Useful stuff, thanks @BartButenaers
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Hi @Colin,
You are welcome! The hook up has some nice reviews on youtube. But the more I look at those, the more doubts I have which cams I should buy.
Another review from last summer is also quite interesting, where he tested 10 Color Night Vision camera's. Those camera's are able to record color even in the dark:
Those camera's only need very few light to operate. Ambient light from the street or neighbours is enough to create a full color image. However no ambient light means no color night vision at all!! In that case the camera will switch to IR LED's, and produce a colorless image again...
The advantage of color night vision, is that you don't need to activate the infrared LED's. That is an advantage, because those IR LED's attract bugs and spiders. Which in turn result in cobwebs and false alerts...
This was the top 3:
I read somewhere that camera's with lower resolution perform better in the dark, because the available light will be spread across less pixels. And that camera's with a larger viewing angle also perform better at night, because a larger viewing angle means that more light will be received...
The only thing under $100USD that doesn't lock up on me has been the Raspberry Pi Zero running MotionEye OS.
There are a lot of cameras, ones that don't lock up, that's a whole different matter. When they lock up, I drive across town and reboot them so it's an issue for me.
Failure rate on the cheap stuff is through the roof so now it's either a RPi Zero or a $250 Vivotek.
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Agreed. I've had pi zeros (with rpi cams) running with MEOS, inside my own 3d printed enclosures for years. Never touched them, ever. Even through rain, hail and 40degC heat. Quite amazing.
For me, 4k surveillance cams are just a waste of bandwidth.
Do you have examples of the image quality?
That is dependent on your choice of cameras. My choices are usually the cheap $15 ribbon cameras. I think the Pi goes up to 8MP or something if you really want to run up the load and bandwidth.
The nice thing is the fact that you can choose whatever camera, lens etc. you want and if it breaks you can replace it. Crappy network camera breaks, it goes in the trash. I have thrown out a bunch of them.
In my case, not to hand, sorry. Due to the nature of the setup (usually on movement) I don't keep video stored. And often use them just in an "image on demand" scenario via Telegram (and NR of course 
)
But the cameras are just the stock rpi v2 model, so the quality is pretty much the same as you would find anywhere with this setup. Aside from being able to tweak some camera settings, I don't think MEOS adds (or subtracts) anything to the quality equation. Not sure whether the OS has been updated to handle v2 of the RPi Zero yet though. Last time I looked it hadn't.
I know everyone's needs are different but 4k video was just overkill for my situation.
Thanks for popping this up. Indeed an interesting alternative. And it is a solution that fully matches the title of this discussion
I did have a quick look at some reviews, but didn't find anything usefull that allows me to compare it with the above discussed camera's.
Since I am not a person that follows every hype, I have absolutely no need for a 4K cam for no reason. Moreover it would take me a lot of headache about processing and storage resources. But from the above youtube reviews it seems to me that I need such a 4K cam in order to be able to identify people during the night. Moreover color light vision seems also a very usable feature, as described above.
If you have any links to reviews of (color) night vision of people with such cams, please share it here. Because otherwise we don't really have any way to compare it with the other camera's from the above reviews.
Color security cameras typically revert to b&w under low light. Lenses used for IR tend to have a color cast to them. As I recall running cameras color vs grey scale is about 8X increase in bandwidth. If I have to choose I choose resolution over color.
Identification is often more about camera placement than resolution.
Doesn't really matter now, you might as well just lock the Raspberry Pi in your safe because if someone sees it mounted on a wall they are gonna steal it and sell it on ebay for a hundred dollars.
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I just hooked up 4 Annke C800's to another brand NVR via ONVIF. They look great for the price, and have easy integration. My only complaint is the mounting hardware is not the greatest.
Some good advice from user sebastiantombs on ipcamtalk -
Don't get caught by the megapixel bug. Instead get caught by the sensor size bug. Right now the best performance is a 2MP on a 1/2.8" sensor or 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor. Higher resolution have poor performance at night even with the same sensor sizes. Watch the focal length of the lens. Most kit style cameras are 2.8mm lenses. To obtain a video that can positively identify someone with a 2.8mm lens the subject needs to be within ten feet of the camera and the camera needs to be mounted no higher than 7 to 8 feet above grade.
Quick guide -
The smaller the lux number the better the low light performance. 0.002 is better than 0.02
The smaller the "F" of the lens the better the low light performance. F1.4 is better than F1.8
The larger the sensor the better the low light performance. 1/1.8" is better (bigger) than 1/2.7"
The higher the megapixels for the same size sensor the worse the low light performance. A 4MP camera with a 1/1.8" sensor will perform better than a 8MP camera with that same 1/1.8" sensor.
Don't believe all the marketing hype no matter who makes the camera. Don't believe those nice night time captures they all use. Look for videos, with motion, to determine low light performance. Any camera can be made to "see" color at night if the exposure time is long enough, as in half a second or longer. Rule of thumb, the shutter speed needs to be at 1/60 or higher to get night video without blurring.
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Hi @smcgann99,
Thanks for the update!
Yes I agree that there will be a lot of marketing hype stuff ongoing. But I am not really following hypes. On the contrary, the lower the resolution the better. Since that would save me a lot of performance and storage headache. So my conclusions above are completely not based on sales talks, but only on comparisons of recorded video footage I found on youtube reviews...
Do you know (affordable) cams that offer those technical specifications? Otherwise I will choose this time to go for the non-scientific dummy approach: just look at the recorded video on youtube reviews and check whether the image quality fits my needs
@aallen Those cams where really what I was looking for, except from the h265 which browsers don't support (i.e. you cannot show them in the Node-RED dashboard without cpu intensive re-encoding to h264...). So I assume you use it in another way...
Yes, you are correct. I am not using these in Node-Red. Just hardwired to our NVR and recording/monitoring locally.
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I just posted this as I thought about your thread when I came accross it.
It is a bit of a mine field getting the right camera for the right price etc. etc I guess the main point is that there is no one size fits all with cameras.
If you are looking to identify people at night then the size of the face in the picture (more pixels) is probably the most important.
"To obtain a video that can positively identify someone with a 2.8mm lens the subject needs to be within ten feet of the camera "
So when looking at the reviews on youtube consider the distances as compared to you own locations, and the lens needed. It adds to the cost but a varifocal lens can be a good option.
I know you will want to build your own solution from the ground up because you are "The Bart" 
But just to recap what I said earlier 
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Has anyone used these with Hikvison NVRs ?
I have an Alibi NVR, which I believe runs a modified Hikvision firmware.
Yes, but "The Wife" wants to speed up things
Yes one of those reviews was about varifocal lenses. What is the advantage of those?
Hi,
It allows you to adjust the field of view to get the picture you need. With a fixed lens you may find that you are wasting some of the image looking at things of no interest, like the side of a wall.
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What is the difference between varifocal and zoom?
Answering my own question, varifocal is a cheap way of doing zoom. A true zoom lens remains in focus while zooming whereas a varifocal does not. With autofocus this doesn't matter much. Varifocal lens - Wikipedia).
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