Help for a microphone install

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
Yeah, Broachoski I know what you mean, Ive got almost 20 years on you (at 86) and believe me, it gets even worse, year by year.
I'm trying to get this camera to record sound as well as video because I have a new family of foxes living under a shed in the back yard. I've been telling my daughter (lives out of town) about it. Watching on the camera as the six pups play and wrestle. They are close enough to the house that I can hear some of the commotion while I get a close-up view on the camera about 20 feet away from them. She's all excited and wants me to send her copies of some of the videos and I would like to include sound, if I can. They'll be grown up and leave in a few more weeks (or less, I think), so my time is short. After that I'll move the camera to a different location for survellance purposes.

Anyhow. Does anyone know if there is a way (for testing) to get the cameras audio to play on the computers speaker or accessory speakers without going thru BI? It seems to me that since the camera's live-view will display on the monitor while the setting are open, perhaps there is a way to get the audio to do the same. If I could do that successfuly, then I would know that I'm missing a setting in BI and it would also tell me whether or not the microphone is good. Does that make sense?
Currently, I don't know if the camera's audio circuits are working? Also are any of these microphones ( 3 ) good? Are all my cables good? Am I missing a driver somewhere in the computer? It seems I need some way to check individual components and I'm not knowledgable enough to do that.

Anyone have any other ideas? Opinions? Advice? Guidance? Anything I get will be much appreciated. Thanks. Mike
 

NightLife

Getting comfortable
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
490
Reaction score
1,096
Location
Canada
One thing you might be able to try is have the camera trigger recording when the mic receives a strong enough sound. I don't use BI so I don't know where that setting would be, but I would look for a way to do this just to test if the mic is actually working.

Looking forward to the fox videos! We have 2 possibly 3 vixens here that are pregnant; 2 grey, and 1 red.
 

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
One thing you might be able to try is have the camera trigger recording when the mic receives a strong enough sound. I don't use BI so I don't know where that setting would be, but I would look for a way to do this just to test if the mic is actually working.

Looking forward to the fox videos! We have 2 possibly 3 vixens here that are pregnant; 2 grey, and 1 red.
Thanks NightLife, I just tried that, but can't find anywhere in the camera or in BI to "trigger" with audio. I'm sure getting discouraged. I'm beginning to think maybe I have a defective camera.

Our foxes are red. As I understand it, foxes mate for life and the male is hanging around pretty close. Whenever the female comes out from under the shed, she looks around a lot like she's looking for somebody to bring her something to eat. Twice I've seen her dart out into the darkness and come right back carrying a rabbit. I think the male brought them to her, but I'm only guessing. Raising six pups i think she needs all the help she can get!!

In a couple of hours I'm going to attempt to get a fox video where I can put it on here. Haven't done that before. Usually I just watch videos, don't try to manipulate them. Thanks again for the suggestion.
 

looney2ns

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
15,521
Reaction score
22,657
Location
Evansville, In. USA
OPen the cameras Live View in Internet Explorer.
Look around the interface for a speaker icon, click and it should play audio, if PC audio is working correctly.
On my Hik cam, the speaker icon is at the lower left corner of the window.

Also, when viewing on the BI console, does that computer sounds work normally? Do you have the volume turned up?
 

NightLife

Getting comfortable
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
490
Reaction score
1,096
Location
Canada
This may be a golden opportunity to reinforce the idea of bench testing everything when receiving new cameras, or microphones etc.

I didn't do that on my last camera, but it had a built in mic however I did encounter another surprise (pita) because I was over zealous with how many cats my cable had. :slap:

This time around it's the mic which will need adapting to the camera, as well as splitting the rj45 female connector again because I buy my cable pre-built. At least on the bench I can sort that all out in comfort instead of doing it up a ladder. The plan is to split it, insert my cable, and glue it closed again. I chose a 125' cable so it could be moved in the future otherwise I wouldn't re-glue the connector.


*I think there may be downloads on the microseven website, and I think some reviewers had success when they downloaded that. Perhaps a driver thing? I hope not because I'm all Apples here. I try and steer clear of my Win10 Parallels OS. It's like that vibe you get when you drive through that part of town you wished you weren't. :idk:
 

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
OPen the cameras Live View in Internet Explorer.
Look around the interface for a speaker icon, click and it should play audio, if PC audio is working correctly.
On my Hik cam, the speaker icon is at the lower left corner of the window.

