Main Features

• 1/3” 1.3Megapixel progressive scan Aptina CMOS
• H.264 & MJPEG dual-stream encoding
• Max 15fps @ 1.3M (1280×960) or 30fps @ 720P (1280×720)
• 3.6mm fixed lens (6mm, 8mm optional)
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• IR LED working distance 20m
• IP66 Rated Outdoor Bullet
• Powered by PoE
• Smartphone apps available

Overall, for the money I like this little dome. It’s more discrete and secure than a bullet camera, especially if you want to use indoors. The aiming mechanism is so simple, works on 3-axis and setting it is as easy as pushing to where you want it to go. Installation was pretty easy too. You twist the bezel off, attached with a few screws and twist the bezel back over it.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first log in. There’s options to take a snapshot, manually record, chose a stream and more.

Across the top are tabs for Live (live viewing), Set (configure the camera), Alarm (setup alarms) and Logout. When you click on the Set tab, it takes you this configuration screen where you can change the image properties.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at two places, one at the front of my garage, under the eave,and in my backyard because they represent different lighting situations. This camera had the 3.6mm lens which is fairly wide and covered most of front of my home.

Here’s an early morning day shot in 1.3MP mode. The image is clean, crisp, white balance is good, much better than the mini bullet. As before, you can click on the image to view the original size image from the camera.

Here’s a day shot in 720P mode with 16:9 aspect ratio taken mid-day

At night this camera surprised me.  I was expecting it to be just like the mini-bullet but actually it did better in low light to the point that in front of my house, not one time during the night did it switch to night mode yet retained a clear image with low noise.

I then tried in my dark backyard and it sort of disappoints here. You can’t ignore the fact that it has a lot less IR LEDs than it’s mini-bullet brother. Also, despite the flat glass, there’s some IR light bleed.

I uploaded day and night videos to YouTube. To see them at the full 720P resolution, you must click on the gear icon and select 720P resolution and then click on the icon with 4 corners to see the video full screen.

• Daytime Video
• Nightime Video

The street price for this camera is about $169 and is a good deal for a camera with these features.

The pluses for this camera are;

• Price
• 720P at 30fps (or 1.3MP at 15fps)
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• Smartphone apps – everyone wants to access their cameras from smartphones these days

The shortcoming of the camera are;

• You must rely on your reseller for support
• Displays wide screen format on the web interface even when you chose a different format
• Could use brighter IR LEDs and better separation between lens and LEDs

Click HERE to go to the company web page for the camera

Main Features

• 1/3” 2.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor
• H.264 dual-stream encoding
• Max of 30fps @ 1080P (1920 x 1080)
• 4mm fixed lens (75 degree viewing angle)
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• IR LED advertised working distance 35m
• IP66 Rated Outdoor Bullet
• Powered by PoE
• Smartphone apps available

Overall, this is an impressive camera with very good image quality, good low light performance, well-organized menus and very, very small. The IR illuminators are bright and have good coverage. The lens, while it says it’s 4mm actually feels wider because it’s view.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first log in. There’s options to take a snapshot, manually record, chose a stream and more.

Here’s some of the setup screens. First thing to do on any network camera is set a fixed IP address, this is done here BUT, as a word of warning, the camera comes setup with a fixed IP of 192.0.0.64. There’s no easy way to change it. I downloaded iVMS-4000 from Hikvision and this had an option to find the cameras and change the IP but I had to manually change the IP on my laptop to the 192.0.0 subnet for it to work. I think Swann or Hikvision can make it easier on us and provide a simple IP camera finder app.

The next thing is to set the time. I use times.windows.com with port 123. Then go to the DST tab to set your daylight savings time days.

The reason you want the time set correctly is because these cameras have the coolest On Screen Display (OSD). It looks at the contrast for each letter and makes it black or white depending on the background.  You can see that the date/time is black when over the concrete and white over the grass. This happens automatically.

The image setup screen is where you fine tune the image, select WDR and noise reduction settings. Probably one of the most configurable camera in this price range.

Now onto the images. I mounted this in the usual spot, under the eave of my garage. As before, you can click on the image to see the full size, 1080P image straight from the camera. Also as before, I set the max exposure time to 1/30th.

This is a day shot, color balance is quite good and it’s just a nice sharp clear image. This is taken in the late afternoon, the harsh sun shining towards the camera. With WDR set moderately low, you can see the tire tread in the shadow of the car. With WDR off, this would just be black. This is actually one of the better WDR implementations I’ve seen at any price.

Here’s a b&w image at night. Good contrast, small amount of noise, good IR coverage.

Since there’s streetlights I have no control over, I also mounted the camera in my backyard which is only lit by the moon. As you can see, the scene is well lit by the built in IR illuminator, noise is slightly increased.

Some of you use BlueIris software, good low cost general purpose NVR software, now with IOS and Android smartphone apps, and a streaming server so you can embed live streaming video from your cameras on a web page.

There’s some quirks you have to look out for. First, select Hikvision RTSP as a camera choice. I was able to get smooth video after making some tweaks. On the camera, I increased the CBR max bitrate to 5120, I set the key frames to 30 both in BlueIris and on the cameras, I set BlueIris to 29 fps, and set the received buffer to 10MB and I was able to get smooth video as you’ll see from the videos.

I uploaded day and night videos to YouTube. To see them at the full 1080P resolution, you must click on the gear icon and select 1080P resolution and then click on the icon with 4 corners to see the video full screen. The video was extracted from BlueIris and represents several events pieced into one extract I did.

