Excellent writeup, thank you.
Mark ------------------------------------------------- Two rules to success in life: 1. Never tell people everything you know. From: Matthew W. Ross [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 3:27 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Security Camera's I've had to do some budget camera shopping myself, and have a little insight on IP cameras. Axis is the #1 brand for cameras. They are crisp, responsive, and robust. An indoor "cheap" axis (the 207 model) looking through a window looks better than some of the outdoor models available from other vendors. Prices can skyrocket quickly with these cameras, shooting over $1000 per camera is easy to do. At the other end of the spectrum we have the D-Link. I've dealt with a few of these cameras, and the only one that worked for me was the DCS-900... their cheapest model. For less than $100, this camera has been running in my shop for over a year now non stop... but it's frame rate is horrid (6fps using MJPEG). Others I've tried (like the PoE DCS-1110) won't work with my software (more on that later). There is a company named gadspot that makes very inexpensive cameras. After putting one of their cameras through the paces, I'd recommend avoiding them. Cisco has come out with a new IP Camera. It's got most of the right features like PoE, a DC Iris, MJPEG and MPEG4... And since it's a clone of one of their Linksys products, it's fairly inexpensive. I wouldn't mind trying one of those. As for the Trendnet, the only camera of theirs that caught my eye was the TV-201p, which appears to be one of the least expensive PoE cameras on the market (except for the before-mentioned D-Link DCS-1110). If it can do MJPEG support, It would be a killer indoor camera for cheap. Many of the others simply will not work with my server software. Panasonic makes some good looking cameras on paper, but I have yet to get one in my hands to try out. If you check out Panasonic's website, they have cameras in the Consumer and in the Corperate sections of their site, each with their own line of cameras. Vivotek is an interesting camea vendor. Many other vendors use re-branded versions of their camreas. (For example, 4XEM uses rebranded Vivotek gear.) If you're in the States, it's a little hard to get these Taiwan cameras, but they have a very good price/feature ratio. But when we decided to get a camera for outdoor use at our school, we decided on the Toshiba IK-WB02A. Actually, we decided on the camera kits that came with the zoom and wide angle lens. My review of these cameras are that they are quite functional, robust (I have 1 out of 5 that is having problems, but I think it has more to do with my wiring than the camera itself) and has the features we needed for a price we could afford. We house them within Videolarm outdoor heated and ventilated housings and have been quite happy with the camera's performance. My one complaint would be the difficulty it is to focus the cameras, especially since it is best to focus these cameras during night. Since the iris opens completely duing dark hours, the focus must be spot on... otherwise the picture gets fuzzy very quickly. If I could make suggestion: No matter what camera you get, make sure it doesn't "requires Internet Explorer" and doesn't support other browsers. This basicaly means that the camera can only be viewed with an ActiveX plugin... which means it is only supported by Windows and IE. Never limit yourself to a single platform if you can avoid it. this is why I cannot recommend most D-Link or Trendnet cameras. As for server software, I only have dealt with 2: ZoneMinder and Lux Riot. Lux Riot looks to be an excellent windows based camera recording software. but, since license for the camera was going to cost as much as the hardware I was going to run the hardware one, I decided to look at the open source alternative. ZoneMinder is quickly maturing into an excellent piece of software. It can do motion detection, camera control, Follow the moving item, and many other advanced features... but it also has its' limitations: Works only with JPEG and MJPEG cameras, no MPEG4. Scheduling needs work. Reviewing video could use improvement. Oh, and you'll have to build it for yourself. But, there is one great advantage to going withe the Free software first... If ZoneMinder ever stops meeting our needs, We aren't heavily invested in it. I hope this info is useful to some of you. --Matt Ross ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
