A little over two years ago, I got a new puppy and wanted to be able to watch him during the day while I was at work. I found the Panasonic BL-111A on Ebay and ordered one for about $130. I thought this little camera was one of the best things in the world. It let me watch him in his crate (which was actually sometimes terrible since I could see how upset he got and hear him howling!) and it was quite a hit at the office.
Once we let him out of his crate while we were away, I realized that a single camera, even with PTZ controls wouldn't be enough so I went on a search for other cheap cameras to put at strategic locations around the house.
I found the Pixord 405M at Surveillent.com for around $140. This is a pretty decent little megapixel camera for the price, but it doesn't do that well in low light and it has no PTZ capabilities.
For my next camera, I thought what I found would be a camera even better than the Pixord since it had IR LEDs for night vision. The camera was the Asante Voyager 1 - another cheap (sub $120) megapixel camera. The night vision feature was great, but the colors during the day were completely awful. I couldn't find any settings that made them even close to accurate. I've also noticed that this camera sometimes needs to be reset by unplugging it and restoring power. I've never had a similar problem with the Panasonic or Pixord cameras.
After a lot of searching and checking Ebay almost daily for a nicer camera at a cheaper price, I finally went with another Pixord 405M, but this time the wireless version. It works just as well and has the same problems as the regular 405M that I already had. Again - a pretty decent camera for the price.
I had temporarily given up my search for the perfect (cheap) IP Camera when I stumbled upon a company called Compro. I was a little dubious after my experience with the Asante, but I received the Compro IP540 last night and am blown away. It is a megapixel camera with full PTZ (very, very fast movement) and IR LEDs for night vision. It works very well and has great software (probably the best of all the ones I've tested). The only downside is that it doesn't have a feature that the Panasonic has - the ability to limit non-admin users to be able to view the camera only during certain times of the day. This makes replacing the Panasonic difficult since a lot of people still like to watch our dog during working hours! I did send them a request yesterday to see if they would add this as a feature so we will see. The camera was $200 at MWave.com and they have a couple of cheaper versions if you don't care about PTZ or IR.
When we built our house, we also wired for analog cameras. I won't go in to my full story, but will say that I've had great success with one of the Vandal Proof Dome Cameras from Monoprice. I only have two analog cameras...I forget the name of the other one, but it was about $50 more than the one from Monoprice and nowhere near as good (in fairness, I may need to spend more time with the settings...I didn't know what "good" was until I set up the Monoprice camera). I use a capture card from bluecherry.net and it has worked great. I got the PV155 since it supports up to 16 cameras, but I notice now that they have a disclaimer that it only supports 4 when using Windows as your operating system so a PV149 may have been a better choice.
For software, again, I was looking for something cheap but full-featured. I tried a lot of different software, but kept coming back to a company called Blue Iris. Their website is relatively minimal, but the software is great. It supports just about every manufacturer of Network Cameras and allows you to integrate all of them, along with your analog cameras, into a single view. It has great motion detection capabilities so I can record only when a camera senses motion. And support is top-notch. Performance with the Pixord camera was a little bit flaky, but after some emails with their tech support and giving them access to the camera over the Internet, they were able to make it work flawlessly. I'm still working with them on the new Compro camera, but I'm expecting similar results (it works, but a little flaky and no PTZ controls). It also works great with the PV155 card from bluecherry. The only downside (and it is a minor one) is that the web interface looks very dated. It could definitely use a facelift and it could also expose some more of the admin options (as it stands now, you have to configure everything through the acutal software interface rather than the web). And before anybody asks, I did look at Zoneminder as an option and don't have an issue running Linux, but from everything I read, it looked like getting specific cameras to work was a hit or miss proposition and I was looking for something that could integrate any Network camera without much trouble.
After writing all of that, I notice that I can't connect to my new Compro camera (the one that I was raving about just a minute ago!) but it may be something I did before going to bed. Unfortunately, its going to be 10 hours before I'm home again to take a look. I'll post an update when I know more about their reliability.
Scott
Once we let him out of his crate while we were away, I realized that a single camera, even with PTZ controls wouldn't be enough so I went on a search for other cheap cameras to put at strategic locations around the house.
I found the Pixord 405M at Surveillent.com for around $140. This is a pretty decent little megapixel camera for the price, but it doesn't do that well in low light and it has no PTZ capabilities.
For my next camera, I thought what I found would be a camera even better than the Pixord since it had IR LEDs for night vision. The camera was the Asante Voyager 1 - another cheap (sub $120) megapixel camera. The night vision feature was great, but the colors during the day were completely awful. I couldn't find any settings that made them even close to accurate. I've also noticed that this camera sometimes needs to be reset by unplugging it and restoring power. I've never had a similar problem with the Panasonic or Pixord cameras.
After a lot of searching and checking Ebay almost daily for a nicer camera at a cheaper price, I finally went with another Pixord 405M, but this time the wireless version. It works just as well and has the same problems as the regular 405M that I already had. Again - a pretty decent camera for the price.
I had temporarily given up my search for the perfect (cheap) IP Camera when I stumbled upon a company called Compro. I was a little dubious after my experience with the Asante, but I received the Compro IP540 last night and am blown away. It is a megapixel camera with full PTZ (very, very fast movement) and IR LEDs for night vision. It works very well and has great software (probably the best of all the ones I've tested). The only downside is that it doesn't have a feature that the Panasonic has - the ability to limit non-admin users to be able to view the camera only during certain times of the day. This makes replacing the Panasonic difficult since a lot of people still like to watch our dog during working hours! I did send them a request yesterday to see if they would add this as a feature so we will see. The camera was $200 at MWave.com and they have a couple of cheaper versions if you don't care about PTZ or IR.
When we built our house, we also wired for analog cameras. I won't go in to my full story, but will say that I've had great success with one of the Vandal Proof Dome Cameras from Monoprice. I only have two analog cameras...I forget the name of the other one, but it was about $50 more than the one from Monoprice and nowhere near as good (in fairness, I may need to spend more time with the settings...I didn't know what "good" was until I set up the Monoprice camera). I use a capture card from bluecherry.net and it has worked great. I got the PV155 since it supports up to 16 cameras, but I notice now that they have a disclaimer that it only supports 4 when using Windows as your operating system so a PV149 may have been a better choice.
For software, again, I was looking for something cheap but full-featured. I tried a lot of different software, but kept coming back to a company called Blue Iris. Their website is relatively minimal, but the software is great. It supports just about every manufacturer of Network Cameras and allows you to integrate all of them, along with your analog cameras, into a single view. It has great motion detection capabilities so I can record only when a camera senses motion. And support is top-notch. Performance with the Pixord camera was a little bit flaky, but after some emails with their tech support and giving them access to the camera over the Internet, they were able to make it work flawlessly. I'm still working with them on the new Compro camera, but I'm expecting similar results (it works, but a little flaky and no PTZ controls). It also works great with the PV155 card from bluecherry. The only downside (and it is a minor one) is that the web interface looks very dated. It could definitely use a facelift and it could also expose some more of the admin options (as it stands now, you have to configure everything through the acutal software interface rather than the web). And before anybody asks, I did look at Zoneminder as an option and don't have an issue running Linux, but from everything I read, it looked like getting specific cameras to work was a hit or miss proposition and I was looking for something that could integrate any Network camera without much trouble.
After writing all of that, I notice that I can't connect to my new Compro camera (the one that I was raving about just a minute ago!) but it may be something I did before going to bed. Unfortunately, its going to be 10 hours before I'm home again to take a look. I'll post an update when I know more about their reliability.
Scott
