Wireless IP Cam with PTZ replacement recommendations

M

mputtr

n3wb
Sep 14, 2021
9
1
Los Angeles
Hi,
It's been quite some time since I last visited IPCT. I have a bit of a conundrum for my home camera setup.
Background:
My entire home currently use Amcrest products. indoors, I have the IP4M-1051 series which was discontinued several years ago. While I really like the camera because it looks a bit more modern than the older 1041 series, it seems to have a serious issue with handling sudden power loss. I've lost about 4 IP4M-1051 cameras due to sudden power losses at home and the symptoms are always the same. It will boot up and do the initial horizontal limit check and get stuck on the first direction. When I was able to send one that was within warranty for Amcrest to look at, they say they don't know what is wrong with it so they sent me a replacement. I do not know enough to diagnose the issue myself but i did open one up and I dont know what is missing it in that is causing it to be unable to complete the initial movement limit scan. I've now lost 2 more cameras on the same day because we had a blip in the grid. I'm tired of having to replace it with cameras that somehow can't handle resets.

Current problem:
I am now considering moving my indoor cameras away from Amcrest products because currently they do not have anything that is equal or better than the 1051 series they discontinued and apparently have no plans on introducing anything new. I have Blue Iris as my main software that handles the cameras, but I would like to have ONVIF access to the cameras on my phone as well for when I'm out.

I'd like to hear what users here recommend in terms of a wifi PTZ camera that they like.

I'm looking for the following criteria:
as close to 120 degree FOV or better
connects via wifi
has Pan/Tilt
ONVIF compatible (ideally also works with Blue Iris but I don't think that will be a problem)

but if there are alternate suggestions, I'd love to hear it as well.

Thanks!
 
Nobody here will recommend a wifi PTZ. Just not a good combination.

People will use an amcrest wifi cam for non critical applications like pet or kid cam.
 
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wittaj said:
Nobody here will recommend a wifi PTZ. Just not a good combination.

People will use an amcrest wifi cam for non critical applications like pet or kid cam.
Click to expand...
why is a wifi ptz not a good combination?
I am talking about indoor home cameras, so I'm not using this for industrial or enterprise usage. Is it possible that my use case would make the cons of such a thing a moot point in this case?
 
Wifi and cameras do not go together.

There are always ways if you don't want to run an ethernet cable.

You need power anyway, so go with a powerline adapter to run the date over your electric lines or use a nano-station.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel
 
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This post from @TonyR would be the only way you would want reliable.

A PTZ and wifi will be laggy and drop signal

Will Blue Iris support two-way audio with <this camera>?

I bought a Reolink E1 Zoom some time ago to put in our "nursery" to monitor our twins. The video and "one-way" audio work OK in BI (not great because WiFi, I assume), and the two-way talk works (albeit pretty poor audio quality) in the Reolink app. It has taken me many hours of scouring BI and...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
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wittaj said:
This post from @TonyR would be the only way you would want reliable.

A PTZ and wifi will be laggy and drop signal

Will Blue Iris support two-way audio with <this camera>?

I bought a Reolink E1 Zoom some time ago to put in our "nursery" to monitor our twins. The video and "one-way" audio work OK in BI (not great because WiFi, I assume), and the two-way talk works (albeit pretty poor audio quality) in the Reolink app. It has taken me many hours of scouring BI and...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
Click to expand...
Thank you for the explanation. I understand what you mean and I can see why it could be an issue. Unfortunately, I currently do not have the money to run lines cleanly, so it is currently the only set up that I am able to do at minimal cost. With my current amcrest ip4m-1051 cameras, I have not experience the packet losses like you have described yet, but I am hoping to either keep the amount of cameras the same or eventually reduce the amount of cameras.
In regards to my network setup, I am using the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro coupled with their AC Pro APs. The good thing is, all of the cameras that actually need the wifi are within 15 feet open space. The 2 main ones I am most concerned with is literally in the same room as the AP that is ceiling mounted. So far, when i review footage, the quality has been consistent with very rarely a drop out.

I do like the idea of TonyR's set up. I should be able to set up a dedicated wifi network just for the cameras if I do see issues with it.

Lets say, if there is no issue with wifi connection, is there a wifi cam that is recommended in general that is about the same performance as the ip4m-1051 or better? or even slightly inferior?

I used to use Foscam, but I forgot why I switched over to Amcrest. I don't know if I would want to switch back to Foscam because while I don't remember why I stopped using their products, there is probably a decent reason why. That is also many many years ago, so maybe Foscam got better?

Thank you for taking the time to explain the specifics on why wifi and cameras don't generally do well though. It is very educational for me and I will take this into consideration when I have more money to spend and upgrade the home. (kids are expensive.. and I want to keep the wires to a minimum around those gremlins....)
 
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The TP-LINK Tapo C210 is a wireless, P/T 3MP cam that will stream video to Blue Iris if you follow these directions in my post Dec. of '22 ==>> Blue Iris Camera Compatibility

A few caveats:
  • I did it with the C110, but TP-LINK includes the Tapo C210 in their own list here that will stream RTSP.
  • It's not ONVIF
  • It is wireless only, 2.4GHz, no Ethernet.
  • Has no embeded webGUI, setup is with a free app.
  • You must setup free TP-LINK account via the app and setup the cam with the app BUT it is NOT using a cloud, streams directly to Blue Iris via your Wi-Fi.
  • Two way audio is with the TP-LINK app.
 
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I have IMOU Cruiser Cameras and some are connected to WIFI AND SOME TO ETHERNET, i have no issues with the cameras working on WIFI, PTZ works just fine.
 
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