IP cam advise needed, for use with qnap NAS

R

rogerwilco

n3wb
Jan 28, 2016
25
0
Hello all, after spending some time in the forum, It a seemed best to ask for your advise, mainly due to so many camera models.

I am planning to use it indoors. Will place it in a central point at home, and with help of PTZ, I am hoping to be able to observe 3 rooms (from doors) and a corridor. To my eye, dome cameras look more aesthetical, for indoor use. Therefore I am leaning towards them.

What I could not decide is, whether it should be a bulky outdoor unit or small ceiling mount type of stuff.

Features needed, in my current knowledge;

-2MP minimum

-some zoom ability (4x or more?)

-Ftp with ability to state directory (my current cam dont have this :( )

-IR led illumination

-a sensitive video motion detection (ie, responding relatively small changes)

-widest angle possible (2.8? )

-ability to record sound (not absolute must) ( is there any sound-motion kind of alarm in cams? )

-Firmware update availability (support)


-I just ordered a NAS, its a qnap ts 212p, there will be 3TB drive in it. I could not understand whether this NAS natively have surveillance features or should I buy necessary software seperately, but at least I am hoping to record video directly into it (feel free to advise some other brand/model, just bought via net, can return it)

-And last point, under $200 (may stretch this a little, very little :) )
 
rogerwilco said:
Looks promising but I have to be sure about two things, NAS support and IR illumination. This looks like no IR leds..?
Click to expand...

It has IR hidden behind the black cover which surrounds the camera lens, common design by hikvision these days.
 
rogerwilco said:
Ok then how about this one?
Click to expand...

That's a Chinese version with multilanguage firmware. You can get that same camera in an official english version so for that price it's probably pointless to get the Chinese version.

The 4x zoom I linked to is not available in official English version though, and I'm struggling to find a multilanguage but I'm sure some seller could do it especially since that 2x has it.

ps; that link is a wifi model which is more expensive, look for one without the /W if its not needed.
 
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spixel said:
That's a Chinese version with multilanguage firmware. You can get that same camera in an official english version so for that price it's probably pointless to get the Chinese version.

The 4x zoom I linked to is not available in official English version though, and I'm struggling to find a multilanguage but I'm sure some seller could do it especially since that 2x has it.

ps; that link is a wifi model which is more expensive, look for one without the /W if its not needed.
Click to expand...

I somehow managed to delete my last message. Anyway, if we face with chinese letters only in web interface, it might not be that big problem, although I dont know where else chinese appears in normal use.
 
rogerwilco said:
I somehow managed to delete my last message. Anyway, if we face with chinese letters only in web interface, it might not be that big problem, although I dont know where else chinese appears in normal use.
Click to expand...

There will be some Chinese characters for day of the week on the video timestamp, however I think it can be removed somewhere in the settings.

About internet explorer/active x, no, it can work with other browsers. Possibly not Chrome, not sure if they've sorted that yet.

If you're interested in buying the 4x zoom Chinese version, pm me your location and I'll tell you how much it'll cost including shipping
 
-I just ordered a NAS, its a qnap ts 212p, there will be 3TB drive in it. I could not understand whether this NAS natively have surveillance features or should I buy necessary software seperately, but at least I am hoping to record video directly into it (feel free to advise some other brand/model, just bought via net, can return it)
Click to expand...
The QNAP NAS has available to it their free version of an NVR, Surveillance Station, for your model with 2 base camera licences. Additional licences are $60 each, almost the price of a camera!
And to be honest, though I should not say this, the feature set is pretty limited.
Also - the TS-212P is arguably a bit low-end to run Surveillance Station, which is very RAM hungry.
Even with nothing else running (and you'll want to do loads with a decent NAS like QNAP that supports a large range of interesting apps) SS will consume up to 500MB of RAM.
So you don't need to add many more apps before the system will start swapping, which will not only bring performance down massively but cause problems for any real-time apps such as video streaming and Surveillance Station.

