Author Archives: Ben Software

10 Recommended IP Cameras 2021

[Note: this list is now outdated – for our latest recommendations, please see Our Camera Picks]

Here are our network camera picks for 2021. They are listed in no particular order (they are quite varied in terms of cost and feature set, which makes them difficult to rank as a “top 10″ list), however they are all cameras that, due to their impressive features, we recommend to our customers for use with our SecuritySpy CCTV software for the Mac.

Some abbreviations used below are as follows:

  • MP – Megapixel resolution – the number of millions of pixels in the image sensor. The higher the resolution, the more detailed the image, but resolution isn’t everything: the optical quality of the lens system is also extremely important.
  • PoE – Power-over-Ethernet – when using a PoE switch, the camera draws power over the ethernet cable and so doesn’t require a separate power supply.
  • IR – Infra-Red – some cameras include Infra-Red LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for night vision. Usually the manufacturer will specify the maximum useful range of the IR in meters.
  • P-Iris / DC-Iris – These features (collectively called “auto-iris”) allow the camera lens to automatically adjust its aperture based on the amount of incoming light. P-Iris is more sophisticated and will give better results than than DC-Iris, but both are far better than a Fixed-Iris lens, especially for outdoor applications.
  • Varifocal – These lenses allow you to adjust the field of view at installation time. A focal length of 2.8mm is wide-angle; 4mm is medium; 8mm is moderately telephoto (a bit “zoomed in”). This is not the same as true “zoom” lenses: varifocal lenses are designed to be set once at install time, whereas zoom lenses are designed to be operated continually.
  • PTZ – Pan/Tilt/Zoom – motorised remote control of the camera’s horizontal and vertical angle and focal length.

For purchasing IP cameras, we recommend B&H Photo Video – they are a reliable, established outlet. Amazon is another option, however there are many “grey market” cameras sold on Amazon (e.g. cameras designed for the Chinese market only, but sold into the US against the manufacturer’s rules), which should be avoided due to lack of support from the manufacturer.

We are not affiliated with any outlet or manufacturer mentioned on this page, and we get no financial incentive for recommending them.

BASIC OUTDOOR TURRET/DOME: DAHUA TECHNOLOGY N53AJ52

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Segregating IP Cameras on their own LAN

Our macOS CCTV software SecuritySpy allows you to set up an effective video surveillance system of any size, in both home and commercial settings.

The simplest setup for a LAN (Local Area Network) that includes IP cameras is to have a central Ethernet switch with all devices, including the cameras, connected to it. This generally works well, and has the advantage that every device can talk to every other device, which helps when setting up new devices. However, there are some potential downsides with this configuration:

  • Performance: at the Mac’s Ethernet port, camera traffic can be significant, and it can slow down other network data transfers to the Mac.
  • Privacy: some cameras “phone home”, sending data of unknown content back to the manufacturer’s servers. While the content of this data is probably benign (e.g. business/diagnostic information), some users worry about private data being sent.
  • Security: some cameras automatically make themselves available from the Internet; automated bots will find the cameras, and will attempt to hack into them.

The above can be mitigated to some extent by changing camera settings, and the Ethernet speed for the Mac can be increased by using a faster link speed (e.g. 2.5 Gbps) or link aggregation. However, if you are sufficiently concerned by the above issues, the ultimate solution is to segregate the IP cameras onto their own, separate, LAN. This has the following advantages:

  • Camera traffic is completely separate and does not impact the general LAN in any way.
  • Cameras do not have Internet access, so cannot send data to the Internet.
  • Cameras cannot make themselves available from the Internet, so hacking into them becomes impossible.

The main downside of this configuration is that the setup is more difficult, and does require some knowledge of IP addressing. If you are unfamiliar with this topic, we would advise you to research how IP addresses work on local networks before proceeding.

An example setup is as follows:

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Running an NTP Time Server on your Mac

[UPDATE 30 JUNE 2021: This functionality is now built into SecuritySpy – see NTP Time Server Installation. We are leaving this post in place in case it is useful to anyone, but we can no longer provide any assistance or updates to the below instructions or scripts.]

