Camera Brand Options

[Oski]

Hi Everyone,

I fell deep into a hole yesterday reading through a fraction of the material on this site, so wanted to say hello, thank you for all the info, and hopefully ask a couple questions I wasn't able to find clear answers to in searching. I'm a property manager working with private nonprofit college student housing in California and a number of my clients have recently been asking about camera systems as unfortunately vandalism and theft have notably increased in the last few years. I've worked with a professional installer at one of these properties before, but being nonprofits, a number of my clients are looking to me to help design and install a system to save on cost - so I am trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, but readily admit that I am hoping to build a system that is relatively foolproof without needing a lot of customization. Questions I would ask everyone:

- Are there top brands that people recommend? It seems Empire Tech has a massive following on this thread so Dahua is clearly a well received brand, but I find that a little surprising given potential privacy/security concerns with Dahua's equipment (or at least as other sources I've researched would indicate) and unfortunately getting into VLANs or other ways to isolate the cameras starts to get above my pay grade (I know what I don't know, but getting into more advanced network design is something I would love to do if I had more time / brain space).

- The professional installer that we worked with used cameras and an NVR that appear to be from ENS (Diamond series) and were installed roughly two years ago. Does anyone have any experience with these and/or can offer relative comparison to other brands? This pro was extremely forward about his privacy concerns and basically said he refused to work with Hikvision or other well-known brands based on those concerns, but at least from the ENS website it appears that they don't sell direct to consumer(?) so I don't know how to purchase those same cameras.

- Do people feel that trusting the rollout of ONVIF support in the UniFi Protect ecosphere is total foolishness? I ask because all of my clients have their hardware installed for their internet services and it would be great to just pop in a purple drive to a UDM-SE and integrate non-Ubiquiti cameras to the Protect app (I can't tell which level of disdain is higher on this forum, Reolink or UniFi cameras). I know that currently not all functionality for ONVIF is supported, but I've used Protect and compared to using the DMSS app it just seems dramatically easier to work with, so if we can save having to purchase a different DVR and more easily integrated user platform that would be really helpful.

Thanks everyone.

 

[mat200]

Hi Everyone,

I fell deep into a hole yesterday reading through a fraction of the material on this site, so wanted to say hello, thank you for all the info, and hopefully ask a couple questions I wasn't able to find clear answers to in searching. I'm a property manager working with private nonprofit college student housing in California and a number of my clients have recently been asking about camera systems as unfortunately vandalism and theft have notably increased in the last few years. I've worked with a professional installer at one of these properties before, but being nonprofits, a number of my clients are looking to me to help design and install a system to save on cost - so I am trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, but readily admit that I am hoping to build a system that is relatively foolproof without needing a lot of customization. Questions I would ask everyone:

- Are there top brands that people recommend? It seems Empire Tech has a massive following on this thread so Dahua is clearly a well received brand, but I find that a little surprising given potential privacy/security concerns with Dahua's equipment (or at least as other sources I've researched would indicate) and unfortunately getting into VLANs or other ways to isolate the cameras starts to get above my pay grade (I know what I don't know, but getting into more advanced network design is something I would love to do if I had more time / brain space).

- The professional installer that we worked with used cameras and an NVR that appear to be from ENS (Diamond series) and were installed roughly two years ago. Does anyone have any experience with these and/or can offer relative comparison to other brands? This pro was extremely forward about his privacy concerns and basically said he refused to work with Hikvision or other well-known brands based on those concerns, but at least from the ENS website it appears that they don't sell direct to consumer(?) so I don't know how to purchase those same cameras.

- Do people feel that trusting the rollout of ONVIF support in the UniFi Protect ecosphere is total foolishness? I ask because all of my clients have their hardware installed for their internet services and it would be great to just pop in a purple drive to a UDM-SE and integrate non-Ubiquiti cameras to the Protect app (I can't tell which level of disdain is higher on this forum, Reolink or UniFi cameras). I know that currently not all functionality for ONVIF is supported, but I've used Protect and compared to using the DMSS app it just seems dramatically easier to work with, so if we can save having to purchase a different DVR and more easily integrated user platform that would be really helpful.