• Daytime Video
• Nightime Video

Some of you may be trying to compare this to the similar looking Dahua cameras, IPC-HFW2100 sold as Q-See 720 IR Bullet currently at Costco for $299 for a 2-pack that I previously reviewed HERE.  The cameras look nearly identical. There’s the obvious difference that the Dahua is 720P and this is 1080P. To me, side by side, the image quality both day and night is superior on the Swann. The color balance, the WDR, the noise reduction is better handled on the Swann. Also, while Dahua will not provide factory support in the U.S., Hikvision will provide factory support on their branded cameras and of course, if you buy the Swann or Lorex versions, they will support you directly. For example, a lot of the software Hikvision provides is readily available along with documentation on their website, www.hikvision.com. Also, they have a U.S. headquarters just outside of Los Angeles, CA. If you never heard of Hikvision it’s because they are fairly new to the U.S. market but they are the worlds largest manufacturer of security cameras. Swann, headquarterd in Australia also has offices in the U.S. and Lorex is headquartered in the U.S. in Indiana.

Some people have successfully loaded the Hikvision firmware for this camera allowing it to operate in 3MP mode. The NVR can not record past 1080P (2MP mode), so you would have to run NVR software like BlueIris to derive benefit from 3MP resolution.

The pluses for this camera are;

• Price
• 1080P at 30fps
• Bright IR illuminators
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter

The shortcoming of the camera are;

• They need an easy to use IP camera finder
• Was not able to get the camera to FTP motion triggered video

Click here to go to the company web page for the camera

Main Features

• 1280 x 960 resolution (1.2MP) or 720P at 30fps
• 1/3″ progressive scan RGB sensor
• 3-9mm F1.2 lens
• Outdoor-ready design with extended temperature range
• Easy installation with remote focus and zoom
• Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) with “Dynamic Capture”
• Multiple H.264 streams
• Day/night functionality
• Power over Ethernet

The P33 series is the top of the line for Axis fixed domes that includes all the features one could want like day/night IR cut filter, motorized focus and zoom, 3-axis manual lens adjustment and the Edge Storage feature with an SD card slot.

The camera’s unique features in the P33 series are Lightfinder and Dynamic Capture (WDR). They both work well at what they do, but the catch is that it’s an either/or feature. You can set the camera to Lightfinder or WDR, not both at the same time.

As other cameras in the Axis P33 series, it can be installed in a harsh climate, -40f to 131F or -40C to 55C. If this is your case, then this may be the camera to get.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first connect to the camera from a web browser. This is a very typical Axis interface which is comforting to know that from their lowest priced camera to their most complex and expensive camera, the interface remains familiar. What makes this unique is the two buttons below the word ”Lightfinder” on top to toggle between the Lightfinder and WDR feature

Clicking Setup takes you to all the available camera settings. For example, in Basic Setup you can set the camera’s clock, the IP address and such. Below is where you tweak the camera image settings are under Video & Audio, Camera Settings. You can see here, under Wide Dynamic Range, your choices of “WDR On” or “Lightfinder Mode”

A nice feature is that this camera can be focused and zoomed from the comfort of your browser. Saves a ton of time pre-focusing and then re-focusing on the ladder trying to get the perfect focus and focal length. This feature worked the best out of any camera I’ve tested with this feature. You can also select the zone you want to use for focus which came in handy when I wanted to focus on the car, not the houses in the distance.

You can control Live View on this settings screen, for example to support other browsers beside Internet Explorer

Axis Edge Storage

The advantage of the camera being able to record to a local SD card or to Network Attached Storage (NAS) is that you can record without having to purchase a PC or Network Video Recorder (NVR) to record. It will record on its own and it works quite well. The only problem is that it’s not easy to find what you want and if you have several cameras, it can be tedious to log into each for forensic analysis or even to view activity in your home or business from all cameras at once.

To solve this problem, Axis came out with free Axis Camera Companion (ACC) software. It lets the cameras do the heavy lifting of motion detection, alerts and recording and they provide ACC to view and configure the cameras from any PC. Because the cameras are doing the heavy lifting, just about any PC can be used to run ACC and you only run it when you need to view the cameras, so it’s environmentally friendly as you don’t have to leave an NVR or PC running 24/7.  Click HERE for more information on ACC.

Here’s a screen shot of ACC with the camera, looking at captured events

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at the front of my garage set the varifocal lens to near its wide-angle. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

This is a daytime shot, works well, nothing special to note

At night is when this camera comes alive. This is at night, with Lightfinder on with my three 13W compact fluorescent lights at the front of my house. The image is in color, looks crisp and clear and virtually no noise.

If I turn the lights off, just the street light and lights from surrounding homes and such, still very good usable image. Did not switch to b&w night mode yet.

I turned WDR on which turns Lightfinder off. Here you can see noise in color mode where it remained. This is noise you would see in a lower end camera and I don’t really see much advantage from it being in WDR mode. For me, I would leave this camera in Lightfinder mode all the time.

I changed some settings to force it to night mode in b&w at which point the adjacent IR illuminator reduced the noise and made for a very nice clear image.

Videos

• Daytime video
• Night video

Conclusions

The pluses for this camera are;

• Extreme low light sensitivity
• Wide Dynamic Range – Dynamic Capture
• Motorized focus and zoom for easy setup
• Extreme weather capabilities from a low of -40F to a high of 131F
• Edge Storage (recording to SD card or NAS)
• Free Axis Camera Companion Software
• Smartphone apps available
• Excellent Axis Customer Service and Support
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• 2-way audio

The misses on this camera are;

• Lightfinder or WDR, but not both at the same time
• While Lightfinder provides excellent low light sensitivity, there isn’t a dramatic difference than other P33 domes I tested without Lightfinder

Where I would use this camera is where you need to cover an area where there’s available light, like street lights, store front lights and you don’t want to use IR illuminators and you want color images at night. Since the WDR functionality can’t be used together with Lightfinder, I would recommend you also consider the P3364-VE and P3364-LVE that have Lightfinder without WDR.  Also good in  extreme weather areas.

