#Vivotek ip camera utility full

So I followed the re-focusing instructions and got it back in focus then in 2014 when the camera was a little over a year old, and the image was back to normal. This repeated movement over time actually causes the lens to move itself out of focus little by little, making the focus progressively worse and worse. When this Vivotek is mounted outside and subjected to large temperature swings from the weather or heating from direct sunlight, the plastic lens and lens mount expand and contract. The mount on some cameras has additional hardware to lock the lens in position and keep it from moving but this one does not. At the factory they simply turn the lens in the mount until the image is in focus, and it's held in that position by the friction of the threads. Like many security cameras, the FD8134V uses an M12 lens threaded into a lens mount. As time went on it became obvious that it was out of focus and it was getting worse.Ī quick search online revealed that other people were experiencing the loss of focus with this particular camera, and there was even a nice document over in the forum at the use-IP website in the UK. Vivotek FD8134V day image out of focus Problem 2: It's slowly going out of focus and getting worse!Īfter using the camera for around a year I noticed that the image seemed to be getting a little blurry like it wasn't quite in focus anymore. Had I been able to point the lens in the middle of the tilt range I probably wouldn't have had as much of a problem as I did. Vivotek mentions the 70° tilt travel range in their IR reflection troubleshooting document and I was certainly at one end of that. In my installation the IR reflection was caused by the rubber ring not working well coupled with me having the lens positioned at the upward limit of the tilt travel. Both should serve the same function but based on what I've seen, the rubber seems to be less forgiving than the foam. Most dome cameras with built-in IR lights that I've seen use a foam ring around the lens to keep it from seeing any IR light being reflected off of the dome, but Vivotek uses a rubber ring around the lens instead. I was able to mess around with it and improve the image a little bit, but it never was very good and there was always some IR reflection causing problems. Looking back I should have just taken it down the next day and returned it, but I thought I could try some things and improve the night image. Vivotek has a really good document on their website to help people troubleshoot IR reflection problems, so I imagine it's a common support question for them. Vivotek FD8134V night image with IR reflection Problem 1: Terrible night image due to the dome and IR lightĪs usual for pretty much all cameras like this, when the sun sets the IR-cut filter moves out of the way, the camera switches to black & white mode, and the 8 built-in IR LED lights come on. There is one problem with my camera though, there is so much IR light reflecting back from the dome that the image is awful!

#Vivotek ip camera utility full

This isn't meant to really be a full review of the camera, but the specs were pretty good at the time that I got it and the online reviews were also pretty good, so I felt confident buying it at the time. There are now many cameras that are even smaller than this Vivotek that have higher resolution and much better performance in all areas, and they cost 1/2 or even less than 1/3 of the price that I paid back then. That just shows how much surveillance camera technology has improved and how much prices have dropped over the past few years. That seems like a lot of money for a 1 Megapixel camera, but at the time it seemed to be the best bang for the buck in a camera that would fit where I needed it. I needed a small dome camera for one location on my house so I bought this camera for $309.95 in April of 2013.

This model is now discontinued but it's worth talking about because the problems that it has are actually fairly common and can happen to many cameras on the market today. The Vivotek FD8134V should have been a great camera for me, but unfortunately it suffers from two main problems that make me regret purchasing it.