HikvisionDS-2CD2332-I 3MP Outdoor Day & Night EXIR Turret Network Mini Dome Camera with 2.8mm Lens, 2048x1536, 20fps, H.264, MJPEG, PoE

For this review I'm going to assume you have some basic networking knowledge, are familiar comfortable setting up network shares, and can navigate documentation and the help menus of the device itself.I ordered one just to test and play with before purchasing another three. First thing to note - pay attention to the focal length, I have a 2.8MM for a wide view area and 3, 4MM lenses, which are perfect for my mid-range use. I could have used a 6MM for one use case, but could not find one on Amazon, I see one now for about 2X the 120ish price. 4MM is fine for the price. There are a ton of YouTube videos that will show the difference and you can also measure for focal length.Mine are powered via PoE (TPE-TG44g) and connected to a Lenovo IX2 that I already had for PC backups. I updated the firmware, changed the passwords and set static IP's for my network, goofed with the on camera areas of interest (AoI) settings, IR light, quality settings... I used the one camera license to check out the iX2's capabilities as well. I used a piece of scrap plywood to temporarily mount a camera and hang it out of a window to get a feel for the daytime and IR capabilities. For now I'm simply using the FTP mode to dump pictures to the NAS. Works great! More on that in a bit.Mounting the cameras is a snap, small hole for the network run, three screws for the mounting ring, aim (using tablet/phone app) tighten the mount screw, snap in the trim ring, done! That was a little oversimplified, I build my own cables, have a tester, and you may need a fish rod to run cable inside your eaves. Running (and making) the cable will likely be the most significant challenge here. I would not recommend any type of WiFi adapter, too much bandwidth in the aggregate for most SoHo AP's.The HKVision applications for Android/iOS are great for live view, so now when the dogs go off in the middle of the night, instead of heading downstairs I can just rollover pick up my phone, Nexus, iPadMini tabs, and pull up all four cameras in a couple of seconds and then determine whether or not just to yell the the dogs through the window or if something is amiss.The IX2 has some built in surveillance software from Mindtree, which mostly works. SecureMind supports ONVIF, but that's not best setting for the HKV camera, dinking around with it indicates Asoni is a better option. And the AOI from the camera is does not automagically manage the video stream. But hey, this was really and ad hoc effort in the first place.I also attempted to use the network file mount, for streams, both NFS and SMB without success. NFS is supposed to work and really widely adopted, but the documentation on the camera, and the iX2 is vague (for me anywar) and I could not get it to work. SMB comes close, the log in works, the "format" is successful. It's not really a format, it's just a file structure setup. And it even works until you log off the camera, then the initialization gets lost. I used discrete shares for each camera and various attempts with a single camera/single share, no luck.In the end the quickest path was to simply set the cameras up to take pictures using the on-camera settings for motion and AoIs, then supply the proper credentials to their own FTP directory on the NAS. Been running about a month that way and I will need to manually clean out the FTP folders now and then. I have not decided on purchasing the SecureMind licenses or moving to a larger NAS. A couple of TBs is a lot for my home PC backups and movies now, but in 3-4 years who knows? There are quite a few new NAS boxes with this capability built in, so that's an option.The net of all this is, the cameras are great, and I assume if you use the intended SW from HKV that's also great. I'm quite happy with the performance of the cameras and images captured, I can browse on an "event" and zoom in on cars, people, docs, cats... whatever. I really like that IP cameras are available at this price point. Three or four years from know when the it's time to upgrade the infrastructure is in place and that's a big plus.If you do figure out how to use one of the NAS functions to stream video please post a note!

Great image quality. 2.8mm sensor gives a WIDE angle. Seriously. Respectable size and easy mounting instructions.Works great with the TP-Link PoE switch and a Synology NAS. Dual streams means that I can login to my NAS anywhere and view my cameras with a respectable framerate and have HD-quality recordings waiting for me when I get home. I bought a domain and DNS service and everything was easy to setup on the Synology system even for a caveman like me.One minor issue is the sensitivity of the motion detection on the camera. The grid is quite large, and even at 20 the sensitivity is very high. The Synology system also seems to fight the camera for control of the settings, and this causes the motion detection settings to reset if the NAS reboots. I don't like using the server as motion detection, but I might break down and do so if I continue to collect hours of clear, crisp footage of flying insects and shadows rolling across my yard.

Daytime picture is good, night time with the single IR light doesn't seem as good as the cameras with the 30 LED's around the lens. It looks much more washed out and has a hot spot in the center.

For the price these Cameras are a good value and work good with my Synology Surveillance Station. Finding them on my network wasn't to much of a issue using the program on the supplied CD that came with the camera and I set them up for MAC IP addressing on my router. While they aren't as feature rich as other models they are great for my purposes. The single IR emitter seems to work good and gives a even light at night but I haven't tested in outdoor environment.

This camera is great for indoors and outdoors. We have installed several of these throughout our property and it works great. We use "Blue Iris" for software and you can set up this camera with very particular details. Triggers, resolution, etc. Worth the money, easy to install and easy to set up.

The picture quality doesn't seem to be as good as my 4mm version of the same camera but it could just be a matter of fine tuning the settings more. The colors are a little washed out even with wide dynamic range and gain turned down. Great camera, love the separate high and low resolution streams and various motion detection strategies that can be combined to minimize false alarms. At 3 MP, you actually get security camera footage that is worth something! You'll want to connect this to a network video recorder or even just a NAS (shared network drive) as there is no local (i.e. SD card) recording. I have it hooked up to both a Hikvision NVR and a NAS for redundancy.Be careful that seller is selling a US or European model because the Chinese models need to be hacked to show English. If you bought one that was hacked and upgrade the firmware, then it is back to Chinese menus. I have had good luck with NetView.

Great picture, please with purchase.