I acquired 2 different Hikvision full-HD (3MP) IP cameras which appear to be a good quality/cost compromise.
These cameras are :
for internal use : DS-2CD2432F-I(W)
for external use : DS-2CD2332-I
These IP cameras come with internal software but I wanted to manage them centrally.
I had a look at different NVR software solutions.
- Hikvision offers a free but limited software (iVMS-4200 PCNVR) (Windows).
- ISpyConnect (Windows)
- ZoneMinder (Linux)
- Xeoma (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android)
I wished to run it on Linux preferably to lower the resource requirements.
- Hikvision solution runs well with good video quality but has no remote access for mobile devices, and event/trigger/action is pretty limited.
- ISpyconnect seemed to work initially but has some smearing effects very often. It also requires to use a cloud account to remotely access your own NVR.
- ZoneMinder is free and runs on Linux which are good points and offers mobile device oriented web portal. It has many many settings but interface is basic.
- First excellent point, the video quality is as good as on the proprietary Hikvision software
- Then it runs on multiple OS
- It is composed of a server and a client, and you can then run the server only on a light headless linux machine (or a VM) and operate it from your Windows laptop for instance
- The interface is clean, intuitive and event/trigger/action are graphically managed by chaining module boxes
- You can as well use external service like clickatell to send text messages on alerts.
- I found that it lacks some monitoring app for IOS and Windows Phone, but you can create a custom view web server using the web server module and access it from your phone's browser or any device, so it's not blocking.
- Basic network layout
