Hello everyone:
I recently purchased a Sricam AP004. Yes, I know, everyone says they suck.
I am an optimist however, and would like to try and solve some of these issues in spite of the non-existent support from the vendor.
The camera does have an unparalleled set of features for it's price. I have also found that there is tremendous commonality with this type of IP Cam between vendors / clones, etc. The command sets and web interfaces appear almost identical in some cases. There was likely a common firmware base that was stolen or diverged at some point. This is my first IP cam so I have a lot to learn.
Here are some basic topics I would like offer for discussion:
1. What works?
My camera works fine in both wireless and wired configuration. I started with wireless and later went to wired because my WiFi signal was not the greatest at the installation site. I have seen more robust performance with the wired setup.
I have good functionality with all of the following methods:
a. Web-page access with IE (ActiveX), and Chrome under Windows 10
b. Web-page access with Chromium and Firefox under Linux Mint 17.2
c. Android access with a smartphone (strangely the APCamera App claims it is incompatible with one of my three phones and won't install). The phones are all Android 4.4.2 so this really makes no sense to me.
d. I can get a video stream to work in Linux with VLC. The appropriate network URL is this: http://username:password@192.168.1.46:81/videostream.cgi
I have gotten the Mail Service settings to work - ie: e-mail with a set of images sent when an alarm occurs
My particular camera does do auto-focus OK... See discussion below for more details.
2. What does NOT work:
H.264 -- I cannot find any way to get the camera to operate with H.264 compression. This is heavily advertised but I have never seen any details of how it works, nor have I been able to "infer" from instructions I have seen from other cameras as to how to do it. Typically, it involves accessing a different port (sometimes 554) with a different stream name (sometimes livestream.cgi). I have found that the only open port on this device is 81. The camera seems to only utilize an 'mjpeg' stream, and that's all I see.
Zoneminder -- I would like to use this with Zoneminder (Linux). I have high hopes because it streams just fine with the network URL using VLC. I have tried persistently to find a working Zoneminder setting but no luck. It seems to be trying because I can sometimes get a status message that reports frames-per-second, etc. Instead of video however, I just get a blank blue frame with time an date stamp displayed.
Technical Support -- I have tried multiple times to correspond with Sricam tech support. I have also seen messages from numerous others who have tried. For me, they have been totally unresponsive so far. This is one of the reasons that this camera "sucks". It is not so much the hardware but the apparent total lack of support.
720P Resolution -- I have a mixed-message here. I could swear that 1280 x 720 was working. Then, somewhere along the way, I experienced a factory reset for no apparent reason. Now, I can't get 1280 x 720 to work at all. You need to be careful about this... I can command it with the GUI and the image seems to change, but as far as I can tell, it is always 640 x 360. It just stretches to fit the frame. When you take a snapshot, it results in a 640 x 360. When I stream into VLC and look at the Media Properties, it is 640 x 360. The three available settings in the Sricam GUI are 1280 x 720, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240. I believe the stream is always 640 x 360 and it just gets scaled differently on the screen. VLC shows 640 x 320 regardless of the chosen setting. This would be a BIG DEAL if true because it is not a 720P camera then, Please comment because as I say, I [think] it may have been working at one point. I am no longer certain.
No firmware updates / activity - I have found no official or unofficial firmware revisions for the AP004. This is simply unacceptable. They obviously have the hooks in place to support firmware upgrades as evidenced by the update feature in the GUI. It is just impossible for a product of this complexity to ship with "perfect" firmware. Updates must be released to provide both bug fixes and patches for security flaws. I am not seeing this, and that is perhaps one of the most disturbing things. Sricam seems to be throwing this unit over the wall and saying "good luck"... We are off on bigger and better things and do not intend to support this product. Anyone else see otherwise?
Motion Alarms - This one is elusive to me. You can arm a motion alarm, and it will trigger an e-mail. I have not tried the ftp option at this point, which can presumable capture video clips. What I do not understand is how to come up with a reliable detection threshold. All that exists is the Motion Detection Sensitivity setting (1-10) where 1 is the most sensitive. I have tried to adjust this, but I do not understand how it works. I had it detecting on very small movements in the distance, but it would not detect large events (like a car coming up the driveway). I saw another post where this triggering was absolutely useless at night because of the coarse IR granularity (yielded tremendously high false-alarm rate). I need to play more, but has anyone developed a working understanding of this? This is one reason I would like to be able to go with something like Zoneminder because the motion detection algorithms are undoubtedly better than the ones in the camera...
3. Other specific topics of interest:
Auto-focus - This is a manual focus camera as advertised. I was pleasantly surprised that mine DOES re-focus when the zoom is changed. There is a substantial lag there, but you do not have to constantly re-tweak focus... I have seen other remarks in this forum to the contrary. I believe that there was a hardware / firmware change somewhere along the way that impacted this. For reference, my camera has the following firmware:
Device Firmware Version 26.8.65.36
Device Embeded Web UI Version 18.0.0.05
Others have commented that there was no autofocus with this firmware setup:
Device Firmware Version 26.8.65.25
Device Embeded Web UI Version 18.0.0.03
Furthermore, the poor non-auto-focus guy (mss-.dj) was told that he could not upgrade his firmware because his hardware does not support auto-focus. Anyone else care to share their versions / auto-focus capabilities?
Compatibility with other tools -- As mentioned, I could not get this to work with Zoneminder. It works with VLC. I have seen comments that lead me to believe it works with Blue Iris. Anyone else have positive / negative experiences with other ones? Open source preferred but others would be interesting too...
Please feel free to discuss any other topics relevant to the AP004 (or perhaps other Sricam's since they are probably very similar). If the moderators prefer, perhaps there should be a Sricam sub-forum created...
