Looking for some recomendations

[Git]

Greetings - looking for help/suggestions for a couple of cameras

I currently have a A "Foscam R18904 Outdoor camera with the 2.8 mm lens" mounted on the eaves of my garage that overlooks the driveway. I live on a small dead end street and there are only 5 housed down the street from me. Here is the current coverage:



These pics show how the camera is mounted. It is 9 1/2 feet off the ground and there is a led motion detector underneath it (that is my flag pole holder to the right of the camera)


I was pretty happy with the Foscam as a starter cam, but now I am ready to move up to a real camera.

Currently I am running Blue Iris on my home server which has a XEON E3-1245 v2 CPU and about 15 TB of disk space - so I should be good there. I plan on purchasing an unmanaged 4 port poe switch and I would like to buy two quality cameras that can be vertically mounted next to each other on the fascia board where the current camera is mounted. (I have plenty of access to this area through the attic in the garage)

Camera #1 - Would have about the same coverage as my current camera and it would only record when it detected motion

Camera #2 - I would like to get a close up of the cars in the street - like in my first picture. The distance is about 75'. Being able to read the license plates would be nice. Again thinking about only recording when it detects motion, but I may have it record 24/7

I also have a couple of Foscam PTZ cameras inside the house which will also eventually be changed over

Thanks

 

[Git]

Anyone?

 

[fenderman]

A hikvision 2032 should get that field of view....4mm....
If you want a close up of the street you will need at least a 12mm lens...your best bet is to get a varifocal lens like the hikvision 2632 or 2732 and adjust to suit...The adjustment is manual at the time of install...the latter 2 also have the option of sd card recording and alarm inputs as well as a mic in and speaker out.

 

[bp2008]

I agree with fenderman. If it was me I'd go with two Hikvision 2032 also. One 4mm lens for the wide view and one 12mm for the street.

 

[LittleBrother]

I think 4mm will give a wider view than that Foscam--and of course its quality is going to be way better, too!

 

[fenderman]

I think 4mm will give a wider view than that Foscam--and of course its quality is going to be way better, too!

with the hiks you can get a wider view if you drop the res to 2mp, i do this on mine...you will lose some vertical view...

 

[icerabbit]

It sounds like you have things planned well. Recommend cat 6 solid copper. Unmanaged POE switch is fine.

For consistency / aesthetics, two of the same cameras side by side would be better. Whether bullet (least expensive), turret (ball no dome) or dome (the direction the camera is aimed at is more concealed, but have to watch out for finger prints on dome which cause night time IR ghosting ... plus trickiest to install)

I recommend a little play with the free online lens calculator at http://www.jvsg.com/online/
Leave camera sensor and format, but play with lens size, distance to target, target width.

Using that tool, and with the specs for the 2032 bullet and/or other models from Hikvision, you can see how close the specs fov match your needs / calculations using above tool.

I run Hikvision 3mp cams at 2mp 1920x1080 as well. That'll be a nice upgrade from foscam.

 

[Git]

Thanks for the input - a couple of Hikvision 2032's should do the trick. It looks like Wrightwood doesn't accept American Express - which is what I prefer to pay with because AmEx will extend the warranty for a year for free. Any other recommended places to buy from?

 

[fenderman]

Keep in mind that amex doubles the manufactures warranty up to a year. So if the warranty is only 3 months like for some cams you will only get 6 total(an technically it would only apply to the manufacturer warranty, not a sellers own warranty ...generally they dont hassle you though, and just credit your account..they are good like that.
http://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/card-benefits/extended-warranty-terms.html
Many good visa and master cards so this as well, discover does too.

 

[Git]

You bring up a good point. I was looking at the Wrightwood site and it indicate a 1 year warranty. I guess the 1 year is actually through Wrightwood and not Hikvision?

Also very pleased when filing extended warranty claims with Amex - usually results in full refund within a day or two of filing the claim.

