Comments on: Hands On: D-Link IP Camera/WHS Solution

By: rpiboy

rpiboy — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:16:11 +0000

Is the software absolutely limited to the Cameras listed in D-Link's documentation? Or would it be possible for the software to connect to some of D-Link's Small Biz cameras? Also, is it possible to for the WHS software to connect to a remote camera, ie through the internet, or will it only recognize LAN cameras? If you don't know, is it possible for you to follow-up with your D-Link contact?

Thanks!

By: Feets

Feets — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:38:06 +0000

If you have 4xCamera's recording to your WHS surely the CPU is going to get slammed? Off the shelf WHS are (currently) low power CPUs, ideal for always on but not for video encoding. Interested to hear how D-Link have solved this.

By: Jim_Clark

Jim_Clark — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:50:32 +0000

It could be possible, however, one the better working machines (the old Dell) was wireless. My normal workstation, and my self-built WHS are both wired.

I really wish that was the problem!

By: scoob101

scoob101 — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:18:26 +0000

Did you try accessing the D-ViewCam software from a wired ethernet client? Im wondering if the poor latency/bandwidth of a wireless connection to the WHS console had a part to play in the poor performance.

By: Jim_Clark

Jim_Clark — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:06:43 +0000

Yep, the camera seamed to work fine, although I will be the first to admit I do not have much to base a comparison on.

If the SW had performed better, I would have been rather inclined to work harder to find the limits of the camera capabilites.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:50:52 +0000

I have a similar D-Link ethernet webcam that I use with third party monitoring software called ZoneMinder. Although the camera itself does a great job, I have to say that the packaged webcam software from D-Link is some of the worst quality software I've ever used. I find it laughable that D-Link can include "world class quality" as one of their core values!

By: Jim_Clark

Jim_Clark — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:42:28 +0000

D-ViewCam is part of the WHS software. The single window version is inherent to the camera itself and is not part of the WHS software.

Per the manual: Min. display mem. requirement is 32MB. A 10 year GPU should suffice. There is no mention of "seperate" GPU required.

Every machine (except 1) I tried this on had a MB/CPU/GPU less than 3 years old. I stand by my statement. I am not being harsh, simply being realistic. The SW does not work. If I said it worked and you purchased the HW for use with this SW; it did not work; would you not be somewhat upset with me?

By: scoob101

scoob101 — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:03:27 +0000

I think your being a little harsh Jim to call this alpha software simply because some of your machines dont meet the the hardware requirements for video playback. From your article, the software appears feature complete, and you didn`t mention any serious bugs, so how can you call it an Alpha? Did D-link not mention minimum requirements in the documentation?

Viewing video over RDP (i.e via the WHS console) is never going to be a good solution, so going down the IE path to view the cams directly on the client seems the only sensible way forward.

As far as I can see, the only benefit to using a WHS with this type of setup is to have an always-on machine to save your captured video onto, and host remote connections from the internet. Anything else and your best off with a direct connection to the client.

Were there any other camera features which the WHS helped with??

By: Jim_Clark

Jim_Clark — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:39:55 +0000

It will work OK with using a direct IP address. You will have to configure it to save to your WHS.

Or the WHS software may work just fine using one camera. But no more…

By: Ascario

Ascario — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:10:53 +0000

Thanks for the helpful reply Jim! At least this clears things up a bit. None of the ip cam reviews I've read discussed sound, let alone sound quality. Since we have a Home Server at our disposal in our office (mainly as a local backup and workspace server), it would be nice if we could use it with these cams.

By: Jim_Clark

Jim_Clark — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:04:49 +0000

I did not do very much with audio (adjustment-wise). Using the default settings, I was able to easily hear real-time conversations, with a normal 1-2 lag time. On the one positioned behind my computer monitor, it was picking up a signficant amount of what seemed like background noise. It was sitting atop a speaker, which meant I was might have been hearing a bit of a feedback loop?

By: Ascario

Ascario — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:40:32 +0000

Nice read! Did you by chance test the audio quality/audibility? Where considering using a few of these cameras to record simulated patient consultations at uni. Since these recordings are for both research and evaluation purposes, sound needs to be of good enough quality.
Cheers