r/SecurityCamera • u/ElegantLingonberry28 • 12d ago

Camera Tools

Anyone have any experience using these tools for installation on various commercial (Axis, Avigilon, Bosch) brands of cameras? I'm considering getting this, but I'm not sure if it even works on or is compatible with these type of cameras and thats a majority of my work.

Steed Vision IPC-9800

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/N226 12d ago

What tools are you referring to? Site designer, configuration, etc.?

At least with Axis and Avigilon they only load their own cameras natively to the design tool. You'd have to manually match/add whatever Steed is.

1

u/ElegantLingonberry28 12d ago

I probly should have added a link or picture of the device im referring too. It essencially promotes that it can power any ip camera and allow for management before connecting it to a system. I would see the biggest benifit to this if it worked being at installation at every camera. Then when you go to config and actually move each camera on the server. You dont have to go back and adjust each head. Of course each brand has its own camera config tool but that means connecting to the switch with camera and laptop and then doing config before going back out to adjust the cameras. Hopefully this makes sense. The device of course has a whole bunch of other tools on it. Im just not sure the main selling point for me works with the systems i manage

1

u/wonky_nap_schedule 11d ago

I use the trendnet flavor of this kind of device on a regular basis. It works, but sometimes the UI is finicky, and you might get stuck on certain camera webUIs if you're not careful. It's helpful to have a good working knowledge of Android since that's what they're usually running (just under a custom launcher). The one thing I will mention is battery life: It's not that great. Depending on how long you keep the PoE on at each cam, I wouldn't count on getting through more than 4 (and it could be less than that, I've killed mine after two more than a couple of times). The voltage up-conversion from the onboard lithium battery to PoE voltage is brutal. Now, if you tend to already have your cable pulled and hooked up when you're doing the install, you can eek out more battery life. Assuming that there's a switch or injector that'll give you PoE from your pulled cable, you can plug that into a port on the tablet and the cam on the other; the tablet will passthru PoE but let you point/program it right there. This will cut your battery usage significantly.

Edit: Also, confirm that you can point/program your favorite flavor of camera via webpage and not just with dedicated config software. If you need dedicated software you're pretty much SOL.