I just recently bought a VeraPlus for our new home. I’ve gotten the basics setup (light switches, etc) and am now looking to get some cameras setup to monitor the back deck and garage for example. There are ethernet jacks where I’d place the cameras, so I’d prefer to do POE if possible.
Does anyone have any recommendations for indoor or outdoor POE cameras that work well with Vera? Ideally I’d like to be able to hook onto the camera’s motion sensing functionality as well. I’m guessing the VistaCams must have the best support, but they seem overpriced compared to the competition.
I purchased a Dahua IPC-HDW4300C, but it was basically a disaster and I’m taking it back: I finally worked through most of the issues but the camera would keep switching between day/night mode non-stop.
I think many here have been pleased with any of the Hikvision POE camera’s. I have 4 of their dome outdoor camera’s running and they are working great. One thing that I also think moist everyone here will also tell you is that Vera (and flavor) is just not a good platform for directly connecting camera’s. Vera is not a DVR/NVR and directly attaching any camera to Vera is going to bog it down significantly. Most of us use an external NVR such as Blue Iris. Blue Iris is an inexpensive software based solution that is actually VERY feature rich but it does require you to have a fairly robust Windows PC or server running 24x7. In my case I have a MAC with a Windows partition running in a Parallels VM and it’s great. You can then use the Virtual Motion plugin in Vera and have Blue Iris send motion notification into Vera to execute scenes or whatever. This all works really well for many of us here.
I did end up returning that camera for a HikVision (DS-2CD2432F-IW) which should be arriving today, so I’m glad that lines up with your recommendation.
[quote=“JY07, post:3, topic:191449”]I did end up returning that camera for a HikVision (DS-2CD2432F-IW) which should be arriving today, so I’m glad that lines up with your recommendation.
It sounds like once I have that up and running, BlueIris + this plug-in you mentioned is the way to go.
Thanks![/quote]
You don’t need the Blueiris plugin and with one camera you might be ok, but Vera doesn’t respond so well to the load of cameras in it. After a few it can create more problems. Usually there is no reason to run the camera’s in vera. All you need is a motion trigger from the camera in vera You can then base scenes off of it. The virtual Motion Plugin will give you that without the camera or images in vera. Also reseach cameras in vera related to where your images are stored, how to erase off that server and such. There was some major concerns recently on this.
If you have Blueiris (which you dont right now) then you really don’t need any images in vera. Also Blueiris can send http commands to vera to trip the virtual motion plugin and which is how the blueiris plugin also works. Blueiris has alot of options and motion detection features that the cameras will never have. After you have blueiris you really never use much of the features in the cameras, Blueiris takes over and watches for motion. You can also set different profiles for day, night, home, away and different settings for each. Then vera and switch those profiles as they change to only record or send alerts when needed.
EDIT:
I use Blueiris, Hikvision 3MP cameras in a few different shapes and http://wifi-texas.com/ 8 port poe Injectors.
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