Hikvision IP Camera 4MP POE Dome 2.8mm WDR IR Day/Night DS-2CD2542FWD-IS HD 1080P IP67 Waterproof Firmware Upgradeable Eziview

Replacing my old PTZ cams in favor of fixed but wide (106 degrees) view. I am amazed at the functionality of this camara. I'll not use the many configuration settings available as I use Blue Iris as my management software, but the options are there. I WILL use and appreciate the clarity of the image. Th image in the attached photo reframed from a 16:9 display, is one step down from the camera's max resolution, and is of course further reduced for upload.. Distortion is minimal -- note that the flagpole near the center of the image area bows only slightly as a result of the 2.8 lens -- and the resolution is excellent. After buying one I went back and bought two more.

I like it, except. There's a huge bundle of wires coming out of it. If you want a neat installation on the outside of your building, you need to drill a 7/8 or 1 inch hole in your building to push all the wires into the hole! -- all for a network cable that can easily fit in a 1/4 inch hole! You have to open the camera to adjust the view, so why not put a standard network connector inside the camera? Everyone uses POE, why is there a power connector in that bundle of cables?software setup. I find the initial setup somewhat confusing. It always take me a couple of tries to set it the DHCP. also, Hikvision cameras have an anti-theft feature where you cannot move the camera to a different subnet... just be aware of this...

These are easy to install and for awhile gave great feeds. Until they started heating up. I have no idea why they heat up, but the IR gates started locking up on them giving me a pink daytime picture on three of the original installs. I thought at first no big deal, I'll just get a couple more, they're cheap but nice. The newest one I bought was middle of last year and the IR gate is locking up giving me a pink picture during the day. The one I put in my garage and the back of the house stopped switching to IR even though the IR illuminators are lit.When I pulled them down to troubleshoot, they were very hot to the touch. These are POE so it's not like there's tons of power going to them.The units in question reside in a garage, on the north facing side under cover of the house, and under a back deck completely under a full roof. Oddly the two I have mounted facing the southern side of the house outside in sunlight have been fine.I put these up myself so there's 0% customer support for them (if you used a contractor they do support them I'm told). Also there have been posts saying these are discontinued.I loved the easy install and the sleek profile. Unfortunately I can't recommend them.

Fast shipping, a little configuration to get it on the network. Works great as a front door camera

This is a fairly nice camera, the resolution is good (not quite what is standard for 4MP, but really good) The interface was a bit silly. It defaults to 192.168.1.64 as it's IP address, rather than use DHCP. So if your network isn't a 192.168.1.x network, you need to do some work to readdress the camera or use some Hikvision network scan tool that didn't work for me. Just make it DHCP... Also I didn't like that the Up-down axis of the camera was only 30 degrees. With a 2.8mm lens, 30 degrees up (from straight down) still is mostly straight down. I had to put a good size shim behind the underside of the camera to point it out enough. Probably would be ok with a wall mount (I am mounting under eves), but still, I'd rather see about a 60 degree arc to it's up-down axis. I pick it because it's sleek and small look, but I had to muck with it a lot to get it to work the way I wanted it to. It limited where I could use the camera. I don't think I've discounted Hikvision products in the future, but I won't be buying any more of this model.

I have 4 of them. The hardware works great, Hikvision software not so much. I use Xeoma NVR software on a Linux server to record motion from the cameras.

I was looking for a small profile camera to mount on the face of a trimboard to cover my backyard. This camera fits the bill perfectly. Pretty wide field of view, good resolution. Great range of adjustability.Using with Bluecherry NVR which detected the camera through it's scan functionality. I would definately purchase this one again.

We purchased this camera as a backup. Brand new out of the box . No image on screen. There is no firmware to upgrade the camera . So we have a 188.00 paper weight.

The camera itself is excellent but i just found out these are not authorized hikvision cameras and are not covered for any support. These are not authorized cameras so don't make the mistake i made. I'm having issues with the alarms not notifying me on my phone and the Canadian or USA support will not help because the device is not authorized.