When implementing a CCTV system (e.g. one based around our macOS CCTV software SecuritySpy) it is important for all cameras to maintain the correct time for the purposes of drawing accurate timestamps onto their video streams. Not only will this help you review recorded footage, but if there is an incident that needs to be reported to the police, it will help them with their investigation. You may even be asked to verify or demonstrate to the police that your cameras are set to the correct time.

For this purpose, you should always give your cameras a valid NTP server address (NTP stands for Network Time Protocol). The cameras will contact the NTP server at regular intervals to set their clocks (you should also set your cameras with accurate daylight savings time settings, so that any such adjustments are applied automatically during the summer months).

For this purpose, we recommend using one of the time servers that Apple provides for free, which are time.apple.com, time.euro.apple.com and time.asia.apple.com. Continue reading

Setting Up A Home CCTV System

In this blog post, we will go through the process of setting up a video surveillance system for your home, based around our macOS CCTV software SecuritySpy. When setting up a home CCTV system, cost is an important consideration, but we also want to choose high-quality hardware that is easy to install and set up. To this end, our example system will comprise the following components:

Cameras: we have chosen to use Amcrest IP8M cameras for the following reasons:

  • Physically quite small and unobtrusive.
  • Easy plug-and-play setup (no manual IP/network setup required).
  • High resolution (8 MP), night vision, and good codec support (H.265 and AAC).
  • A built-in microphone – essential for a camera covering an entrance.
  • Great value at around USD $100.

IP5M-T1179EW-28MM Camera Continue reading

10 Recommended IP Cameras 2020

Here are our network camera picks for 2020. They are listed in no particular order (they are quite varied in terms of cost and feature set, which makes them difficult to rank as a “top 10″ list), however they are all cameras that, due to their impressive features, we recommend to our customers for use with our SecuritySpy CCTV software for the Mac.

Some abbreviations used below are as follows:

  • MP – Megapixels – the number of millions of pixels in the image sensor. The higher this number, the more detailed the image, but resolution isn’t everything: the optical quality of the lens system is also extremely important.
  • PoE – Power-over-Ethernet – when using a PoE switch, the camera draws power over the ethernet cable and therefore doesn’t require a separate power supply. This is very useful for easy installation and ongoing reliability. All the wired Ethernet (i.e. non-WiFi) cameras on this list support PoE, but note that the larger “speed dome” cameras typically require the higher-powered PoE+ standard.
  • IR – Infra-Red – some cameras include Infra-Red LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for night vision. Usually the manufacturer will specify the maximum useful range of the IR in meters.
  • P-Iris / DC-Iris – These features allow the camera lens to automatically adjust its aperture size, based on the amount of incoming light. P-Iris is more sophisticated and will give better results than than DC-Iris, but both are far better than a Fixed-Iris lens, especially for outdoor applications.
  • Varifocal – These lenses allow you to zoom in and out somewhat (sometimes manually, sometimes motorised), in order to adjust the field of view at installation time. A focal length of 2.8mm is very wide-angle; 4mm is standard; 8mm is moderately telephoto.
  • PTZ – Pan, Tilt, Zoom – motorised remote control of the camera’s horizontal and vertical angle, and focal length.

For purchasing IP cameras, we recommend B&H Photo Video – they are a reliable, established outlet. Amazon is another option, however there are many “grey market” cameras sold on Amazon (e.g. cameras designed for the Chinese market only, but sold into the US against the manufacturer’s rules), which should be avoided due to potentially foreign-language user interfaces, lack of firmware upgrades, and lack of support from the manufacturer.

BASIC OUTDOOR DOME: DAHUA TECHNOLOGY N44BN52

Dahua Wedge Camera

This compact outdoor Dome camera from Dahua is a good inexpensive ($180) camera for covering an outdoor area. 4 MP resolution and good low-light sensitivity, combined with 20m night vision and a built-in microphone, provide all the basic features necessary to make an effective addition to any CCTV system. And it works in temperatures down to -40° C (–40° F), making it ideal for extreme environments. Continue reading

Remote Access via Mobile/Cellular/Satellite Internet

[Update 8 Nov 2022: although the below solution still works, ngrok have put up their prices significantly since this post was written. We now have a new post that describes some alternative solutions, many of them free, so we recommend you refer to this one instead: Remote Access Without Port Forwarding.]

