Security Camera

January 28, 2014 12:55 PM

Looking for a retail security camera setup with a few criteria...

Hey, why miss out on using my question this week when I can ask something useful?

I'm helping a retail business replace their current DVR/security camera system. The one they currently have is a decade old, is monitored via a Internet-Explorer-Only plugin that hasn't worked with Internet Explorer since IE9, and constantly gives them errors that the hard drive is failing.

I am fully capable of using Google to research camera systems, but I'm hoping AskMe can help by providing some info from people with personal experience regarding good systems or bad systems to avoid.

Here's what we're looking for:

• supports three or more cameras with recording, not just watching;
• Price isn't much of a concern but the accountant likes thing cheap;
• it must be able to be viewed live from the internet, and preferably administrated and configured too;
• being able to monitor the cameras from iOS (important) or Android (meh) is a positive feature;
• using existing cameras, NTSC/BNC, is a plus;
• and the ability to watch several cameras at once is extremely important.

posted by AzraelBrown to Technology (2 answers total)

Milestone XProtect Go is a free version of a very good piece of enterprise video management software for up to 8 cameras and 5 days of recordings. It has a web client and mobile clients for IOS and Android. However, you'll need a recording server (pretty much any modern PC will work), and if you really want to keep the analog cameras rather than replacing them with IP cameras you'll need to put an encoder between them and the recording server.
posted by outfielder at 6:54 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Rereading that, it sounds like a corporate advertisement. Sorry. I administer a big enterprise install of Milestone, and it's way more user-friendly to install and use than the other 3 or 4 pieces of camera software I've used. I haven't used the free version, but it looks like it has most of the same features, just a limited number of cameras and days of recordings. Whichever route you take, I would definitely recommend a server-based recording system rather than a DVR.
posted by outfielder at 7:12 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]