Amcrest AD110 - Can I do better than this?

W

wondering

n3wb
Aug 10, 2018
21
3
United States
I received my Amcrest AD110 video doorbell yesterday and was able to get both it and the included module for my existing mechanical chime hooked up. I have not been able to get remote access working yet, but that's alright because I will be using Blue Iris. Likewise, I did not install a microSD card. Otherwise everything works adequately... "as expected."

However, I am finding that the video quality is not that great. Additionally, blocking the unit from the internet results in it no longer working in the Amcrest app...yet it continues to work with Blue Iris, almost as if it's throwing fits since it can't phone home. I have only used Eufy in the past, so I don't have a lot of context or experience with other video doorbells, but I feel like this is a bit of a step behind. And the issue with it wanting to phone home is concerning. Should I also / instead try the Hikvision / EZVIZ / RCA / Nelly's doorbell? It's my understanding those units are all the same. Or even try something else entirely? I could order the Hikvision unit, and I would be able to try it out going into next week after testing the Amcrest out for a few days.

I also ordered the Amcrest floodlight camera, which will be an easy replacement for an existing flood light located above the garage door. But I am torn between going this route and doing separate lights and cameras. I am particularly fond of the video quality found in some of the latest high-resolution Reolink units in particular. At same time, I don't want a bunch of cameras sitting on the outside of my house because it would look quite odd. Anyway...another topic, another day. Right now I'd like to get this doorbell situation sorted out.
 
Doorbell cameras are still problematic. Many have instead gone with small dome wedges.

A wifi camera will be problematic when you need it the most.

Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together, but the same principles applies for almost any low end consumer grade camera. It is just Reolinks is one of the more consumer end cameras people buy and come to this site as to why it is pointed out often about. I have a cheapo camera for overview purposes so it doesn't matter, but it exhibits this same behavior even though in the settings I can set an iframe...

This was a screenshot of a member here where they had set these cameras to 15FPS within the cameras (I suspect you will be missing motion that you do not know you are missing....):

1617133192782.png


Now look at they key - that is the iframes. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...try to do AI Tools and it will be useless...

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below 6 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.25 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

Now compare above to mine and cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that my FPS match what I set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

1614139197822.png


Return them and get some real cameras with true AI capability in them. Or upgrade to the latest BI with DeepStack AI integration...

Regarding customer service from a manufacturer - keep in mind for the better cameras, we are not the user that Dahua and Hikvision is targeting so you will get the same service from either manufacturer (which is nonexistent). They have made a business decision to target the professional installers and authorized distributors of these cameras. I suspect many of them have been trained on all the settings or have installed enough to know what to do. But if you as an individual have an issue and call either company up for support and they will tell you to talk to the vendor you purchased from, if they even acknowledge you.

Contrast that with consumer grade stuff sold at the big box stores. You can call a Night Owl or Arlo or Reolink or Lorex or Amcrest or DLink or Google Nest or Ring and speak to a representative (now whether they can help you or not is another story), but they will not tell you to talk to Best Buy where you purchased it...and several of these cost the same or more as Dahua or Hikvision...So it comes down do you want customer service on inferior cameras, or better cameras and use a site like this to help you dial in the settings...

We are just fortunate enough to be able to get our hands on these brands and a site like this forum to help us with the settings.


After you review this thread and see real world examples, you will probably not think the same about Reolinks either...

Reolink: Deconstruction of a dangerous misleading youtube review "Finding the BEST 4K Security Camera NVR Package (Reolink vs Amcrest vs Swann)"

Executive Summary: DO NOT be a sheep. Ask what a reviewer can be missing, ask if a reviewer is using hype words to sell the cheapest product. Test your cameras and kits right away. Just do a bench test. Test real world conditions. Test moving suspects. Test at night, test at day. Use a test rig...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
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@wondering - We’ve been using the AD110 for a year now, and it’s been working quite well for our basic needs. That is, notifying us when packages are delivered and to be able to answer the door remotely. The 1080p video quality is fine for this, night or day, and motion alerts via the PIR and SmartHome app are quite good with only occasional false alerts.

