Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVision

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Re: Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVisi

Here's my update. Both the DropCam and the HikVision arrived today. First of all I'd like to say that Nelly's delivery time was far superior to DropCam's. DropCam claimed 2 day business shipping but what they don't tell you is it can take up to a week or more for it to leave DropCam's facilities.... kind of a farce.

So both cameras are setup and here is my analysis:
* Aesthetics of the DropCam is simply cleaner. It can easily be hidden in our decor whereas the HikVision would stand out like sore thumb with it's "zebra" pattern and blinking lights etc. Wife wouldn't be happy but if I can get the rest of the check marks I think I still have a fighting chance.
* DropCam setup was a breeze. HikVision wasn't hard particular if you follow Nelly's YouTube videos but I can't say it was simple. Non issue either way as this is a one time event.
* Image quality on the HikVision blows away the DropCam in my opinion. However that can be because the DropCam is going to their server than back to my browser whereas the HikVision going directly to my local browser. Either way HikVision rocked.
* As you guys said you don't miss the zoom. The clarity of the HikVision makes the zoom unnecessary. This is at least true in the browser where the browser itself also gives you control + zooming. DropCam's zoom in this case, while it's nice, just looks grainy.
* Viewing angle... I had to pay attention to the picture to notice but the DropCam's is definitely better. Frankly though for our room's width it wasn't really that noticeable.
* Night vision on both are great close to the cameras but further in the background HikVision takes the cake by a wide margin.
* iPhone support, which I think is a very high priority for us, easily won by DropCam. It was dramatically better than that of the HikVision. Hands down. HikVision was actually a tremendous disappointment in this category. I'll go through some of the reasons why. The native HikVision iPhone app's image quality is poor. All that beautiful sharpness in the browser is completely lost in the iPhone app. The DropCam image is superior on the iPhone. Next issue was on a smart phone you desperately need the ability to enlarge the image. This is not to say you need to zoom but you need to expand the image to it's full size. This ability is completely lost in the HikVision native app. DropCam allows you pinch to zoom. Even the night vision quality on the smart phone for HikVision stinks compared to DropCam whereas in the browser HikVision blew DropCam away.

Is there a solution for the iPhone problem? I believe that's going to be at least 90% of our access and I cannot imagine dealing with the lack of ability to expand the image. That's just a show stopper.

By the way I don't know if this affects anything but I don't think it does. I setup the DDNS using hik-online's DDNS service. I didn't bother doing port forwarding on my router because I noticed that the hik-online link simply does a 302 redirect to the IP address of the host machine. Kind of a brilliant way to remove any additional hops without needing a real DNS entry. I figured since this was happening it was unlikely that my setup caused any issues with the iPhone app problems I saw.

That's all for Day 1 with the cameras.

Thanks
Sam
 
Re: Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVisi

@MonitorMyHomeThanks for the review...couple of notes, when comparing night vision makes sure only the camera you are testing is plugged in..otherwise you will be getting the benefit of the additional ir from the other camera.
With respect to the app, image quality can be adjusted..you need to select clear, balanced or fluent (clear will be best) or you can select custom and pull the main stream..this will give you the highest quality as if you were at your browser. .but will not be smooth unless you have a very fast connection and is WAY overkill for cell phones...see my edit below, just increase your substream settings in the camera.
Turning the phone sideways will expand the image to full screen (i am testing with android, but i have installed for ios users and i believe its the same)
If you click on the magnifying glass you can pinch zoom..its not as smooth as other apps but gets the job done. The magnifying class is also available in the portrait view, you just need to slide the bottom toolbar to the left.
Another alternative is to use something like ipcamviewer (by robert chou)...you wont be able to review recorded video, but you may prefer the interface.
EDIT: I believe (maybe someone can confirm) that the clear, balanced or fluent options pull the substream, so go into your camera settings and change the substream settings to the highest possible and maybe increase the bitrate from 512 to 1024 or even 2048..that should help a lot. To me, the camera looks great on the app, probably because i have my substream set higher than the default.
EDIT2: The dropcam pro's claimed field of view of 130 degrees is DIAGONAL...this is the same as the 2.8mm lens on the hikvision which has a 98 degree HORIZONTAL view..
 
Re: Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVisi

I had a Dropcam HD and a Dropcam Pro for a while, so very familiar with them.

The Cube mentioned has a smaller viewing angle, but its resolution is tons better. Although the Dropcam can see much wider, in most cases you'll just be capturing wall or, if pointed outside, it will be so wide that what is in front ends up getting less pixels dedicated to it. What I'm basically saying is don't worry about its field of view.

The Dropcam cameras are ultra easy to setup, with cloud-based recording (if you pay). The smart phone app works well, or you can view in a browser.

