A little help required in choosing a camera

[SquALeD]

Hi everyone, new here! Great place to read up!!

My situation is this: I want to set up a basic surveillance system comprising 2 wired ip cams and one wireless. I don't really need PZT but I would need image emailing/ftp and video recording with the ability to integrate with Evocam. The first IP cam I bought was a Grandtec WiFi pro which was terrible. I was lucky to get my money refunded.

Another important consideration is I want relatives back in the UK (I'm in Western Australia) to be able to view the camera streams on web browsers. I know this is easy to do but I don't want an Activex driven display because most people I know are on macs. I know there are cameras out there that will work with Firefox, safari etc but how do I tell the difference?

Lastly is the golden question! Which cams would best suit my needs? From reading here I can see that a lot of people like the Axis cameras - How would I pick one that doesn't use Activex? The other makes I'm considering are Panasonic and 4XEM ... I don't mind paying for a good cam (Say A$500) but would prefer to stay away from the Grandtec WiFi pro end of the market.

Again, glad I've found this site, mega helpfull...

Thanks in advance .. Sq

[Dwayne]

I'd have a look in y-cam. (www.y-cam.com) there is no official dealer yet in australia, but worth a look.

You only need to have activex for first setup. viewing can be done also with macs and of course firefox (make sure you get a 2nd generation y-cam, not 1st)

Those cameras have a resolution of 640 x 480, you can get them with or without ir support and get an outdoor shell.

If you want to extend this to a better surveillance system you can get blue iris, a very good windows webcam and ip cam surveillance software. It's webinterface also does support playback your recordings in non-ie surrounding. And this is independend on what format your camera uses as long it is supported by blue iris. So you can use activex only cameras for blue iris, and provide live stream and clip viewing without the need to load an activex component on clients side.

if you want to learn more about BI just leave me a message or visit my site (I am not the programmer, only a fan of Blue Iris)
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Blue Iris Support Forum

[Kazukiman]

Hi there,

Axis are good but their software charges can be up to £150 per camera, which is ridiculous and you should probably not go for them. Panasonics are a bit of a pain, as are 4XEMs.

The wisest choice of cam would be a IP megapixel camera, Acti are not bad somewhere like the ACM 3000 range, but once again there is software charges per camera of approaching £100.

The top of the range is Mobotix, which is around £500 per camera, but the software is all free and they have all the functions, very useful too. You should have no real problem doing them without ActiveX, you'll just need to go to their website call em up and they'll tell you which version update to download for free.

Hope that helps.
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For advanced equipment in IP megapixel camera technology visit Ideal CCTV

[SquALeD]

Hi there, thanks both for the replies. Im going to be checking out those cams soon.

Im still a bit confused about the activex thing. You say its only needed for camera setup? So I can use an activex cam, set it up and then view the cam feed on a mac with FF? When I tried to use firefox or safari on my mac to view my camera feed from The GrandTec I got the cameras webserver page but just an empty box instead of video but it worked fine in IE with activex which is what Im trying to avoid. What am I missing?

I had a look at BlueIris which looks pretty good although I couldn't get any of the demo pages to work. Should I be seeing something? I can view members feeds on this site just fine.

Thanks .. Sq

[Dwayne]

[SquALeD]

Hi people just to say that I ended up getting a few TP Link TP-SC3000 cameras which are working fine.


Sq

[Administrator]

Let us know what you think of the cameras
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Administrator
NetworkCameraReviews.com
www.networkcamerareviews.com

[SquALeD]

[SquALeD]

Hi here's a link to the cam in our garden. I made an enclosure to keep it dust free/dry:

http://www.re-located.com/cams.html

Uses Evocam to provide the web server and is embedded in my own site.

Sq