VIVOTEK is a well-known manufacturer of IP surveillance equipment. 
The Taiwanese company has seen growth in the recent years and has gone IPO due to the variety and quality of the products of its products; products that are able to meet anyone’s needs for IP security surveillance – they include IP cameras, NVRs, Video Servers and Central management software. The success of the company is also due to its ability to pack each of their products with features that lack in the competitors’ similar products.
FD8134 is the topic of our review. It is a small and stylish indoor dome camera that is designed for surveillance of homes, offices, banks, ATMs, and retail stores. It has the same features as its brother FD8134 except for a few additional very important ones.
What is in the box:
FD8134, Power Adapter, Software CD, Alignment Sticker, Quick Installation Guide/Warranty Card, and a RJ45 Female/Female Coupler/Screws/Clamp Core.
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Setting up
The installation is easy and is well documented in the camera’s manual: remove the dome cover, write down the camera’s MAC address (written on the cover) for later reference. Then place the sticker on the spot where you plan to mount the camera and drill two holes at the specified places on the sticker and the camera can be mounted with the cable routed through the ceiling or wall. Once installed and all the mounting details fixed you can adjust the lenses by loosening the tilt adjustment screws on both sides of the camera and then turning the lens module up and down, and rotate them, as necessary. The FD8134’s 3-axis mechanism makes it possible for the lenses to be positioned in any angle.
Well, the web installation is much easier. You just have to install and start the Installation Wizard 2 and it automatically recognizes the camera and asks you to confirm it! Once you do that you are ready to configure its settings!
Tech specs and image quality
VIVOTEK FD8134 is a megapixel IP camera capable of supporting 1280×800 resolution video stream. This translates into clear and detailed images. The camera uses three codecs for image transmission and storage: H.264, MPEG-4 and MJPEG compression. The H.264 will greatly reduce the storage space on your NVR/HDD compared to the other 2 compression methods and the megapixel quality will reveal the detail in your images. The VIVOTEK’s camera provides for 4 streams each of which can transmit images from the maximum resolution (1280×800) to the minimum available (176×144) except for the fourth one – its resolution is fixed at 1280×800. You have the freedom also to select the compression and resolution and the image quality for each stream from a drop-down menu. If you want to make the stream available for more than one person to watch, you will have to use the multiple streams options from the menu.
FD8134 Day mode screenshot
Besides that each Region of Interest allows you to define a different window/s each with its own frame rate. For example if the camera is set up to watch a door entrance, the door itself could be set as an Area of Interest with a high frame rate compared to any other area because you need to receive more image from the door.
Another helpful feature that the camera provides is Motion Detection. You can set up the amount of Sensitivity and the Percentage of the “alerted pixel”. The Motion window becomes red when motion has been detected and the percent of the “alerted pixels” exceeds the number that you have set for them. Our advice is to try to experiment with different settings as different objects require different settings. The photos and videos of detected objects can be sent via email or FTP (for storage at a remote server) and here you also have several options to choose from.
Besides recording on NVR or HDD the camera’s stream can also be recorded at a different storage – on a built-in Secure Digital card and the settings can be made through the web interface. You can use this option as a backup solution!
Another important feature is the Tamper detection – the ability of the camera to react to situations where it is redirected, blocked, defocused or spray painted. You are provided with options to specify when and how it should react (will send you an email or upload images to FTP).
Last but not the least the camera supports the open ONVIF standard; a standard that is backed by big players in the industry and is gaining popularity among many security surveillance manufacturers. This means that FD8134 can communicate with other devices that also support this standard!
Operation at night
The camera has an IR cut filter which when turned off allows for infra red light to reach the sensor and in that way quality low light images are received. Day/Night Settings are located in the Video category of Configuration section in the web interface. The video and screenshot below show the nice megapixel quality of the night mode images. It is a little low (1280×800) than that of IP7161 (1600×1200) but the difference is very slight. Having an IR cut filter is one of the two major features that differentiate FD8134 from its sibling FD8133. The other is the PoE – the latter doesn’t have it unlike the former.
Conclusion
FD8134 resembles very much its Day-only, PoE-less analog FD8133 which is a packed full-of-features dome IP camera. FD8134is an excellent middle ground solution as the camera’s stream is megapixel, although not the highest possible, supports more codecs than usually do cameras at this price range and gives you a plenty of options to configure the streams you will be watching. That makes it the right solution for many occasions especially where you need surveillance in low light conditions. For more information about FD8134, please visit FD8134 reviewon our web site!
The Ip Camera Store team