I got rid of mine because earlier last year Dropcam released an update to their system (remember, it's cloud based so you get an update whether you want it or not), that broke the motion detection for many, many months for a lot of people. Also, though, I was paying $15/month (two cams) and getting way less quality than I have now with my hikvisions. The hikvision iOS app works very well with port-forwarding.

Dropcam's image quality is worse than the hikvision, but still plenty good for indoors.

My summary points on Dropcam are:
1) If you're not technically inclined or just cannot be bothered, they are perfectly usable cameras
2) They have not come down in price in a long time Dropcam HD is 2+ years old and Pro is over a year and they still cost $150/$200.
3) Monthly cost isn't very fun
4) Dropcam as a company is going down the sh*ter in my opinion, since Nest acquired them. Go look at their feature requests hosted on their own site. Dropcam hardly ever enters the threads and just doesn't care. I think Nest has either cut back their operating budget or stolen its engineers for something else. They have not released any new product in a long time. The last they were going to release (Dropcam Tabs) was summarily cancelled last year. My card was even charged(not just preauthorized) for the tabs at the same time they were cancelling them. The company has lost its way.

If you are only using this cam as an indoor baby cam, get an SD card (make sure it's compatible with the cube--check networkcameracritic's review to get comments on that) and record to that. Very fast, super easy setup. The network storage on the hikvisions can be a pain to setup initially if you've not done it before.
 
Re: Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVisi

MonitorMyHome said:
Here's my update. Both the DropCam and the HikVision arrived today. First of all I'd like to say that Nelly's delivery time was far superior to DropCam's. DropCam claimed 2 day business shipping but what they don't tell you is it can take up to a week or more for it to leave DropCam's facilities.... kind of a farce.

So both cameras are setup and here is my analysis:
* Aesthetics of the DropCam is simply cleaner. It can easily be hidden in our decor whereas the HikVision would stand out like sore thumb with it's "zebra" pattern and blinking lights etc. Wife wouldn't be happy but if I can get the rest of the check marks I think I still have a fighting chance.
* DropCam setup was a breeze. HikVision wasn't hard particular if you follow Nelly's YouTube videos but I can't say it was simple. Non issue either way as this is a one time event.
* Image quality on the HikVision blows away the DropCam in my opinion. However that can be because the DropCam is going to their server than back to my browser whereas the HikVision going directly to my local browser. Either way HikVision rocked.
* As you guys said you don't miss the zoom. The clarity of the HikVision makes the zoom unnecessary. This is at least true in the browser where the browser itself also gives you control + zooming. DropCam's zoom in this case, while it's nice, just looks grainy.
* Viewing angle... I had to pay attention to the picture to notice but the DropCam's is definitely better. Frankly though for our room's width it wasn't really that noticeable.
* Night vision on both are great close to the cameras but further in the background HikVision takes the cake by a wide margin.
* iPhone support, which I think is a very high priority for us, easily won by DropCam. It was dramatically better than that of the HikVision. Hands down. HikVision was actually a tremendous disappointment in this category. I'll go through some of the reasons why. The native HikVision iPhone app's image quality is poor. All that beautiful sharpness in the browser is completely lost in the iPhone app. The DropCam image is superior on the iPhone. Next issue was on a smart phone you desperately need the ability to enlarge the image. This is not to say you need to zoom but you need to expand the image to it's full size. This ability is completely lost in the HikVision native app. DropCam allows you pinch to zoom. Even the night vision quality on the smart phone for HikVision stinks compared to DropCam whereas in the browser HikVision blew DropCam away.

Is there a solution for the iPhone problem? I believe that's going to be at least 90% of our access and I cannot imagine dealing with the lack of ability to expand the image. That's just a show stopper.

By the way I don't know if this affects anything but I don't think it does. I setup the DDNS using hik-online's DDNS service. I didn't bother doing port forwarding on my router because I noticed that the hik-online link simply does a 302 redirect to the IP address of the host machine. Kind of a brilliant way to remove any additional hops without needing a real DNS entry. I figured since this was happening it was unlikely that my setup caused any issues with the iPhone app problems I saw.

That's all for Day 1 with the cameras.

Thanks
Sam
Click to expand...
Remember that any zoom with either of this is just digital zoom; it's akin to taking an image in microsoft paint and hitting the +zoom button.

I'm using iVMS-4500 on my iPhone. It is hikvision's app.

It absolutely has the pinch ability you want. When you are viewing something there is a little plus button (I just tested) along the lower band of options, and that lets you pinch to zoom.