Axis P3384 Camera spec sheet can be found HERE

Main Features

• 2592 x 1944 resolution (5MP) at 12fps
• 3MP at 20fps or 1080P at 30fps
• 1/3.2″ progressive scan RGB sensor
• 3-9mm F1.2 lens
• Outdoor-ready design with extended temperature range
• Easy installation with remote focus and zoom
• Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)
• Multiple H.264 streams
• Day/night functionality
• Power over Ethernet

The P33 series is the top of the line for Axis fixed domes that includes all the features one could want like day/night IR cut filter, motorized focus and zoom, 3-axis manual lens adjustment and the Edge Storage feature with an SD card slot.

The P3367 has 5MP resolution (2592×1944) which feels huge. While most people’s TV’s or PC monitors can only view video at 1080P (1920×1080), having the extra resolution to either use the camera’s virtual PTZ feature or to take snapshots that have 2 1/2 times the resolution of a 1080P camera comes in handy to identify a person or car. While some brands, the higher you go in resolution the lower the low light sensitivity, this camera does extremely well in low light while still in color mode. Switching to night mode requires the use of an external illuminators which I’ve used in my testing, but actually, if you can provide a small amount of white light, this camera is best left in color mode as the image appears sharper.

As other cameras in the Axis P33 series, it can be installed in a harsh climate, -40f to 131F or -40C to 55C, (not sure there are many places on earth that exceed these limits). If this is your case, then this may be the camera to get.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first connect to the camera from a web browser. This is a very typical Axis interface which is comforting to know that from their lowest priced camera to their most complex and expensive camera, the interface remains familiar. What makes this unique is that in order to make a 5MP image feasible on common PC screens is the button in the upper left, the square with the arrow in it. Clicking on this shrinks the image to make it viewable on typical monitors. Then on the bottom and right hand side, you have virtual PTZ controls to zoom in to the higher resolution image, then pan/tilt around the image.

Clicking Setup takes you to all the available camera settings. For example, in Basic Setup you can set the camera’s clock, the IP address and such. Below is where you tweak the camera image settings are under Video & Audio, Camera Settings.

A nice feature is that this camera can be focused and zoomed from the comfort of your browser. Saves a ton of time pre-focusing and then re-focusing on the ladder trying to get the perfect focus and focal length. This feature worked the best out of any camera I’ve tested with this feature. You can also select the zone you want to use for focus which came in handy when I wanted to focus on the car, not the houses in the distance.

Motion detection is under Detectors and is set by creating motion detect windows. If you are using Axis Camera Companion (ACC), skip this step as it has its own motion detectors it uses.

You setup video streams here, and as you can see, I set it for the full 5MP.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at the front of my garage set the varifocal lens to near its wide-angle. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

This fist image I turned WDR off so you can compare it to the same image with it on.

I took WDR images at different levels, low medium and high so you can see what effect different settings have. I did notice more grain/noise the stronger the WDR level. If you need WDR, you may want to experiment to find what the lowest setting is that meets you needs.  The idea of WDR for those not familiar is to have a wider dynamic range so you can see details that may be lost in high contrast situations like shadows or bright lights. This is the same image with WDR set to LOW

This is the same image with WDR set to MEDIUM

And finally, WDR set to it’s maximum setting

At night, the camera did surprisingly well with just my house lights on which are three 13w fluorescent bulbs (60W incandescent equivalents). This would be a less expensive way to go than buying external IR illuminators. This is an image with WDR turned off. Even with WDR off, you still get good detail, you can see into the car.

This is a night image with WDR set on (medium). I purposely put the high beams on, shining towards the camera, worst case scenario but you can still read the plates.

This is an image with the front house lights off and you can see it switches to night mode in black & white. This has WDR mode on so you can see the increased detail at the expense of contrast. This requires external illuminators and for this test case, I’m using a the built-in illuminators from another camera.

Videos

• Daytime video
• Night video

Axis Edge Storage

The advantage of the camera being able to record to a local SD card or to Network Attached Storage (NAS) is that you can record without having to purchase a PC or Network Video Recorder (NVR) to record. It will record on its own and it works quite well. The only problem is that it’s not easy to find what you want and if you have several cameras, it can be tedious to log into each for forensic analysis or even to view activity in your home or business from all cameras at once.

To solve this problem, Axis came out with free Axis Camera Companion (ACC) software. It lets the cameras do the heavy lifting of motion detection, alerts and recording and they provide ACC to view and configure the cameras from any PC. Because the cameras are doing the heavy lifting, just about any PC can be used to run ACC and you only run it when you need to view the cameras, so it’s environmentally friendly as you don’t have to leave an NVR or PC running 24/7.  Click HERE for more information on ACC.

The street price for this camera is about $1,300 and considering the special capabilities, Axis reputation of excellent service and support and no need for an NVR or NVR software to record, it’s a good value.

Conclusions

The pluses for this camera are;

• 5MP
• Wide Dynamic Range
• Motorized focus and zoom for easy setup
• Extreme weather capabilities from a low of -40F to a high of 131F
• Edge Storage (recording to SD card or NAS)
• Free Axis Camera Companion Software
• Smartphone apps available
• Excellent Axis Customer Service and Support
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• 2-way audio

Where I would use this camera is where you need to cover a wide area yet still have plenty of resolution for identification purposes. Also, in an extreme weather area. While this is not their low light camera with Lightfinder, it’s pretty close.

