JideTech 5MP PTZ WiFi Outdoor Surveillance Camera

[testman78]

Introduction

This is a newly released camera from a company called JideTech and this camera comes with a lot of nice features. The main selling point of this camera is the Image Sensor which adopt 5.0Megapixels Sony IMX335 CMOS and provides 20X optical Zoom. In terms of cameras more megapixels is not always better. For instance 2MP cameras often perform better in low light while 5MP will allow for more detail when lighting is good. One disadvantage of higher megapixel cameras is the recordings will take up more hard drive space. Depending on the number of cameras, this can become a larger concern. It is wireless (supporting 2.4GHz WIFI, like most devices tend to do) so this means that there are a lack of cables due to no DVR like some sets have. It is equipped with multiple Key features such as PTZ, Night Vision, Motion/Sound/Human Detection, Two-way Audio and Auto-track. I will go over both pros and cons. And if you are interested in buying this camera you will find my affiliate links in this article with the most updated prices.



Let’s start with the bare data of the JideTech 5MP PTZ WiFi Outdoor Surveillance Camera:






Packaging & Contents

Camera arrived in a large(for camera) white padded box.



The white label on the side indicated the exact model inside.



The camera was well packaged supported by foam.



What we get in the box is, the camera, power adapter, antenna, a waterproof cover for the ethernet cable, screws, and dowels.






It comes with a good set of English instructions to guide you through set up.




Included with the camera was an a card that detailed helpfull info.




You can use the enclosed CD or you can also use the provide link that as written in the instructions. This is supposed to direct you to a web page that provides software, to enable you to install the software so that you can view on your PC or Laptop.




A Closer Look

First impressions of the camera is that it feels very solid built. The camera is very well made and much bigger and heavier than I was expecting. The upper part is made of metal and the lower part is made of plastic but its not that cheap plastic some cameras are made of, it feels really good and I’m sure this camera will last a long time beeing outdoors. It also is massive, so should be a really good dissuasive method to keep people away.



Utilizing a 110° wide-angle varifocal lens and the head rotating 355° horizontally and 90° vertically, a 360° view is easily obtained. This makes this camera an outstanding choice to be placed on a corner of an eave where it can constantly monitor the largest possible area.



The camera has a built in microphone that is good enough for normal surveillance. The camera supports 2 way audio and it comes with a speaker at the back.



The camera comes with a 5mp SONY CMOS image sensor (IMX335-HiS3516 chipset) and a resulotion of 2560×1920 but thats such a weird format that dosen’t fit most screens so all the recordings i have done is made in 1440p.



It has a x20 optical zoom using a 4.7-90mm varifocal lens.



Often a drawback of 5MP and larger resolution cameras is the storage space required for the videos captured. This camera utilizes Smart 265/Smart 264/M-JPEG compression allowing for the smallest file sizes while maintaining the highest quality.



For Night vision it uses 6 infrared lights and according to the seller it should work up to 60 meters.



I must admit I did find it difficult to get to the SD slot and replacing the frame, but I also understood and appreciated that placing the slot inside the frame, made it difficult for any unauthorised person to have access to, as well as protecting the SD card from the weather elements. The cam has a microSD card slot that supports up to 128GB which is good. This camera can loop record and so this card will automatically be overwritten with newer footage.



The place for antenna.



With antenna on it.




Camhi Pro App

The camera uses an App called Camhi Pro which is an App i’ve tested before and it works ok. You will get instant push notifications on your phone when motion is detected and you can view the recorded footage saved on the SD card. It will record a short 15 second clip. In addition to CamHi, you can also add the surveillance camera on other software. The camera supports you to view on your PC through Blue Iris, iSpy and others.



To access the camera with the Camhi Pro app you can eaither do it by connecting a ethernet cable to the camera from your router or you can connect using AP mode. So plug in the power cable and then the ethernet cable and wait for 60 seconds, open up the App and click “add camera” and then click “search camera from LAN” and your camera should show up here, click on it and then add name and password. The default name and password is admin. The click done and you are connected.



To add your wifi just go to Wifi settings and add your home network and password, now you can remove the ethernet cable. You can also access the camera through a web interface using your web browser. To do that you just type the IP address of the camera that your router has assigned for it in your browser and log in. Same here default username and password is admin.




If we click on settings, then Alarm settings, we can turn on or off motion detection, select were on the screen we want motion detection activated by moving the square. And we can also adjust the sensitivity here. In “Action with Alarm” we can turn on or off notifications and to record to the sd card make sure you have the “alarm SD REC” selected.



On the main screen in the App we got “Picture” which is where you will find screenshots and they are saved on the phone. And in “video” we can access alarm clips saved on the sd card as well as recordings you’ve done manully which are saved on the phone.



If you have “Online” selected you have access to the SD card and on “Local” you will find all the recordings done on your phone. By swiping on the phone screen on the app, you actually change the lens direction. Both horizontally and vertically, or “Panning” and “Tilting”. Which is a very convenient way to change directions.



