1

Hello Spiceheads!

My company wants to upgrade our camera system. Our current camera system has been running great for years. The HIKVISION system is outdated and the DVR/Cameras are using the old BNC style connectors.

We want to upgrade the entire system which will include about 25 cameras total. Mostly indoor and a few outdoor.

I know there are a lot of options out there. I’m not sure I want to go with HIKVISION again.

Another company I know just installed a Tiandy system and quite frankly, I think it’s horrible.

What are your recommendations?

I like Unifi Protect, but that is not an option at this time as their products are impossible to get.

What do you think about Lorex or Amcrest?

10 Spice ups
2

Jeff, what if anything are some of the other features, functions, or integrations with other products that you might want?

Most of what you have listed is fine for plain jane video recording applications. However, some of the more commercial and established brands won’t have as many of the cybersecurity concerns, sourcing issues,or ethical issues. But they will of course cost more money.

It can depend on the use you’re hoping to get that determines what recommendations some people may make.

3

Hi Luis C.

The number one priority for this camera system is for security reasons. To record any activity around the premises and record events.

Also, staff members will be using it to view certain parts of the building during office hours. We have 8 locations and users need to see what’s going on at other locations (parking lots, etc.).

It would be great if they can access the entire system, or one or more cameras through a web interface.

4

We have been testing distributed/federated solutions for six months now; if I could stomach the cost, we’d have switched to Ava Security by now. $160K over three years is a tough number for my brain to handle.

For a smaller, highly distributed environment, it may be both more cost effective and more functional to go to a pure play cloud solution. Take a look at Rhombus, they weren’t appropriate for our environment but they have some solid capability and sexy analytics. They are also one of two cloud connected systems that talk to our OpenPath site, which is impressive (Ava is the other). WAY less expensive than Verkada and way less likely to compromise your internal security.

Edit to add: https://www.rhombussystems.com/

5

Just an FYI if you are in the US

HikVision is on the FCC Ban List

I am also a fan of the Unifi Protect line. we use them at all of our sites and they work really well

1 Spice up
6

Thanks molan,

Yes I read that in the past. I don’t want to use HIKVISION.

I don’t want to use Tiandy, a copycat of HIKVISION. A friend’s company just installed a BRAND NEW Tiandy system. It still wants you to use Adobe Flash Player to access the interface! Unbelievable!

1 Spice up
7

Personally, I would get an updated HIKVision/Dahua system. DO NOT BUY UBIQUITI CAMERAS. I love UI stuff but they have demonstrated this nasty habit of just dropping support for things and the last thing you want is $10k of security cameras that no longer have a way to record or a mobile app or something otherwise absolutely necessary.

The Hik stuff seems to always be the most cutting edge and ‘open’. About the only flaw to it is that the UI is a little more…‘advanced user’ than ‘this will be great for grandma to check on the neighbors’. But if it’s for a business, that’s really what you want.

8

How is the user interface on Dahua products? Easier to use then HIKVISION?

Any experience installing these products?

9

I personally find this list to be a joke. The title of this list might as well read: “List of the highest quality devices for the best price.” I have high confidence that the attacks on specifically ZTE, Huawei, and Xiomi are funded heavily by Samsung and Apply lobbying because they don’t make products that hold a candle to theirs.

In the same vein, compare the capabilities of a new Hikvision PoE camera with a UniFi device. The Hikvision/Dahua is an open platform and everything interacts with each other, you can change firmware from one brand to another, they’re half to 1/3 the cost with 2-8x the video quality, and this does not even include the feature capabilities of onboard SD cards, facial recognition, license plate tracking, object presence, and on and on. UniFi works with only UniFi, they have 3-5 cameras to choose from (100% of which are mediocre at best), they only work in their completely closed ecosystem (for which they have already dropped various bits of software support multiple times), and it costs a FORTUNE ($1800 for a PTZ 4k camera?!, $300-500 for an EMPTY NVR?!).

Like I said above, you’re basically paying for the interface. If you like a flashy app and setup in two clicks and this is worth a “monthly fee” to you and it doesn’t really matter if you see the license plate of the person who robbed you then go with UniFi. If you want a real security system that will actually store 30-60-90 days of video, have proper alerts, and give you visual data that would get a criminal caught and prosecuted in court, get a real system like a Hikvision/Dahua.