I have the AD110 RTSP streaming 24x7 to both Home Assistant and a Dahua NVR (along with several Dahua StarLights). The 2.4G Wi-Fi connection has been surprisingly reliable, even passing through a brick wall and several interior walls. Of course I would prefer an Ethernet connection, but that’s usually not practical for a doorbell.

I’m using Home Assistant to capture snapshots and send to our phones via Telegram along with a link to the recorded video. HA also knows when we aren’t home and if the doorbell is pushed, it will play some really loud vicious dogs barking at the door.

FYI - the AD110 motion sensors trigger both “AlarmLocal” events and “VideoMotion” events. The former is triggered by the PIR heat sensor and is the only motion event SmartHome/push notifications responds to. The latter is triggered by any significant pixel changes within the enabled pixel grids and is what other 3rd party apps typically subscribe to. There will usually be many more false alarms via this motion sensor than the PIR.

My porch is brightly lit and so the AD110 never kicks in the IR at night. The video remains in color which I prefer. A concern is that when the AD110 is streaming to Blue Iris or an NVR there are reports that the doorbell continuously reboots when the IR kicks in. Sounds like a borderline power issue, but it was supposed to have been fixed in the latest firmware.

I do not block our AD110 from the internet like I do my other cameras, but it’s necessary for P2P 2-way talk (hosted on US AWS servers). The AD110 is on a segregated Wi-Fi subnet along with firewall rules restricting access so trusting Amcrest for P2P in this limited fashion is an acceptable risk to me. I do dislike that the AD110 lacks a web UI and configurations are supposed to be only done via SmartHome app. However, I have successfully used the HTTP CGI API to configure settings the app lacks.

Since you are wanting higher video quality, there is a new AD410 doorbell camera that just now became available on Amazon. It’s 5MP and supports 5gHz Wi-Fi. Dahua offers practically the same doorbell under their Lorex brand on Amazon as well. It’s a little bit more expensive due to including an SD-card, angle brackets, and an integrated night light. These new doorbells supposedly now do person detection, but I certainly don't expect anything resembling high-end native AI capability. However, I am looking into upgrading my Home Assistant server to incorporate Tensorflow level of AI person/object detection.
 
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Just got mine installed...now the original Mechanical chime is quivering for some reason. Must be inadequate power? its 16 Vac.

j.png
 
Coupon Code : DIGIBLUR took like $6 bucks off. just ordered another one for a jealous Buddy. :)
 
Anybody install one on the back door for a double install?
 
Wondering how the wiring of the 2nd chime adapter would go, and/or if pulling voltage on 2 would be too much for a transformer
 
Flintstone61 said:
Coupon Code : DIGIBLUR took like $6 bucks off. just ordered another one for a jealous Buddy. :)
Click to expand...
I just tried to use that code and it didn’t work, but on the Amazon Website there is a coupon code for $15 off that doorbell: 5M7Q7S6N. Hopefully my limited technological skills will still manage to be able to replace my Ring Doorbell that was already installed on my house when I bought it and get it working on Blue Iris….
 
Flintstone61 said:
Just got mine installed...now the original Mechanical chime is quivering for some reason. Must be inadequate power? its 16 Vac.

View attachment 89539
Click to expand...

Got my AD410 today and installed everything without a hitch prior to integrating with Blue Iris (did a standard install with the chime kit on a mechanical chime and everything was working fine). Once Blue Iris had the camera added to its system, now the audible ringer and the mechanical chime do not work. App doesn’t show anything amiss. Got any ideas what might have gone wrong? I’m wondering if the chime kit has some kind of ONVIF trigger so its going to Blue Iris instead of sounding the bell?
 
410 is a slightly different animal. I set one up at my buddies house. but he has no Blue Iris.
Maybe there is a setting somewhere in audio tab in BI? or the App?
I had to uninstall one of the doorbell cameras. not quite enough power. at least one is working solid rather than 2 half assed.
 