In order to connect to any server over the Internet (such as SecuritySpy’s built-in web server for remote access to your CCTV system), the server must be exposed to the Internet via a public IP address.

Most standard home and commercial Internet connections (Fibre, ADSL, Cable) provide a public Internet address, which makes setting up remote access to SecuritySpy fairly straightforward, as described in the Remote Access section of the SecuritySpy Installation Manual.

However, Mobile/Cellular Internet connections (i.e. those that use a 3G, 4G or 5G modem to connect wirelessly over the cellular network) are becoming increasingly common, as their speed and reliability increase and costs decrease. Unfortunately, most mobile Internet connections do not provide a true public IP address, but rather provide a private address within the Internet provider’s network (this is called Carrier-Grade NAT). Therefore it is not possible to set up remote access in the same way. Typically, this is the case with Satellite-based Internet connections as well.

Some mobile Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can provide a true public IP address for an extra fee, but not all do.

The solution to this problem is to use a service called ngrok, which allows you to set up a secure tunnel to your server in order to provide access to it from the Internet. Here’s how it works: Continue reading

Optimising SecuritySpy’s AI Object Detection

The new AI-powered motion detection features in SecuritySpy version 5 use deep neural networks to detect the presence of humans and vehicles. This allows for highly-accurate triggering of recordings and notifications of just the events that you are interested in.

The AI algorithms output a prediction probability, indicating the likelihood for the presence of a human or vehicle, and you can choose the threshold at which this triggers recording and notifications. Generally, a threshold of 50% gives good results.

However, the accuracy of the AI depends on many factors such as the distance to the subject, lighting, resolution and quality of the camera. You might find that the threshold you have chosen is letting through too many false-positive triggers, or conversely is preventing real motion from generating a trigger.

To see how the AI is performing on your system, create a folder called “AI Predictions” in the SecuritySpy folder within your Home folder (to get to the Home folder, click the Go menu in the Finder and select Home). Then, whenever a video frame is passed through the AI, SecuritySpy will annotate the frame with the motion area and prediction probabilities, and will save it to this folder as an image file. Inspecting these images allows you to determine what the AI is “seeing”, and will therefore allow you to adjust your trigger thresholds for optimum results on your system.

Here are some examples of these annotated images (cropped to just the relevant area):

annotated1 Continue reading

10 Recommended IP Cameras 2019

[Note: this list is now outdated – for our latest recommendations, please see Our Camera Picks]

Here are our network camera picks for 2019. They are listed in no particular order (they are quite varied in terms of cost and feature set, which makes them difficult to rank as a “top 10″ list), however they are all cameras that, due to their impressive features, we recommend to our customers for use with our SecuritySpy CCTV software for the Mac.

Some abbreviations used below are as follows:

  • MP – Megapixels – the number of millions of pixels in the image sensor. The higher this number, the more detailed the image, but resolution isn’t everything: the optical quality of the lens system is also extremely important.
  • PoE – Power-over-Ethernet – when using a PoE switch, the camera draws power over the ethernet cable and therefore doesn’t require a separate power supply. This is very useful for easy installation and ongoing reliability. Note that some cameras require the higher-powered PoE+ standard.
  • IR – Infra-Red – some cameras include Infra-Red LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for night vision. Usually the manufacturer will specify the maximum useful range of the IR in meters.
  • P-Iris / DC-Iris – These features allow the camera lens to automatically adjust its aperture size, based on the amount of incoming light. P-Iris is more sophisticated and will give better results than than DC-Iris, but both are far better than a Fixed-Iris lens, especially for outdoor applications.
  • Varifocal – These lenses allow you to zoom in and out somewhat (sometimes manually, sometimes motorised), in order to adjust the field of view at installation time. A focal length of 2.8mm is very wide-angle; 4mm is standard; 8mm is moderately telephoto.
  • PTZ – Pan, Tilt, Zoom – motorised remote control of the camera’s horizontal and vertical angle, and focal length.

