IP CAMERA LEARNING & RESOURCE CENTER

QNAP (Quality Network Appliance Provider) are a Taiwanese-based company focused on creating the “World’s best solutions in the areas of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Network Video Recorders (NVR)”. They caught our eye by offering simple video surveillance solutions in complete, easy to use devices.

We are going to look at the VioStor VS-201 which is a compact NVR, ideally suited for security surveillance for small-office/home-office (SOHO) or small-medium sized businesses (SMEs).

QNAP VioStor 201

The first thing we noticed about the unit is that it comes in a compact, attractive looking box. It looks modern with a glossy front panel, secured with rugged looking stainless steel screws and bright LEDs. It’s also very sturdy and weighs a substantial 3.5kg. We like the design.

With the unit you get a CDROM containing setup software, an Ethernet cable, power supply and a Quick Installation Guide. It’s everything you need.

The unit has 2 drive bays which can accommodate 2x SATA drives up to a capacity of 2TB. Our demo unit came with 1x 500GB drive.

This particular model is an 8-channel unit suitable for the recording of up to 8 camera devices simultaneously.

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Lighting is incredibly important in video surveillance as no camera can ever capture an image without some form light. The light can be natural, artificial and if the camera supports it, we can also use infrared.

You will find that you may pay a premium for a true day/night camera over a regular color camera. This is due to the fact that a day/night camera will not only provide vibrant color images throughout the day but is also sensitive to infrared illumination at night. They will normally auto-detect and switch between the two without user intervention too.

Some cameras have infrared illumination built into the camera or housing but you can also purchase infrared lamps separately. Raytec are a company which offer quality infrared (and white light) products for a wide range of applications. Recently they have launched a new range of lamps which can be powered using Power over Ethernet IEEE802.3af. The RAYMAX 25 IP series is ideal for IP video surveillance installations where there is a high chance you will already be using Power over Ethernet during the installation of the cameras.

What we thought we would do is show the difference that an external, stand-alone IR lamp would give compared to built-in infrared illumination that you find in a camera. For our example we used a Y-cam Knight to illustrate this difference (although we appreciate that most people wouldn’t purchase a stand-alone IR lamp for a Y-cam).

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The Y-cam Shell is a great way to mount your Y-cam White, Y-cam Black and Y-cam Knight camera outdoors. It is designed for ease-of-use and work with the wireless capabilities of the Y-cam range.

We are asked regularly why the cameras’ internal LEDs (Black and Knight) reflect back from the Y-cam Shell’s internal dome. There is a very simple solution to this.

Each Y-cam Shell comes with two manuals - one for the Y-Cam White and one for the Y-Cam Black and Y-Cam Knight. The difference between these cameras is night view capability through built-in infrared LEDs. When installing your camera into the Y-cam Shell ensure you follow the instructions from the appropriate manual.

The only other difference during installation is that for the Y-Cam Black and Y-Cam Knight you must remove the Shell’s internal dome before installing the camera. The dome on both the Black and the Knight cameras is capable of external installation and when mounted in the Shell this is what projects from the front of the housing.

Y-Cam Shell with internal dome in place.

Y-Cam Shell with internal dome removed for installation of Y-Cam Black or Knight.

If you install your Y-Cam Black or Knight into the Shell with the internal dome still attached the infrared LEDs on the camera will reflect on the internal dome and ruin your night-time images.

We think the Y-Cam Shell manual isn’t particularly clear on this point and many people miss this key step in the installation process.

P-iris is an automatic iris control system developed by Axis Communications, designed to give precise control over the iris opening using a stepper-motor driven iris and specialized software. The P-iris system has been developed to make improvements over the traditional auto-iris by giving better control over the aperture.

In bright conditions an auto-iris lens may be subject to blurring caused by diffraction. This is when the surrounding light levels cause the iris to close too much. This is even more noticable in megapixel cameras where the pixel size in the image sensor is a lot smaller than conventional standard definition cameras.

This has led to Axis developing an iris system where the user has greater control over the aperture and by doing so has provided greater image quality with higher contrast, increased clarity, higher resolution and better depth of field control.

P-iris is expected to replace the DC-iris as the standard method of iris control in fixed Axis network cameras.

Image on left shows traditional lens, image on right shows the new P-iris lens demonstrating better depth of field control

Taking what we have learned from HOWTO: Create video clips on demand for local hard disk storage using the Y-cam IP camera we can take it a step further.

How about instead of manually creating video clips each time we have the camera create them automatically when it detects motion? Sounds like that kind of thing would be useful eh? Well it’s very simple to set up so let’s take a look at how it is done.

This guide is suitable for the following Y-cam models:

Y-cam White
Y-cam Black
Y-cam Knight

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Pelco are a leading manufacturer of video security systems and equipment. They have long been established as an expert in their field and produce professional CCTV cameras, access control, video matrix systems, DVR recording solutions and hold many respected product lines such as Spectra, Camclosure, Endura and Digital Sentry.

Pelco are now taking their years of experience and applying it to the IP video industry with the introduction of the Spectra IV dome series.

They’ve kindly sent us a demo unit for evaluation. Let’s take a look…

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One of the interesting features of the Y-cam home security camera is its ability to record short video clips with audio. These video files are stored natively in .asf format, suitable for playing back using Microsoft Windows Media Player.

This guide will show you how to create video files on demand by manually selecting the video start and stop points from the camera’s live view interface. We will also show you how to choose the location for storage of your video clips and also how you can limit the maximum file size per video.

This guide is suitable for the following Y-cam models:

Y-cam White
Y-cam Black
Y-cam Knight

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With the image transfer feature found in many IP cameras you can store a number of images in a central location as an archive for security purposes or maybe for building a time-lapse movie.

These images are sent using the FTP protocol which stands for File Transfer Protocol and is normally associated with transferring files across the Internet. It also works equally as well on a local network and this guide will show you how to set it up.

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Perhaps a little known fact about Panasonic’s BB-HNP15 Network Camera Recorder software is its ability to be accessed remotely. By remotely we mean that you can install the software on the main PC (server) and then use another PC (client) to access the software. This can be done on the local network, or even across the Internet.

Here are a couple of points to note before we start.

1. You can only ever have 1 remote connection to the server at any one time. This means multiple people cannot all view the cameras/recordings simultaneously. However, you can still view the cameras/recordings on the actual server while someone is viewing them remotely but some functions may be limited when 2 people are viewing in the way.

2. To set up either a server or a client requires 1 license of the software, so, if you want to set up remote access you will need to buy 2 copies of BB-HNP15, 1 for the server and 1 for the client. For each further client you would require another copy of the software (but remember only 1 remote client can connect at the same time)

The procedure for setting this up is very simple. Here’s how it’s done:

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How do you connect to Panasonic’s BB-HNP15 recordings remotely? We are asked this question a great deal and it has a simple answer.

BB-HNP15 does not have a built in remote client, or ‘Smart Client’ like some other IP surveillance recording software. You need an additional license and install BB-HNP15 on the remote PC.

In effect, you install the primary BB-HNP15 normally (consider it as the ’server’) and the remote BB-HNP15 normally (considered as a ‘remote client’). The client BB-HNP15 has full access to the live and recorded footage from the server BB-HNP15.

Panasonic explain the Remote Client Function like this.

We will post more information on setting up a remote client for Panasonic BB-HNP15 later.

Another way to achieve essentially the same thing, of course, is to use your PC’s built in Remote Desktop facility or any of the freely available remote PC access systems like VNC, GoToMyPC etc.

For a complete step-by-step walkthrough see our article: HOWTO: Set up Panasonic BB-HNP15 Network Camera Recorder Software for Remote Access