Axis P3367 Camera spec sheet can be found HERE

Main Features

• Day and night function with mechanical IR cut filter
• Built-in f4.2  mm / F1.8 Megapixel fixed lens
• 15 fps at 5MP (2592 x 1944)  or 30fs at 1080P resolution
• Selectable H.264, MPEG-4, MJPEG compressions with dual streaming
• Weatherproof IP66 rated casing
• WDR ( Wide Dynamic Range)
• Digital Noise Reduction
• Video Motion Detection
• Powered by PoE Class 2

The camera is a traditional style IR bullet camera identical in appearance to their E31 and E32 siblings. What’s different is they now include an odd pigtail out the back with an RJ45 jack. My guess is most people will use the included conduit adapter and run an Ethernet cable into the back of the camera for a weatherproof connection. Also included in the box is the mount which was previously charged extra for, the sun shield and a focusing tool to turn the lens without getting your fingers in the way.

The image quality is good both day and night. There’s more noise than what I’ve experienced with the E32. This is common as you increase pixel density, in general it becomes less sensitive to light.

The WDR is considered their basic version, it did well at reducing glare from headlights and seeing in shadows where other cameras just show dark blobs. ACTi also sells the D33, basically the same camera but without WDR at a lower price but if you are using this to capture images outdoors where you have a lot of bright lights, the small premium for the E33 is worth it.

As with all ACTi cameras, you are entitled to you use their NVR software for free for up to 16 cameras and is amazingly good. They also include an IOS app but for those with Android phones, you can choose from many apps that work well with ACTi cameras.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first log in. The 5 MP image will be overwhelming but you can control the display by using the magnifying glass with minus sign to reduce the image size so you can see the entire picture on your screen. You can also select to view the live video in full screen mode and an icon to take a snapshot. If you are viewing the camera on a slow internet connection, you can also select stream 2.

Clicking on the wrench/screwdriver icon takes you to the cameras setup screens. The Video selection allows you to configure most of what’s needed including motion detection, WDR, noise reduction, day/night options, and in the screen below, resolution and compression for each stream.

This tab is where you set the exposure options.

This tab is where you set the camera to email or ftp snapshots or video.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. As with other tests, I set this camera up with a maximum exposure of 1/30th of a second. This is fast enough to capture motion yet still provide decent low light images.

I mounted the camera at the front of my garage, under the eave. With the 4.2mm lens, it was able to provide coverage wide enough for the front of the home but remain effective at being able to ID people about 35′ away. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

I happened to catch an unexpected rainy day. You don’t get the contrasty shadows but even under the trailer, were many non-WDR cameras would struggle, you can still make out detail.

I moved the cameras to my backyard where it’s harsher conditions, more shadows and it did pretty well

At night the contrast is good, the low light capability is decent. There’s more noise here than the E32 but the image is still good overall, with good dynamic range.

Here’s a shot in the backyard at night. There’s some light from a few landscape lots, but overall a darker place than my driveway. Definitely more noise but a usable image.

I took a day and a night video using the ACTi NVR software and posted on YouTube. View it at the highest resolution you can which is 5 MP by clicking the gear icon underneath the video and selecting “original”.   Unfortunately, the video does have some points where motion is not perfectly smooth. This is a just released camera and I’m sure ACTi will work to get these minor kinks out.

• Daytime Video
• Nighttime Video

The street price on this camera is under $400 and it represents a good value. If you need a decent outdoor 5MP camera and you don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with a more expensive camera, this is may be for you.

The pluses for this camera are;

• 5MP resolution – no substitute for resolution
• Day and night function with mechanical IR cut filter and IR LEDs
• WDR
• Free NVR software that’s quite good
• Selectable H.264, MPEG-SP, MJPEG compressions with dual streaming

Drawbacks for the camera include;

• a minor glitch with the video freezing for a split second when recording which may be a bug with their NVR software rather than the camera.
• more noise is present here than in their 3MP camera

Recommended for those needing to protect their homes or business that need a high resolution quality commercial grade camera.

Spec sheets, manuals, overview are available here

Main Features

• Day and night function with mechanical IR cut filter
• Built-in f4.2  mm / F1.8 Megapixel fixed lens
• 15 fps at 3MP (2048 x 1536)  or 30fs at 1080P resolution
• Selectable H.264, MPEG-4, MJPEG compressions with dual streaming
• Weatherproof IP66 rated casing
• WDR ( Extreme Dynamic Range)
• Digital Noise Reduction
• Video Motion Detection
• Powered by PoE Class 2

The camera is a traditional style IR bullet camera very similar in appearance to their outgoing TCM-1231. What’s different is they now include an odd pigtail out the back with an RJ45 jack. My guess is most people will use the included conduit adapter and run an Ethernet cable into the back of the camera for a weatherproof connection. Also included in the box is the mount which was previously charged extra for, the sun shield and a focusing tool to turn the lens without getting your fingers in the way.

The image quality is quite good both day and night. This does not have the exceptional low light capabilities of the KCM-5611 I reviewed, but still very good at night with low noise levels and good contrast. Also, while the WDR is considered their basic version, it did well at showing license plates with headlights shining towards the camera. ACTi also sells the D32, basically the same camera but without WDR at a lower price but if you are using this to capture cars outdoors or where you have a lot of bright lights, the small premium for the E32 is worth it.