10

Dahua/Hik are similar interfaces. The interface that you’re going to be interacting with is ultimately that of the NVR. If you have 25 cameras then you should really be looking at the interface of the Hikvision software from their website. That’s the actual interface. The weird ‘flash’ device software that you’re talking about you never look at. That’s just what the NVR/Hikconnect software will interface with.

There’s also a lot of ‘branded’ hik products. Make sure you get something from the USA if you buy their stuff or it won’t have any warranty here (like don’t buy stuff randomly off amazon). Talk to a Hik rep in the US and they’ll demo you something. The stuff is very powerful and has come a VERY long way since the BNC connected system you have now. They’re actually pretty amazing in their capabilities. You’re really only limited by your budget with Hik/Dahua products.

11

You could actually even look at some piece of software like BlueIris. That’s inexpensive and robust if you like the interface. That will read from tons of cameras. It’s likely that you could connect your old BNC system to that if the NVR has ethernet and then peacemeal change over using whatever system you build out for the PoE.

12

I disagree with everything you just said (except the price of that PTZ Camera, that is crazy). Depending on the OP’s industry regardless of personal opinion that list might carry significant weight.

1 Spice up
13

Silly me used a DW watchdog install on a self-built linux box, and could throw anyone’s cameras at it. I personally liked the Amcrest and trendnet IP cameras. The software is relatively cheap.

The design is getting long in the tooth now, but I liked that it was 100% on prem solution, with ability to connect to cloud if you wanted.

14

Given the use of Hikua products by CCP internal security, it’s pretty disingenuous to blame their ban on competitors. Literally NO ONE in the US gives a damn about Samsung getting an advantage from the bans. The excuse is “they’re so cheap!” - OK, when you get something for free, you’re the product.

Pretzel-ing logic to claim that supporting an authoritarian regime is OK because everyone else does it “and they’re cheap!” is sad.

2 Spice ups
15

OP, BlueIris is great for what it is, but can’t be federated. If you have 8 locations and 25 cameras, it’s time to look at something cloud-first.

16

thelanranger wrote: “I personally find this list to be a joke. The title of this list might as well read: “List of the highest quality devices for the best price.” I have high confidence that the attacks on specifically ZTE, Huawei, and Xiomi are funded heavily by Samsung and Apply lobbying because they don’t make products that hold a candle to theirs.”

‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’

The numerous Hik and Dahua cyber and backdoor insecurities have been well documented for a number of years now, including the infamous one that turned any Internet connected Dahua NVR into a Bitcoin miner.Yes, they have been noted for having very good image quality for the price, but that does not mean they are very secure.

It is also easier to get that image quality for the price when you have near unlimited subsidized funding from the government (who is a majority owner in Hik), giving the products an unfair advantage and accused of product dumping making it harder for legitimate market competition. Maybe Samsung and Apple should get government subsidies using taxpayer dollars?

Now you have the human rights ethics concerns, such as with their facial recognition technology being developed and used specifically for ethnic racial based tracking and monitoring of their Uyghur and other minority populations.

All of this has been reported by many independent news and technology publications, not just by competitor PR campaigns.

3 Spice ups
17

I would recommend BlueIris, a PoE Switch and Generic IP cameras.

We went with that, and it is fantastic.

18

I’ve always been a fan of Vivotek cameras. I was a Hikvision fan until all of their issues came about.

1 Spice up
19

BI is great but doesn’t work across multiple locations. OP says 8 sites with 25 cameras, so the ability to

  • federate NVR’s through a cloud service -OR-
  • store data locally to cameras with cloud federation

is going to be part of that solution.

I have a couple of folks here at the shop that bought BI for home use, they LOVE it, even use the WyzeCam RTSP beta firmware with it. It’s improved spectacularly over the last six or seven years, and remains a bargain. It’s just not the right tool for a job like this.

1 Spice up
20

I struggled with a Lorex NVR system for WAY too long. I could never get it to work.

At home, I spun up a ZoneMinder server but as soon as I got it working, they stopped supporting the mobile app.