G'day from Australia

[somebodyswatchingme]

Hi there. I'm a software dev with a passing interest in IP cameras, spurred by a break-in at my parents' house a few years ago.

I bought my first IP cameras in early 2012. The first two were no-name eBay specials that had fairly decent hardware but terrible software, so I didn't end up using them. Then I bought a Vivotek IP8332 which does a pretty decent job, and set it up recording to a HP MicroServer N40L running Milestone XProtect. I bought a second IP8332 but their price has doubled in the past year (probably the aussie dollar) so I've been looking for cheaper alternatives. Recently bought a Swann NHD-820 (rebranded Hikvision DS2CD2032) which I'm pretty impressed with so far.

I'm also testing out ExacqVision as an alternative to XProtect, and I'm liking it enough that I've decided to buy licenses for it. Unfortunately the NHD-820 isn't detected by ExacqVision (I believe it is if I flash the Hikvision firmware, and hence void the warranty) so I'm probably going to buy some Hikvision DS2CD2032s instead.

I've wasted quite a bit of money on this little side project and had a few false starts, but I think I'm finally getting closer to a decent HD IP camera setup on a minimal budget.

 

[fenderman]

Welcome to the forum. I find it strange exacq cannot pic up the Swann when all other software treats it like a Hikvision. The firmware update is quite easy ...probably a better option then selling it at a loss. Maybe the folks at exacq can help...
Would be great if you could post your thoughts on exacq vision and how it compares to Milestone in the camera software section, I think you are the first member using exacq and we would love your thoughts.
Fenderman

 

[vector18]

G'day mate, welcome to the forum.

 

[somebodyswatchingme]

Welcome to the forum. I find it strange exacq cannot pic up the Swann when all other software treats it like a Hikvision. The firmware update is quite easy ...probably a better option then selling it at a loss. Maybe the folks at exacq can help...
Would be great if you could post your thoughts on exacq vision and how it compares to Milestone in the camera software section, I think you are the first member using exacq and we would love your thoughts.
Fenderman

Cheers, I upgraded my Swann camera to the Hikvision firmware last night ... tried 5.0.0, then 5.0.2, 5.0.5 and 5.1.0. Upgrading was painless, I just loaded the Hikvision firmware in through the web interface and it all just worked. It doesn't seem to want to play with Exacq though. Exacq will detect it as an ONVIF camera which means no motion detection. I can connect to it as a Hikvision camera but it fails to set up the stream without any useful error message. I think I'm just going to buy some proper Hikvision cameras instead of trying to deal with support (I'm guessing flashing unsupported firmware onto different branded cameras is unsupported by Exacq).

The main reasons I like Exacq is good hardware motion detection support (ie. less resources on my server), the significantly simpler (and unified) user interface and the iPad/webapp for remote access seems more refined than XProtect.