ieGeek Security Outdoor Cameras 2 Pack 1080P Waterproof Home Security Systems CCTV Cameras Systems With Full Aluminum Housing, 25m Night Vision, Motion Detection and Push Alerts for Android/iOS/PC

I came across the ieGeek camera. The reviews looked pretty solid, so it was worth a try for the small outlay.

Whats in the box?
1080p Camera,
A separate +5dbi aerial
A (aluminium?) mounting bracket.
1.5m RJ45 cable
Power adaptor
User manual & wifi connection instructions leaflet (both written in Chinglish unfortunately)
Bag of screws, rawl plugs & allen key (for the grub screws on the bracket).
Unlabelled mini CD, with various PC & phone apps, user manual & FAQs

The unit itself is quite small, and can be installed fairly discretely. The bracket allows for quite a bit of range of adjustment. I’ve got it mounted near to my gates, which are about 15 metres away from the nearest wireless AP. The camera has an external +5dbi aerial, so I’m not seeing too many wifi dropouts via the video recordings on my NVR.

One BIG plus, is the power adaptor is very neat and compact – so much so that it fits underneath the cover of a BG 2Gang external weatherproof socket! Bonus, as it made my install much easier! (it wouldn’t quite fit under a LAG weatherproof socket cover though) It also has a power lead that is about 3m long – which also helped to make the installation quicker & simpler.

The fixed lead, which is about 2 metres long splits into a RJ45 connector (semi waterproofed), 2.1mm barrel socket for the power, and a reset button with a small semi waterproof cap over it. I’d suggest to hide these away under a cover or in a small enclosure to make sure they don’t get much exposure to rain etc as they don’t look 100% effective in my opinion.

I set up the camera before installing outside (thankfully). The supplied software is a bit hit & miss, and the android app isn’t all that much better. After a little trial and error I managed to get the camera connected via RJ45, and then transferred onto the wireless network (not sure how I managed it, or if i’d be able to do it again, but it’s stayed connected OK since). I’ve not bothered with motion detection or the other functions on the camera yet.

I also connected it via my NVR, which was much less painful as the ONVIF implementation is pretty good. I use the NVR application to view all my cameras when away from home, so can’t comment on how good or stable the images are via the app.
There’s also a microSD card slot on the bottom of the camera body – I haven’t used this yet, but it looks robust and weatherproof enough to be OK.

Verdict in use:

Daytime: The camera image is pretty good, and images are clear. They are good enough to see lots of fairly small details. There is a slight ‘fish eye’ to the images, probably around a 14mm lens equivalent if it were on a 35mm camera.

Night time: There is a little vignetting and reflection around the edges (not sure why it doesn’t appear so noticeable in the day), but the camera copes remarkably well with different bright and dark areas of the image – much better than some other cameras I’ve used previously. FPS is a lot slower at night, so it can’t capture quite as much detail eg passing cars have trailing lights etc and aren’t 100% recognisable, but its still sufficient for its main task of keeping an eye on my gates.

The camera outputs 2 streams via ONVIF, a 1080p and a lower 640×352. Connection speeds vary between 500kbs and 3000kbs dependent upon how much movement there is in the image.

Overall, I’m happy with the camera unit. If the software and CamHi App were better it would be a no-brainer at this price – though I can see a lot of people struggling to get it set up and maybe giving up on it. As it is, even with the clunky software it meets my needs.