Recommendations / Products / Setup for outdoor security cameras

[ts1234]

Thanks everyone...I've been a bit tied up to get back to this. It looks like in general I'll have to settle for a little less than I want...but probably what I need

[JRose]

Anything Reolink is a poor choice. The company plays games with the firmware resulting in very poor nighttime performance.
More research available here: www.ipcamtalk.com

Interesting take. I've found that in my real life use, they actually work better than Amcrest, Hikvision and Dahua cameras. My biggest complaint with all of them is on back-lit images. Just my untrained, non-reviewer, average guy opinion.

[wpiman]

Lol, the side talk on IPCAMTALK is notorious. Stay off of the ChitChat forum. It is a large country, and many of those in the middle who have lots of land (and dislike of people) have a strong interest in cameras.

There is also an administrator on there that can be extremely toxic. I think so much so that Blue Iris started their own board. If you don't like Windows and/or run in a VM he become unhelpful.

That said, it is hard to find a more useful resource on the topic.

"Would like/ Need...

Face recognition
Vehicle recognition
Motion Detection
Record to HS4 or DVR
Event Triggers

I'd especially like the face recognition part to work well with very few false alarms."

Blue Iris will fit the bill. Someone pointed to the MQTT thread. I am currently using it to read license plates into Homeseer. CodeProject has a facial recognition thing that will work with BI- I have not tried it yet.

[wpiman]

Interesting take. I've found that in my real life use, they actually work better than Amcrest, Hikvision and Dahua cameras. My biggest complaint with all of them is on back-lit images. Just my untrained, non-reviewer, average guy opinion.

I don't own any- but there seems to be some love for the Reolink POE doorbell on IPCAM talk. I was thinking about replacing my doorbirds with this...

[Wade]

I don't own any- but there seems to be some love for the Reolink POE doorbell on IPCAM talk. I was thinking about replacing my doorbirds with this...

A major draw is PoE which is otherwise uncommon (unavailable?) in the <$100 range, cloudless. I've had one in service a couple of months and it's done well. Just ordered a second for another location where an Amcrest AD410 has frequent connection issues despite good wifi coverage. My standards for video quality for doorbell use aren't especially high, but it seems to compare well against others in a review on The Hookup on YouTube.

[Traction Tim]

I use Blue Iris:

Face recognition - I'm presently testing face recognition with Blue Iris. Time will tell if it is a toy or a tool. I've just set it up to send unknown faces to my mobile phone by email.
Vehicle recognition - If you mean car,bus,truck,bicycle etc then that works well. If you mean "Ford Mustang" or "Volkswagen Passat" then no.
Motion detection - no problem there.
Record to HS4 or DVR - Would be NVR for IP cams, but IP cams do allow you to record in multiple places. I have my door cam in Blue Iris and HS4 at the same time.
Event triggers - I'm presently using MQTT to send information from Blue Iris to HS4. It can even send ALPR numbers to HS4, and HS4 can read them out to you.

I think the Reolink doorbell with the Homeseer Onvif plug in could be very useful. Unfortunately in the UK, I can't get hold of one to do any testing so I can't comment further on it. Reolink generally are problematic with Blue Iris, I guess it is because they want you to buy their NVR, but there is thread after thread on the Blue Iris forum about getting them connected - and trying to keep them connected. Cheap hardware with dodgy firmware ? I can only tell you that your life will always be interesting with Reolink

Cameras ? I go on specifications. I mainly use the Dahua cameras that can see colour in the dark when my eyes can only see dark

[Traction Tim]

Would like/ Need...

I currently have an Amcrest DVR and indoor cameras that it would be nice to integrate into the same solution. They only have motion detection.

Some DVRs and NVR's will be able to connect into Blue Iris and make all cameras visible within BI5 so that you can keep your existing kit and expand on it.

[ts1234]

Everybody thanks!

Traction Tim...I already have an Amcrest DVR and several of their cameras and a doorbell. It's been almost a year since I looked, but at that time all the recording had to be local thru BI. That is great to know...will start looking. Hope BI does good with facial recognition. Let us know! As a far as cars go, it be nice if it could tell the difference between a Jeep Liberty, a VW Bug, and a Pontic Sosltice...at least for me. The problem with my doorbell and I think newer ones do...is they can't see 180 degrees. I need that.