider it, but I just can't based on my location.

[Astrum]

11 minutes ago, nicholasfd said:

I and the hikvision ones were made out of really cheap aluminum, compared to the aluminum and steel of the bosch cameras. If I was somewhere with a much more stable weather pattern, I might consider it, but I just can't based on my location.

I live in Ontario Canada. and have no issue with weather for the hikvisions. Everything is pretty enclosed

[nicholasfd]

1 minute ago, Astrum said:

I live in Ontario Canada. and have no issue with weather for the hikvisions. Everything is pretty enclosed

When I was installing the hikvision cameras, they did seem to seal up good, the aluminum just seemed really cheap and soft on the bullet cameras where I had to do a lot of adjusting to get them right. That was one of my only complaints with them.

[ianspy1]

14 hours ago, exetras said:

For pro grade stuff you are looking at 300$ plus per camera for sure, Honeywell is a great choice.

 

Check out Synology's compatibility list: https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility/camera  Most of the camera's there are Pro grade. But personally I recommend Panasonic or Sony if you can afford it, they work with pretty much every system.

 

The biggest issue I see with IP cams is retention time, most people or companies don't realize how expensive it can be to hold months of video data.

I work in a company where we support and do the hole tech arround this problem .... not only the cams are expensiv but also a storage server ( would suggest ) and maintnance is bad too

But we shoot on panasonic AW-hr140´s...