Did you let Blue Iris "Find/Inspect"? or did you manually add it under Amcrest AD110 etc?
 
I have been using the Amcrest doorbell for 2 weeks now (I had Ring PRO before) and to be honest it's really not bad of a video doorbell if you intend to use it for what it is meaning using original Amcrest Smart Home with the AD110 video doorbell. From this perspective, it is just way way better than RIng PRO video doorbell that i previously had. The motion detection is spot on and I never have any false motion detection yet. The new firmware (maybe hardware) Eng_N_V1.000.00AC006.0.R.2020922 that I use never reboots the device every Tuesday at 2AM as reported by most people. But if I manually reboot the device from the SH app the night vision mode will default to "Smart Light" mode which shows "Auto" from the app. Things start to fail when Night Vision set to "ON" this doorbell still suffer from its own reboot due to power. Maybe the new firmware smartly set Night Vision mode to "Smart Light" so it doesn't suffer from its own reboot loop like most reported. I set mine to OFF and been rock solid reliable at night.

The only beef I have with this door bell is that there is no way forcing it to "Night Color" mode only. It will automatically switch from Color to B/W if the light is low and B/W to color if some car shining head light to its image sensor. Definitely it's a feature request to developer to have this option enable. Ring PRO suffer the same issue when it first came out but they eventually update the firmware to have it permanently set Color mode at night. Really hope Amcrest look into this 100%

Things get uglier when you start integrating this AD110 doorbell with "smart home" devices for instance "Light up front porch light during sun down if there is motion detected at the front door doorbell" and blocking Internet access to use it locally with Home Assistant. This use case is outside of the AD110 doorbell description. Suffice to say there is nothing "SMART" about this Amcrest AD110 doorbell. And to be fair, Ring PRO doorbell couldn't do this either without subscription and the needs for constant internet access anyways. But even with constant internet access for this AD110 doorbell and use original Amcrest SH app, I can't do anything SMART automation about this setup. Some came up with idea using dedicated Android device and use Tasker to capture the notification and webhook it into HA. Though it might work but just too much work for me anyways. Someone by the name lonestriker did a PR to HA to natively intergrate alarm trigger motion detection binary switch using the device PIR and video motion detection but it came to the dead end and got cancelled. Don't know how this thing goes. Ref. "Add support for Amcrest alarm_triggered to binary_sensors by lonestriker · Pull Request #30932 · home-assistant/core"

I have setup ZoneMinder capturing this doorbell with Modect function and it's been very reliable. Though during day time, it's perfect without any false alarm but terrible during night time due the the camera switching back and forth from Color to B/W mode. Thus lots of false alarm at night in B/W mode due to car passing by, I am right close to busy intersection so ZM and AD110 is bad combination at night. I imaging Blue Iris suffer the same issue with AD110 at night unless there's is some AI integrated into the software for human /object detection.

@GaryOkie Please let me know if you find anything interesting about this doorbell, you seem to know a lot about his AD110 than any other guys :) Please talk more about AI human detection. I have pretty neat server maybe i can setup as what you mention in the previous post.
 
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Hi @chrysopelea - I have very recently upgraded to the AD410 but I'll try to answer your questions about the AD110.

The weekly reboot was removed in the lastest update. The doorbell resetting the night vision to smartlight/auto after a reboot is a bug. It can be changed with the API automatically at sunset via Home Assistant to ensure it is set how you want it. I had mine set to Auto (the default) along with bright LED porch lights so the doorbell was always in color mode at night. Maybe you can also increase your porch light brightness instead of using automation as a workaround?

Integration with Home Assistant using the Amcrest integration works fine for streaming and recording (but with a several second lag). PIR Motion detection and button press detection are possible in several ways. The latest method is the Amcrest2MQTT custom component which can be used to subscribe to any doorbell (or camera) event. Alternatively, instead of using Tasker to respond to SmartHome notifications, you can use the HA Android or iOS Companion app to trigger automations based on "Someone is at the <front door>" or "Motion detected at the <front door>". This app can also be used for location detection.

