Reolink IP Cameras

margyjr

margyjr

n3wb
Sep 1, 2019
13
3
Australia
Hi, has anyone used Reolink Ip Security Cameras, I was looking at their RLC-410 or RLC-410W, RLC-511W??
 
I have several RLC-420 5M "eyeball" cameras and (with the latest firmware) they perform well in daylight and with the (visible) built-in IR illumination. Low-light performance is not on par with Dahua Starlight models; but I live in a rural area where night lighting never exceeds full moon so low light becomes no light quickly here. I also have 410 W and 411WS Reolink cameras which work OK but I think eyeball or dome cameras make much more sense in most cases

My main issue was NVR compatibility with third-party cameras. I have a Reolink NVR and an Amcrest (relabeled Dahua) NVR. With latest firmware both NVRs work well with mixed cameras. Not so with the PC clients. The Reolink NVR client crashes or crashes the NVR (depending on version) when mixed (Reolinkand Amcrest/Dahua) cameras are used. The Amrest client freezes on replay. The SmartPSS (Dahua) works better but doesn't handle Reolink time correctly on replay and causes the Dahua camera image to freeze when mixed channels are synched. Direct connection to either NVR with a mouse and monitor works fine but remote log-in from a PC (via network) has problems.

So I installed Blue Iris on an unused i7-3770 box I had, BlueIris is truely awesome but complicated (so many options). The only other downside for Blue Iris is the need to run a power-hungry PC 24-7 vs a relatively low-power NVR.
 
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Scott Ritchey said:
So I installed Blue Iris on an unused i7-3770 box I had, BlueIris is truely awesome but complicated (so many options). The only other downside for Blue Iris is the need to run a power-hungry PC 24-7 vs a relatively low-power NVR.
Click to expand...
Modern pcs are very power efficient. 25-40w for the typical blue iris load. Blue iris can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. No more difficult for basic setup than an nvr.
 
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I had a 4k Reolink nvr and 6 x 4k 8mp bullet cams. The daytime picture was good, the nighttime picture was ok ish, but the spiders loved them!
Motion detection was absolutely terrible, it either picks up everything (shadows from clouds etc) or you reduce sensitivity to reduce false alarms, then you can walk right past and it doesn't notice.
Sent it back.
I now have Dahua nvr and cams. There is simply no comparison, significantly better in every aspect.
 
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fenderman said:
Modern pcs are very power efficient. 25-40w for the typical blue iris load. Blue iris can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. No more difficult for basic setup than an nvr.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, I used a Kill-A-Watt to measure power consumption of two NVRs and one PC running Blue Iris 24/7.

HP i7-3770 PC: 50 watts with one hard drive

Reolink RKN8-410-E : 12.7 watts with one hard drive (no POE loads)

Amcrest NC4108-HS : 10.0 watts with one hard drive (running Dahua firmware)

Some newer CPUs use less power: e.g. 77 watts TDP for my 3770 vs 65 watts TDP but only low-power versions (i.e. T or S suffix) get lower (like 35 watts).

Still, I can live an extra KWH per day for all the slick features in Blue Iris.
 
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Reolink is low-end and Fenderman seriously dislikes the brand. My Reolink Cameras and NVR misbehaved badly until I updated all the firmware a few months ago. Other than I-frame the current Reolink firmware fixed a lot of things. Now, my cams and NVR work well in a mixed-brand setup EXCEPT the Reolink PC client crashes the NVR (even though the Android app works fine).

My best cam is a T5442TM-AS (4M Dahua via Andy) which has crisp images and good low-light performance. I was disappointed by the Dahua HDW4631C-A (Chinese version) which has slightly better low-light capability than my 5M Reolink cams (420, 410, and 411WS) but image quality is same or worse than the Reolinks. The Reolink RLC411WS (obsolete varifocal model) does have focus problems, especially zoomed-in and at night.

Blue Iris makes all the cameras look good if the image quality is there.
 
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Here's another power consumption data point for Blue Iris on my i7-3770 box. . I replaced the mechanical 7200 RPM (system) hard drive with a SSD and added a 4TB WD red drive for image data. The power consumption dropped 1 watt (from 50 to 49 watts).
 
