Cheap tablet to serve as permanent camera viewer

[LittleBrother]

Just for fun, I'd like to have a tablet permanently on my shelf near the TV or in the kitchen that is constantly pulling images from my four cameras.

I was thinking a $50 Amazon kindle fire might suffice. Do I have to worry about burn-in on these? I assume I would if I had a grid pattern up 24/7. Alternatively I was thinking of just having some script cycle through each camera pulling an image off it every couple of seconds because pulling the full def picture down on all cams will suck a bit more out of my local network than I may want.

 

[klasipca]

I had 15" tablet streaming 24/7 for over a year, no burn in, but the battery no longer charged fully

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Hp-Envy-X2-15-c101dx/dp/B00VMU1IKI

Also, I use 7" Nexus table for over three years, I do stream cams on it occasionally for half a day and have not had any issues with burn in, but frankly 7" screen is too small.

I now upgraded to 24" screen with a streaming box, it's much better when I need to glance at my cameras a the distance.

 

[bfollowell]

I think these screens are pretty similar to your typical LCD monitor. Assuming that's true, LCD monitors don't suffer from burn-in the way old CRT monitors did. They can suffer from something similar called image retention, but that's totally correctable. If you have an LCD screen suffering from image retention, call it LCD burn-in if it makes you feel better, just create a solid white image the same size/resolution as your screen and have it display non-stop on your screen. After a few hours, maybe a day, everything should reset and the "burn-in" should be gone.

I've experienced this on a couple of LCD screens in the past and was able to correct it this way.

 

[LittleBrother]

Thanks for responses.

Although the screen on these things is only 7", they are currently $39. That's basically throw-away. iVMS-4500 which I like isn't on the amazon store (seems a knock off is), but is on google and apparently a trick can be used to load those onto Amazon tablets without rooting them. Think i should just give it a shot. Too cheap to buy a 15" or 24" now

 

[klasipca]

I use tiny cam pro, which should be available. I like it more then ivms.

You can buy 24" for $100 which is not bad

 

[acp_xt]

+1 for tiny Cam pro, works well on my 2012 nexus 7

 

[bp2008]

7 inches is okay for one camera, but not so good for more than one. You may be interested in what I did for my permanent camera viewer tablet: https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/6191-My-permanent-front-door-monitoring-tablet

I've recently had the opportunity to use one of the $50 ($40 on sale) 7 inch kindles, and they are okay. It should make a fine camera viewer. The included USB cord is really short though so you may need a longer one to plug it in.

 

[Tomscave]

I've been using an iPad mini on my bedside table for over a year now with no issues. I only view my front door cam on it.

 

[Jack B Nimble]

I use a Lepan 10" tablet with tinycam monitor works for years now no issues.

 

[LittleBrother]

Got the Kindle Fire with tinycam. The free version is working fine--I had it overnight running two cameras with the tablet vertical. Frame rate is about 1 FPS for some reason (could be tablet processing power, though I get frame cuts on my iphone 5S also, and even on my ipad air 2, but not as severely--on desktop PCs, even wireless ones frame rate is fluid). I don't really care, though. It's working precisely as desired and tinycam free has no ads that are bothering me.

There was another ip viewer prominently on the app store but it's fairly unusable without paying for it.

So far at least, no issues at all. These little fire tablets are spectacular for the price. The iPad Air 2 may be 10X the cost, but it surely isn't 10X the piece of equipment.

 

[bp2008]

So far at least, no issues at all. These little fire tablets are spectacular for the price. The iPad Air 2 may be 10X the cost, but it surely isn't 10X the piece of equipment.

Thats for sure!

Regarding your frame rate, is it possible the tablet isn't loading an h264 stream, but instead a jpeg stream or something? Hikvision cameras for example only produce jpeg images at 1 FPS.

 

[LittleBrother]

Thats for sure!

Regarding your frame rate, is it possible the tablet isn't loading an h264 stream, but instead a jpeg stream or something? Hikvision cameras for example only produce jpeg images at 1 FPS.

Could be, but sometimes it goes into the several FPS range. I haven't spend long tracking it down really. Once I get around to it I'll get my ipad, my phone, a laptop, my PC all jamming up on the camera and see what's happening.

 

[msqr]

To the poster above with the HP tablet, what software are you using to view? Wondering if you have a Modern Windows app to suggest..

 

[klasipca]

To the poster above with the HP tablet, what software are you using to view? Wondering if you have a Modern Windows app to suggest..

I used ivms4200 and streamed via NVR web interface.

 

[nayr]

bah just use a 1080p monitor, you can get a used one with hdmi inputs for a song and a dance.. everyone you find can mount to the wall with a cheap $10 mount, takes 120v AC directly.. and you can plug a cheap $35 Super Mini NVR into it and get a full wall display with full FPS in realtime and have wired ethernet as an option... all the plugs are on the back of a Monitor where they should be and not on the bottom or side requiring a frame to be built.

is the touchscreen interface on the wall that attractive? I dont get it, must be psychologically embedded in people's heads from watching Star Trek as a kid.. they just want it, even though they cant think of any reason why the'd like operating a device fixed to a wall.

I tried the central console thing for a while, thought it was stupid after a while and would rather keep the tablet a, well tablet so I could to do it on the couch, or patio or wherever I want to take it.. really what you guys want is a nice looking status display, you'll never interact with it unless you make your self or go to show it off.