As with all ACTi cameras, you are entitled to you use their NVR software for free for up to 16 cameras and is amazingly good. They also include an IOS app but for those with Android phones, you can choose from many apps that work well with ACTi cameras.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first log in. The 3MP image will be overwhelming but you can control the display by using the magnifying glass with minus sign to reduce the image size so you can see the entire picture on your screen. You can also select to view the live video in full screen mode and an icon to take a snapshot. If you are viewing the camera on a slow internet connection, you can also select stream 2.

Clicking on the wrench/screwdriver icon takes you to the cameras setup screens. The Video selection allows you to configure most of what’s needed including motion detection, WDR, noise reduction, day/night options, and in the screen below, resolution and compression for each stream.

Here’s where you set the image options for example, the WDR and noise reduction as well as if you want to flip/mirror the image and contrast.

As with all ACTi cameras, it has 3 motion detect zone, you can set the boxes and parameters in the motion detection tab. There’s 2 profiles. This is common for those that want a different set of motion detection parameters for daytime vs. night.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. As with other tests, I set this camera up with a maximum exposure of 1/30th of a second. This is fast enough to capture motion yet still provide decent low light images.

I mounted the camera at the front of my garage, under the eave. With the 4.2mm lens, it was able to provide coverage wide enough for the front of the home but remain effective at being able to ID people as far as the sidewalk, about 28′ away. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

The image quality is quite sharp, color accuracy is very good. You can see the difference more dramatically in this side by side image of the 3MP Dahua I previously reviewed on the left with the E32 on the right. The white balance and the level of detail for example in the texture of the concrete, the detail in the shadows, the lettering on the steam roller are very good.

At night the contrast is good, the low light capability is good. There’s some noise but the image is quite good overall, with good dynamic range where the tires don’t just meld in with the under carriage as some cameras do.

I took a day and a night video using the ACTi NVR software and posted on YouTube. View it at the highest resolution you can which is only 1080P by clicking the gear icon underneath the video. One thing you’ll notice in the night video is how well the WDR works when I drive in the garage at night. The car has very bright factory HID Xenon lights that would blind most cameras without WDR but you can clearly make out the detail in the grill. Unfortunately, the video does have some points where motion freezes for a split second. This is a just released camera and I’m sure ACTi will work to get these minor kinks out.

• Daytime Video
• Nighttime Video

In comparison to other cameras I’ve tested, the low light capabilities are pretty good for a 3MP camera. Other cameras may have better noise reduction, but many times that comes at the expense of lost detail.

The street price on this camera is about $350-400 and it represents a good value. If you need a decent outdoor 3MP camera and you don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with a more expensive camera, this is may be for you.

The pluses for this camera are;

• 3MP resolution – no substitute for resolution
• Day and night function with mechanical IR cut filter and IR LEDs
• WDR
• Free NVR software that’s quite good
• Selectable H.264, MPEG-SP, MJPEG compressions with dual streaming

Drawbacks for the camera include;

• a minor glitch with the video freezing for a split second when recording which may be a bug with their NVR software rather than the camera.

Recommended for those needing to protect their homes or business that need a high resolution quality commercial grade camera.

Spec sheets, manuals, overview are available here

There are ways to make your camera display on a website, but consider that many require ActiveX controls making it only work with Internet Explorer, then you have local PC permission issues and putting your camara directly on a website just doesn’t work for a public website.

The other consideration is how fast your internet upload speed is. You may have to limit resolution and frame rate to suit your internet connection speed. It’s not reasonable to expect 30fps of 1080P video with 100 users connected with a typical home internet connection. If that’s your expectation, you may want to consider a streaming service that specializes in this. They will take your video feed directly from your camera and host the video on their site.

But this is for those that want to do it themselves, know enough HTML programming to be dangerous but just don’t know where to begin. The first thing you need is a media server. There’s several media server software apps out there like Wowsa Streaming Server and Red5 Media Server but I chose a simpler one called Unreal Media Server because they have a free version that will suit most home or small business user’s needs. It’s limited to 5 camera streams and 15 concurrent users. If you exceed those limits, it will wait until the number of active connections drop. In reality, mosts homes don’t have the network bandwidth to do more anyway. Out of all the methods I’ve tried, Unreal Media Server seems to use the least amount of resources, so you can run this on your home PC without impacting your regular work.

The first step is to download the software on the Windows PC that will be running the Unreal Media Server.  Click on this link to download it – http://www.umediaserver.net/umediaserver/download.html and install the software

Before you start, it’s important to know what the RTSP string is for your camera. You can typically get this from the manual that came with the camera or from their tech support. It will look something like this which is for a Dahua camera but each brand of camera has different parameters;

http://192.168.0.111:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

554 is the standard RTSP port and all cameras I’ve tinkered with use this port and the rest is camera specific. Also, the IP address I used will be different than the one for your camera, so make sure you change that if you used my examples.

After Unreal Media Servier is installed, run the Media Server Configurator. This is screen shot of what it looks like. I already setup a live broadcast I called TestCam which is what you’ll be doing soon.

Right click on “Live broadcast” on the left tree and select “new Live Broadcast” and selected the bottom radio button, Broadcast RTSP / MPEG2-TS / MMS Source and click OK.

After cllicking OK above, you’ll get a screen to setup the source camera stream, meaning this is where you enter the camera’s RTSP string with your IP addres and parameters specific to your camera. If you camera has the ability to have multipe streams, setup one specifically for this purpose with lower resolution and lower frame rate to suit your needs. Enter your user name and password for the camera. Select Get Video Only next to RTCP A/V Synch and most options you can leave as they are.

After clicking OK, it will take you back to the the first screen I showed above. If it’s not automatically started, you can start the streaming by selecting File from the top menu bar and then Start Media Server. You should have a green ball at the bottom right that says Media Server is running.

