Need new camera system - Ring vs. the world

I use Hikvision - 8 x 1080p cams with a NVR containing 2 8gb drives (need to check size if interested). About 30 days of full time recording. All cams are PoE.

The bullet cams are great, domes not so great. I can grab stills into indigo with a refreshing URL.

The phone app is poor at best, and the software on the NVR a little clunky. No filters for motion, other than line crossing and blocking out areas.

Have been running for 18 months with about 5 reboots (only b/c the web server providing the images to indigo crashes, but the box still records - I've not investigated the problem).

Image quality is perfect daytime, the domes need extra IR at night, but the bullets function well.

There are two outputs on the NVR - HDMI is fed into a modulator so visible on all TV's, the other is fed into a local monitor.

Whole system cost around £1,500 (say $2,250) so not cheap but solid.

I use indigo for monitoring when away with a refresh every 5 seconds.

There are a few niggles, but generally impressed. Police were also impressed with quality - night time footage used to confirm suspect had driven past a night on his way to kill a young lad.

Gotta say I'm really impressed with he Reolink cameras. The housings are metal, they feel really durable. The firmware/software seems good for a IP cam, the POE worked perfectly and the Reolink client (IOS and MacOD tried) found the cams shortly after they booted and walked me through the config. Did I mention the 4 MP cams are only $60 USD on Amazon??? I'm going to try one of the 5MP with 4x optical zoom next. Below is a link to a full-size image captured from the RLC-420 dome camera in the driveway (couldn't attach the image to the post as it was too large).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1peI2ctW2dfpwips7uNbpgJHnB21XeRVM

Terry

Just to comment on the Unifi G3 Cameras - they give great image quality at night, but the night IR is awful compared to the Hikvisions I have.
I've had to purchase the IR Extender at a further £80 to make it usable, which now also attracts all the bugs due to the extra IR Output.

I've now bought a £20 IR LED Flood light which I'm going to locate elsewhere to draw the bugs and spiders away, and stop tripping the cameras motion sensors.

But I do prefer the form factor of the Unifi's, and the daytime quality is much, much better.

I use Hikvision - 8 x 1080p cams with a NVR containing 2 8gb drives (need to check size if interested). About 30 days of full time recording. All cams are PoE.

I have a similar setup except I have a mix of older analog cameras and Hikvision IP cameras -- 16 in total storing on a Hybrid NVR with two drives. From my experience with 3 different NVRs over the years, I'm convinced they all come out of the same factory in China, at least the boards/software. The OS X software isn't too bad - we have continuous recording but can search on motion events. The software directly on the NVR is a PITA to use, but rarely have to touch it. Mobile app on my end is just acceptable.

However, it has been rock solid now for quite a few years and you can't beat that. I feel better about it running 24/7/365 than relying on a computer and USB drives.

Adam

I'm going to try one of the 5MP with 4x optical zoom next

Hey Terry, did you ever try the 5MP Reolink with optical zoom?

Another option: Synology DiskStation and their phenomenal Surveillance Station NVR. Have been using it for years.

• Rock solid and in continual development
• API to trigger events from Indigo
• Windows and macOS native apps or view/configure via HTML5
• Newly updated iOS app that takes full advantage of the iPhone X

Take a look: https://www.synology.com/en-us/surveillance

(usual disclaimer: just a happy customer — no affiliation with Synology)

I am now at 12 UniFi cameras, seem to work fine. Doing it again, I would not buy the DOME ($130) but the new mini version ($80) for internal. They look better and are much smaller.

Unifi NVR is running on mac pro under virtual box and ubuntu.

12 Cameras with virtual box overhead use ~ 30-80% of 1 CPU at full resolution on a MAC-pro2012.

Karl

still feel like bragging about the mac-pro 2012:

Screen Shot 2018-07-18 at 21.19.45.png (271.6 KiB) Viewed 1616 times

NVR (VBOXHeadless) uses most of the CPIU, but still <<10% with > 600 Indigo devices