I be confused about camera choices.

[christyhicks]

So, I've had several Foscam and look-alike cameras for a few years, some old, some newer, and eventually I purchased Blue Iris and set it up on it's own desktop, i7 chip, lots of ram, seems to work fairly well for our use, which is everything from that desktop to Ipads, to Androids and laptops.

Our property consists of a large, spread out house, extensive outdoor patios, some outbuildings, and an office building, and my experience has been that, when possible, the cameras are best wired . . . run several wireless though too. Power is not a problem, as have outlets or can put them anywhere I want a camera. I use a few routers as access points, each access point wired to the main router. We have rural wireless wifi, so not really fast. . .in fact, fairly slow with 5 download and 2-3 up (the price we pay for living on acreage I guess.)

So, I am not very knowledgeable about any of this. . . I can set static ip's and forward ports, set up alerts, etc, but when it comes to adding a couple cameras, I'm confused over the posts I read that basically trash Foscam cameras and sing the praises of Hiki, Dahau and others. So I start shopping for a "better brand" and I'm having a hard time finding sub-$350 cameras that have Ethernet connections, ptz controls, zoom, etc that work with Blue Iris and don't require knowledge of a specific foreign language. Since I only have Foscam and similar cameras, I've only compared the F18908W,F18910W,F19816w,F19826w,F19821W, F19831W and a couple of oddball Hama and Wansview. See, told you I don't have variety of experience because, in the past, I chose cheap & easy.

We do use PTZ because many of our cameras are in positions were we rotate them to look at specific areas depending on time of day, type of alert, what wildlife is standing on the patio, etc. We use them to watch for the pizza delivery guy, to alert us when a substitute driver drops a delivery off at our home instead of the office, a few for specific security alerts if someone were to enter an outbuilding containing equipment. . . just all sorts of things, but I don't want to give up PTZ through the software, so I want to make sure my next camera plays nice with Blue Iris.

I access the cameras directly at times, but mostly through the Blue Iris server, using anything from ipads to phones to laptops or desktops. . . from here, from across the country. I use them to see if it really is raining so I know to cancel a job and shift our employee's schedules around, even if I'm working from another state. I have them so my husband can relax knowing his tractor or mower is safe and sound in it's little garage. I can tell if one of the guys came to the house and didn't get my back door closed tight, encouraging a raccoon explorer to check the place out, or maybe I want to see if the red light is flashing on my mousetrap in my shop, meaning I need to get the little vermin out before it's carcass "becomes one with the trap!" If I'm down South and spot snow on my home driveway, I know it's time to suddenly add a few more vacation days to my schedule ;-). If I want to be woke up by an alert on my cell phone, only to watch the video of a giant spider traipse across my camera lens, or of a possum nosing around my front door, I can do that too!

I'd like to be able to zoom a little more. . .maybe be able to see the mailbox across the street and see if the flag is down, meaning the mail has run. I also think I'm having too many problems with loss of signal/connection on the wireless ones, even with better antennas, so I prefer both wired and wireless options on every camera, since I have a tendency to do the round robin camera shuffle, where I put the newest and best in the most useful place, moving the existing to the second most useful place, and that one to the next location, on down the line until the oldest one ends up in the barn or as an armadillo cam or something. (those little buggers are putting their OWN lives at risk when they dare dig up my new plantings in front of a camera and spotlight. . . I swear, if they are THAT dumb........).

Why is it that everyone hates Foscam cameras and brags on the other brands, and yet I can't seem to find ones at a good enough price to fit my needs, and since I have several Foscam indoor cameras under roof overhangs, I don't really seem to have problems with using the indoor ones outside. Of course, I started spraying a circuit board sealer on each circuit board when I purchase a new camera, so is there a real benefit to buying outdoor ones?

Maybe someone wouldn't mind giving me some advice and help me understand the differences better? I do NOT want to run cables, so it's wireless or LAN, preferring LAN where I've got Cat5e...no cctv for this girl. Thanks for any advice, Christy

 

[dalepa]

There has been many issues with foscams over the years, and many frustrated hours spent trying get their cams to work.


For outdoor zoom, give the Huisun 10x a try. For comparison, give a Hikvision DS-2CD3345-I a try and you will quickly see the image quality difference. I bargin at $83 shipped and easy to mount.

See my other recommendations below

 

[Q™]

Maybe you should forget about the cameras and focus on sterilizing your property of all that wildlife.

 

[christyhicks]

Haha, good point....except that's WHY we live where we do, because even though they can be a bit nosy, they ARE fairly decent neighbors, they don't have drag races at night, don't fight with their wives, don't paint their dens crazy colors......hahaha, just kidding, I've always been lucky enough to have good neighbors when I lived in town, even the nutty one was harmless! The hardest thing was knowing what to do...she'd turn around in the middle of her sentence and walk across the yard and right through her own front door, talking the whole time. You didn't know whether to follow her, stand out in the yard listening politely, or yell, "Well, bye then" and walk away! She WAS really nice though, even the day she showed up at the door asking, "Do you have a duck???" I responded, "Well, we DID......." She then said, "I think he's in my back yard!" Sure enough, Chuck, the rescued duck, had figured out his wings had filled back in and he tested them by sailing across our stockade fence into her yard. Chuck got a quick trip to the lake to wait there for his returning buddies and Bozzer, our golden retriever, finally was free to roam the back yard in peace and safety.

