Ben there are so many permutations on what people want and feel happy with, cameras in any enviroment are only as good as the material they capture OR warn you about, a £20 camera can be better than a £10k camera if it captures or warns you of a situation that a £10k camera misses and vice versa
Arlo cams have there place i absolutely agree with that but they do have there down side, POE cameras have there place but even they have there down side, installation, cost, availability, all factors that impact the purchasers choice, what works for one person will not work for others
If anyone needs to install cameras they really need to think of what exactly it is they want to achieve, rock solid dedicated installation 24/7 recording or other less stable but maybe more convenient ways
@Steveuk23
I really cant give you a good model number as the Hik line up changes from time to time plus it depends on what camera look you prefer, i am not a fan of bullet shape traditional style cameras or domes, bullet shape is too aggresive outside your house and domes suffer from IR glare alot, these are my particular favs
less intrusive and very good, 30Mtr IR is about as good as most get but in real terms its a lot less, further away less you see like any torch at night, connections are like this
Camera POE > NVR > Router thats it, (actually i will be a little more discriptive, the Camera has a power and POE pig tail ready fitted with a female cat5 connection, all you need is Cat5 cable connected to the female pig tale and take that back to the NVR IN port, from the NVR there is a output port, again cat5 which connects to one of your router IN ports) most NVRs have powered poe ports ( POE Power over ethernet) so no need to have seperate injectors or run seperate power cables, however if you want to run one or 2 cameras on there own straight back to a router then you will need an injector to power them, control used to be via web interface, again alot has changed recently with browsers so i dont think firefox can access the live features of the camera, pale moon can but again its a field that is un neccessarily complex, i havent tested IE or Chrome, there is a phone app for the remaining 2 operating systems that is basicaly for viewing only as its not the best you will ever see which is a shame as the camera and NVR quality are very very good
You can hook up the NVR to your Tv ( HDMI ) and completely control from there, the NVR uses a mouse so if your NVR is under the Tv you will find yourself scrabling around the floor with a short mouse lead looking at the Tv from 2 feet away, also note the majority of POE cameras do NOT have audio, so if it is a thing you need make sure you are aware of this and pick a camera that does have audio
So as i said all systems have up and down sides, for real security it is worth going that extra painfull mile and installing a POE system but for ease of use and perhaps a little more instability, use Arlos or whatever your choice
The whole camera field no matter what you pick is way more complex than what i wrote as well, there is FOV to think about which brings onto play height, distance and angles to be viewed, its no good installing any camera system if all its going to see is a baseball cap and or too far away or has massive IR glare, and it definately is NOT worth installing anything that is analogue no matter how cheap, digital POE is way way better, cost wise you should be looking to pay around £100 ish per camera £100 for a dedicated CCTV hard disk and £200 ish for an NVR, these are rough prices plus Cat5 and a few connectors
but if you or anyone does choose a POE system i cannot emphasize enough the need to buy Uk stock that is 100% gauranteed Uk, there are many places like Amazon and ebay that will sell Hik/Dahua cameras that on first use appear to be Uk but if you try a firmware update they resort back to Chineese or brick, most of the time they can be recovered but it is a whole world of pain to do so
And the camera must match the NVR to enable all features to work, mixing and matching does work and certain features within the camera will not be available to control or use in the NVR, features like line crossing, movement in set areas, entrance exit zones will not function if the Camera is Hik and the NVR Dahua and vice versa
ST integration… the only way i have seen to get some integration with Hiks into St is via IFTTT, Hikvision has moved its remote playback for NVRs to the cloud ( FREE ) which does allow IFTTT connectivity, so if movement or any other function is triggered in the camera the IFTTT channel is tripped and from there you could have lights flash or a security light go on or whatever you fancy
Another upside to POE is the ability to record before and after, if movement is detected and the NVR is set to record for 20secs it will not only record the - before 20secs but after 20 secs - this is a big bonus allowing for better internal line placing and or not missing an event that could happen quickly
Down side, i see you wanted an image sent Steve, bone of contention with HIK NVrs/ Cameras, they will do it but the images sent are small and not detailed, these are sent via email from the NVR, whether new NVR`s have had changes made to send better pics i cant say, i recieve images and use them alot for alerts but really they are for cursory looking, if i see something odd in the pic then i will check the recording or live and the speed with which the emails are sent are determined by the servers they go through, usualy google and these are not always quick
For Christmas would i put a POE system on my list… nah not really, its too cold and long winded to set up i would go for Arlo, if it were summer and i had some time on my hands and a bit of cash to play with… POE all the way
