Posts made by pdownes2001_384636162646205

What did I say earlier about the English weather?

We've not had a drop of rain or even a light breeze since I secured the camera to a west-facing wall.

There is one thing you can predict about our weather, though. You can't predict it.

@faasio82_480971996033257

Me neither. It isn't intended for live streaming or 24/7 recording and I prefer that option, to be honest.

Having said that, if folk want a totally wireless, stick-it-anywhere, smart IP camera, this fits the bill superbly.

All my other cameras (that I actually purchased) are POE and connected to my network by CAT6 ethernet cables. You simply can't beat solid copper.

@faasio82_480971996033257
I'm currently testing the Argus PT 4MP black version.
It is battery driven and uses wi-fi for data transfer.

The white cable in the image below is a micro-USB charging cable connected to a Reolink solar panel.

I am very impressed by its performance so far. It has smart AI detection for persons and vehicles as well as PIR detection. I have a thread about it here:
https://community.reolink.com/topic/3268/argus-pt-4mp-black-version-first-impressions

And here it is in all its glory. (I mounted it on black-painted timber rather than put holes in my plastic soffit board.)

I think it's very handsome and, so far, it performs as good as it looks.

Some local wildlife doing their morning exercises. That squirrel loves chasing blackbirds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DgzFXH6DR4

A very useful feature of the Argus is the way it allows you to adjust the brightness of shaded areas. Many Reolink cameras have this feature and I think it is not praised enough. It can make a big difference.

Look at these two images. They show the difference between auto shadow brightness and manually adjusted.

Hats off to your tech guys & girls.

@reolink-fiona

I have found the cause of the false event. It was a real event caused by a neighbour's cat.

If you listen to the video carefully, at 02:00:15, there are some noises that I recognised as the sound of a cat jumping onto a storage box that I keep in the garden. It's just out of shot on the left.

To be sure, I checked the front door camera and, sure enough, the cat walked past on his way to our back garden just a few seconds before the Argus recorded its event.

It seems that the PIR field of view is wider than the lens field of view. A PIR event can be triggered but not captured on video if the event is outside the camera's field of view. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you think about it.

So far so good but ... I've just had its first false event.
It was a PIR initiated event. Person detection is enabled but this event was not tagged as a person. (Vehicle detection is disabled.)

Its PIR sensitivity is 90.


Here's a link to the video file. I can't see anything moving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ceOmD6e9ik

The camera has performed well so far but being strapped to a tree in the front garden was a bit too boring. Nothing of any significance happened.
Onto another location where I can test its performance and also connect the solar panel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25y93bfp-Js

A quick look at the Client app for Windows shows its status...


And its field of view ...



This should be a more taxing examination. The camera is more open to the English weather and is on a west-facing wall where it will encounter the best that the Atlantic can throw at it.

I wish it luck.

@reolink-fiona
Excellent. It's a must-have for security cameras.

I lost a camera to a thief a few years ago who later confessed to throwing the camera away. He just wanted its SD card.

@faasio82_480971996033257

New product trial.

Can you spot it?
This is its first deployment and I expect its captures will only be of a very mundane nature. You never know though.


And this is its field of view. Like I said. Boring stuff.
You never know though.
Such a shame that this camera does not support FTP. If it is stolen, the SD card will be gone with it.
It's just as well I have another camera covering the area which DOES send its files to my NAS drive via FTP.

Setting up the camera using my iPhone was reasonably simple. The only slight difficulty was getting the camera to read the QR code on my phone but I managed to do it eventually. That was more likely to have been caused by my old, shaking hands than anything else. (I'm 67!)

The next difficulty was wi-fi configuration. Several attempts and resets later, I suspected that the camera was being confused by my universal wi-fi repeater (TP-Link TL-WA901ND). I turned the repeater off and the link to my router was made successfully. Perhaps users should be advised to disable any repeaters during the setup process.

I am very familiar with Reolink's user-friendly interface and it presented no difficulty.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a new (to me) option; separate detection zones for Person, Vehicle and Others. 

That is an excellent and very practical function however, if the PTZ function had a user-defined 'Home Position' to which it returns on command, the detection zones would be more easily maintained.

Regarding the hardware, the camera is solid. Its high quality construction is hard to criticise however, the power switch cover has no lanyard and can easily be lost if dropped. That is my only criticism of the hardware.

I have not deployed the camera outdoors in a real-world surveillance position yet. I will be doing that in as many situations as I can invent, so please watch this space.

@reolink-fiona

It just happened again. This is very strange. On this occasion, I performed a hard reset by switching the camera off at its power source then switching it back on. There were no more false alerts.

All settings are the same as before:
Smart Motion (PET beta) 90
Vehicles 0
Persons 0
Motion 1

@reolink-fiona

@reolink-fiona

I've shared a video onto your Captures with some notes.
There's not much to see during its 1 minute & 11 seconds. Nothing happens. Total mystery.

@reolink-fiona

Glitch Alert ! (I hope this can be helpful)

This evening, there were 17 events and push notifications that were totally without cause.
My camera (RLC-1210A) is configured to respond exclusively to Pet Motion. It is targeted at a bird feeder and alerts me when a rat is detected.

I was intrigued by these false alerts, so I rebooted the camera.

It made no difference. The false alerts persisted through the evening.

Logically, the camera must have been reacting to something which the AI algorithm deduced to be animal in origin.

I deduced, therefore, that it must be seeing something that is not there; it must be misinterpreting the data, somehow.

I went out to the bird table and rearranged the bird food on the table.

The false alerts stopped after I did that.

If that isn't a challenge for your smartest of smart tech geeks, I don't know what is.

The first image generated 17 false alerts over the course of 4 hours with no rain, flying insects or anything else you might expect would cause a false alert.

The second image shows the same constituent elements that have been rearranged and resulted in no further false alerts.

Enjoy.

@reolink-fiona

Pet Detection also recognises owls.

Maybe you should encourage Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to buy some Reolink cameras.

@reolink-fiona

@reolink-fiona

I am pleased to say that the new smart "Pet Detected" function works perfectly.

Despite heavy rain and a howling Atlantic storm, I received no false alerts. However, as soon as a rat came into view, I was alerted. The rat was dealt with appropriately.

Your tech team have succeeded. Please pass my thanks and congratulations on to them.

@mdunning_323765759099098

I found a quick fix for this.
If you've got a Covid lateral flow test kit, they include a small plastic test tube.
The tube is just the right size to push firmly onto the reset button and protect it from the weather.