Regarding AI human detection, this is the main reason I upgraded to the AD410. It supports IVS human intrusion detection natively and I'm finding it very reliable. We have a water fountain by the front door which the birds love, and so did the AD110 PIR sensor in letting us know about every bath they took. That's no longer an issue with the AD410.
 
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I have an AD110 that was working fine for a year or so but it recently lost wifi connectivity due to a power outage. While reconfiguring it I had to hard-reset as I forgot the admin password. Now it is failing to finish the config app as it cannot reach their cloud. Yeah, no kidding. I blocked every single one of my cameras from internet access as I use Blueiris. I started looking at the Amcrest webpage and they were quick to want to chat about buying a new camera. When I asked if this requirement of having internet connectivity to setup the camera for some reason the fellow went dark... I see from previous posts that others have found this out, too. Ironically when the button is pressed, the doorbell still dings in the house but the app never wakes up and I cannot connect to the camera through it. I suppose I could put it on the wifi network that I use for IOT but that means firewall rules and I really s*ck at that (pfsense). Has anyone walked away from Amcrest and found a better, less annoying, solution for doorbell cams that does NOT require a connection to their mothership, and works with Blueiris?
 
A few days ago replaced a few months old AD110 with the AD410 and it's a night and day difference. The AD110 had a darker picture that got progressively darker the longer I had it. It also had connectively issues and it seems like it always had a yellow triangle in Blue Iris. AD410 works great so far and the human detection has made it very reliable and well worth the upgrade. Now I just need a more angled mount than the one that came with it in the box...
 
A few years ago I installed pfSense as my firewall/router/DNS. Because of its firewall logs I learned that every single camera that I have, from Hikvision, to NSC, to Foscam, wants to "phone home" to IP addresses in China, and I have 15 cameras. So I wrote a firewall rule I cleverly called "NO_INTERNET_FOR_YOU" and blocked all of their internet access but left them with LAN access so Blueiris would work. Ok, at least I thought it was clever. I am not a big fan of applying firmware updates unless there is actually a problem and since I use Blueiris it was not a big deal to stop the phone-homes for whatever damn reason they were trying to connect to Chinese IP's (yes I did look them up).. I could get to Blueiris inside and outside the firewall just fine.

I hadn't thought about it for a while but the Amcrest AD110 stopped waking the app a few months ago when someone hit the bell though it did ring the inside bell. I was always home anyways and did not give it any thought. When I posted the other day it was because I was just stupified that not only did the AD110 now need constant internet access to be configured, but it now REQUIRED internet to use it's features.

I am done with being required to have cloud access for a device that is to be used locally. I am done with having to turn on Location Services on my mobile phone to configure a device. I am done giving up marketing and location data for free to be allowed to use a simple device. In my opinion we are tolerating entirely too much intrusion into our private lives by these companies in order to use even the basic of functions of their devices while they get marketing and whatever other data from us free and then make money from it. I paid for it, I own it, get out of my life. And if you think I should pay more to NOT have you map out my life then you should have charged me for it before I bought it. At least Amazon had the guts to offer an "ad free" Kindle version for a few extra bucks.

Sure I could put the AD110 on a separate network with unrestricted internet and let it rat me out to the Chinese marketeers, but then I have to play firewall games. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this camera yet but sometimes iIt's just not worth it to beat them at their own game and just go without. Thanks, I feel better now.

Does anyone know if the AD410 has the requirement of unrestricted internet in order to use the app and also access it through Blueiris?

Does anyone know if there is another camera with similar features that does not need to phone-home?
 
Just for fun I tried one more time. I moved the wifi router to within 10' of the AD110 and tested the wifi signal using my mobile (4/4), I hard reset the device, enabled the hotspot, went through the setup, entered the passwords (device and wifi), and it the AD110 connected to my mobile and we continued.. But when it said "adding device to your account" it timed out complaining that my wifi was too weak. Nooooooooooo. I don't think so. I deleted the device, the app, and removed it from Blueiris. I'm not putting up with this crap any longer. I will look for something else as this product no longer meets my needs.
 
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