 

[christyhicks]

So, is there a comparison chart anywhere showing the differences between the various HikVision models? I mean, I CAN click around and copy & paste to make my own, but curious if it's already been done somewhere. I know a lot of people like the HikVision, I was just a tad uneasy because it seems that there is debate about buying through Amazon when it comes to support or upgrades.

The hubby definitely wants to have access to any camera through Blue Iris and it appears this will be supported. I'll take a closer look, thx!

 

[Kawboy12R]

Look at these Christy. Pan/tilt, good chipset, good warranty, 'Merican. Well, at least based in Houston, Texas...

https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest-IP2M-841-1920TVL-Security-Camera/dp/B0145OQTPG/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1466769873&sr=1-1&keywords=amcrest

It's a more American Foscam with Sony chipset. PT, no optical Z.

As for Hikvision, the Aliexpress versions and cheapest ones available on Amazon are Chinese versions hacked to take English firmware. It's basically a one time thing and you can't upgrade the firmware. Not a huge deal if it does what you want from the start and you don't expose your cameras directly to the net, which is good security practice anyway.

 

[christyhicks]

Look at these Christy. Pan/tilt, good chipset, good warranty, 'Merican. Well, at least based in Houston, Texas...
....... and you don't expose your cameras directly to the net, which is good security practice anyway.

Could you explain what you mean by "you don't expose your camera directly to the net"

I've read various arguments about people being able to hack your camera and see what you're seeing. . . but I've not exactly been convinced that even though we password protect our networks, cameras, etc that a determined hacker couldn't penetrate my computers. I mean, if these guys can hack really secure sytems, I doubt I could keep them out anyway. Every time I write a check to someone, I give them my bank account number, even though I avoid using credit cards anywhere but Amazon, Paypal, etc, the big guys, I figure it's only a matter of time before one of those guys gets penetrated. . . I know identity theft is a nightmare for people, but I'm not sure my cameras are really going to be the thing that gets me. That's ONE of the reasons my bank accounts have stiff fraud protection. . . no one can initiate an ach without about a two week process with my direct involvement, no checks can pass through my bank accounts without my prior approval, and my local bank manager actually calls me personally if there is ANY doubt it's legit, so I do what I can to protect ourselves.


I'm not in any way downplaying danger, but on the other hand, an acquaintence started to lecture me about how someone who wants to rob me can jam my wifi and scramble my cameras, and the whole time I'm thinking, "You know what, if

they are THAT determined to get in and THAT skilled, yeah, they're in. This isn't Fort Knox and they must think I have a lot more goodies than I do! If I'm home, they probably will take a bullet, and if I'm gone, they'll have a hard time carrying off OUR valuables because pretty much, they are all big heavy pieces of antique furniture, a few large animal heads we found at flea markets, cool things like an old soapbox derby car, an old fire truck off a coney-island ride, some neon signs off an old restaurant. . . they'd better bring a BIG trailer is all I say ;-)."


He was proving how much more secure his cable wired cameras were and how they couldn't jam the wifi and disable his camera at his big, impressive entry gate. . . . and I'm thinking, "well, I could probably shoot that camera dead with a good rifle, and you've got, what, 220 acres. . . if they are determined enough to drive out in the country to your place, with a wifi scrambler, intent on penetrating your place, they're probably not stupid enough to drive down your driveway. . . likely they'll enter through the perimeter somewhere in that 200+ acres and I bet you don't have enough wire strung through the trees to cover all that, ha ha". I didn't SAY that, just thought it.


Anyway, I digress. . . can you explain more in detail about the internet access when it comes to this specific choice?

 

[Kawboy12R]

The condensed version is don't port forward your cameras so you can access them directly from the Internet (from outside your LAN). Accessing them through Blue Iris is fine because BI is regularly updated and has security as a major consideration. Camera companies sometimes seem to think that remote access by anybody without a password is a "feature". Some cams can automagically open their own ports and phone home without your permission. Some have malware built into the firmware. Cams are most secure when on their own subnet, upnp turned off, and firewalled with no remote access permissions at all.

 

[christyhicks]

Hmmm, well, I've always had to set up the port when I gave the camera a static IP, and that allowed me to access the camera independently from BI. I don't do it often, but occasionally I have accessed a specific camera directly when BI was having an issue with it and rebooted it, or if BI was down (one update crashed it for a day or two until they published a patch), and when I'm troubleshooting from inside my network I normally just pull up the individual camera. Als0, my understanding is that Amcrest is really just another Foscam, so not sure if that's really the direction I'd want to go. I'll look into it a little more though, thx!

 

[Kawboy12R]

Crap, just lost a long post pecked into my phone. Oh well, here's the Cliff Notes version- https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/9163-Dahua-Mini-Black-Face-PTZ-(SD29204S-GN)?highlight=Dahua+mini+black+ptz

 

[christyhicks]

You rotten thing! You're luring me in with all that clear video!!! If I end up having to learn Chinese, I'm going to be hunting you down!!!!

 

[Kawboy12R]

If you end up learning Chinese come find me. The cheapest deals go to those that speak Chinese.

 

[christyhicks]

I have to warn you, the first words likely would bu cuss words ;-).

 

[Kawboy12R]

When you're dealing with AliExpress and the like, they can be the most important.