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Scott Ritchey said:
Here's another power consumption data point for Blue Iris on my i7-3770 box. . I replaced the mechanical 7200 RPM (system) hard drive with a SSD and added a 4TB WD red drive for image data. The power consumption dropped 1 watt (from 50 to 49 watts).
Click to expand...
power consumption will vary by cpu and how efficient the power supply is and whether or not there is a graphics card installed.
 
Scott Ritchey said:
Reolink is low-end and Fenderman seriously dislikes the brand. My Reolink Cameras and NVR misbehaved badly until I updated all the firmware a few months ago. Other than I-frame the current Reolink firmware fixed a lot of things. Now, my cams and NVR work well in a mixed-brand setup EXCEPT the Reolink PC client crashes the NVR (even though the Android app works fine).

My best cam is a T5442TM-AS (4M Dahua via Andy) which has crisp images and good low-light performance. I was disappointed by the Dahua HDW4631C-A (Chinese version) which has slightly better low-light capability than my 5M Reolink cams (420, 410, and 411WS) but image quality is same or worse than the Reolinks. The Reolink RLC411WS (obsolete varifocal model) does have focus problems, especially zoomed-in and at night.

Blue Iris makes all the cameras look good if the image quality is there.
Click to expand...
you should be disappointed by a hacked low end china region dahua. The difference is dahua makes great cameras as well, reolink is all junk from a lying spamming scamming company. The lack of iframe interval adjustment is a huge deal.
 
I wanted to see for myself how the hacked low-end camera compared to a high-end one from Andy that cost almost three times as much. And I did. Education isn't cheap but I'll find somewhere suitable for that cheap IP cam.

I know what i-frame is but I don't understand why it's important to be able to adjust it.
 
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Scott Ritchey said:
I wanted to see for myself how the hacked low-end camera compared to a high-end one from Andy that cost almost three times as much. And I did. Education isn't cheap but I'll find somewhere suitable for that cheap IP cam.

I know what i-frame is but I don't understand why it's important to be able to adjust it.
Click to expand...
An international camera is not 3 times the cost of a hacked china region camera.
 
fenderman said:
Modern pcs are very power efficient. 25-40w for the typical blue iris load. Blue iris can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. No more difficult for basic setup than an nvr.
Click to expand...

Taking this as a challenge, I realized that speed-step only works in the Power Saver profile. Choosing PS profile my average power dropped from 49 watts to 36 watts. CPU speed slowed from 3.4 GHz to 1.6 GHz but I'm still using only 20% of the CPU according to BI and only 10% according to task manager. This is with five 4-5M cameras recording continuously at full res and at 640x480 at 6 frames per sec. This i7-3770 does have Quick Synch Video (QSV) but I don't think it's working because the driver does not support WDDM 2.x (only 1.3). If I can fix that it should save a few more watts. Intel shows a newer driver on their website but when I download I get the older driver (which I already have).

On BI setup complexity, I'm not there yet. Maybe I have stupid NVRs but BI certainly has many more electable options. This would be a good thing if I knew what I was doing.
 
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Scott Ritchey said:
Maybe so, but I paid $68 for the hacked HDW4631C-A and $175 for the nice T5442TM-AS, both on Amazon. OK, so not 3 times (only 2.6).
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That's because you're comparing apples to oranges. You are comparing a hacked Chinese camera with a crappy sensor to and international camera with a high end low light sensor. You should be comparing the crappy camera to an international dahua with a cheap sensor. You will find it there only about a hundred bucks or so. In fact you can even buy an international starlight camera for a hundred bucks with slow shipping. Now redo your math.
 
I'm very happy with my Reolink RLK8-410B2D2 and 410 PoE cams. Picture quality is awesome. As with any affordable consumer-grade systems, I didn't like that you couldn't disable P2P. The whole "you just scan a code and it works!" mentality bothers me because people don't think about were their streams are being router. I'm very happy Reolink added the ability to turn this off. Wheeeee!
 
CamZerg said:
I'm very happy with my Reolink RLK8-410B2D2 and 410 PoE cams. Picture quality is awesome. As with any affordable consumer-grade systems, I didn't like that you couldn't disable P2P. The whole "you just scan a code and it works!" mentality bothers me because people don't think about were their streams are being router. I'm very happy Reolink added the ability to turn this off. Wheeeee!
Click to expand...
Reolink is trash and it's obvious that you've never seen good picture quality. Every consumer system allows you to turn off P2P. Reolink is a lying scamming company and should be avoided at all costs.
 
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