I want to setup in house video cameras so I can monitor my wife's health and status during the day from work. I saw a four camera, DVD recorder at Harbor Freight and gave it a try. Thankfully, they have a good return policy and that unit has gone back. The biggest problem was their network interface is more of an after-thought. Their recommended browser, Internet Explorer, with Active X enabled, only rendered a dark, background screen. Trying another browser rendered four Chinese character labeled controls that remained inert. Contacting their technical support resulted in 'it is only designed for local monitor but if you'll contact Geek Squad they may help you . . ." Next I picked up a Uniden Guardian, two-camera, wireless monitor at Costco and am much happier. No wires, it went together quickly and I was able to get the iPad and iPhone apps to display live video over the Internet! Yes they are password protected . . . we're not putting up a geriatric, web-cast, sex site. Regardless, I can now add two more cameras as needed and local storage is to SD card. The only thing not working, yet, is their recommended Internet Explorer browser interface. But since the iPhone and iPad are working perfectly fine, this is no loss. There may be better video surveillance and recording systems but these were both available locally. Avoid the Harbor Freight unit. The Uniden system is working just fine and meets my requirements. Bob Wilson
The Digitial Watchdog VMAX Standalone DVRs are very nice for the money. I've had two of them, the last being an upgrade to the VMAX to get H.264 video compression (really need this efficient level of compression for off site monitoring) AND the apps available to monitor with a smart phone... VMAX 480 Products | Digital Watchdog VMAX for Android phones (also available in Iphones) DW VMAX - Android Apps on Google Play Product Demo page: Demo | Digital Watchdog Have had quite a bit of experience with DVRs in general.. You get what you pay for.. The VMAX 16 channel units run around $1000.00. You can also get 4 or 8 channel versions of this unit, for less money but don't under buy... I started out with an 8 channel unit and outgrew it...
I'm starting to layout the two cameras and it looks like I'll be able to cover the my wife's primary areas: the TV room and her bed. I may add a third. Each camera has an audio recording capability but I haven't tested everything yet. Right now, I'm using a T-Mobile 'hotspot' that bandwidth limits after 5 GB so I need to measure the traffic overhead: ethernet IP mode 1 0.0015 kB/s 0.0008 kB/s idle no App 2 0.45 kB/s 0.035 kB/s iPad App idling 3 60 kB/s 50 kB/s iPad App watching camera I am still not happy that it is only Internet Explorer browser compatible but the iPad and iPhone apps are working just fine. Bob Wilson
Same with my DVR if using Web interface on Windows platform... needs IE ... I run Firefox on all my systems and have found the IE plug-in for Firefox works fine with the DVR... the plug-in switches to the IE rendering engine inside Firefox...and you can define which sites you want this to be done automatically.
I'm using dLink DCS-942L wireless IP cameras, each with a 64gb xd chip. I got them on costco.com for 69.99 on sale. You can use any browser to access them. They also have access via iPad, iPhone and Android smartphones.
Bob.. Does IE work from inside your house on the lan if you bring up the DVR's local ip address/port? For outside access- most DVR's require two to three port forwarding routes set up on your router.
The Uniden documentation shows only access via one URL and nothing locally: Uniden Video I ran nmap and got: $ nmap -PS -p1-65535 192.168.1.253 Starting Nmap 5.61TEST2 ( Nmap - Free Security Scanner For Network Exploration & Security Audits. ) at 2014-08-02 00:01 CDT Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.253 Host is up (0.0018s latency). Not shown: 65533 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 80/tcp open http 443/tcp open https But attempts to reach either 'index.html' or 'index.htm' reports 404, page not found. I suspect there are one or more local pages on the Uniden device BUT they are not documented. I ran tcpdump during a camera monitor app session: 10:04:10.135904 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 12 10:04:10.166921 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 14 10:04:10.167007 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.168858 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.177786 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.179386 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.203067 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.207365 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.209989 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 357 10:04:10.215923 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.237733 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.241500 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.242510 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 301 10:04:10.256919 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.286914 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 14 10:04:10.316906 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 12 10:04:10.325166 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.326943 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.327036 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 10 10:04:10.327210 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.333347 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.335118 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.337085 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.338508 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 712 10:04:10.341626 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 4 10:04:10.346950 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 12 10:04:10.347045 IP 174.237.65.185.2009 > 192.168.1.253.11060: UDP, length 10 10:04:10.369133 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.371609 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 10:04:10.375119 IP 192.168.1.253.11060 > 174.237.65.185.2009: UDP, length 1032 So two high UDP ports are used that float during the session such as at this time: 11060 - on the local, uniden device 2009 - on the remote server, the data path to the App interface There is some negotiation going on but it appears to be UDP based which makes sense. The device reaches out to at least three IP servers and negotiates the subsequent communications channels. Bob Wilson
