HIKVISION DS-2CD2132F-I-2.8MM IR Fixed Vandal Dome Network Camera

The 2.8mm lens is the widest angle lens they make. It has about a 90 degree view left-to-right, and is perfect for up-close positioning. Mine is mounted on the soffit over the front door so I can see when I have a package delivered. For monitoring your yard or driveway, you might want the 4mm version or longer, which have narrower viewing angles (i.e. they're "zoomed in" more). The 2.8mm version has some fisheye effect to it, but not bad at all.The 3MP sensor is amazing. Truly that's the biggest reason to buy a HikVision. It produces a great image day or night, IR LED's on or not. The image is color in the day, and B&W when using the IR LED's, but the clarity is the same for both. It also has wide dynamic range settings, so you can use it in situations like looking out through glass doors or, in my case, needing to see in areas of direct sun and shade at the same time. When the dome is installed correctly, the entire camera body is sealed in a weatherproof enclosure, perfect for mounting outdoors.This camera does not have Pan Tilt Zoom settings through the web interface; it's a fixed camera, and you have to adjust its aim before bolting on the dome. However, the camera is designed to mount only to a flat surface, like a soffit, not a vertical surface, like a wall. This is a limitation of the pan/tilt bracket, but isn't much of a limitation. If you require wall-mounting, HikVision makes a bracket, or you can get creative and build a bracket to hold the camera horizontal against the vertical surface.Speaking of the web interface, this is a bit clunky at times, but it gives you full control over the sensor, alarm settings, network settings, video settings and functions, and motion detection functions. Mine is set up to upload a series of still pictures to an FTP server any time motion is detected. You can also stream a full-resolution, or "downgrade" to an HD resolution, to a computer or DVR for storage. They also have free apps for viewing the images on your phone, tablet, or computer.This camera does not come with a power supply. It requires 12VDC on a 5.5/2.1mm plug. I bought a 12VDC adapter from Amazon for $7, and it works perfectly. The camera is only 100Mbps, not Gigabit, so I used the 2 unused pairs of wires in the Ethernet cable to carry power from the power adapter in my network closet to the camera. This meant running only 1 Cat-5 cable through my attic, which was a huge convenience.Overall, this is a great camera. The quality of the hardware is excellent, the quality of the web gui is very good, and they have free apps for iPhone and Android to view the images on. For this price, you can't beat it!

2/12/14 Just ordered another one. Ideally I like the bullet version of this cam, but for the front of my house I like the domes so people can't easily tell where it's pointed if they see it. Granted at night time when the IR's are lit you can pretty much tell, but during the day time you can't tell where the camera is pointed. This will be my 5th camera in my arsenal and the 3rd one of these. Bumped up to 5 stars after installing the one I purchased in late January. There is only IR reflection if you have a wall, gutter, etc near the field of view. Once I adjusted where the camera was pointing it got rid of the glare.1/23/14 Woohoo! These are actually Hikvision cameras as long as you don't purchase from HD Security Store. I just received my Hikvision from CCTVONE and there is branding ALL over this thing. It's the real box pictured, the manual has Hikvision on it, the camera even has Hikvision on it like in the pictures. Now let's see if I can install the camera before sundown and see if the IR bleed/reflection is an issue. Bumping up to 4 stars. Can't help the seller tried to give a few of us customers a different product.1/19/14 Well I bought another one just now. I bought it from CCTVONE this time so hopefully it will be the branded camera. It was ~$10 more expensive than the one offered by HD Security Store which is fine with me as long as I get a branded camera. I'm hoping my location and the dome on this camera this time will not have glare from the IR's. So far I have this Hikvision dome DS-2CD2132-I, Hikvision Bullet DS-2CD2032-I which I just put up, and a Dahua BW IPC-HDB3200C. I love that this camera and the Hikvision bullet have night vision. The Dahua just doesn't give me the picture I want at very low light. I have my flood lights on and if the power goes out I wouldn't feel comfortable at night as I'd have very limited visibility with the Dahua cam. Hopefully this 2nd Hikvision DS-2CD2132-I won't have the IR bleed/reflection I have on my first one because hopefully of where it's mounted. I'll try to get back on here and leave a review after I get my 2nd one installed.1/11/14 I now realize this is not a Hikvision camera and the seller HD Security store is advertising these as Hikvision with branding all over the product and box. This is not the case. I've uploaded images of the box I received and likely others have received. There's just a Winic box with a Hikvision sticker on it. I don't know if there's much difference if any between the Hikvision listed here and the Winic PX-IPD213, but I certainly want to receive the product I purchased and read reviews for. I've contacted Amazon in regards to this seller and it seems as though they do this for other cameras as well. Make sure you do not purchase from HD Security store if you want to receive an actual Hikvision camera.1/8/14 I'll have to say I'm not a camera expert, but as a tech guy I really like this camera. My original setup included about 5 Foscam cameras I was using for daylight surveillance from inside. I finally set up this camera wired with PoE on the outside of my house under the eve in the backyard. The picture quality is awesome during the day, but I'm having a little trouble with IR bleeding/reflection at night. I plan to clean the dome in case it's my fault during the install, or it may be reflecting from nearby wall and gutter. I plan to keep playing with the adjustments until I can figure it out since I really purchased this for 24/7 visibility.Once I get the night vision figured out I plan to buy several more of these.

I got these Hikvisions and had high hopes that they'd be as good as the Dahua cameras for a lower price.Just as a point of reference, I have a Dahua 32 channel NVR with a mix of QSee and Dahua 3MP cameras. They are working with the Dahua NVR using the Private standard, as well as internal Foscams on the ONVIF standard. I used the ONVIF standard and PSIA and both worked with the Hikvision.Unfortunately, the Hikvision dome that I have has a lot of IR bleed at night in one of the corners, making it useless. Also, these cameras are the Chinese versions, with hacked English firmware. I decided the extra headaches and bad picture quality was not really worth saving $30-40 per camera, and went back to the Dahua. Also, setup was a complete nightmare... why not enable DHCP from the factory, or even use the same IP range. How many computer does anyone have running on 192.0.0.x ? I'm sure it was someone's bright idea to make it a little more secure, but all that ends up happening is you have to jump through hoops to get it to the IP range every other device you own is using anyway.The build quality of the cam is really nice. The image quality for daytime is pretty good, albeit missing a little detail compared to the Dahuas. Like I mentioned before, the IR bleed at night is terrible. I've tried moving it, but unfortunately it cannot be moved too much without negating why I got the camera in the first place. It may simply be the luck of the draw on the foam seal to reduce the IR bleed, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter how cheap/great value this is.