The next step is to write a web page that displays your camera. Not going to teach you HTML programming, so the assumption is you know HTML and already have a website but just want to add live streaming from your network camera on your site. There’s diffrerent ways of doing the same thing with HTML, so I’m going to show the simplest, least code required way I know.

<html>

<head>

<title>Webpage Streaming My Camera</title>

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html;charset=utf-8″ />

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.umediaserver.net/bin/FlashPlayer/umsplayer.js” charset=”utf-8″>

</script>

</head>

<body id=”unload-trigger-element”>

<h3>This is my example</h3>

<!– player container –>

<div id=”player-container”>

</div>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

embedPlayer(‘player-container’, {

flashvars : {

‘rtmp’ : ‘rtmp://192.169.0.50:5119/live/TestCam’,

‘autoplay’ : true     },

size : { width: 352, height: 240 },

playerStyle : ‘quick’ });

</script>

</body>

</html>

Edit this to suit you. Put the width/height of the video you configured your camera to be, in my case, 352×240 is what I chose on my cameras’s sub stream. Also put the IP address of your PC that’s running Unreal Media Server, for testing, just put your local network address of your PC. You can just double click on the file name, for example if it’s on your desktop and it will bring up your browser. Here’s what shows on my browser.

The next step is to make it display from the internet. The first step is to change the IP address for the PC running Unreal Media Server from your local LAN to the external LAN. You may want to use a DDNS service. If you don’t know how to go about this, read my previous article called Accessing Your Camera from the Internet.

Place the web page on your website. My assumption is you already have a website and you just want to embed live streaming video.

Then you need to set your router to allow the Unreal Media Server port to be accessed externally. By default, the port used is 5119.

You also need to setup the Windows firewall to allow people access to the media server. First test it with your firewall off. If that works, then go back and configure the Windows firewall to allow people to access Unreal Media Server until it works the way you expect. Each version of windows is different and there’s tutorials on how to do this.

After you complete this last step the world will be able to see embedded video on your web page. This uses Flash player from Adobe which works on just about any web browser on a PC or Mac but may not work on some smart phones. The world is moving to HTML5 but the transition will take a while and for now, Flash works for most people.

If you want to take it to the next level, you may want to put a time limit on how long someone can live stream. You don’t want someone to connect to your website, minimize the browser and walk away from your their computer for days as it continues to live stream video using up your bandwidth and one of your 15 concurrent connections. The following is a sample page contributed by Rory of Bahamas Security that will do this with a 300 second timeout that you can configure.

<html>
<head>
<title>Unreal Flash Player</title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html;charset=utf-8″ />
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.umediaserver.net/bin/FlashPlayer/umsplayer.js” charset=”utf-8″></script></head>
<body id=”unload-trigger-element”>
<!– player container –>
<div id=”player-container”>
</div>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
embedPlayer(‘player-container’, {
flashvars : {
‘rtmp’ : ‘rtmp://192.168.1.100:5119/live/dhdvr’,
‘autoplay’ : true
},
size : { width: 480, height: 360 },
playerStyle : ‘glow’
});
</script>
<span id=”txtleft” style=”display:none;”><br>Guest Time Left: <b><span id=”txttimeout” title=”Time Left ..”>30</span></b></span>
</body>
</html>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”jquery-1.6.2.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
timeouturl = “timedout.htm”;
timeout    = 300;
var tmrtimeout;
var tmrloop;
$(window).load(function() {
if (timeout>-1) {
timeoutLoop();
document.getElementById(‘txtleft’).style.display = “”;
}
});
function timeoutLoop() {
timeout = timeout-1;
if (timeout>=10) {
if (document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’)) {
document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’).innerHTML=”+timeout+”;
}
} else if (timeout<=0) {
if (document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’)) {
document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’).innerHTML=’00′;
clearTimeout(tmrloop);
timedOut();
}
} else {
if (document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’)) {
document.getElementById(‘txttimeout’).innerHTML=’0′+timeout+”;
}
}
tmrloop = setTimeout(‘timeoutLoop()’,1000);
}
function timedOut() {
clearTimeout(tmrtimeout);
if (timeouturl!=”") {
location.href = timeouturl;
}
}</script>

If you post questions, I can try and help you out as best I can. Also, feel free to post on the Bahamas Security forum where Rory can provide some help. Their website is – http://www.bahamasyellowpages.net/cctvforum/

The extra pixels comes at the 4:3 aspect ratio vs. the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio in 1080P mode (the camera can do both). The penalty for being in 3 MP mode is the maximum frame rate is 15 fps compared to 30 fps in 1080P mode. It depends if you can take advantage of the extra pixels. In my case, looking over my driveway, I can certainly take advantage of the extra pixels to provide better coverage and more likely be able to recognize someone in the video. You can tell from the video I captured that 15 fps is still very fluid motion.

The camera looks identical to its 1080P brother.

Main Features

•  1/2.8” 3 Megapixel progressive scan Sony Exmor CMOS
• High-performance TI DaVinci series DSP
• H.264/MJPEG video compression and JPEG image capture
• Supports dual-stream encoding
• Max 15 fps at 3 MP (2048 x 1536) &  30 fps at 1080P resolution
• Support true Day/Night with an IR Cut Filter
• Built-in 3.3~12mm varifocal/F1.4 Auto Iris lens
• Built-in IR Illuminators with a working distance of 20m
• Supports Alarm I/O
• Support up to 32GB Micro SD card for local storage
• IP66 Water-proof protection
• Powered by PoE or 12V/24V
• Smartphone apps available

I don’t want to duplicate the review for the 1080P version so I’m leaving out the section on the web interface and the camera pigtail as it’s the same.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at the front of my garage, under the eave. With the varifocal lens starting at 3.3mm, it was perfect for viewing the entire front of my home. While at that wide of an angle, you still can not ID someone across the street, it was very effective as people approached my front gate or driveway. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

Now onto the low light night performance. This time there’s three scenarios, the first is how you would likely use it, with IR lights on. Because there’s a street light across the street, the camera would not automatically shift to night mode so I had to set it to a scheduled time to cut over. This is what it looks like with IR lighting in night mode with no other lighting other than the street light across the street.

