Budget Hikvision camera recommendation for use with my iDS-7204HQHI-K1 / 2S(B) DVR?

[tannerdotq]

Hi,

Can someone reccomend me a budget hikvision camera which is compatible with my model, and provides a great quality picture particularly at night? This camera will be placed at the front of my house at an elevated position. It needs to be a night time camera that can read plates, and read faces high quality. Any recommendations?

Model: iDS-7204HQHI-K1 / 2S(B)

 

[JB1970]

Hi,

Can someone reccomend me a budget hikvision camera which is compatible with my model, and provides a great quality picture particularly at night? This camera will be placed at the front of my house at an elevated position. It needs to be a night time camera that can read plates, and read faces high quality. Any recommendations?

Model: iDS-7204HQHI-K1 / 2S(B)

I think you'll need to manage your expectations to avoid disappointment! You've said that you're mounting the camera at an elevated position, so I'm guessing that this camera will have a wide angle view of the area? There really is no chance of getting a camera that will satisfy all of your requirements of reading plates, identifying faces etc at night - certainly not with a single camera for a number of reasons.

1- That particular DVR can only accept HDTVI cameras to a maximum of 2 megapixel resolution

2 - The wide angle and elevated position means that a face or numberplate in the view will not have sufficient pixel density to enable identification.

3 - The integral infra red on a wide angle camera will tend to vignette (darken) toward the edges of the image leaving some areas darker, with little resolved detail in those areas

4 - At night, the infra red will reflect off numberplates leaving you with just a white rectangle visible (assuming it's close enough to view)

5 - The slow shutter speed (which cannot be adjusted on HDTVI cameras as it can on IP models) will introduce motion blur.

Your best bet would be to install multiple cameras to cover the specific areas where you need coverage. One wide angle model close to the front door, a varifocal (adjustable viewing angle) model set to cover the driveway entrance only etc. ColorVu models are available that use white light rather than infra red - however these are only available as fixed lens.

 

[tannerdotq]

I think you'll need to manage your expectations to avoid disappointment! You've said that you're mounting the camera at an elevated position, so I'm guessing that this camera will have a wide angle view of the area? There really is no chance of getting a camera that will satisfy all of your requirements of reading plates, identifying faces etc at night - certainly not with a single camera for a number of reasons.

1- That particular DVR can only accept HDTVI cameras to a maximum of 2 megapixel resolution

2 - The wide angle and elevated position means that a face or numberplate in the view will not have sufficient pixel density to enable identification.

3 - The integral infra red on a wide angle camera will tend to vignette (darken) toward the edges of the image leaving some areas darker, with little resolved detail in those areas

4 - At night, the infra red will reflect off numberplates leaving you with just a white rectangle visible (assuming it's close enough to view)

5 - The slow shutter speed (which cannot be adjusted on HDTVI cameras as it can on IP models) will introduce motion blur.

Your best bet would be to install multiple cameras to cover the specific areas where you need coverage. One wide angle model close to the front door, a varifocal (adjustable viewing angle) model set to cover the driveway entrance only etc. ColorVu models are available that use white light rather than infra red - however these are only available as fixed lens.

Hi thanks for replying,

Whats the cheapest NVR I can buy to improve my cameras?

 

[Phil]

We are currently strongly recommending that people build their Hikvision IP CCTV solutions around this NVR (which is NOT the cheapest):
Hikvision DS-7608NI-I2-8P 8 Channel Network Video Recorder

This K-series NVR costs less, but please note the bold paragraph that we have recently added as a consequence of firmware/performance issues:

Hikvision DS-7608NI-K2-8P | 8 Channel Network Video Recorder

Key Features: - 8 Channel PoE IP Camera Ports - Support for up to 8MP recording a playback - Support for 4k video output - H.264/H.264+/H.265/H.265+ video codecs - 2 SATA interfaces to connect 2 x 10TB hard drives - Support for VCA detection alarm - Compatible with third-party IP cameras -...

www.use-ip.co.uk

 

[cymruchris]

To be fair you need to reign in your expectations. It's understandable that you want to work to a budget (most of us have to) - but you won't get an all-singing all-dancing CCTV system that gives you the time on the thief's watch on their wrist at a distance of 100m for £12.50. (I say that to give a dose of reality).

That said - to get number plates read at night, you usually need a specific ANPR camera (and these are not cheap) - as number plates reflect infra red light, generally appearing as white rectangles in any footage.

As has been mentioned, if your camera is going to be up high, and has a wide angle of view, the 'detail' that you want is going to be limited.

You don't say how well the area is lit after dark, are there streetlights? does the property have PIR floodlights? or is it pitch black?

You may need more than one camera to deliver (close to) what you're looking for. A 2.8mm wide angle for a general overview - and then likely a longer focal length (possible varifocal camera) to zoom in (permanently) on a particular area of interest where you're likely to get the most detailed facial features (A gate/door or entrance). The second camera would be more beneficial mounted at a lower point - as a camera from up-high will generally get the tops of people's heads (not much good when they are wearing a baseball cap).

If there's decent night time lighting - you might do well with a camera with/without LED lighting giving a colour image - if it's totally dark - then an infra red camera - and if it's a combo of the two (our council turns off streetlighting at midnight every day), there are now cameras that switch between LED lighting/colour images when there's movement and IR lighting when there's no known movement.

It's been mentioned that your DVR will only accept HDTVI cams - so it might be time for a whole of system upgrade - but comes back to budget. You mention you want it all as cheap as possible - but what's your realistic budget for the system components/cameras/cabling etc. and are you able to fit these yourself - or will you need a pro in to cable it all up?

 

[JB1970]

If you're looking for budget-friendly Hikvision cameras to use with your iDS-7204HQHI-K1/2S(B) DVR, you'll want to consider cameras that are compatible with your DVR's specifications. The iDS-7204HQHI-K1/2S(B) DVR is part of Hikvision's Turbo HD series, which is designed to work with analog and HD-TVI cameras. Here are a few budget Hikvision camera models that should be compatible with your DVR

I'm guessing they got sorted as the thread is over 3 years old!

 

[Phil]

Sorry that the new respondent has wasted your time and effort

Unfortunately, they are just a spammer from an Indian marketing company, who would have hoped to make subsequent Posts with links to websites that they hope to promote.



Their naïve hope being that a link from this forum adds credibility to and/or drives traffic to whatever site they are trying to promote.
Of course, Google is way smarter than that these days ...

We have lots of automated processes that will typically prevent these Posts [can't say much more about the checks & balances applied ].

They appear cleverer nowadays, as they can now use chatGPT or similar to generate plausible text responses [:eye roll]

They have now been banned.

We get an increasing amount of this, due to our site appearing on lists that tell spammers we see worthwhile monthly traffic (over 3M search impressions per month on Google!).

 

[cymruchris]

I'm guessing they got sorted as the thread is over 3 years old!

Interesting - it came up as a new thread yesterday.

 

[JB1970]

Interesting - it came up as a new thread yesterday.

Yeah if you read Phil's post above it was a spammer. Strange as it looked a genuine enough message and I only thought it strange that they were responding to a post so old...

 

[cymruchris]

Ah you’ve deleted the offending post that flagged it up as ‘new’ so now it just looks like I’m replying to an old thread

 

[Phil]

When we ban spammers we/the software automatically deletes ALL their Posts.
On this occasion, what they posted is quoted in JB's response at #6, so I am hoping it make sense to anybody seeing this after the dust has settled.

We manually delete 30-50 spammers a week (after all the automated road blocks stop the majority of attempts) - it is very tedious ...