CHEAP Chinese PoE IP Camera - How Bad Could It Be?

Networking Networking Hardware
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I recently came across some PoE cameras on Aliexpress for such a good price I was willing to take the risk. $32.71 AUD (that is US$22.86) for a 1080p PoE camera, including shipping. The BESDER Wide Angle

Before ordering it, I assumed it would be bad. How bad was the question. . .

So, here we are 19 days later and my camera arrived (on a Saturday!)

I quickly abandoned the chores I should really be doing to power the thing up and get to testing.
Step one, find the device IP and log in. Lucky for me it has a fixed IP of 192.168.1.10 and a fixed user name of ‘admin’ with no password. Unlucky for me, my main network is already using that IP. So, after a little faffing about I got it onto a test network and entered its IP. “Your browser is too new, downgrade and install this plugin”. What it meant was, use internet explorer with this plugin, or it won’t work.

So, after I setup a fresh copy of windows for the occasion, installed the activeX plugin I was off to the races.

From within the webGUI you can changed all the important settings like date/time, IP, video quality, FPS etc. So iset the unit to DHCP and fiddled with a few other settings before some testing.

This is where it gets good. It’s actually good!!!

It defiantly isn’t 4k, and for 1080p, it’s a bit grainy. But, for $33, it is amazing!

I ordered the 3.6mm lens version (also available in 2.8 or 6mm) so the image is a little zoomed compared to most CCTV cameras I have used.

There are some downsides, besides having to trust a dodgy looking exe file to get it working and the grainy image quality (compared to newer, more expensive cameras) the camera seems to struggle keeping up over the network, and seems to stagger/hiccup its stream occasionally. But, again for the price, totally worth it.

I am going to order a few more of the same camera to add to my Devember project “internet box of everything” setup. Watch this space for updates, if there are any. :slight_smile:

FYI - here is a link to the camera I bought
I got the 1080p version, but they are available in 3 and 5MP as well

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A few sample screen shots to show how good/bad it really is.

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Be interesting to see how it handles low-light/night/heat/cold/rain.

We really need decent yet affordable PoE IP camera options.

If it doesn’t work out, you can always buy a USA-stickered camera for 20x the price that is 20% better.

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Just a reminder, your camera is subsized by the govt of China. The outdated software and requirement may not be simple incompetence.

You should isolate your IPTV CCTV, preferably not connected to the internet and hosted on its own LAN.

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Oh yes, i know the potential for a sneaky backdoor i to this camera is high. It will be put in my IoT network that doesn’t have internet access or access to other networks at my house. But my home assistant can still see it. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I forgot to add that to the OP

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We should have open-source camera firmware, like how a lot of routers can run DD-WRT.

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There are ESP32 options out there that are open. And the price is right on that hardware, but it’s a little more involved to get it up and running. The outcome is totalyy worth it thought IMO

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A little update on the night vision quality. . .

It isn’t great, but it isn’t too bad either.
For the purpose of a human detector, it is fine but the grainy-ness goes up in low light and the IR spotlights are pointed at the center of the frame, so the darker borders really suffer.

Will I buy more, Yes. I think I will.

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How would you say it would compare to e.g. annke nc400… or their cheaper IR only C500?

What’s the framerate at 1080p - what codec/bitrate do you get out of it?

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A quick google for Annke NC400 makes me believe this is a sub par camera if compared with the NC400. I haven’t had the chance to test them side by side though. It appears the NC400 can do a higher resolution though. The frame rate goes up to 30fps (from memory). I would have to fire up the windows machine again to confirm this. Same goes for the bit rate. I have mine set to HQ and 10fps as this is all that home assistant needs to do person detection. 5fps would even be fine,

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I think adafruit is working on the open camera stuff now. Over the last several months, they’ve had many editions of their Sunday videos, around this topic (I think they call it ‘desk of lady Ada’).

I would check Shodan for cam streams, and heck, see if yours is there too. :wink:

Looks like someone started breaking down the network profile of a different version of a besder camera here:
Link removed, as I can’t share links but its on the githubs.

It would appear they quit, once they realized it was using TLS to phone home. I have no idea if they tried to MITM the cert, but seems like the logical next step.

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Do you know if it supports RTSP and/or ONVIF?

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I probably won’t even investigate IF it is phoning home, I just assume it is and plan for the worst. But with such cheap hardware it would be good to ‘hack’ and install an open variant. ‘AHHH THE DREAM’

vivante - It streams RTSP, and the seller even gives the URL in the item description, so I was confident it would work. It also states in the listing it supports ONVIF 2.0 although I don’t take advantage of this feature directly.

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Is it better than the harbor freight cameras?

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I have no idea. My only real comparision is the HIKVISION DS-2CD2385FWD-I and the HIKVISION DS-2CD2385G1-I, which are basically the same as each other, both being 4k, IP based CCTV domes. But their price is about $220 AUD. I also have a AXIS P3344, which is an older 720p camera that had an original price of over $2000 AUD (I was lucky enough to repair one I found in a bin).

We don’t have harbor freight here.

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just a heads up. a lot of ip cams have poor security.
so check your make and model for default login credentials on google.

make sure your using at least 10 letters numbers and special chars for the password.

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I would advise to put them in a mostly offline network.

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Just a few post above this we cover that. The camera will live on a network that only houses IP cameras and does not have access to the internet or any other network in the house. I assume the worst, and plan for it.

FYI - The camera does come with a default user name of ‘admin’ with no password set. About as soft as it gets. =P

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I’ve been using some relatively cheap reolink PoE cameras. im no cctv expert but I think they fit the both decent and affordable needs.

Good idea to be honest. All I can say is i have high confidence that a number of Chinese owned cctv company’s hardware works far better on a closed network… :thinking:

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Since you are willing to go through all these lengths to get an IP camera working, may I suggest using a raspberry pi? The picamera is really good. You can get something like motioneye working with it, or one of use my projects.

The pain with security cameras is that you have to keep monitoring them manually, so having some kind of intelligence built in is really valuable. Oh and by the way, the newer Pis support PoE, so you can use it like a much cheaper PoE camera that is infinitely more customizable than a COTS solution. Much fewer worries about security as well.