Reddit reviews Hikvision 4MP DS-2CD2142FWD-I HD WDR IP Network Dome 2.8mm Lens

How much are you looking to spend? Controllable dome cameras cost a fortune.

I really like hikvision fixed domes, they are great value for the money. Extremely well built cameras with great image quality. As far as integration with home assistant, the motion sensing binary sensors seem to work quite well. You will still have to use their software to setup motion sensing zones etc. They can work entirely local, I have mine writing to an NFS share.

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Just watch which ones you buy, make sure its the North American version. The Chinese ones are locked to certain firmware. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B017Y4CD9U/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These:

• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EN3YBZ4
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017Y4CD9U
  
  Note that the latest HikVision firmware breaks the ONVIF motion detection. I tried upgrading and then had to figure out how to force-downgrade to V5.4.5 build 170124.
  
  Here are my camera and BlueIris settings: https://imgur.com/a/leXnG4w

install an inexpensiveish Hikvision camera

plug it into your power outlet (probably secure this in a steel box)

if you have line of site from the neighborhood entrance to your house or the community office then install a pair of these to create a wireless bridge (like an invisible ethernet line up to a half mile distance. you can now monitor the camera as often as you want from just entering its ip address. let me know if this is a route your interested in and I can provide more info if needed

I have a couple of Hikvision outdoor IP dome cameras that work well. They are PoE, so power is easy for them, and they are 4mp, so the image is pretty good, though low light sometimes leaves something to be desired (lots of people supplement with night time IR lights in those cases.

I have a Synology NAS too, and while I actually liked their Surveillance Station app, it doesn't work in web browsers anymore (They have been sitting on a broken implementation for 2+ years now here), so I moved away from it.

The Hikvisions have a web server built in a decent enough interface, and I just write the video files out to my NAS drive, where I have a 10 GB partition set aside for it.

They also have passable motion and line-crossing detection, though I think that it could be better.

Nice little cameras for $130 or so: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017Y4CD9U/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

One warning if you go this route: Hikvision is kind of a dick about support. They only really "support" their authorized dealers. Further, they have region based distribution, so you can get a Chinese camera if you aren't careful. MAKE SURE YOU BUY FROM A SELLER THAT GUARANTEES YOU GET THE RIGHT REGION. If you don't you may never be able to upgrade your camera's firmware, because there are a lot of knockoff Hikvisions out there coming out of China that are not binary compatible.

On the amazon page I linked, if you click on the "15 new from" link it'll show the actual companies that will fullfill the order behind the scenes. The good ones will have comments telling you the above. Make sure you order from them specifically.

Also, I highly recommend PoE. Cameras chug a lot of data, so isolating them from the rest of your wireless is a good idea, and you don't want to run power to every drop. Buy a PoE injector. Your switch will just plug into this, and then the other side will have PoE on it. I have the following 6 port injector and it works great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FYEY6SY/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There are other cameras out there, some are better and with less issues around firmware / knockoffs, etc. Very few provide the same quality at the $130 price point. But if you don't want to mess about with that, there's always Axis and a few others that are great, but significantly more expensive.

That GW Security camera looks fine.

I recommend POE IP cameras though like the following:

Trendnet Bullet/Dome:
https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-Outdoor-Megapixel-Network-TV-IP314PI/dp/B01C5Q2JL4

Hikvision Dome:
https://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-DS-2CD2142FWD-I-Network-Dome-2-8mm/dp/B017Y4CD9U

Hikvision Bullet:
https://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-DS-2CD2042WD-I-Network-Security-Bullet/dp/B01M1EMS52

If you got to have indoor WIFI then something like this Hikvisiion will do all right, but remember WIFI can be flakey at times so you may experience some periodic drop in the stream/recording:
https://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-DS-2CD2442FWD-IW-Indoor-Wireless-Camera/dp/B01N2YFTNX

One MAJOR thing to be aware of, with any security camera system, make sure you set up the cameras on a separate VLAN and/or separate physical LAN from your other home network and have firewall rules in place to deny that VLAN and separate physical LAN from communicating to the outside and do not let any external device access it from the outside. If you need access remotely to the cameras, setup a VPN server to have secure access into that camera network. Pretty much all of these cameras come from China so, you want to protect yourself not just from unwanted random outside snooping but also from the cameras calling home in the event there's hidden foreign government backdoors/spyware.