-Thanks
Tom
I recently purchased a Sricam AP004. Yes, I know, everyone says they suck.
I am an optimist however, and would like to try and solve some of these issues in spite of the non-existent support from the vendor.
The camera does have an unparalleled set of features for it's price. I have also found that there is tremendous commonality with this type of IP Cam between vendors / clones, etc. The command sets and web interfaces appear almost identical in some cases. There was likely a common firmware base that was stolen or diverged at some point. This is my first IP cam so I have a lot to learn.
Here are some basic topics I would like offer for discussion:
1. What works?
My camera works fine in both wireless and wired configuration. I started with wireless and later went to wired because my WiFi signal was not the greatest at the installation site. I have seen more robust performance with the wired setup.
I have good functionality with all of the following methods:
a. Web-page access with IE (ActiveX), and Chrome under Windows 10
b. Web-page access with Chromium and Firefox under Linux Mint 17.2
c. Android access with a smartphone (strangely the APCamera App claims it is incompatible with one of my three phones and won't install). The phones are all Android 4.4.2 so this really makes no sense to me.
d. I can get a video stream to work in Linux with VLC. The appropriate network URL is this: http://username:password@192.168.1.46:81/videostream.cgi
I have gotten the Mail Service settings to work - ie: e-mail with a set of images sent when an alarm occurs
My particular camera does do auto-focus OK... See discussion below for more details.
2. What does NOT work:
H.264 -- I cannot find any way to get the camera to operate with H.264 compression. This is heavily advertised but I have never seen any details of how it works, nor have I been able to "infer" from instructions I have seen from other cameras as to how to do it. Typically, it involves accessing a different port (sometimes 554) with a different stream name (sometimes livestream.cgi). I have found that the only open port on this device is 81. The camera seems to only utilize an 'mjpeg' stream, and that's all I see.
Zoneminder -- I would like to use this with Zoneminder (Linux). I have high hopes because it streams just fine with the network URL using VLC. I have tried persistently to find a working Zoneminder setting but no luck. It seems to be trying because I can sometimes get a status message that reports frames-per-second, etc. Instead of video however, I just get a blank blue frame with time an date stamp displayed.
Technical Support -- I have tried multiple times to correspond with Sricam tech support. I have also seen messages from numerous others who have tried. For me, they have been totally unresponsive so far. This is one of the reasons that this camera "sucks". It is not so much the hardware but the apparent total lack of support.
720P Resolution -- I have a mixed-message here. I could swear that 1280 x 720 was working. Then, somewhere along the way, I experienced a factory reset for no apparent reason. Now, I can't get 1280 x 720 to work at all. You need to be careful about this... I can command it with the GUI and the image seems to change, but as far as I can tell, it is always 640 x 360. It just stretches to fit the frame. When you take a snapshot, it results in a 640 x 360. When I stream into VLC and look at the Media Properties, it is 640 x 360. The three available settings in the Sricam GUI are 1280 x 720, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240. I believe the stream is always 640 x 360 and it just gets scaled differently on the screen. VLC shows 640 x 320 regardless of the chosen setting. This would be a BIG DEAL if true because it is not a 720P camera then, Please comment because as I say, I [think] it may have been working at one point. I am no longer certain.
No firmware updates / activity - I have found no official or unofficial firmware revisions for the AP004. This is simply unacceptable. They obviously have the hooks in place to support firmware upgrades as evidenced by the update feature in the GUI. It is just impossible for a product of this complexity to ship with "perfect" firmware. Updates must be released to provide both bug fixes and patches for security flaws. I am not seeing this, and that is perhaps one of the most disturbing things. Sricam seems to be throwing this unit over the wall and saying "good luck"... We are off on bigger and better things and do not intend to support this product. Anyone else see otherwise?
Motion Alarms - This one is elusive to me. You can arm a motion alarm, and it will trigger an e-mail. I have not tried the ftp option at this point, which can presumable capture video clips. What I do not understand is how to come up with a reliable detection threshold. All that exists is the Motion Detection Sensitivity setting (1-10) where 1 is the most sensitive. I have tried to adjust this, but I do not understand how it works. I had it detecting on very small movements in the distance, but it would not detect large events (like a car coming up the driveway). I saw another post where this triggering was absolutely useless at night because of the coarse IR granularity (yielded tremendously high false-alarm rate). I need to play more, but has anyone developed a working understanding of this? This is one reason I would like to be able to go with something like Zoneminder because the motion detection algorithms are undoubtedly better than the ones in the camera...
3. Other specific topics of interest:
Auto-focus - This is a manual focus camera as advertised. I was pleasantly surprised that mine DOES re-focus when the zoom is changed. There is a substantial lag there, but you do not have to constantly re-tweak focus... I have seen other remarks in this forum to the contrary. I believe that there was a hardware / firmware change somewhere along the way that impacted this. For reference, my camera has the following firmware:
Device Firmware Version 26.8.65.36
Device Embeded Web UI Version 18.0.0.05
Others have commented that there was no autofocus with this firmware setup:
Device Firmware Version 26.8.65.25
Device Embeded Web UI Version 18.0.0.03
Furthermore, the poor non-auto-focus guy (mss-.dj) was told that he could not upgrade his firmware because his hardware does not support auto-focus. Anyone else care to share their versions / auto-focus capabilities?
Compatibility with other tools -- As mentioned, I could not get this to work with Zoneminder. It works with VLC. I have seen comments that lead me to believe it works with Blue Iris. Anyone else have positive / negative experiences with other ones? Open source preferred but others would be interesting too...
Please feel free to discuss any other topics relevant to the AP004 (or perhaps other Sricam's since they are probably very similar). If the moderators prefer, perhaps there should be a Sricam sub-forum created...
-Thanks
Tom
