This one’s a monster. The camera can run from 12v or Poe – that is a POE adaptor running power through an Ethernet cable – that is, it’s a wired camera – not WIFI – and high resolution with it. The Poe Adaptor is not supplied but Reolink make them as do many others for very little money.
I simply plugged the camera into my PoE-equipped network lead, waited a moment or so and the floodlights came on temporarily then went off. I went to the Reolink app on my Android phone and the Reolink Duo 3V PoE device magically appeared as an uninitialised device. I hit the grey area where I’d expected an image and was asked to create a username and password. That’s it for the instructions – end of setup. The resulting image was a very wide image of my office as the camera was lying upside down on the hallway bench.
Why does that image look odd? Well for starters upside down and the camera comprises 2 lenses pointing in opposite directions for a full 360 degree view. Oh and I’ve for the next indoor shot, I’ll set the resolution to high, not low.
As I can’t open my office window (insect mesh) I’ve put the camera out of the office, down a corridor and outside on a bench – at the end of a very long Ethernet lead comprising 2 leads with a connector block in the middle – no degradation at all.
Looks like I’m going to have to mount the camera after all – a photo of grey autumn skies just doesn’t do it. But while we are here, lets just zoom in a little – the resolution really counts here.
Next – no storage – I’ll have to put a microSD into the camera – that’s pretty normal. You can choose to record audio or not, there is a sound test facility and noise reduction control (handy).
Next – the upside down internal night shot – it’s WAY too cold to go out and do an installation.. and this camera looks like a little more work is needed for installation than other Reolink cameras. The mounting base is part of the camera so you need to undo 3 small Allen bolts (tool included), mount the base on the roof/ceiling then put the cover back on – looks like it will be simple.
As for detection, there is non-detection zone setting, marking of moving objects, sensitivity control, alarm delay control, object size setting, and perimiter protection. There are lots of controls for camera recording including schedules and post-recording duration.. push notifications can be turned on and off and more…
Email alerts, FTP on and off, siren control and more – there is an extensive list of controls with this camera.
Time-lamps, file encryption options, device sharing, illegal login lockout…
Oh and I nearly forgot, under IP information, advanced – you have RTMP, HTTP, HTTPS and RTSP so hooking into other systems should be a breeze.
Of course, Reolink have a PC app as well. There are in fact apps for Windows, MAC, IOS and Android. Here comes the Windows app.
Nothing special to look at here as the camera has neither zoom nor pan and tilt. It just has an incredibly wide field of view and very high resolution. You can use the camera with Reolink’s NVR but I’m happy to keep my cameras separate with their own storage.
For now, the camera remains upside down outside on a bench – it’s getting dark and it’s quite cool – so perhaps that needs covering – dead easy to make impressive camera claims on a hot summer’s day – let’s see what it gets on a cloudy autumn evening.. Below is the PC Reolink app which took only a minute to set up including another two of my cameras. You can of course watch one camera or all of them.
Note the plant pot in the window zoomed in below.
Saturday – the weather has picked up and I’ve put the camera on the top of our pergola – I’m thinking somewhere head-height would have rendered a more interesting view – but it serves the purpose.
Look and you’ll see on the left, the side of our building then our pool. Middle the side of the pergola then our front gate. In other words everything.
The software still needs a little work… the camera with no SD let me think it was recording – but nothing. I plugged in a handy 64GB SD and that said 0GB/0GB, so I rebooted the camera and was invited to format the SD. It finished – still saying 0GB/0GB. I cycled the power and all was well but no live video.
Now on the Android app I could see live video but not on the PC. I restarted the PC app and all was well, but these remain niggles that should not be in a finished product. Now for a short video recording – there was a little wind so I could see the live video was working. I saved the recording (using the PC app) and went to playback – there was the recording. All’s well in the end.
I’m assuming the recording is on the SD at this point. How to get it so I can download and show in here. When viewing recorded videos there is a download option so I downloaded a file, sent it off to YouTube and here it is…