Hello from Rural NC

[Scott Ritchey]

Thanks all for this site; I found much great information here despite the occasional vitriol. I am working on a six-camera exterior setup for my home (2-front door, 2 back door, and 2 side over-watch) . This is partly a hobby and partly a way to get evidence in case of a break-in.

Before I found this site I started with Reolink IP cameras and a Reolink 8 POE NVR. The day images from these cameras (4-5M) are quite good. But odd things happened with the NVR and PC client setup: it would work one day and crash the next. But it seems OK now after the latest (like last month) firmware updates to the NVR and 5M cameras. These recent, frequent firmware updates may be a good sign that Reolink is fixing things.

My cameras are connected to a POE switch; I don't use the POE ports on Reolink NVR. This gives me PC client/browser access to the cameras and I run both NVRs at the same time.

I found the Reolink images poor for ID at night: they blurred with motion and images were too dark at fast shutter speeds; so I bought a Dahua HDW5442TM-AS from Andy via Amazon. It's too soon to comment on the 5442. At first the Dahua camera had problems working with the Reolink NVR so I bought an Amcrest NV4108-HS which I believe to be very similar to the Dahua model with a similar model number.

At this point, all cameras work OK with both NVRs so I'm fine-tuning as well as trying to decide which NVR I want to use. The Reolink images are brighter and the Amcrest images are more pastel. The user interfaces are different so I need to decide which I dislike least. The smart phone apps for both systems seem to work OK. The Reolink PC client seems more fragile. SmartPSS seems clumsy to use (learning curve issue?) but it has some nice features, like displaying bit rate and resolution when you mouse to the top of an image. One thing I dislike about PSS is the need to log in so frequently, a pain during fine tuning. Maybe there is a way to turn that off but I haven't found it.

I thought both NVRs were very affordable with no hard drive (I had plenty), the Amcrest box (no POE) was less that $100 and the Reolink box (8 POE) was about $150. The guts in these boxes are quite small, like all on one small circuit board. The Amcrest box has a small (40x10mm 2 wire) fan which is louder than my three PCs combined because it runs at 100% all the time. The Reolink box had no fan, which is surprising for a POE box. But I thought it needs a fan, especially if the POE outputs are used, so I installed one (40x20mm 3-wire).

I am pretty low on the learning curve when it comes to FPS, BPS, and resolution. I don't know how they effect NVR CPU loading. For example is lower bitrate/higher compression harder on the NVR or not? It seems that third-party ONVIF cameras do increase NVR CPU loading (vs same brand). But I'm learning.

 

[SouthernYankee]

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I would junk the NVR and setup a standalone PC running BI, then over time replace the reolink cameras.
The reolink cameras are JUNK, they may work sometimes with BI and other NVRs, they use non standard video recording.
Record at between 8 and 15 fps, you are not shooting a hollywood movie
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My standard welcome to the forum message.

Please read the cliff notes and other items in the wiki. The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) | IP Cam Talk in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras or ICPT Night eye cameras (https://store.ipcamtalk.com/) if you need good low light cameras.
2) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
3) Do not use wifi cameras.
4) Do not use cloud storage
5) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
6) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
7) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
8) Do not use reolink, ring, nest cameras (they are junk)
9) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
10) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)
11) use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
12) (Looney2ns)If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 8ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
13) Use a router that has openVPN built in (Most ASUS, Some NetGear....)

Cameras to look at
IPC-HDW2231R-ZS
IPC-HDW5231-ZE
IPC-HFW4239T-ASE
IPC-T5442TM-AS
IPCT-HDW5431RE-I
DS-2CD2325FWD-I


Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Test do not guess

 

[Scott Ritchey]

Yankee: Thanks for the welcome and advice. I may stick Blue Iris on one of my PCs just to see what I'm missing. It is cheap enough to just try. With all cameras going through a POE switch (and a KVM switch) I can do easy side-by side comparisons between NVRs and clients.

I appreciate the expertise on this site but I wish there were more fact and less opinion. For example, why is Reolink junk? I'm looking at their current products and I don't really care about what Reolink did in the distant past.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Reolink has a small sensor. It also does not allow you to set the iframe value, which causes tearing in the video,. It also pays cops for good reviews. Please read and do research.

 

[Scott Ritchey]

Yankee:

Thanks for your insight and advice. With latest firmware the Reolink and Amcrest NVRs both work correctly when connected directly to a monitor and mouse (although the Amcrest NVR willl only decode 3 cameras on replay). But the current PC clients (and direct log-in) are show-stoppers (for various reasons) although SmartPSS was the best of the lot.

I took your advice and bought (from ipcamtalk) Blue Iris and installed it on an unused i7-3770 box I had. BlueIris is outstanding although it will take time for me to become proficient with all the features and settings. Also, I want to add a larger hard drive in that PC and maybe swap an SSD for the small (500M) system drive. I'd like to run that i7-3770 through a Kill-A-Watt to see just how much power it is really using. I'm only seeing 15-20% CPU now but I need to add at least two more cameras (six now).

I don't plan to junk the NVRs. I plan to put the Amcrest NVR in some obscure location in the house where thieves probably won't find it. The Reolink NVR has POE outputs so I may save that for some TBD stand-alone installation elsewhere.