This is late at night but my front porch lights are on and it just so happens there’s some additional lighting from holiday lights, albeit not sure how much they contribute. This is in day mode, color but no IR illumination.

Lastly, with no other lights other than the street light across the street in day mode (no IR illumination), you can see it’s pretty dark. This is similar to the 1080P sensor and not really practical, especially since it has very nice IR illuminators.

Again, many of the same issues about setting the exposure mode, using their IOS and Android apps, their poor support and writing to SD or NAS is the same. If you write to SD or NAS, you can use their free CMS software PSS to view several camera together and view the recordings it made. While I was not crazy about the interface on PSS, it does work and did I say it was free.

Videos

I uploaded day and night videos to YouTube. The problem is while the video was recorded at 3 MP (2048 x 1536), when I uploaded it to YouTube, it cropped the image down to 1080P (1920 x 1080) so you will see actual resolution from the camera, but in real life, you would see 50% more content. To see the videos in its 1080P resolution, you must click on the gear icon and select 1080P resolution and then click on the icon with 4 corners to see the video full screen.

• Daytime Video
• Nightime Video

Conclusion

I did run into a slight problem with this camera I want to note. If you record to a NAS or SD, the video is in their proprietory DAV format. You have to use their player tool to view the video and it works fine as expected. When you convert the video to AVI, using Windows Media Player all you see is black, no video. If you use a different player to view it like VLC or DIVX it plays fine. When I copied the video to my Mac, it showed the video fine but had extra black section of video which was weird. There may be a glitch in the conversion from 3 MP to AVI files or this could be a Windows Media Player bug, not sure.

The pluses for this camera are;

• Price – don’t know where else you can get a camera this good for this price
• 3 MP at 15 fps or 1080P at 30 fps (specs say 20 fps at 3 MP but it’s wrong)
• IR Illuminators that work well, even coverage even at wide-angle
• Varifocal auto-iris lens that’s sharp and clear
• Sony Exmor sensor has excellent daytime quality and performs well in low light
• Smartphone apps – everyone wants to access their cameras from smartphones these days

The shortcomings of the camera are;

• Poor customer support. Luckily it works well without much to complain about.
• Can not take advantage of 3 MP mode on a Dahua NVR

The camera is recomended for those that want a really good camera at a bargain price and are savy enough to figure things out on their own and don’t need much support and are OK with buying products from China.

Click here to go to the company web page for the camera

Main Features

• Outdoor-ready design with extended temperature range
• Easy installation with remote focus and zoom
• Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)
• Multiple H.264 streams
• Day/night functionality
• Power over Ethernet

The P33 series is the top of the line for Axis fixed domes that includes all the features one could want like day/night IR cut filter, motorized focus and zoom, 3-axis manual lens adjustment and the Edge Storage feature with an SD card slot.

The P3343 has SVGA resolution (800×600) which feels small compared to many megapixel cameras I’ve tested, but if you don’t need the higher resolution, for example, you will be accessing this camera a lot via the internet and your priority is excellent low light capability, the ability to focus and zoom this camera remotely, the ability to place this in a harsh climate, -40f to 131F or -40C to 55C, (not sure there are many places on earth that exceed these limits), then this may be your camera.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first connect to the camera from a web browser. This is a very typical Axis interface which is comforting to know that from their lowest priced camera to their most complex and expensive camera, the interface remains familiar.

Clicking Setup takes you to all the available camera settings. For example, in Basic Setup you can set the camera’s clock, the IP address and such. Below is where you tweak the camera image settings are under Video & Audio, Camera Settings.

A nice feature is that these camera can be focused and zoomed from the comfort of your browser. Saves a ton of time on the ladder trying to get the perfect focus and focal length. This feature worked the best out of any camera I’ve tested with this feature. You can also select the zone you want to use for focus which came in handy when I wanted to focus on the car, not the houses in the distance.

Motion detection is under Detectors and is set by creating motion detect windows. If you are using Axis Camera Companion (ACC), skip this step as it has its own motion detectors it uses.

Once you setup the detectors, you can then setup an action rule to record. In this case I set it to record a few seconds of pre and post trigger video onto the SD card. I used a class 10 32GB SD card.

You can view recordings made by the action rules above or via continuous recordings. In this case, I made a 15 hour continuous recording without any problems. It breaks the recordings into 5 minute chunks.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera at the front of my garage set the varifocal lens to its wide angle. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

This fist image I turned WDR off so you can compare it to the same image with it on.

This image with WDR does look a little flatter, more washed out but if you look at the shadow detail, like the tire thread, you can see that you can gain better detail in shadows than before. For example, if someone was wearing a cap, you may have a better chance to ID them in the shadow of their cap. Another great use of WDR is at night, when you want to read a license plate in between two bright headlights.

At night, because of its low light capability, it didn’t really want to switch to night mode.

Eventually it did when my porch lights went off and it was just the street light across the street. This seems like it’s bright outside but consider this is very late at night, it’s dark outside despite the street light and this is at 1/30th second max shutter.

