Need help with finding best affordable NVR and camera package

S

Steve in IT

n3wb
May 3, 2021
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In A Van Down By The River
Hey all, I am sure you have heard this all before but I need some help trying to find an affordable and user friendly NVR and cam package for home use. I just tried a Amcrest NV4108E and I am returning it because the user interface is a total POS and not at all friendly.

I am a network technician and I have seen and installed a few systems including Hikvision, Unifi, Amcrest, and Reolink. here are a few of my thoughts on these to maybe let you know where I am at and what I am looking for.

Unifi is great except for the proprietary aspect and cost. The interface is easy to use and updates are free. The cloud key 2 is easy to setup and has cloud access included. It only has 2TB drive space but that is easily replaceable and good enough for home. The camera prices have increased in the last couple years and a 4 camera system for my home would be @ $1200 or so.

My last home system was a ReoLink and it is fairly stable and worked well for me for 4 years. I just upgraded the firmware and lost the remote view ability. Remote view was always a bit buggy and slow and the cams were not great quality. I will say that that was a 4 yr old system. The interface was pretty straight forward once familiar with it.

The Hikvision I setup for my employer was just OK but I dont care for the interface as it is maybe a small step above the Amcrest. The price was just OK and the cameras are pretty decent

The Amcrest I just tried is terrible trying to setup and deal with the interface. The cams are OK quality and have a nice wide FOV but the firmware is outdated and the system is discontinued


I only need 4 cams now and might add 2 later. I have 2 in my driveway viewing the street about 40 ft away. I have one cam on my front door entry to watch deliveries and visitors and another cam on my back screen port. I am just covering all entrances and using motion detection for recording. I would like remote viewing capability, motion zones and an easy to use interface and POE cameras. Budget is @ $600

Thank you for any help and suggestions.
 
Steve, for $600 all you will get is junk cameras and seems you have prior experience with those.

As you are a network technician you probably have a computer or two laying around and a few switches.

Buy yourself a Blue Iris licence for $60, add a POE switch and with a bit of learning you will have a better NVR than any you could buy.

Pick up whatever Dahua cameras suit you budget.
 
( Ancient Chinese Secret) All the NVR interfaces are similar.
Blue Iris is a game changer.
I run an Amcrest 4108 in conjunction with a Blue iris PC recording the same data, but with mucho friendly User interface.
The motion event preview pane down the left shows recent motion from all cams so you can quickly go tp an area of interest, instead fucking around with the timeline bullshit on the AMcrest. or Hikvisions
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Thank you. I guess I kind of knew the answer from reading the forums here and I need to stop trying to compromise with a out of the box solution. I really didn't want another project to learn but if it will get me stability and a piece of mind then it will be worth it. It looks like BI will do everything I need and a whole lot more. I have an older Dell 9020 that I can throw a SSD and purple drive into that should work well enough for 4 cameras.
 
Amcrest is made by Dahua, so that would toss out Dahua, Lorex, and a variety of other brands as the interface will be similar.

In fact many of us do not like any of the clunky NVR interfaces. I was an NVR user for years and after less than 30min trying out Blue Iris, I haven't looked back.


I started with four 2.8mm cameras with an all-in-one system like you buy at the big box stores and I was like "I can place one on each corner of the house and see my whole property and the whole neighborhood." A newbie loves the wide angle "I can see the whole neighborhood" of the 2.8mm fixed wide angle lens. I LOVED IT WHEN I PUT IT UP. I could see everything that would be blocked looking out the windows.

It is easy to get lured in to thinking the wide angle "see the whole neighborhood" because you are watching it and you see a neighbor go by and you are like "Look at that I can tell that is Heather out walking." and "Yeah I can tell our neighbor 4 down just passed by". Or you watch back the video of you walking around and are like "yeah I can tell that is me".

Little do we realize how much WE can identify a known person just by hair style, clothing, walking pace, gait, etc.

Then one day the door checker comes by. Total stranger. Totally useless video other than what time the door checking happened. I was so furious my system let me down.

Then you realize that this wide-angle see the whole neighborhood comes at a cost and that cost is not being able to IDENTIFY who did it. These 2.8mm wide angle cameras are great overview cameras or to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet of the camera if the camera is installed less than 9 feet hight. At 40 feet out or a higher install you need a different camera.

And like most, I stuck these wide angle cameras on the 2nd story to be able to see even more, which then means any IDENTIFY distance is lost vertically. Someone needs to be within 10-13 feet to identify someone with a 2.8mm lens. A camera placed 16-20 feet up means the entire IDENTIFY distance is lost in the vertical direction. They could be one foot away horizontally, but at 20 feet high, you will only get a good shot at the top of the head...

So then we start adding more cameras and varifocal cameras so that we can optically zoom in to pinch points and other areas of interest to get the clean IDENTIFY captures of someone. While the varifocals are great at helping to identify at a distance, they come at a cost of a reduced field of view, just like the wide-angles are great at seeing a wide area, but they come at the expense of IDENTIFY at distance.

Long story short - you will end up wanting more than 4 cameras, so go with 8 or 16 channel NVR or since you are in IT, go with Blue Iris!

See this thread that places in one location the most commonly recommended cameras based on performance day and night and cost based on the distance you want to IDENTIFY at.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
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Steve in IT said:
I guess I kind of knew the answer from reading the forums here and I need to stop trying to compromise..
Click to expand...

There will always be compromises. Use them to your advantage for broadening your options to find your answer..

Blue Iris is no magic bullet for every need by any means. There's more than just a slight learning curve even for an experienced IT person -- which like you, I also happen to be.

And just like your Reolink interface, it's cool once you become acclimated to its look and behavior. Switch to something else and it's clunky and foreign just like your Amcrest experience. (Just go back and read about the transition to BI v5.)

Load up the BI demo on that 9020 and take it for a spin. Once you figure out how to actually view a camera, load it up with as many as you have and pound the snot out of it while watching the CPU utilization and learning the navigation. Then reconsider an XVR type solution for general comparison and ease of deployment for the immediate task at hand. Weigh the features of both against the actual objectives of the project. There's no one size fits all approach or solution.

Managing Blue Iris CPU utilization will be your first compromise -- even with only four cameras until a fairly thorough understanding of the platform is under your belt -- depending on the processor, of course.

XVRs have their own positives and negatives -- and logical place alongside BI (or other software-based solution) in many surveillence network environments. I also run both an XVR and Blue Iris for reasons similar to those given above. The XVR also happens to be an Amcrest. After learning its capabilities and shortcomings, it has become a valuable and very flexible piece of my network for its intended use (and the Interface has become second nature.) A factory refurb AMDV8M8-H5 for $100 that will do both analog and IP cameras. It happened to be the perfect solution for maintaining a couple of analog camera locations that still serve their purpose while also allowing easy addition of a few more IP cameras (BI dulpicate streams for redundacy) while BI does the rest of the heavy lifting.

There's a solution for everyone, but not everyone else's solution may be right for you.

Keep it all in rational perspective and don't try to do everything at once.

I think I might give that NV4108 another good look before I shipped it off. It has its place. Your situation may be one of em.
 
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i also currently employ the Amcrest xvr with 2 remaining analog cams as i transition to Ip’s
 
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