Review on ANNKE 8 Channel 5MP Lite H.265+ DVR CCTV Camera System with 1 TB HDD and (8) HD 1920TVL 1080p Dome Cameras – E200, featuring Instant Email and App Alerts with Snapshots by Chris Hayes

The attached images show the same camera in daylight outside my barn, enlarged to include a sprinkler in the same image and a night view of the canal. Two of these show the settings for the DVR's website and direct access camera, and the error the web server starts throwing when it needs to be restarted. They are listed with a field of view of 82° I believe. That's right. The digital zoom the DVR does won't be a full CSI Miami, just zoom, zoom, zoom until you can't read license plates on the street. An image showing an enlarged area from the same day shot is attached. It works, but resolution is important, and the resolution on these cameras isn't 4K. They are 2k (1080p). Night Vision The cameras themselves offer night vision using a ring of IR LEDs around the lens. At night, they don't provide useful illumination of anything but nearby objects. The photos show my fence line 40 feet from the camera. Day shots are good. At night, the IR LEDs illuminate the area like a flashlight, but the detail in the image means that small critters that get caught under the fence are blurry at best and typically don't show up in the frame. My hedge line next to the camera was well lit and I can see every detail of the leaf. Behind me are streetlights that illuminate my yard just enough for me to see details that these cameras don't capture. They are only really effective during the day. Motion Detection The DVR tries to detect motion events. These event records do not appear on the website. You need to use the DVR directly. Unfortunately, any bug that flies close enough into the camera's field of view is a "movement," so most of my events are a wasp or moth flying by. You can adjust the motion detection area on the image, but the sensitivity will not be reduced - you just include/exclude areas from detection in the grid. ****DVR****DVR has direct keyboard/mouse/display access. It also accesses the network via the integrated web server. I usually use the web page to access the recording and live view. I get random "Abnormal Network" errors. Once it gets into this state, the website basically crashes (no listings available, live cams can't be viewed, blank configuration page) and trying to login again fails with the same error. It goes away after a few hours, but the quickest way to fix the problem is to restart the DVR. So I have to go where I installed the DVR and physically do it. The cameras that came with my 8cam/1TB DVR kit are said to be 1080p30. The DVR only records them at up to 15 frames per second. The HDMI and VGA ports cannot be used at the same time. I wanted to connect a display via HDMI and KVM via a VGA port. The connected HDMI display works, but the KVM is not receiving a video signal. The software is similar to Hikvision. Additional settings may be made for different cameras. When settings are enabled on the web page, only image adjustment settings are available. The webpage does not show anything for IR Brightness - this setting is only available when the DVR is used directly with keyboard/mouse. There are no exposure/white balance/color temperature settings available at all, so one of my cameras has a very blue tint in the image that I can't correct. Not critical, but it annoys me that my other cameras reproduce colors more accurately than this one. With 8 cameras and a 1TB hard drive installed, I get a recording rollback with continuous recording and H.265+ in about 2 weeks. encoding. Therefore, a 2TB drive should probably be used to store a data set for a month. **** Network Camera Streams **** 8 analog camera streams are available as RTSP channels at rtsp://USER:PASSWORD@ipaddress/Streaming/Unicast/Channels/XXX, where XXX is the primary or secondary channel stream as 101 (Channel 1 Main) or 102 (Channel 1 Sub Stream), 201/202, 301/302 etc. I never found any JPG picture URL on this DVR to get still pictures. VNC works to view streams. I have them in my home app thanks to the Homebridge plugin on the Raspberry Pi (live view only, no recording or camera control). With the DVR firmware, you can view the remote access camera through the Anneke Vision app. I'm not using this as I won't be controlling the end-to-end connection. Cameras and DVRs are available over the local network. In my case, I have a VPN connection to my home router that allows my phone or other devices to connect and view cameras while I'm away. **** Is it worth buying? **** I bought it based on the price alone (it was a stock Revain item that was priced well below the original price). I don't know if it's worth it without a decent affordable coupon or a cheap open box. When I add cameras and add another DVR or upgrade to a 16 channel unit I make sure the cameras I get offer at least a little optical zoom/focus to better capture what I want to see .