11 things that are worth knowing before you buy a monitoring camera

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And so it is e.g..for the Orllo Goodcam Z8 camera.The set includes four screws and mounting plate.Three screws are used to attach the mounting tile in a selected place, while the fourth - for additional protection of the camera after fixing it on the mounting plate.

Installation time?About 3 minutes, and this is mainly because I screwed these screws directly into a fairly hard wood with an ordinary screwdriver.

Also for other cameras (Orllo Goodcam Z7, Orllo Goodcam Z9 and Orllo Goodcam Z10) in the packaging we will find the entire necessary assembly kit and the installation should not take us a lot of time.

Secondly - it should be easily connected to the power supply

Which in the case of self -assembly usually assumes using an external power supply, not playing with cubes and cables.And in the case of ORLLO cameras, this simpler standard was focused, which further accelerated the entire assembly operation.

Third - not only WiFi

This is something I found out for myself.I have an external camera connected to wifi at home.It works fantastic, although one but - it is located a long distance from the router and can simply hang up with the internet from time to time, thus stopping fulfilling your functions.I would like to drill through the wall with an Ethernet cable, but...I can't, my outer camera does not support this form of connection.

However, I connected to the Orllo cameras without any problem - anyway, in the photo above you can see what the connectors configuration looks like at each of the cameras that reached me.

It is also a big plus, if for some reason we do not have wifi in a given location.Instead of buying a router with the right function, all you need is a cable - it is already attached in the package.

Fourth - and if there is no router at all, then the GSM camera will help.

And again another case from my yard - and literally.If I wanted to (and I have such a plan) to build a garden gazebo monitoring and connect it to the internet, in the case of most cameras I would have to either put another WiFi router on site (preferably with a SIM card), or dig a lawn and pull the internet by cable.A little bit of work and additional expenses.

Instead, I could simply mount it (which I did) the ORLLO Goodcam Z7 SIM camera there - it is its fragment in the photo above.It does not need connecting to the Internet either via WiFi or via the cable (although it offers such an option).Instead, we put the SIM card inside and the GSM camera is automatically connected to the operator's cellular network.

From that moment it is completely independent of what is happening to our home internet.It may fall, it may not work for any other reason - the camera will function, monitor the area and give us notifications.

A great solution where there is not only no WiFi coverage, but there is simply no form of local internet.

Fifth - an external camera should know what to monitor.

Most cameras offer alarm or alarm recording in situations where traffic will be registered.It's just that this very often leads to false alarms and clogging of the memory card with recordings of moving branches or running pets.

Intelligent ORLLO cameras Goodcam Z7, Z8, Z9 and Z10, using AI to recognize, they have no problems with it, which I managed to check at myself:

In the case of these models, the automatic detection function of people works properly - it never happened to me that the red frame is found, for example.A dog or a moving tree.There was also not a single false alarm, nor did the camera skip any appearance of man in the frame.

Of course, you can enable the monitoring mode of any movement in the observed area, if e.g..We want to check if a dog or a neighbor's cat runs to us.

Sixth - it would be good if the IP camera could follow.

And in the literal sense of the word.What do all the ORLLO Goodcam cameras that came to me.

How it's working?At the beginning, the rotary camera recognizes traffic in the area it monitors, and then begins to rotate so as to follow the person who hit the staff.In practice, it looks more or less like this (the rocking results mainly from the element to which the camera was attached):

This will be useful both when we have a larger fragment of the area to monitor, and when we monitor, for example,.relatively small room, and we do not want to hang it all with cameras.

Of course, Orllo Goodcam cameras can also be controlled by hand, freely changing their setting - there is even the option of preparing special presets, i.e. specific settings that can be activated with one click.In the case of ORLLO cameras Goodcam Z9 and Orllo Goodcam Z10, we can even take advantage of the lossless approximation-5 times in the case of the first camera and 18 times in the case of the latter.

After tracking the object, when it goes beyond the frame, the rotary camera returns to its current location.

Detection of people also has another advantage.Goodcam cameras can also monitor when someone leaves the monitored area and returns to it.And so, for example, we can turn on this function to know when our child came out of a safe zone in the garden and it was not known where.Or when someone at work goes away from a machine that should definitely not remain without control.At the same time, you can inflict a time of such permissible absence, after which we will get a notification.

Seventh - an external camera should inform you as soon as possible about the detection of activity.