BASIC OUTDOOR DOME: DAHUA TECHNOLOGY N44CG52 / N44CG53

Dahua N44CG52 IP Camera

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10 Recommended IP Cameras 2018

[Note: this list is now outdated – for our latest recommendations, please see Our Camera Picks]

Here are our camera picks for 2018. They are listed in no particular order (they are quite varied in terms of cost and feature set, which makes them difficult to rank as a “top 10″ list), however they are all cameras that, due to their impressive features, we recommend to our customers for use with our SecuritySpy CCTV software for the Mac.

Some abbreviations used below are as follows:

  • MP – Megapixels – the number of millions of pixels in the image sensor. The higher this number, the more detailed the image, but resolution isn’t everything: the optical quality of the lens system is also extremely important.
  • PoE – Power-over-Ethernet – when using a PoE switch, the camera draws power over the ethernet cable and therefore doesn’t need a separate power supply. This is very useful for easy installation and ongoing reliability.
  • IR – Infra-Red – some cameras include Infra-Red LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for night vision. Usually the manufacturer will specify the maximum useful range of the IR in meters.
  • P-Iris / DC-Iris – These features allow the camera lens to automatically adjust its aperture size, based on the amount of incoming light. P-Iris is more sophisticated and will give better results than than DC-Iris, but both are far better than a Fixed-Iris lens, especially for outdoor applications.
  • Varifocal – most lenses have a fixed focal length, whereas varifocal lenses allow you to zoom in and out somewhat (sometimes manually, sometimes motorised), to adjust the field of view. A focal length of 2.8mm is very wide-angle; 4mm is standard; 8mm is moderately telephoto.
  • PTZ – Pan, Tilt, Zoom – motorised remote control of the camera’s horizontal and vertical angle, and focal length.

INEXPENSIVE OUTDOOR BULLET: HIKVISION DS-2CD2042WD-I

hik-bullet

Hikvision has a huge range of IP cameras, with quite a few outdoor bullet-type models at very good prices. This particular models offers a good all-round feature set, with 4 MP resolution, great low-light sensitivity, PoE support and 30-meter IR night-vision. It’s also great value, retailing at around $100.

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10 Recommended IP Cameras 2017

[Note: this list is now outdated – for our latest recommendations, please see Our Camera Picks]

Here are our camera picks for 2017. They are listed in no particular order (they are quite varied in terms of cost and feature set, which makes them difficult to rank as a “top 10″ list), however they are all cameras that, due to their impressive features, we recommend to our customers for use with our SecuritySpy CCTV software for the Mac.

Some abbreviations used below are as follows:

  • MP – Megapixels – the number of millions of pixels in the image sensor. The higher this value, the more detailed the image, but resolution isn’t everything: the optical quality of the lens system is also extremely important.
  • PoE – Power-over-Ethernet – when using a PoE switch, the camera draws power over the ethernet cable and therefore doesn’t need a separate power supply. This is very useful for easy installation and ongoing reliability.
  • IR – Infra-Red – some cameras include Infra-Red LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) for night vision. Usually the manufacturer will specify the maximum useful range of the IR.
  • P-Iris / DC-Iris – These features allow the camera lens to automatically adjust its aperture size, based on the amount of incoming light. P-Iris is more sophisticated and will give better results than than DC-Iris, but both are far better than a Fixed-Iris lens, especially for outdoor applications.
  • Vari-Focal – most lenses have a fixed focal length, whereas Vari-Focal lenses allow you to zoom in and out somewhat (sometimes manually, sometimes mechanically), to adjust the field of view. A focal length of 2.8mm is very wide-angle; 4mm is standard; 8mm is moderately telephoto.

INDOOR / OUTDOOR DOME: VIVOTEK FD8164 / FD8164V

Vivotek FD8164

Vivotek FD8164

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