[vreihen16]

I picked up two Reolink 4MP wifi IP cameras on an Amazon Black Friday sale two years ago, and had them linked to my home Synology NAS. When I wanted to add a third camera last fall, I found out that the NAS only supported two and would need to be replaced with a much more expensive unit to add additional cameras.

I picked up a basic Amcrest NVR with a 4 TB video-grade hard drive from Amazon, along with an Amcrest wifi 4MP camera. The Amcrest NVR and Amcrest camera work great together, since they both do H.265 video. The Reolink cameras only do H.264, and seem to be struggling with wifi bandwidth with the Amcrest NVR despite performing acceptably with the Synology NAS. Long story short, all of the cameras support PoE, and I just had a new PoE ethernet switch arrive yesterday that will eventually wind up being wired to all three cameras as well as two more that I want to add.

The Amcrest NVR interface on the device is clunky, and only supports a mouse and HDMI TV output. The software they provide is nothing to write home about, and is missing basic functions like a video jog feature on playback. It is usable enough remotely to check up on the lawn service or see if the mail carrier has delivered yet, but painful if you need to look for a specific event over several days even looking at the motion-triggered timelines.

I live on a dead end street, and have the H.265 Amcrest camera hidden on a fence post at the side of the road. It has a really good shot at passing license plates during the day, and occasionally gets a legible rear plate at night because the headlights aren't washing it out. I want to pick up a second camera for the street with an IR-only lens filter and external IR illuminator, just for night time license plates. One of my neighbors further down the road had his outboard boat motor stolen back in the spring, and I was able to give the police a time-stamped vehicle pictures including the license plate number.....