Also, I'm 99% sure that when you say the phone looks blurry it is because you are viewing the substream of the camera. Your camera has a main stream and a sub. They are at different resolutions. You can open the stream as the main stream in the app by clicking what looks like a window icon and going to "clear". Be warned, though--and this is why I use my indoor cube at 1 MP not its available 3 MP--the clear uses a lot of bandwidth. I have a 2 mbps upload and it handles that fine, but when I view mainstream on my other hikvisions set at 3 MP I only run at around half speed because of how much bandwidth they use. As such, I generally view my streams at substream speed.
 
Re: Wife pushed me to buy a DropCam but I'm thinking about returning it for a HikVisi

MonitorMyHome said:
Here's my update. Both the DropCam and the HikVision arrived today. First of all I'd like to say that Nelly's delivery time was far superior to DropCam's. DropCam claimed 2 day business shipping but what they don't tell you is it can take up to a week or more for it to leave DropCam's facilities.... kind of a farce.

So both cameras are setup and here is my analysis:
* Aesthetics of the DropCam is simply cleaner. It can easily be hidden in our decor whereas the HikVision would stand out like sore thumb with it's "zebra" pattern and blinking lights etc. Wife wouldn't be happy but if I can get the rest of the check marks I think I still have a fighting chance.
* DropCam setup was a breeze. HikVision wasn't hard particular if you follow Nelly's YouTube videos but I can't say it was simple. Non issue either way as this is a one time event.
* Image quality on the HikVision blows away the DropCam in my opinion. However that can be because the DropCam is going to their server than back to my browser whereas the HikVision going directly to my local browser. Either way HikVision rocked.
* As you guys said you don't miss the zoom. The clarity of the HikVision makes the zoom unnecessary. This is at least true in the browser where the browser itself also gives you control + zooming. DropCam's zoom in this case, while it's nice, just looks grainy.
* Viewing angle... I had to pay attention to the picture to notice but the DropCam's is definitely better. Frankly though for our room's width it wasn't really that noticeable.
* Night vision on both are great close to the cameras but further in the background HikVision takes the cake by a wide margin.
* iPhone support, which I think is a very high priority for us, easily won by DropCam. It was dramatically better than that of the HikVision. Hands down. HikVision was actually a tremendous disappointment in this category. I'll go through some of the reasons why. The native HikVision iPhone app's image quality is poor. All that beautiful sharpness in the browser is completely lost in the iPhone app. The DropCam image is superior on the iPhone. Next issue was on a smart phone you desperately need the ability to enlarge the image. This is not to say you need to zoom but you need to expand the image to it's full size. This ability is completely lost in the HikVision native app. DropCam allows you pinch to zoom. Even the night vision quality on the smart phone for HikVision stinks compared to DropCam whereas in the browser HikVision blew DropCam away.

Is there a solution for the iPhone problem? I believe that's going to be at least 90% of our access and I cannot imagine dealing with the lack of ability to expand the image. That's just a show stopper.

By the way I don't know if this affects anything but I don't think it does. I setup the DDNS using hik-online's DDNS service. I didn't bother doing port forwarding on my router because I noticed that the hik-online link simply does a 302 redirect to the IP address of the host machine. Kind of a brilliant way to remove any additional hops without needing a real DNS entry. I figured since this was happening it was unlikely that my setup caused any issues with the iPhone app problems I saw.

That's all for Day 1 with the cameras.

Thanks
Sam
Click to expand...
Remember that any zoom with either of this is just digital zoom; it's akin to taking an image in microsoft paint and hitting the +zoom button.

I'm using iVMS-4500 on my iPhone. It is hikvision's app.

It absolutely has the pinch ability you want. When you are viewing something there is a little plus button (I just tested) along the lower band of options, and that lets you pinch to zoom.

Also, I'm 99% sure that when you say the phone looks blurry it is because you are viewing the substream of the camera. Your camera has a main stream and a sub. They are at different resolutions. You can open the stream as the main stream in the app by clicking what looks like a window icon and going to "clear". Be warned, though--and this is why I use my indoor cube at 1 MP not its available 3 MP--the clear uses a lot of bandwidth. I have a 2 mbps upload and it handles that fine, but when I view mainstream on my other hikvisions set at 3 MP I only run at around half speed because of how much bandwidth they use. As such, I generally view my streams at substream speed.

My wife, like many, didn't want to jump through hoops when I got rid of the Dropcam, but I can say that the iOS app is indeed easy enough to use that there is very little learning curve. Also, it actually loads quicker than Dropcam because it authenticates to the camera faster. Seeing historical footage is harder and easier at the same time; with Dropcam you can scroll around to see previous events, but if you want to go back, say, a day, it's a real pain to do so and in the past actually would crash the app because you have to scroll through hundreds of thumbnails. With the hikvision you need to specify a time interval, which is annoying for something that happened 10 minutes ago, but it also lets you view anything at any time easily.
 
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