The camera comes in several layers. Basically you screw a cast aluminum mounting plate to where you want the camera, another thicker cast aluminum plate  that holds the camera screws to the mounting plate using the included screwdriver. The camera which resembles a still picture camera snaps into two clips and then you screw on the dome cover and optionally the sun shield if it’s wall mounted.

Videos

• Daytime video
• Night video

Axis Edge Storage

The advantage of the camera being able to record to a local SD card or to Network Attached Storage (NAS) is that you can record without having to purchase a PC or Network Video Recorder (NVR) to record. It will record on its own and it works quite well. The only problem is that it’s not easy to find what you want and if you have several cameras, it can be tedious to log into each for forensic analysis or even to view activity in your home or business from all cameras at once.

To solve this problem, Axis came out with free Axis Camera Companion (ACC) software. It lets the cameras do the heavy lifting of motion detection, alerts and recording and they provide ACC to view and configure the cameras from any PC. Because the cameras are doing the heavy lifting, just about any PC can be used to run ACC and you only run it when you need to view the cameras, so it’s environmentally friendly as you don’t have to leave an NVR or PC running 24/7.  Click HERE for more information on ACC.

The street price for this camera is about $1,000 and considering the special capabilities, Axis reputation of excellent service and support and no need for an NVR or NVR software to record, it’s a good value.

Conclusions

The pluses for this camera are;

• 800×600 at 30fps
• Wide Dynamic Range
• Extreme weather capabilities from a low of -40F to a high of 131F
• Edge Storage (recording to SD card or NAS)
• Free Axis Camera Companion Software
• Smartphone apps available
• Excellent Axis Customer Service and Support
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• 2-way audio

Where I would use this camera is where a reliable high quality video is needed and very low light capability or in combination with external IR lighting is used. Also, in an extreme weather area. Would love to see the low light capabilities in future releases of the 3MP and 5MP cameras. The newer versions of the P33  with 720P resolution have a feature called Lightfinder and hope to do a review on that camera soon.

Axis P3343 Camera spec sheet can be found HERE

Main Features

• Superb image quality with 1MP/ HDTV 720p
• Day/night functionality
• 2-way audio
• Varifocal lens
• Multiple H.264 streams
• Easy installation with remote back focus
• Edge Storage
• PoE

The P series cameras are the middle of the Axis line and usually include features such as day/night IR cut filter that their entry level M series don’t have.  Just from the heft and feel of this camera, you know it’s a step above the M series. Before you think adding all these features and ruggedness puts it out of your price range, the street price difference between the M1114 and the P1344 is only about $250. The P13 series includes a 3 and 5 Megapixel versions as well as a lower cost SVGA version.

This is what the web interface looks like when you first connect to the camera from a web browser. This is a very typical Axis interface which is comforting to know that from their lowest priced camera to their most complex and expensive camera, the interface remains familiar.

Clicking Setup takes you to all the available camera settings. For example, in Basic Setup you can set the camera’s clock, the IP address and such. Where you tweak the camera image settings are under Video & Audio, Camera Settings.

Motion detection is under Detectors and is set by creating motion detect windows. If you are using Axis Camera Companion (ACC), skip this step as it has its own motion detectors it uses.

The Event Types screen found under Events is where you add motion detect rules.

Once the cameras starts recording to the SD card or to a NAS, you can view the list of recordings and play back the video directly from this screen. You can also download the video and play it on another computer.

Selecting an event and clicking on the Play button, starts to play the video.

Now onto the images, how well does this camera perform. I mounted the camera in my backyard. I set the varifocal lens somewhere at about 4mm. As with my other reviews, click on the images below to see the full size image, straight from the camera.

I also mounted it at a second location at my garage viewing out at my driveway to see how it does under different lighting situations. The front of my house gets direct sun most of the day, a challenge for some cameras, the rear does not get much sun because of the slope behind the house and patio covers but has higher contrast from shadows.

This camera does not have any built-in illuminators so it depends on external light. This is a night shot using landscape lights in my backyard.

In the driveway at night, using only available illumination from the street light, you can see pretty good detail in color. Since lighting was adequate, there was no need for it to switch to night mode.

Videos

• Daytime video
• Night video

Axis Edge Storage

The advantage of the camera being able to record to a local SD card or to Network Attached Storage (NAS) is that you can record without having to purchase a PC or Network Video Recorder (NVR) to record. It will record on its own and it works quite well. The only problem is that it’s not easy to find what you want and if you have several cameras, it can be tedious to log into each for forensic analysis or even to view activity in your home or business from all cameras at once.

To solve this problem, Axis came out with free Axis Camera Companion (ACC) software. It lets the cameras do the heavy lifting of motion detection, alerts and recording and they provide ACC to view and configure the cameras from any PC. Because the cameras are doing the heavy lifting, just about any PC can be used to run ACC and you only run it when you need to view the cameras, so it’s environmentally friendly as you don’t have to leave an NVR or PC running 24/7.  Click HERE for more information on ACC.

The street price for this camera is about $800 and considering the features, Axis reputation of excellent service and support, it’s good value.

Conclusions

The pluses for this camera are;

• 720P at 30fps
• Edge Storage (recording to SD card or NAS)
• Free Axis Camera Companion Software
• Smartphone apps available
• Excellent Axis Customer Service and Support
• Day/Night IR Cut Filter
• 2-way audio

Where I would use this camera is where a reliable high quality video is needed and low light capability or in combination with external IR lighting is used. Order the “E” version if you want an outdoor version of this camera.

Axis P1344 Camera spec sheet can be found HERE