We have been attempting to use one of your WPS-750-BUL-IP cameras however recording playback with .avi file format does not work with Windows 8 Media Player. The web interface for your camera is also less than desirable in the area of event management. Controlling the effective masks are not intuitive. They cannot be changed without deleting and creating new. Playback of .avi files have insufficient resolution to be of any use. All in all, I would not recommend your product do to these limitations. Is there a better 3rd party solution to control the Wirepath IP cameras?

Stay away from their NVR as well.  Total POS.  Hard drive went out after 3 months.  Nice reliability for a life safety system Snap..

So... you blame Snap for a hard drive failure that they don't even make?

That's like blaming Ford if your tire gets a flat. Ford doesn't make tires.

LANCEMCGREW,

Windows Media Player has trouble streaming .AVI files. If you right click on the link and click on "save as", you can play the file on the Media player once saved.

We are working hard to improve the user interface for a better user experience. You should expect to see firmware updates with improvements over time.

The resolution and quality of the .avi files is whatever stream 1 is configured to. By default, this is 1920x1080. Please check your configure.

I'd love the opportunity to discuss your feedback over the phone. Please reach out to me.


internetraver,

We use AV grade hard drives from Western Digital. These drives are built to perform 24/7 with a mean time to failure significantly longer that what you would expect from a PC drive for example. Even with that, hard drives are mechanical devices that will have a failure on occasion.

However, your hard drive failure may not have been a true failure. There is a known issue with our firmware that is causing some customers to receive false-positive HDD errors. Our software attempts to analyse debug information in the drives to anticipate future HDD failures. But, it's currently too sensitive and can report errors erroneously. We are in the process of testing new firmware that will address this issue along with other improvements.

If you'd like to be involved in testing these improvements, please reach out to me and you can participate in the beta program beginning shortly.

As a follow-up to Alex’s post:

Dear LANCEMCGREW,

Welcome to the RC Forum! I am very sorry you did not have a good experience with our product. Your feedback is very important to us. We agree there are always opportunities to improve the GUI and ease installation. Regarding your integration question with 3rd party CMS software we are in process of integration with Milestone and Exacq certification. Alex has addressed the more technical points in his response.


Dear internetraver,

Again, I apologize for a negative first experience. As Alex pointed out, we have found a bug that manifests in some NVRs falsely reporting an HDD error. This does not impact recording, but it does log the event. We are in regression testing for firmware that will address this bug. For all of our NVRs and DVRs we use AV grade Western Digital HDDs that have a longer lifespan than the average PC grade drives sold at retail. The failure rate is exceptionally low but care must be given to the recorder when moving it during install or in a rack when it is turned on. Please call or email me with your contact information so we can research your case and report back.

Please feel free to contact either Alex or myself so we can address these issues. Thank you for considering Wirepath and again I am sorry for your negative experiences. We are here to solve these issues.

Um, that's not even close to the same thing.  I didn't run over a nail with my NVR!

Did they make the motherboard? Did they build the capicitors and resistors??  Of course not but they do choose which parts to use for their product.  When you attempt to build things "cheaper", quality get sacrificed.

Alex,

I went through all the steps with your tech support and your guys determined this isues is not the firmware problem your product is having.  He also explained to me how "budget" drives won't have a great lifespan with all the read/writing that goes on in an NVR.  HIS suggestion was to put in better quality drives for maximum reliability!  I was as shocked to hear this from him as you probably are but I respect the honesty.

I've been hearing for a while about this new firmware.  It it going to fix the issue of the NVR stream quality when switching form thumbnail to full size?  He couldn't answer that for me.

I have no interest or time to be involved in the beta program.  I've wasted far too much time on this 1 NVR experiment. 

The blunt truth to how it works Alex. Integrators see you have a new competitive priced product that just came out and they decided to give it a try.  When that attempt has as many failures/issues as it does, we move back to the product we're currently using (cause they works), and it's doubtful we will give yours another try anytime soon. 

As far as the cameras, I didn't mind them for the price.  As long as your not using the NVR, The streams look pretty good and can be fed right into control systems without a hiccup.

I'm not sure I understand why you would think Snap would be above any other manufacturer? Everyone from Crestron to Snap release products that truly aren't ready because they don't have an extensive beta programs. Pressures to bring in another revenue stream are more important than releasing a rock solid product. Hell, it sounds like RTI only uses employees to beta test in their homes because of some of their comments on their forum over the past few years.

The frustration for me is that it affects my bottom line but Snap cannot be singled out in this. Everyone does it and it's just the way of the world now. At least Snap is open regarding their issues and actively tries to improve/correct them.

I've had Nuvico hard drives fail within 1 month and 6 months on two different projects...

Why did you go to a public forum to complain about a product, rather than to the manufacturer? That should be the first choice. If you think someone will want to help after you dump shit all over them, you're wrong. You should return the DVR and find something else because they'll never satisfy you.

If one of your clients went to a public forum to complain about you because their system failed and it was because you chose materials/equipment that failed, would you be pissed off?