Thanks everyone.

" I'm a property manager working with private nonprofit college student housing in California and a number of my clients have recently been asking about camera systems as unfortunately vandalism and theft have notably increased in the last few years. I've worked with a professional installer at one of these properties before, but being nonprofits, a number of my clients are looking to me to help design and install a system to save on cost "

Hi @Oski

Who will be caretakers of the security camera system ?

Typically, Dahua OEM or Hikvision OEM are good options, as they are the giant vendors that have a large selection of cameras.

Now that stated, both vendors have bans from the US Government for installation in defense businesses. I do not know if there are any bans for purchasing for education institutes which get funds from the US Government. ( I assume not ).

All ip / IoT / ip cameras need to be properly managed to reduce internet security issues.

Ask yourself how much work you will be taking on to do this yourself.

Personally I would have no issues putting up Dahua OEM / Hikvision OEM cameras to monitor my industrial or private school property. I would probably have to put policies in place to protect myself as well as signage about the security cameras and probably turn of audio recording.

 

[bigredfish]

Dahua is the 2nd biggest camera manufacturer in the world. Like any product line, the cheaper models are not as good as the more expensive ones.

No need to worry about VLAN's and such with a good router and a PoE NVR that natively puts the cameras on their own isolated subnet. That said, I've yet to have a Dahua camera reach out to call home or anywhere else that I didnt set it up to do (2014 to current). Some folks make it harder than it needs to be

 

[wittaj]

Keep in mind that unless you are a government, NDAA is useless/meaningless to most of us.

Now being a private college - are any funds from the government? That may dictate what you can do and you may be stuck with NDAA compliant cameras.

Too many companies have jumped on the NDAA bandwagon and sell subpar performing cameras and NVRs at a premium price all under the disguise of being secure.

We have had many people come here thinking they need to get NDAA complaint stuff because some article scared them and in most instances once they learned what NDAA really meant and who it applied to and how poor the cameras perform, they then went and got Dahua or Hikvsion OEM as they represented the best overall value in terms of cost and performance.

The real issue that NDAA doesn't address is EVERY camera can be hacked, even NDAA cameras and NVRs. Don't let your cameras touch the internet and you won't have a problem.

Block the cams from the internet and go with the best bang for the buck and that will be Dahua and Hikvision OEMs.

Well known NDAA compliant companies have been hacked, thus showing that the ban and only using NDAA compliant devices like Verkada doesn't protect you if you give them internet access.

It is why we recommend DO NOT LET YOUR CAMERAS OR NVR TOUCH THE INTERNET. You isolate them via VLAN or dual NIC.




There are a few threads floating around here about ENS. They suffer like most and put less than ideal MP/sensor ratios in their cameras. 4MP on a 1/3" sensor is horrible. That sensor is designed for 720P. It will perform poorly at night. The higher MP cameras will be even worse.

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Also thought I would mention that one NDAA brand I have seems to have some issues that Dahua and Hikvision don't have.. Like having a PTZ camera that you setup a preset before you add in before and even after to the NVR. Adding a Preset to lets say 9 but is the 4th preset you setup will reflect the 9th spot on the Camera but in the NVR it will show up in the 4th.. That is just madness.. Next while I will admit that my DVR/NVR are now being flagged as spam by my server lol. That isn't the issue with my NDAA devices every one of them if I setup to my Email server my Hosting company will lock me out of the server saying that my devices are trying to access my webserver as root and I don't have any root users and that makes it so I don't get any emails and locked out of accessing my own website.. I thought it might have only been the NVR but it is that and the Cameras. Cameras were connected to POE on NVR so never tried until I found out the NVR was what kept getting me locked out.. I moved cameras to my POE switch and found cameras get me locked out as well.. There are a good few things that are crazy and just don't act as nice as my Amcrest or Dahua devices.. So I will stick with them..