Also, when viewing on the BI console, does that computer sounds work normally? Do you have the volume turned up?
When I hover over the microphone icon in Live View, it displays "Start Two-way Audio". When I click on it, the icon below that displays "Two-way Audio Channel 1". Clicking on that displays "Using two-way audio failed".
Yes, my sound seems to be okay, the external speakers are working fine. Thanks for jumping in here, much appreciated.
 

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
Also, I found a website "onlinemictest.com" that helped me get my original microphone configured and it works. I can plug it into one of the mic jacks on my BI console and using the control panel I loaded the needed drivers (I guess). Anyway I now have a microphone that I know works, but It still needs to be configured to the camera and BI.
There is a place in BI>Options>Audio and under Microphone it allows for "Enable audio capture hardware". Should I enable this or not? If so, it wants a "Device", "Input" and "Format" and I have no idea what to put there.
 

looney2ns

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
15,521
Reaction score
22,657
Location
Evansville, In. USA
When I hover over the microphone icon in Live View, it displays "Start Two-way Audio". When I click on it, the icon below that displays "Two-way Audio Channel 1". Clicking on that displays "Using two-way audio failed".
Yes, my sound seems to be okay, the external speakers are working fine. Thanks for jumping in here, much appreciated.
Microphone icon has nothing to do with hearing audio. There is a speaker icon along that bottom area of the screen. Look at the bottom right corner.
 

looney2ns

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
15,521
Reaction score
22,657
Location
Evansville, In. USA
Also, I found a website "onlinemictest.com" that helped me get my original microphone configured and it works. I can plug it into one of the mic jacks on my BI console and using the control panel I loaded the needed drivers (I guess). Anyway I now have a microphone that I know works, but It still needs to be configured to the camera and BI.
There is a place in BI>Options>Audio and under Microphone it allows for "Enable audio capture hardware". Should I enable this or not? If so, it wants a "Device", "Input" and "Format" and I have no idea what to put there.
Only place you need to make any audio settings is when you set up the camera in BI click on the audio tab and click enable audio, that's all you need to do.
 

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
Microphone icon has nothing to do with hearing audio. There is a speaker icon along that bottom area of the screen. Look at the bottom right corner.
Got it. My mistake, It's now activated (or enabled), Still no sound but I think we're getting there. I'm calling it a night for now. Thanks all, talk to you tomorrow.
 

kalecocat

Young grasshopper
Joined
Feb 23, 2018
Messages
45
Reaction score
18
Location
Ozarks
Wellll, major development. Yesterday my regular comuter wouldn't boot. It would try but after testing the cd drive and i think beginning the ram test, it would stop, pause and try again. Thats all it does. Anyway I dug another computer out of the pile and spent most of the day getting my Thunderbird email program installed and working and making arrangements for another proper computer.
This morning a neighbor called and wanted to make sure I was getting video of the fox family at play. I was, and now I finally have the time this afternoon to try to put it on the forum to share.

The method I used is: while viewing the video, right click, select Trim/Export, (also used the Green and Red arrows to make smaller) selected Windows Media (did not change properties), then selected "Create a new file". It took a long time, maybe an hour and when it was finished it was a very small file and when I rtried to play it with Win Media Player it just flashed. I deduced from this that once again, I don't know what I'm doing!
So, I started over by right-clicking on the clip in the column of clips and selected "Move">"Copy only to.." and selected the destination folder. Woked great, copied quickly and plays properly with BI. Only problem now is how to get it over onto this, my regular computer in order to put it onto the forum. I've tried several thumb drives with plenty of room but always get the message that it's "too large for the destination file system". It says the file is 4.41 GB and the new thumb drive is 8 GB.
Once again I need help. Please,
 

khustabak

n3wb
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Location
usa
Current front door has a decent duhua camera a couple meters away, but no built in microphone. I don't feel replacing the existing camera with the microphone model is the best route.
Looking at cheap poe cameras with pornhub mics seem to be a similar cost to running a dedicated mic to the NVR. Not sure what the better option is here. Any recommendations?
 
Last edited:

wittaj

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Apr 28, 2019
Messages
24,448
Reaction score
47,588
Location
USA
Current front door has a decent duhua camera a couple meters away, but no built in microphone. I don't feel replacing the existing camera with the microphone model is the best route.
Looking at cheap poe cameras with mics seem to be a similar cost to running a dedicated mic to the NVR. Not sure what the better option is here. Any recommendations?
Does your existing camera have an audio in cable? If so, it would be cheaper to add it there.
 
Top