Keep drinking that koolaid

Exactly! What a way to introduce yourself to this community. I get that your frustrated and have issues/complaines, but I find it odd that you choose a new forum to post a random rant about a product.

Especially where you reach out to the MFG at the end of your post....why not use the mfg email or website or phone number. We are VERY lucky imo, that the mfg does participate in these forums, but what are the odds that a question to a mfg (ANY mfg) posted on an a random forum by a first time user would get actual responses from the mfg. This is a testimate to snap imo. 

I agree that going public before working with the manufacturer is not very productive. (Also hard to believe that someone would be a S*AP dealer and not already be a member here.) However, if the manufacturer has a lot of issues and is not resolving them with the dealers, then I want to know!

I trust and value the opinions of the actual dealers and their product and support experiences. If you have a problem that doesn't get resolved after working with the manufacturer, please go public and save me the aggravation.

On a similar topic, IP cameras and NVRs are pretty complicated systems. I'm not sure I would ever consider selling a new brand before the dust settles and I have had an opportunity to test them in our shop or my own home.

I told the AXIS rep that his cameras were more expensive than our normal brand. Without blinking, he said, "Yes, but how often do you have to go back?".

Another wise man told me that if I sold enough $5k CCTV systems, without support contracts, I could surely put myself out of business! It took a year or so to understand his logic.

Party on!

On a side note, we build a lot of custom computers. I cannot even begin to tell you about all of the hard drive failures I have had over the past year. I usually had 2-3 a year. This year we have seen probably 20, and its just August. I have had several Seagate and WD drive DOA right out of the box. I had two WD drives go bad after a couple months, and some Seagates bad in about 6 months.

I heard/read somewhere that since the flooding/Fukashimi Dachi/Tsunami disaster in Japan, that the Quality control has gone down.

I am still a firm believer in WD Drives, but they are the same drives from about 2-3 years ago.

** LANCE MCGREW **
You have made yourself look like an idiot. I'm not saying you don't have a problem, but you sure chose an abrasive and off-putting way to deal with it. Not only have you tested the patience of the guys from Snap with this approach, you've got to look at this:
*Right now, below your name in your first post, it says "It's My First Day!" That's normal at this site on the first day of your membership. We who have been here for a while have learned that very often that can mean "I don't know WTF I'm doing, I'm a total newb!"
*The thread title,


would be used by most of us, if ever, after we had contacted the manufacturer and, over the course of several days, had found them uncooperative, jerks, and/or idiots. This seems to be your first communication with ANYBODY technical about this, and you've thrown them under the bus without even knowing how good they are at working with you to solve this.

*Not only did you do this in a way that exposes your lack of patience and finesse to the Snap guys, your crass act is how you've chosen to introduce yourself to everyone here at remotecentral. You've shot yourself in the foot. It will be months before I will take seriously anything you have to say.

*It's astoundingly unusual that you've gotten responses in a public forum from ANY manufacturer! I know this is partly a fluke of you staying up late on a school night, but they answered you IN LESS THAN THREE HOURS. What, exactly, is your complaint about Snap as a company, that would force you to create such an insulting GENERALIZED thread title?

*I just looked at your first thread again, which starts "I have been attempting to use ONE...." Jeez, it's your first day with Snap, too, or so close as to show you have no experience with them? As I wrote this, the thought occurred to me "you go to a new fast-food joint, get something with fries, you don't like the fries, and you take out a full-page ad in the newspaper to warn everybody." The difference is that you were able to do this here for free.


Chill, man. Realize when you're new at something, or something is new to you, that you might not know how to really assess the problem. For instance, your complaint that it won't play .avi files is or might be, the Media Player but you're on Snap for blood. I mean, it won't play on my 1986 Zenith portable with DOS 3.0 and the ten megabyte hard drive either, but I don't blame Snap! Your best approach would be to come here and ask if others have the same kind of problems. Look at the responses you got anyway -- some seconding your experience, some saying to look at other things.

Snap did NOT deserve this. This is your first day: did you know that if you open your first post to edit, you can change the thread title to something a bit less hysterical?

Poor quality conrol has become an epidemic that the world, for some reason, accepts.  In our industy it's even more prevalent.  I for one am fed up with it. 

New cars having recalls is commonplace, phones/portable electronics locking up and needing resets happens everyday. New fridge has a part go bad in the first 6 months, TV's have bad boards that need replacing within weeks, and on and on and on and on.  This is what he world has come to accept with the products we spend our hard earned money on, and it's sad.  Until the world starts to hold these manufactures (not just snap, all of them) responsible, they have no reason to change how they do things. 

Reliability has become the most important aspect of the systems we design now, and we've gotten them to become near 100% reliable with the products we chose to use.  Many of those product I've personally learned about in public or private forums because people were having great reviews of them (Mikrotik, for example), but I also believe in the negative reviews as well.  If 10 people are saying this product sucks, more than likely I'm not going to waste my valuable time looking into it. 

What would you guys recommend as a license plate capture recipe?