There is no too long description here - if we get a notification after a few or several minutes after the detection of traffic, it may not be useful to us.

How quickly notifications reach the tested cameras, you can see on the GIF above.

Importantly, notifications can be sent both to a smartphone with the appropriate application (Eye4, available in Polish, there is also a version for computers, a maximum of 81 cameras connected simultaneously), as well as to the e -mail address, if someone, e.g..he did not use the smartphone.We can also provide other users with a camera preview, so you do not have to share access to our main account.

After eight - everything needs to be monitored.

For example.Returning to my plot again - I want to monitor traffic in front of the house as much as possible, while the camera is set so that at a wide angle there is no chance that it does not cover part of the street and pavement in front of the house.As a result, with standard settings, I will get notifications every time someone walks the street, which I don't really interests me.

Solution?Possibility to choose zones that are monitored and for which alarms are activated.

In the case of Orllo Goodcam cameras and the Eye4 application, this possibility exists as much as possible and with a very high resolution of the area that we want to monitor.And yes - it works.

After nine - a smartphone alarm is sometimes not enough.

Because he mainly gives us information that someone appeared, for example.on our property, but it doesn't allow you to do much more - except for quitting everything and driving home to react.

In the case of Goodcam cameras, we have three options to choose from.First of all - we can use the built -in speaker and thus try to scare off the unwanted guest.Possibly, if this guest is e.g..courier, we can talk to him - cameras also have microphones - and ask, for example.for leaving the package behind the house.

You can also automate the whole process and determine your own voice notification, played after detecting man in specific zones in a timely manner.

Some cameras (e.g..Goodcam Z9) also have a built -in option in the form of a sound and visual alarm - e.g..using flashing LEDs.

Tenth - where to write it?

And here there are several issues important.

First, the most basic - how much memory card can be put in the camera.Most of them record in loop mode, i.e..by overwriting older recordings, which at high frequency of recording and small cards may threaten to lose relevant information.In the case of Goodcam cameras, we can use cards up to 256 GB, which gives us...A lot of space for our materials.

The second option is to send materials directly to the cloud - I tested and works as it should work, and by the way we do not risk that we will lose the recording, e.g..As a result of a memory card failure.In the cloud associated with ORLLO (Orllo Cloud) we can buy two packages - with storage of materials for 7 days (PLN 24 per month, PLN 240 per year) or for 30 days (PLN 60 per month, PLN 630 per year).This is obviously not obligatory, but we get a monthly test period for the start and we can check if this form of backup will be useful to us.

The cloud service activation process itself is banal.We get the appropriate QR code, in the application, click the plus icon in the upper right corner:

Then we scan the code:

It is only left to choose which cameras we want to activate the recording in the cloud:

In both cases (cloud and local memory) we can download recordings directly to the phone's memory - e.g..To have access to them later in offline mode or secure key recordings in an additional way.

The third solution, not very common in the case of cameras, which so easily configure and connect is an external recorder/recorder, e.g..with a 16 TB disk.And yes - such an add -on can also be connected to the ORLLO cameras.

Po jedenaste - rozdzielczośćit's not everything

Yes, it is important, because more pixels are theoretically more details. For example.Orllo Goodcam Z10 is able to faint recordings with a resolution of up to 4 megapixels, but...it's not everything.

In some cases, especially if the monitored object or person is located at a greater distance from the camera, the resolution itself is not enough.Then it is much more useful to be the possibility of strictly enlarged the registered object - and Orllo Goodcam Z10 offers such an option, maximally enlarging the image up to 18 times.

How does it look in practice?With a standard camera setting, we see this area:

So I position myself as far as I can:

Then I turn on the maximum approximation:

There should be no trouble identifying a person in the picture.

What else is worth paying attention to?

It would be best if the external camera was resistant to dust and rain.In the case of the equipment I tested, they all offer the IP66 water resistance index, which I actively check during the next in a row of Wrocław downpour - the cameras are still working.

Do I need all this in one camera?

Not necessarily - hence so many models available on the market, between which you can choose at will.On the other hand, such a wealth of choosing allow you to choose the additional elements that we will need the most, and which we could not know before.For example, I had no idea how much a garden monitoring would make it easier for me to track the targeted object.

So the very fact that the camera records video is - especially in 2021.- not enough.The more that you do not have to pay a fortune for additional possibilities today.The text was created in cooperation with Orllo Electronics.