IP CAMERA LEARNING & RESOURCE CENTER

Vivotek are a Taiwanese company established in 2000. They say they are committed to providing total solutions in the IP CCTV surveillance industry and their large product line-up is a testament to that. Their products range from small home security cameras to high performance day/night speed domes. They also market video encoders, NVRs and recording software solutions.

One thing that strikes us about the Vivotek range is that their cameras often contain features you don’t commonly find in IP cameras of any other range and the camera we are looking at today is no different.

The IP7142 is a compact outdoor-ready fixed CCTV camera which contains built-in infrared LEDs for around-the-clock surveillance and in complete darkness.

For more information and purchasing, please see:

UK Store: Vivotek IP7142 outdoor day/night static IP camera

Outdoor Ready

The camera sits in an IP66-rated weatherproof housing which means you can place the camera in almost any location, indoors or out. Its compact and stylish design may be more acceptable to have installed outside your property than many traditional CCTV housings.

Low light viewing

The IP7142 is a true day/night camera, with a removable IR-cut filter. The IR-cut filter is used to screen images throughout the day, eliminating the infrared light generated in sunlight. Without the IR-cut filter in place the camera will display unusual colours for daylight images. The camera has a built-in light sensor and when it detects that light levels are getting low it will automatically remove the IR-cut filter and switch the video feed to black and white / monochrome. In this state the camera is now sensitive to infrared illumination.

The camera contains in its facia 12 infrared LEDs. These allow the camera to illuminate a scene up to a distance of 15m in pitch black conditions (0 lux), and because the light is infrared it cannot be seen by the human eye so intruders can be captured in the dark without realising they’ve been caught on camera.

Easy to install

The camera presents Power over Ethernet (PoE) connectivity out of the box, making installation a breeze and is especially welcomed in CCTV cameras destined to be placed outside. This means that by using a PoE midspan (not supplied with the camera) or a PoE switch on your network you can run both the data and power to the camera using a single Ethernet cable. This lowers installation costs and allows wider scope when placing the camera.

The Vivotek IP7142 comes with an indoor power supply as an alternative to the PoE connection.

Installation Wizard

The product box contains an installation wizard which takes you through the entire setup procedure from discovery (detecting its dynamically asigned IP address), setting the date/time, configuring a static IP address, setting a local port number and even setting up dynamic DNS, wireless connectivity and mobile phone access.

Performance

The camera delivers images from a 1/3 inch wide dynamic range CMOS sensor. Wide dynamic range (WDR) means that the camera should be capable of providing a realistic image from scenes which have high contrast lighting. This results in an image which combines the darkest part and brightest part of the image to generate a more accurate representation of the actual scene.

The supported resolutions appear to be based on NTSC specifications although the camera is neither PAL or NTSC based. The selectable pixel resolutions are:

720×480
352×240
176×144

As we spend a lot of time with IP cameras every day these resolutions didn’t look normal to and there was no way to adjust them even when you select the 50hz power line frequency.

Image quality

We took a couple of snapshots:

IP7142 with WDR enabled - 12:00pm sunlight, approx: 2800 lux

IP7142 with WDR enabled - time: 15:00 flourescent lighting approx: 200 lux

The images are ok but the colour in the outdoor image seems to be a little off. The camera provides some control over white balance but every adjustment made seemed to make the image worse. I could have used a sharpness control but the camera didn’t have that feature. It did allow control over brightness, contrast and saturation but none of those helped the clarity of the image.

Sensor settings opened up exposure, automatic gain correction (AGC) and Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) adjustment but like the white balance control any adjustment made reduced the overall quality of image.
Low light Performance

We turned off the lights in the technical office and the camera automatically switched to infrared black and white video:

IP7142 with WDR enabled - time: 18:00 camera’s infrared lights on, approx: 0 lux

To compare, this is the image taken from the camera if we manually disable the IR lights:

IP7142 with WDR enabled - time: 18:00 no lights on, approx: 0 lux

We can see that having the infrared illumination on makes a significant difference to the image and to visibility of people and objects in the scene. In the IR illuminated image above it is possible to make out two people in the office which would be impossible in the image with IR disabled. The specifications state that the coverage of the IR lights is approx. 15m and we would say that is about right. It certainly lit up the office well.

On the downside the infrared lights do emit a red glow when activated meaning that the camera is not fully concealed and can be seen from up close.

Comparison of Image Quality

By way of comparison we set up a BL-C160 next to the IP7142 and took a snapshot from it. The BL-C160 is an outdoor entry-level security camera from Panasonic which doesn’t have infrared lights but does have bright white LEDs for low-light monitoring.

IP7142 with WDR enabled - 12:00pm sunlight, approx: 2800 lux

Panasonic BL-C160 default settings - 12:00pm sunlight, approx: 2800 lux

Conclusion

The Vivotek IP7142 IP camera is packed full of features, is stylishly designed and offers the flexibility to be installed indoors or out. By shipping with full recording and playback software for up to 16 cameras it also represents good value for money. The build quality is excellent, as are the high-grade cabling and grommets supplied.

However, we think that image quality lets it down when compared to a number of cheaper models. Its colour reproduction was just not natural enough.

If you only had an IP7142 and didn’t have any other IP camera to compare it against we think you would be more than happy with its performance and features. It provides good performance in low-light and is accessible using a 3G mobile device and comes with a 16 camera recording application.  It is also a good price for what is essentially the only outdoor camera available with built-in infrared lights.

Addendum: Since this article was published Vivotek kindly informed us that you can now download 32-ch recording software from their website for this camera model.  This represents even better value for money.