Review on 5MP IP PoE Bullet Camera W/ AI Motion Detection, 2.8Mm Lens, Outdoor Full Color Night Vision & 256GB SD Card Slot - VIKYLIN Security Camera Compatible For Hikvision by Brian Rivera

I'm working on a video review for this, but wanted to go ahead and record my initial impressions for future interested buyers.Attached photos:* Later afternoon on an overcast day in the chicken run.* Dark night in the chicken run. Note that the supplemental light isn't nearly as bright as this image makes it seem. I have it turned down all the way, and it's just enough light to navigate in there. The camera has a very sensitive sensor.I typically have my IP cameras monitored by an NVR software such as Zoneminder. However, I do have a small constellation of cameras that are a little bit more off-grid and are monitoring my small farm operation. For these, I basically have a Raspberry Pi running an FTP server for the cameras to upload motion snapshots to, and some FFMpeg processes performing a constant write of my camera streams to disk. The idea is that the cameras can use their own processing power for in-camera motion detection, upload JPEGs as a sort of bookmark of motion, and the RPi will just write all of my streams to disk. Ideally the cameras would just upload their motion video, but none of the cameras I have from 3 different manufacturers will do that.Installation:+ This camera has the absolute best adjustable mount I've encountered in something like a dozen brands of camera. An intuitive lock ring unscrews on the base without any tools, and then you can twist, pivot, and point the camera, and then retighten it. It's great.+ The included template is correct so that you can drill holes if needed, where needed. Make sure if outside the cord exits the bottom and not the top!+ The coupler for the Ethernet cable is like all others I've seen, and no doubt works. All of my cameras are under cover, but if they were exposed directly to rain, I'd probably wrap the coupler in butyl tape.+ Active 802.3 POE works as expected and makes installation super easy.- The mounting screws are junk and stripped out easily when screwing into wood.Configuration:+ Supports H.265+. This makes a HUGE difference in the size of the resultant streams. Without any additional processing I'm writing 720p @ 30FPS and only using 23 MB per 10 minutes.+ Supports AAC audio. I don't know why this isn't enabled by default. but AAC means you can write these as actual MP4 files and everything is happy.+ Good options for customizing the text overlays.- The initial IP address is statically assigned as 192.168.1.64, so won't be accessible on networks that don't use this addressing scheme. Why oh why do they do this. Use DHCP, manufacturers! It was easy to locate with a ping sweep since my camera network happens to use the same subnet. but it's annoying.- The initial admin password dialog requires an 8-16 character password with two character classes. This might be an appreciated security feature for less technical people, but less technical people will probably buy a Ring and not care if their data is in revain's cloud. I find it annoying.- You cannot paste your initial admin password into their dialog. So you've got a good password just for this camera loaded up in your password manager - well too bad. Hopefully you have auto-type capabilities. There's no reason for them to block pasting that I can think of.- You are prompted for security questions, but can cancel the dialog. If I forget the password I'll just factory reset. This is a strange feature.- Live video in the web browser needlessly requires their plug-in. This is a big red flag for me, and there is no way a camera with this requirement can ever get to 5 stars. In 2022 I should not need to (somehow) install your proprietary .EXE on a Linux machine running Firefox in order to view an RTSP stream. This is pretty sketchy. Fortunately it seems like most of the interface is still usable, you just have to monitor your changes in another window.- After setting the time zone and automatic time syncing, you still have to set dates for Daylight Savings Time. This should just be part of the time zone selection, right? I don't have to do this anywhere else.- The user login, at least in Firefox, isn't allowed to save your Username/Password into the browser. Ugh, whyyyyyyy. They've probably got some weird javascript or div tag on the form to prevent this. Again, I don't know why they choose to do this, but it is very annoying.- Poor documentation of features. What's the difference between Smart Supplement Light and Auto Light Brightness Control?Video quality:+ Good color, clarity, and resolution during the day.+ For night time viewing, the camera is quite sensitive to light! Almost as sensitive as my own eyes.+ White light illumination coupled with a sensitive camera and the resulting full color night time video is pretty handy. Now you'll know what color shoes the night time visitor was wearing, for real.+ The illumination level can be set very low or pretty darn high. It won't go up to driveway security light levels, but it will definitely light up an alley way around a door, or the area where your trash cans are. At least it will for me where there isn't a ton of light pollution.+ The included illumination light is super handy. I can see in the chicken run at night when I'm in there, and I bet the chickens appreciate the light when they're trying to find their way to the roosts too. This would be great on a porch or scary-dark corner of your property.+ Audio is clear. Environmental noise filter works pretty well.- The side effects of low light video when you don't have ample light are a pretty big deal. Either there is a ton of sensor noise (dots, like static) that make compression and motion detection algorithms very mad, or you turn on the denoiser and motion becomes a blurry trail. There are compromises to not running the illumination at full tilt.- It would be awesome if the light were combined with a PIR motion detector, so that the light would only turn on when there was physical motion.- The light attracts bugs. My chickens appreciate that though.- Audio has a hum to it that I have on my other Vikylin camera too, noticeable even when you turn the gain way down. My other cameras in the vicinity do not have this hum. Not a huge deal.Others:+ Support is responsive, but I wouldn't expect my parents to be able to install and make use of this without being very frustrated.+ Camera makes use of standards (I don't use ONVIF, but the support is there) so it is trivial to access the camera the way you probably expect to. "rtsp://user:pass@192.168.1.64/h264/ch1/main/av_stream" works in every app, VLC, FFMPEG etc to access the stream. This should be trivial to add to Zoneminder and other similar software.+ Lots of apparent options including different sensitivities for different areas of the image.- I haven't yet been able to get motion detection triggering image snapshot uploads to my FTP working. This is a little bit of a niche case these days, admittedly. I'm working with support on this.- No "audio" detection for triggering on loud noises / changes in noise.I did not evaluate any proprietary software / plug-ins / apps because I don't think those should be necessary. If this has cloud "features", I didn't evaluate those, and it is fortunately not necessary to make use of them to enjoy the camera. As always, cameras like this should be isolated on your network and I would make sure that something other than the camera itself handles security.While there were a lot of nit-picks for me, I recognize that a lot of it is personal preference. But the biggest detractors keeping this from being 5 stars are the requirement for installing a web browser plug-in for live in-browser video and the breaking of password pasting and in-browser login-saving. The poor documentation of some of the features means that I might not have appreciated some of the features as much as I should have.I want to make sure everyone recognizes that this camera handles dark scenes differently than most other cameras. Instead of giving you a black and white image illuminated by invisible infrared light, this camera actually has a very sensitive sensor and a visible white light, so you will get color images and illumination included. I like that in some circumstances, such as my specific chicken-run use.Overall I recommend this camera for users of NVR software or folks who want to home brew something of their own, and who want some extra light where they install the camera. I would not encourage my parents to buy one off the shelf and install it in their home, because I don't like / trust proprietary software. But that's a personal gripe.