Security Cameras
- Thread starter Xanthon - Michelle
- Start date
I can hear Mike Meyer's character "Fat Bastard" say "It's crap"
I am hearing it... with the Scottish accent, of course
Lmao. It turns out these cameras were real and I know where some of them ended up. I came across them on ebay and was curious about the decent price and "90 FPS" frame rate advertised in the product specs. Several different ebay sellers are listing these cams for around $200-$250 shipped:
I decided to order one, specifically from this listing:
There was a sticker on top of the box covered over with another white sticker. I peeled it off and with enough backlighting I could read the word "XANTHON" on it. I decided to search ipcamtalk for "milesight" in case anyone had played with these already and I found this thread started by "Xanthon - Michelle" followed by a bunch of replies apparently thinking it was fake, and that made me chuckle.
Here's a mini review of the Milesight MS-C2971-X23TPE.
Device Setup
The cam arrived with a custom static IP assigned in the
90 FPS is real
And with the right software stack and configuration, it lets you have really very smooth video and good responsiveness from the PTZ controls. This is exactly what I was hoping for because the last PTZ I installed (a ~$800 Dahua) has ridiculously sluggish PTZ controls.
With this camera I was able to achieve something in the ballpark of 100-200ms of end-to-end latency controlling and viewing the camera in UI3. Slightly better latency if using Blue Iris's local console, but frankly I do not like Blue Iris's native PTZ controls. The latency in the camera's own web interface is much worse than using it via Blue Iris when tuned properly.
The main stream can encode at to 90 FPS (sub streams only up to 30 FPS; or 25 FPS if the cam is still set to 50hz mode in the Image settings). Consequentially using a sub stream in Blue Iris significantly worsens the video delay and video smoothness because Blue Iris uses the sub stream for timing info and that limits you to 30 FPS with a lot of stuttering. I generally don't use sub streams with most PTZ cams for this reason, but it is especially important for a cam like this where the main stream and sub stream frame rates are mismatched.
To optimize for the best low latency in UI3, you must not use the Automatic/HTML5 video player since that adds a bit of extra buffering that is out of our control. WebCodecs works great if you are connected with HTTPS to Blue Iris. Do not use direct-to-wire either; that introduces a lot of additional latency for some reason.
However Blue Iris can't really seem to transcode the video to feed to UI3 over about 60 FPS anyway so I ended up changing the main stream's frame rate to 60 FPS to save some CPU cycles in Blue Iris. It is still extremely responsive for an IP cam.
PTZ motors / Responsiveness
The pan and tilt motors are very fast and responsive, which is just as crucial as low video delay for a good manual PTZ experience. The zoom motor is kind of slow though. And autofocus is not very impressive and I would rank it a little below average.
Another little note, 3D positioning works pretty poorly via Blue Iris right now and can't control zoom. I'll probably do some debugging and see if I can get Blue Iris to fix it on their end.
Auto-tracking
The camera has PTZ auto-tracking capability built in. I don't love it. It doesn't want to zoom in tight on subjects even if they are moving slowly. It has a few options for "Tracking Zoom Ratio" but it is confusing and doesn't seem to have any effect. It helps if the camera's home position is more zoomed in already, but then fast moving vehicles sometimes shoot through the FOV before the camera knows what is going on.
Oh well. Imperfect auto-tracking is better than no auto-tracking I guess. It can be configured to track humans or vehicles or both. A screenshot of the Auto Tracking configuration interface is attached below:
Firmware
Out of the box, the camera had really awful slow autofocus. I'd zoom the camera and then wait through 2-4 seconds of blur before it began to autofocus. Turns out this was a firmware issue. The camera arrived on firmware version 61.8.0.4-r1. Latest is 61.8.0.5-r5 which is readily available from Milesight's website.
After the firmware update, the slow autofocus issue was resolved. Autofocus performance still does not impress me, but it is no longer embarrassing.
Day Performance
Day performance is pretty ordinary for a 1080p sensor. As with some other cameras, it oversharpens the image by default. I dropped the sharpness setting from 50 to 20 which I think makes it look better.
Night Performance
Night performance is unspectacular. Here's an autotracking video of a car going by last night. Please forgive any video corruption you see in this; it is not the camera's fault. Blue Iris is just unusually bad exporting MP4 today (not that it has ever been good at it). The IR glare also only happens when the camera is pointed a little upward because IR reflects off my soffit. It is an installation issue, not a camera issue.
I decided to order one, specifically from this listing:
There was a sticker on top of the box covered over with another white sticker. I peeled it off and with enough backlighting I could read the word "XANTHON" on it. I decided to search ipcamtalk for "milesight" in case anyone had played with these already and I found this thread started by "Xanthon - Michelle" followed by a bunch of replies apparently thinking it was fake, and that made me chuckle.