Yeah sure, I use HIKVISION. You can get a 4MP (Compared to 1.3Mp) external IP bullet cam with a 4MM lens for $106.33 on Amazon Here

The NVR to go with it here for $199.99 and a 2TB WD Purple HDD here for $79.99.

If you need a very wide angle, a 2.8mm 4MP Dome with WDR is $120.00 here

You can pick up a PTZ dome with 4x Optical Zoom for $506 here

Hikvision have recently introduced H265+ codec compression which means you can store a quite frankly ridiculous amount of footage even on a relatively small 2TB drive. The software is extremely easy to use, supports Windows/Mac/Android/iPhone and it's got built-in DDnS that's literally childs play to configure. The cameras are extremely straightforward to setup and the NVR has 8 PoE ports on the back to power them.

The cameras on their latest firmware can do people counting (Think shopping centres, etc), ANPR (Log to a CSV/Database) - The PTZ units can do smart tracking and follow vehicles in/out of a compound. (I've deployed this at an airfield and it follows vehicles in through the gate, very cool to watch!)

If you'd like any snippets or footage I'll upload some to our company OneDrive for you to take a look. The kit is so cheap compared to Bosch/Siemens and outperforms ALL of it. We've been competing directly with ADT over in the UK for a lot of work and our kit has trumped it every single time. We're a Silver VAR Hikvision partner now and I can't imagine using any other kit to be honest, it covers every possible scenario from a single camera covering someones porch right up to a 64 camera installation. Feel free to pick my brains via PM or anything else buddy.

I found this camera on B&H that seems to fit all of your criteria, except it's 170 per dome. It's hard to find a PTZ dome that is less than 150 dollars unless it's for indoor use.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1320810-REG/speco_technologies_o2p4x_2mp_4x_indoor_outdoor_ip.html

You can try searching on Alibaba or Amazon for something, but quality isn't guaranteed. For instance, this PTZ dome is only 100 dollars, but the reviews are scarce and iffy.

Here's a non-PTZ dome I would recommend.

Hikvision 4MP DS-2CD2142FWD-I HD WDR IP Network Dome 2.8mm Lens

Get blue iris.

Quickly looking at amazon I’d get these.

Hikvision 4MP DS-2CD2142FWD-I HD WDR IP Network Dome 2.8mm Lens https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017Y4CD9U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_YxhNBbYVAGSZJ

Set to full res at 12 FPS or more if your machine can handle it.

thank you for the list

I am still researching DORI and differences between cameras, but from what I gathered so far here is what I need:

• blue iris $70 (with a phone app)
  
• pc (since it only supports windows) likely i7-6700 something like this
  
• PoE switch: something like this
  
• router, I have an old lynksys with dd-wrt which should do it
  
• several very long ethernet cables with some couplers
  
• most likely also a UPS
  
• ONVIF, PoE cameras
  
  the last bit I am still looking at. I am not ready to spend several hundred dollars per camera (one of your examples is Dahua 2MP Starlight which seems to be super expensive). While I understand it might be much better than the rest, I'd like to see if I can be in a $50 to $100 dollar range per camera. Is there any such cameras you can recommend?
  
  I can see some (ONVIF, PoE): Hikvision 4MP, ONWOTE 5MP, ONWOTE, 4X Optical Zoom Autofocus, Amcrest ProHD, GW Security 5, JideTech PTZ, etc. but I am not sure how to gauge the quality.

I have 3 of these up: Link using the Hikvision 7608 NVR. Great setup and the picture is fantastic.