- Feb 20, 2017
- 8
- 0
Hey everyone, I found a comment elsewhere about Sricam cameras very useful ("they're junk cameras") - unfortunately by then I was the owner of one, with exactly the same problem...
I thought I might share my experiences with it, in conjunction with a dirt cheap NVR...
I've got the SP007 (720p) WiFi IP camera, it's got a pretty decent connection to my network via a repeater, and I've put in a memory card as it supports local recording.
The camera itself seems to be inherently unstable with random cases where it stops responding and / or streaming, requiring a hard reset to restore functionally. These seem to happen at least every 3 days (!) meaning you have no security at all until you notice.
I reported this to them and was sent an as yet unissued firmware update that is tweaked to only record in high quality - 14.00.00.76(4622)
This firmware has the same random stream failure issue.
Now to complicate things I bought a dirt cheap NVR (8ch), and the in a 1Tb drive.
I had major issues trying to get it to display the stream although some of that might be the result of never having set any CCTV up before...
A quick word on software now (as used on a Samsung S5) - the stuff the Sricam is supposed to use gives a lovely high res display, but typically crashes within 20 seconds of launching it - sometimes before you can even get to the stream ! It's useless... You can *guarantee* a crash by zooming in to the stream image and trying to plan around.
My NVR used software called NVSIP and it's very stable, but the stream it plays is in crap quality, both on the phone and the display output to the TV, but the NVR records in high res.
As for troubleshooting, when the camera stops streaming to the NVR, rebooting the NVR makes no difference - it still reports "server broken"
The twist is that it doesn't necessarily mean the camera is no longer streaming at all - sometimes their own software will show a stream.
Rebooting the camera will restore full functionality, and the stream will automatically be picked up by the NVR again, without doing anything to the NVR.
I suspect Sricam streams to its own software in something other than ONVIF (otherwise the NVR should be seeing it).
As per the other comment describing it as a junk camera, I'm inclined to agree :-(
The NVR seems pretty stable (I got it from tomtop.com IIRC) although the user interface is a bit on the basic side (think of minimalist ASCII / DOS layouts).
I'm going to make my life even harder soon, as I've got another two WiFi cameras on order... a Wanscam HW0045 (PTZ) and some eye shaped thing from eBay (both are 1080p apparently).
The PTZ in my case is to try to cover a junction opposite our house as there has been a fair bit of theft in the area, and youths have been seen loitering there, trying to hide their faces as you walk past, and the ability to pan to cover all three access routes would be great.
I thought I might share my experiences with it, in conjunction with a dirt cheap NVR...
I've got the SP007 (720p) WiFi IP camera, it's got a pretty decent connection to my network via a repeater, and I've put in a memory card as it supports local recording.
The camera itself seems to be inherently unstable with random cases where it stops responding and / or streaming, requiring a hard reset to restore functionally. These seem to happen at least every 3 days (!) meaning you have no security at all until you notice.
I reported this to them and was sent an as yet unissued firmware update that is tweaked to only record in high quality - 14.00.00.76(4622)
This firmware has the same random stream failure issue.
Now to complicate things I bought a dirt cheap NVR (8ch), and the in a 1Tb drive.
I had major issues trying to get it to display the stream although some of that might be the result of never having set any CCTV up before...
A quick word on software now (as used on a Samsung S5) - the stuff the Sricam is supposed to use gives a lovely high res display, but typically crashes within 20 seconds of launching it - sometimes before you can even get to the stream ! It's useless... You can *guarantee* a crash by zooming in to the stream image and trying to plan around.
My NVR used software called NVSIP and it's very stable, but the stream it plays is in crap quality, both on the phone and the display output to the TV, but the NVR records in high res.
As for troubleshooting, when the camera stops streaming to the NVR, rebooting the NVR makes no difference - it still reports "server broken"
The twist is that it doesn't necessarily mean the camera is no longer streaming at all - sometimes their own software will show a stream.
Rebooting the camera will restore full functionality, and the stream will automatically be picked up by the NVR again, without doing anything to the NVR.
I suspect Sricam streams to its own software in something other than ONVIF (otherwise the NVR should be seeing it).
As per the other comment describing it as a junk camera, I'm inclined to agree :-(
The NVR seems pretty stable (I got it from tomtop.com IIRC) although the user interface is a bit on the basic side (think of minimalist ASCII / DOS layouts).
I'm going to make my life even harder soon, as I've got another two WiFi cameras on order... a Wanscam HW0045 (PTZ) and some eye shaped thing from eBay (both are 1080p apparently).
The PTZ in my case is to try to cover a junction opposite our house as there has been a fair bit of theft in the area, and youths have been seen loitering there, trying to hide their faces as you walk past, and the ability to pan to cover all three access routes would be great.