This whole Hikvision thing is confusing. I see some pretty decent prices on NewEgg and Amazon (through third party sellers) but how can you tell what you are getting. I would like to stay away from Chinese Firmware/gray market cams. I even emailed Hikvision US for recommendations and all they did was point to their list of distributors - who I don't believe will sell to a diy'er?

 

[LittleBrother]

You bring up a good point. I was looking at the Wrightwood site and it indicate a 1 year warranty. I guess the 1 year is actually through Wrightwood and not Hikvision?

Also very pleased when filing extended warranty claims with Amex - usually results in full refund within a day or two of filing the claim.

This whole Hikvision thing is confusing. I see some pretty decent prices on NewEgg and Amazon (through third party sellers) but how can you tell what you are getting. I would like to stay away from Chinese Firmware/gray market cams. I even emailed Hikvision US for recommendations and all they did was point to their list of distributors - who I don't believe will sell to a diy'er?

I'm new to this, but I've ordered three cams from milkisbad (he has a thread on the forum) in the past two weeks. They are non-hikvision branded cameras, but they are English. His prices are good and he ships immediately, and they seem to have a solid warranty. I've only upgraded the firmware of one with English firmware so far but it worked fine.

 

[bp2008]

To clarify, what milkisbad has is re-branded Hikvision cams. They don't say Hikvision on them (this is common for different companies to rebrand Hikvision and Dahua cams) but they are Hikvision for all intents and purposes including firmware updates.

 

[Git]

I considered MilkisBad and pm'd him - he doesn't have the 12mm lens and suggested Wrightwood for that. I would prefer to get both cams from the same place and I will probably just end up buying from Wrightwood and not worrying about the AmEx thing

 

[Git]

Found a 'work-a-round' to my Amex problem with Wrightwood. Wrightwood doesn't accept AmEx - but they do take PayPal. My PayPal account pulls funds from my AmEx card and I just confirmed with an AmEx agent that this would qualify for the extended warranty benefits, so that is what I am going to do

Thanks again for your help

 

[sprucecams]

"with the hiks you can get a wider view if you drop the res to 2mp, i do this on mine...you will lose some vertical view..."
"I run Hikvision 3mp cams at 2mp 1920x1080 as well."

A wider view might be helpful. Where do I make this change? In the camera settings? Or in Blue Iris? Many thanks.

 

[fenderman]

Found a 'work-a-round' to my Amex problem with Wrightwood. Wrightwood doesn't accept AmEx - but they do take PayPal. My PayPal account pulls funds from my AmEx card and I just confirmed with an AmEx agent that this would qualify for the extended warranty benefits, so that is what I am going to do

Thanks again for your help

Thanks for the info about the extended warranty via amex through paypal..I always wondered that...

 

[LittleBrother]

"with the hiks you can get a wider view if you drop the res to 2mp, i do this on mine...you will lose some vertical view..."
"I run Hikvision 3mp cams at 2mp 1920x1080 as well."

A wider view might be helpful. Where do I make this change? In the camera settings? Or in Blue Iris? Many thanks.

You can certainly do it within the camera, and it's a prominent setting within the video/image section. You can also within that section change frame rate and quality settings.

 

[fenderman]

"with the hiks you can get a wider view if you drop the res to 2mp, i do this on mine...you will lose some vertical view..."
"I run Hikvision 3mp cams at 2mp 1920x1080 as well."

A wider view might be helpful. Where do I make this change? In the camera settings? Or in Blue Iris? Many thanks.

You would make this change in the camera itself....
Just as a point of reference, the hikvision 4mm bullet in 2mp mode gives the the same horizontal angle as a Dahua 2.8mm in 3mp mode (or two, because there is no horizontal effect on the dahuas when you change from 3mp to 2mp like there is on the hiks, on dahua it just cuts off vertical field of view)

 

[nayr]

yeah the dahua just crops it down, the 3MP gives a bigger FOV... attached sample

1080p vs 3MP on 2.8mm HFW4300S (both displayed in 16:10)