But - it will work OK for recording video directly into it, but again the TS-212P is a bit limited in that it does not have available the 'storage pool option' of QTS that would allow you to allocate volumes to share of arbitrary size, needed by Hikvision cameras recording to a NetHDD destination.
The user quotas with SMB/CIFS though should work OK, and did the last time I tried them.
 
alastairstevenson said:
The QNAP NAS has available to it their free version of an NVR, Surveillance Station, for your model with 2 base camera licences. Additional licences are $60 each, almost the price of a camera!
And to be honest, though I should not say this, the feature set is pretty limited.
Also - the TS-212P is arguably a bit low-end to run Surveillance Station, which is very RAM hungry.
Even with nothing else running (and you'll want to do loads with a decent NAS like QNAP that supports a large range of interesting apps) SS will consume up to 500MB of RAM.
So you don't need to add many more apps before the system will start swapping, which will not only bring performance down massively but cause problems for any real-time apps such as video streaming and Surveillance Station.

But - it will work OK for recording video directly into it, but again the TS-212P is a bit limited in that it does not have available the 'storage pool option' of QTS that would allow you to allocate volumes to share of arbitrary size, needed by Hikvision cameras recording to a NetHDD destination.
The user quotas with SMB/CIFS though should work OK, and did the last time I tried them.
Click to expand...

Wow, I was not aware about the role of ram in Nas. So what would you choose as minimum among qnap models?
 
The mid-range QNAP NAS boxes have multiple GB of RAM, and are often user-upgradeable. An mid-range home / SOHO NAS would be worth considering.
This is a TS-431+ running only Surveillance Station with 3 x Hikvision cameras:
QNAP_4.jpg

And a TS-412 starting up Surveillance Station with no cameras connected. Check out the swap space used. This is HDD space, so very slow, the system grinds to a halt.
Your 212P will be somewhere in between these two.
QNAP_5.jpg
 
alastairstevenson said:
The mid-range QNAP NAS boxes have multiple GB of RAM, and are often user-upgradeable. An mid-range home / SOHO NAS would be worth considering.
This is a TS-431+ running only Surveillance Station with 3 x Hikvision cameras:
View attachment 8157

And a TS-412 starting up Surveillance Station with no cameras connected. Check out the swap space used. This is HDD space, so very slow, the system grinds to a halt.
Your 212P will be somewhere in between these two.
View attachment 8158
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed answer, Then, do 431+ have the LVM and other "good to have" features?
 
Yes, TS-431+ is mid-range home and SOHO, 1GB Ram (that's not a lot by modern standards) and eligible for the storage pools / LVM facility in QTS.
But it is a dual-core ARM CPU, the faster more capable NAS boxes are now Intel-powered, especially those that you can load with lots of RAM and do virtualisation with.
 
alastairstevenson said:
Yes, TS-431+ is mid-range home and SOHO, 1GB Ram (that's not a lot by modern standards) and eligible for the storage pools / LVM facility in QTS.
But it is a dual-core ARM CPU, the faster more capable NAS boxes are now Intel-powered, especially those that you can load with lots of RAM and do virtualisation with.
Click to expand...

Problem is, its price becomes more and more closer to a Laptop, with a freeNAS or something similar :)
 
Yes indeed - it would be a bit of a waste to only use it as an IP camera recording destination. It's a very capable device with lots of optional official and unofficial apps to make use of.
 
alastairstevenson said:
Yes indeed - it would be a bit of a waste to only use it as an IP camera recording destination. It's a very capable device with lots of optional official and unofficial apps to make use of.
Click to expand...

Right, in fact I am adding third NAS, others are mybook Live and Mycloud, at home. I am happy with android app of WD which immediately backups newly captured photo n videos from mobile phone, dont know if qnap have something similar. After reading ton of documents, mind mixed up completely.
 
Ok, instead of suffering continuously, decided to suffer big once and bit the bullet. Ordered a TS-431+, will return 212P.

For the camera, I decided to buy the one advised by @spixel above. Cost is about 70-80 range, have all the features I need, but language is chinese :( Is there any custom firmare etc to make it english?
 
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