And then we got some other settings here as well you can play around with. We can also flip the screen, zoom, set preset points and I do recommend you do that instead of trying to move the camera manually each time, much faster using preset points. We can turn off night vision, turn on or off the sound, take screenshots, record video and also change the image quality. And thats the settings we got in the App.




In here we have more control over the camera compared to the App. We got the PTZ controls and Zoom in and Zoom out. Another nice feature this camera has is that we can control the speed of the Pan and Tilt from 1 to 63 where 63 is really fast and 1 really slow. I think around 45 is a good speed. By default, the camera is static. You can PTZ manually. Then you can add preset points that the camera will sweep. It will go from 1 to 2 to 3 and return to 1 as a cycle. You can add to that people tracking. The famous 93+ call. What will happen is that the camera will routinely scan your preset points and if it detects a person, it will stop the scanning routine to follow/track/zoom that person. When the person is away the camera will resume it's sweeping motion.







Performance

Installation of this camera was what I expected, 4 screws into a wall or other solid surface and a power (+ ethernet connection if not using WiFi) then you’re done.



Mounting is a bit awkward since the camera body blocks the mounting screw holes. To mount it I had to loosen the 3 screws that holding the camera body to the mounting arm and let the camera dangle from the cabling while I turned in the mounting screws. I made a paper template to know where to drill the screw holes before even trying to hang the camera. The audio out (when I talk to someone through the camera) is surprisingly loud and with good-enough clarity, which was not what I was expecting and a nice surprise. The audio-in (someone talking to me through the camera) is somewhat variable, and seems to greatly depend on the orientation of the microphone-pickup. Sometimes I can hear conversation clearly from 40 yards away and sometimes it is indiscernible from only 10 yards depending on the relative orientation of the camera, but so far has been plenty good for most of purposes. With a 128 gb micro SD card (purchased separately) it has tons of space, it seems to be enough to store 2-3 weeks of constant record video on the highest quality setting, and it seems to just automatically overwrite the oldest previously recorded data which is great.



The daylight picture quality is excellent. The Picture is very clear, sharp and of high resolution.



The 20x optical zoom is so much better than digital.X2AF:



X5AF:



X8AF:



X13AF:



X20AF:



The movement of this camera is very fluid as is the zoom function, but whilst smooth they are also extremely fast allowing you accurately track people/objects through the full range of motion. The lag is minimal between PTZ inputs and visual.



Night vision is unbelievable it throws that infra red light out quite a few metres, and under street light at the front of my house it looks like mid day in the middle of the night if you set it on colour.




Final Thoughts

Firstly this unit is huge, but very robust and seems to be very good quality build. The camera housing is heavy duty and appears to be something that will last for a long time. I must admit I did find it difficult to get to the SD slot and replacing the frame, but I also understood and appreciated that placing the slot inside the frame, made it difficult for any unauthorised person to have access to, as well as protecting the SD card from the weather elements. Needs an sd card as one is not supplied, best quality 128g card. This camera can loop record and so this card will automatically be overwritten with newer footage. The camera is attached to a support that has 4 screws. You cannot screw the support without taking the camera itself down. You can do that by unlocking 3 little screws. Once the camera itself is out of the way you can screw the support. A mounting bracket would have been very nice. There are two ways to set the camera up. One uses a network cable. The other uses a wireless connection. The set up was entirely pain-free and it's providing a very stable WiFi feed through several wall of my house. The Camhi Pro app that is used to operate the camera is allows you to adjust motion sensitivity, adjust picture settings, set preset locations, and set a cruiser mode where the camera continuously pans between preset locations, along with other more advanced settings giving you a great amount of control. As opposed to the mobile app that can be used for this camera, I added it to an existing BlueIris NVR server which was a painless experience, not only did the video stream work straight away but so did all of the options for both PTZ control and hardware options like manual IR illumination control (a feature only often found in very expensive cameras). It does support ONVIF so you can use this with any NVR or software that supports ONVIF. ONVIF is critical for using with software such as Blue Iris. The camera is 5MP so the captured footage is sharp with high clarity. It has a fantastic range of viewing angles - it can almost rotate horizontally around 360 degrees and can tilt 90 degrees - this means that it can cover our complete garden and the walkway below it and up the side of the house - absolutely brilliant. The 20x optical zoom works very well and the quality doesn't start to lack once the zoom is applied. Night vision on this camera also works well, the range is still very good. Motion detection via the app is consistent and notifications arrive timely, close to when the event occurs. Also the microphone is very clear and speaker is loud enough.



I have only praise for this security camera and the company that sells it on Amazon. They stand behind the product plus their customer service is excellent. If you are looking for a outdoor PTZ wifi camera with good image quality and great zooming capabilities then this might be what you are looking for. The camera sells for around $248 dollars on Amazon when making this article but you can also buy it from Amazon.eu for about €262 which I think is a good price for this camera. While this is the first JideTech camera I have reviewed I look forward to seeing other cameras they create. All indications point to this being a manufacturer that builds high quality security cameras that are dependable and made to last.

https://www.amazon.com/Security-Surv.../dp/B082TZ4D8Y
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B099DYGWLB?...language=en_GB