Here's a mini review of the Milesight MS-C2971-X23TPE.
Device Setup
The cam arrived with a custom static IP assigned in the
192.168.4.x range, and fortunately Milesight's device detection software found it no problem. The cam also had admin credentials already assigned (with an unknown password) so I had to open the camera to use its physical reset button which is behind the lens next to the micro SD card slot. The black ring around the dome bubble has to be twisted a little and removed, then there are 4 Phillips #1 screws to loosen and then the dome can be carefully removed; it is tight and takes a fair amount of force to pull off. Then there's a little black plastic door on the camera module directly behind the lens. This covers the micro SD card slot and reset button. Once reset, the camera reverted to the default IP of 192.168.5.190 which is also on a sticker on the bottom of the camera, and allowed me to assign the admin password and set it up.90 FPS is real
And with the right software stack and configuration, it lets you have really very smooth video and good responsiveness from the PTZ controls. This is exactly what I was hoping for because the last PTZ I installed (a ~$800 Dahua) has ridiculously sluggish PTZ controls.
With this camera I was able to achieve something in the ballpark of 100-200ms of end-to-end latency controlling and viewing the camera in UI3. Slightly better latency if using Blue Iris's local console, but frankly I do not like Blue Iris's native PTZ controls. The latency in the camera's own web interface is much worse than using it via Blue Iris when tuned properly.
The main stream can encode at to 90 FPS (sub streams only up to 30 FPS; or 25 FPS if the cam is still set to 50hz mode in the Image settings). Consequentially using a sub stream in Blue Iris significantly worsens the video delay and video smoothness because Blue Iris uses the sub stream for timing info and that limits you to 30 FPS with a lot of stuttering. I generally don't use sub streams with most PTZ cams for this reason, but it is especially important for a cam like this where the main stream and sub stream frame rates are mismatched.
To optimize for the best low latency in UI3, you must not use the Automatic/HTML5 video player since that adds a bit of extra buffering that is out of our control. WebCodecs works great if you are connected with HTTPS to Blue Iris. Do not use direct-to-wire either; that introduces a lot of additional latency for some reason.
However Blue Iris can't really seem to transcode the video to feed to UI3 over about 60 FPS anyway so I ended up changing the main stream's frame rate to 60 FPS to save some CPU cycles in Blue Iris. It is still extremely responsive for an IP cam.
PTZ motors / Responsiveness
The pan and tilt motors are very fast and responsive, which is just as crucial as low video delay for a good manual PTZ experience. The zoom motor is kind of slow though. And autofocus is not very impressive and I would rank it a little below average.
Another little note, 3D positioning works pretty poorly via Blue Iris right now and can't control zoom. I'll probably do some debugging and see if I can get Blue Iris to fix it on their end.
Auto-tracking
The camera has PTZ auto-tracking capability built in. I don't love it. It doesn't want to zoom in tight on subjects even if they are moving slowly. It has a few options for "Tracking Zoom Ratio" but it is confusing and doesn't seem to have any effect. It helps if the camera's home position is more zoomed in already, but then fast moving vehicles sometimes shoot through the FOV before the camera knows what is going on.
Oh well. Imperfect auto-tracking is better than no auto-tracking I guess. It can be configured to track humans or vehicles or both. A screenshot of the Auto Tracking configuration interface is attached below:
Firmware
Out of the box, the camera had really awful slow autofocus. I'd zoom the camera and then wait through 2-4 seconds of blur before it began to autofocus. Turns out this was a firmware issue. The camera arrived on firmware version 61.8.0.4-r1. Latest is 61.8.0.5-r5 which is readily available from Milesight's website.
Camera Software Version: MS-Cxxxx-xxE is the package that matched my camera's model number. Milesight Firmware & SDKAfter the firmware update, the slow autofocus issue was resolved. Autofocus performance still does not impress me, but it is no longer embarrassing.
Day Performance
Day performance is pretty ordinary for a 1080p sensor. As with some other cameras, it oversharpens the image by default. I dropped the sharpness setting from 50 to 20 which I think makes it look better.
Night Performance
Night performance is unspectacular. Here's an autotracking video of a car going by last night. Please forgive any video corruption you see in this; it is not the camera's fault. Blue Iris is just unusually bad exporting MP4 today (not that it has ever been good at it). The IR glare also only happens when the camera is pointed a little upward because IR reflects off my soffit. It is an installation issue, not a camera issue.
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Chokolinho
Getting comfortable
Looks smooth as F.
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