Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment film to digital (Score 1) 20

started with an old brownie camera in the early 70's. Went to SLR in the early 80's. First digital in 2006 (still have it! Panasonic FZ-50) Upgraded to d-slr in 08, and another d-slr in 12 and still use it. Multiple lenses, flashes, filters but it is still the best camera out there. Hey, nothing against smartphones, but those super TINY image sensors not to mention there are too many of them.

Comment Charging in the U.S. (Score 1) 106

Unlike say South Korea, Japan, Europe...you can drive across the entire country in a day. In the USA it takes DAYS to cross the entire country. Not to mention a lot of places are out in "the sticks" and are 20-30 minutes or more between towns & cities. To "build out" a nationwide charging network would not only be expensive, it would be impractical, not to mention our charging grid can barely handle the load today. In cities, EV's are more practical than ICE. But in the more rural areas of the United States, hybrid and ICE vehicles are way more practical.

Comment energy (Score 1) 107

Sitting in a cafe in the city of Mykolaiv right now, everything runs on generators. Earlier today, around 7:45 local time a few shahed drones flew over the city, this was after a lqrge attack from about 6 hours prior. Multiple energy distribution systems were hit in multiple regions. There were people killed, some drones hit homes, there were myltiple kinjal (dagger) missiles launched from mig-31 platforms. I crossed the border to Ukraine over 2 weeks ago, spent a week in Kiev, a day in Lviv, a day in Odessa, etc. Everywhere there are issues with energy distribution. Where I am now there are issues with watwr as well of course. People keep going because tbat is what people do, nobody here wants to give up anything to ruzzia, they want to stop the war in a way that prevents future attacs from the scourge that is ruzzia. As to this lawsuit, it is completely justified but it is not enough. Europe is giving ruzzia more money every year in oil and purchases than Europe spends on this war, given tbat Ukraine is protecting Europe from putin taking this war further west, I find this behaviour atrocious.

Comment Soo.... (Score 1, Informative) 111

Paid for by taxpayer dollars. Oh, and the public funding drives.
(which of these is "the most important" depends on who's begging in front of whom) ...oh and $2.5 million per state? So a flat $125 mill annually?

"The commission's decision to drop PBS membership is a blow to Arkansans who will lose free, over the air access to quality PBS programming they know and love,"
IT'S CLEARLY NOT FREE.

Comment Re:This is a tough one (Score 1) 143

I see TAPO and Eufy mentioned. I do actually have a Eufy camera to test but I believe it's wired and it's pretty nice. TAPO is one I have tested but didn't deploy mostly because as I mentioned with taking a Wyze camera and flashing it - you become the entire infra for alerts. TAPO seems to have good image quality and I recall the low light was good too, price wasn't bad. Worth grabbing one to check out and test IMO. Eufy seems to make solid hardware too but I believe mine was a bit larger than the TAPO and Wyze hardware. I've tried out all sorts of whacky camera lol

Comment Re:You said "cheap" and "Wifi", but... (Score 1) 143

I have one of their cameras that's wireless; I wouldn't recommend it. It can be flipped to a standards-based mode but it's no longer managed in their environment, has poor low light capability, and costs an ass load more than more capable cameras. Does have a nice look to it and isn't cheap plastic but it's also not weather rated.

Comment This is a tough one (Score 2) 143

I've been using Wyze cameras and the Wyze Bridge (https://github.com/mrlt8/docker-wyze-bridge) in a container to stream standards-based traffic to NVR software. Sadly, the project appears to be abandoned and Wyze instituted some changes that made it difficult to use if the cameras weren't all on the same network as the container. There are forks but I've yet to try them and would appreciate feedback from others. Wyze reps claimed (on Reddit) that the change that broke things was a "back-end issue" and that they were working on a fix. Crickets. Older firmware worked but most of mine got flashed, it's possible to flash back with an SD card and image. If you aren't trying to record in multiple places connected with a VPN (Tailscale for instance) or have your IoT on a separate network this isn't a problem. I was recording 15 Wyze cameras to BlueIris reliably (some others too) and the cameras are dirt cheap and have EXTREMELY good light gathering for color video in low light! I also pay for their cloud service in order to get alerts and ease of access - one yearly fee for unlimited cameras so far and is a decent symbiotic relationship. Currently my system is down due to a long-distance move so I'm relying strictly on their app right now.

I had no issues with Wi-Fi congestion at the remote site that held ten cameras and a 30meg 'net service was fine over Tailscale for recording. The cameras have worked well in weather but I've not yet weather tested their V3 pan/scan unit - I will :) It tracks motion well, I have one inside a building. I am using Ubiquity APs meshed over Wi-Fi for now and am getting good distance. Weirdly some of the MAC show up as kitchen appliances

Alternately:

You can flash their cameras with open-source firmware but NOT all of them, they're locking them down in later versions like their newest flood-light cameras (dammit!). https://github.com/themactep/t... is a project that supports this and it has a good supported hardware list worth looking at. This will remove them from the Wyze ecosystem. There's a power injector sort of adapter that will allow you to (supposedly) provide power over the USB and get IP traffic from the USB port turning it into a sort of wired camera but I've not tested it - I did buy a few of the adapters to try when time allows. IF you do this all of the alerting and remote access setup will be up to you, it's obviously no longer symbiotic. Speaking of adapters - I've had multiple USB power adapters from Wyze die, using a good Anker replacement gets them back into service easily.

I like the form factor, I like the light gathering, I love the price (!), I own many of their cameras as well as some of their other hardware. I'd love to be able to buy one that was standards based out of the box even if it cost a bit more. I do NOT like that they screwed everyone with an infrastructure change and appear to have lied about fixing it. I want "local" 24x7 recording that doesn't rely on a damn SD card that can be stolen with the camera or corrupted. Wyze had beta firmware for some cameras that produced ONVIF streams (from memory..) but it was unreliable and not kept up - NOT recommended.

I have used one of the Ubiquity indoor cameras too. NOT worth the price, not good light gathering, and to stream to another NVR it has to be removed from their environment - don't do it.

Hope that helps some, I look forward to seeing what others have used. I know there's hardware similar to Wyze out there that may be more open and I think I have one in a box somewhere but I'm not sure it's as weather resistant and you get to handle all of the alerting etc. Frigate looks like a good NVR for this. BlueIris can alert too if you can get it sorted and they now screw around with pricing yearly if you want updates and I've yet to get their AI working so buyer beware.

P.S. I like the Dahua wired cameras - great low light, weather resistant, reliable, but rough firmware support, and I'd never let them talk to the 'net only to your NVR... Buy them from the vendor recommended on IPCAMTALK straight from China.

Slashdot Top Deals

Friction is a drag.

Working...