Anyone care to share their experience with the MV cameras?

[makerbiles6]

I’m looking at putting one or two of these up at a remote office. Since they’ve been out for approx. a year now, would anyone care to comment on their experience with these cameras? Specifically the outdoor MV71 and how it works at night and in tough lighting conditions.

[Network-dad]

We now have a hand full of them and they are a great simple all in one solution. The one down side I will say is the amount of latency.. Most of our cameras have upwards of 20 seconds of latency... I've had several troubleshooting calls with Meraki and cant find any ways to improve this... Other than that they are very easy to put up and get working.

[MerakiDave]

@Network-dad sorry to hear that and I would ask for an escalation of your case regarding 20 seconds latency, the typical HLS delay is on the order of 4 to 7 seconds, so if you are seeing 20 seconds of latency I'd have the Support team engage with the Product team to investigate.  RTSP can also eliminate the HLS delay if that applies and is acceptable for perhaps a handful of your more critical cameras where even 4 to 7 seconds isn't good enough.  While that small HLS delay rarely causes operational impact, the tradeoff is with simplicity and being 100% browser-native, so no special software, no browser plug-ins, etc.  There are some use cases where RTSP can help by eliminating that delay, check out the documentation.  

[Network-dad]

@MerakiDave  Not really looking to work on this any more I have spent a good amount of time on the phone with support about this and have just accepted it. 

[J_Sarnoff]

Overall this is a good plug and play model that has nice automation of motion sensing. The internal heat unit allows for continuous functionality in varying weather conditions. They also have the MV72 as a replacement model option however, it is understandable not wanting to due to the investment that was already made.

[BlakeRichardson]

@makerbiles6  We have a single camera installed as a test case. It works well and I have had no issues with it.

What I really like about the MV is you can view them anyhwere in the world without the need for VPN or port forwarding which makes them secure, they dont require client software so all you need is an internet connection and a web browser. 

[Banfield75]

Okay product. Easy to setup. There have been a lot software issues. The biggest drawback is the cost. You get so much more (real zoom objective and movement 360 degree) equipment from other professional camera solution for ½ of the price. Another drawback is the cost for extra storage and that hardware warranty is not included with license.  

[MrBear]

Prior to Meraki, I had about a dozen IP cameras (indoor & outdoor).  They were all made by Axis Communications (they make outstanding cameras).

After implementing Meraki last month, I decided to also buy a handful of Meraki cameras to evaluate.

I can say that the Meraki cameras were the only Meraki products I do NOT like. Primarily because of the big delay (I get about a 8-12 second delay when local) and for some camera locations, that is a total deal killer. The other thing I hate is having to use a browser/dashboard to view my Meraki cameras.

However with the RTSP feature in the Meraki camera beta version, I can view (and record) my Meraki cameras WITHIN my QNAP QVR Pro security software, right along side my Axis cameras - and get this... the delay is GONE!!!!!!!!

There is a bug in the beta version (the stream works, then freezes, then works, then freezes... to infinity) but I am sure they will sort that out.

[EJN]

We have 100 MV cameras at church/school, and we love Meraki and the MV line. We have 70 MV22 and 30 MV72. They are connected to Brocade POE switches and some go to unmanaged Netgear POE switches. Very happy with our implementation, and support has been superb.

[MCITDept]

As most everyone has said they are easy to setup, and have some really nice features, however, the cost and the main issues with these cameras make them a NO GO for us any more.  First off, if you want to record the audio along with the video, then you will be sorely disappointed, the audio quality is about as bad as it can get, in our experience.  I have some Ubiquiti cameras that are less than half the cost of the MVs, that sound so much better in the audio, it is really crazy. 

Another thing, we licensed several of our cameras, we wanted more storage, and with the license, you MUST accept the lower video quality, boy do we regret that!  Video is pretty nice when you have it all at the max, but then you only get maybe 5 days to 2 weeks according to motion, if you are lucky.  That is just not enough in most of our issues.  Sure you can catch a lot of things in the past 3 days, but not everything. At this point in time, I would look else where for better cameras at a cheaper price, you'll be glad you did in the long run.