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2 Responses to “Archerfish Quattro Interactive Video Monitoring and Recording System with 2 Day/Night Color Weatherproof Cameras”

1. Chizue Says:
   March 10th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
   Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)

   There is a lot to like about this system. Unfortunately, for home use, there is a lot that falls short too. Let us skip the technical details that are contained in the product description above and instead scrutinize a real users experience with setting up and using this system – my experience.

   BEFORE SYSTEM SETUP

   In unpacking the equipment, first impressions are that it is well made and well packed. The two indoor/outdoor color cameras are compact (slightly larger than a roll of dimes), made of metal and come equipped with an optional sun cover and a sturdy metal pivoting mount that attaches with three small screws. Each has its own power adapter. Here is the first problem. The screws and the holes for them in the mounts are very small and are appropriate for wood only. If you attempted to mount them on drywall, one good bump and they would be dislodged. Using these screws on stucco is absolutely out of the question. Also, the power adapter for each camera is designed to plug into the end of the Siamese connecting cable farthest from the camera – near the Archerfish box – so, although you don’t need power at the camera site, you will need three plugs for this system where you place the system box. One for the Archerfish box and one for each camera connected to it.

   Also in the shipping box are two 100ft. rolls of Siamese cabling that manage the signal and power for the cameras as well as a short CAT 5e cable to connect the ArcherFish box to a router (required to set this system up). Finally there is the ArcherFish Quattro box and supporting documentation. Being a former network administrator, I actually read technical documentation. I want to understand how it all works before I begin (why run in-wall wires before you know you are completely satisfied with a product). Unfortunately, you do not get sufficient information from the supplied documentation. What you do get is very thorough and easy to follow instructions on how to place the cameras, connect the system and register it on the ArcherFish website. You also get a bit of instruction on port forwarding for your router, which is required to view your cameras from outside the local network. What you do NOT get is information on connecting and using an external USB for DVR storage, using an external monitor with the system or how to use the digital inputs/outputs – three potentially very nice features that require extra planning and hardware. What was most frustrating was that this information was also not available on the public website. The only way you can obtain this documentation is by registering the box and setting up your monthly payment plan. Only then do you get access to the support section of the ArcherFish Portal website.

   SETTING UP THE SYSTEM

   System setup is relatively smooth and painless. Place the cameras, run the wires, plug in the camera wires to the ArcherFish box, connect the ArcherFish box to a router and power up. The rest of the set up is done from a PC on the ArcherFish website. The device will let itself be known to the website and then, by using its serial number, you register and connect to the device through the website. Everything about setting up the cameras, event notification, live viewing, watching captured footage and defining zones is done through the website. Also, since I did my system setup from a laptop via a wireless connection, I set up port forwarding on my router. This is required if you plan on viewing live video from PCs that are not plugged into your LAN. You could still connect and configure without port forwarding, you just would not be able to view live images from your cameras.

   During setup, you are allowed to enter two possible means of notification for system events. I chose to be emailed with a video attachment and to receive a text message to my phone with an attached still photo. However, when you are setting up the specific times for notification on a particular camera, you are only allowed to pick one of the two methods you set up previously. That is really lame. I don’t want to have to go to the website and make changes for notifications depending on my whereabouts on a particular day or hour. I want both notifications, text and email, all of the time. Unfortunately, that is not an option. You can work around this by setting up a whole new user, complete with first and last name, address, email address etc. but what a pain for such a simple objective. ArcherFish provides for event notification via text message or email with either plain text, text with attached picture or text with attached video. I have not been able to get the video attachment to work over ATT’s MMS service – but I am still working on that. The email with attachment works perfectly.

   SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

   ArcherFish specs out the camera resolution as “Ultra high 470 line” and the camera uses a Sony image sensor. The picture quality is adequate while viewing it embedded on the web page but it is grainy if viewed in full screen mode. The color quality is good and the camera will automatically go to black and white in low light situations to enhance viewing. The 3.6mm lens has a good viewing angle. The cameras are supposed to be good down to 0.1 lux – that is about the light of a full moon. Although they worked very well detecting objects in normal light, the system failed to pick up a person walking across the room at night with night lights on that emitted enough light to comfortably walk about the room.

   The “black box” that is the ArcherFish Quattro provides the ability to divide each camera view into zones for detection (up to 3 zones per camera). This allows you to be very selective in what parts of the image you want to report events. Each zone of any particular camera view can be set to report detection of a person, vehicle, motion or external trigger. You can then set what times of day the event reporting is active, how long the movement must transpire before it triggers an event and which user the event notifies. Setting all of these features up is fairly straight forward.

   The website also gives the ability to download video clips to your PC and to manage the DVR (the USB hard drive you can attach to the Quattro device – and is not included). I have not hooked up a monitor to the Quattro unit to check out what benefits it might add and, you guessed it, there is no documentation on the issue. Also, the only monitor hookup is via BNC connector.

   CONCLUSION

   The ability to watch your house or business live or to watch recorded video of triggered events without wading through a ton of video footage, all via the Internet, is both convenient and useful. Paying a small monthly service for a website to host all of this and to notify you when something warrants your attention is also a reasonable expense. It is the entry price of the system and some of the issues mentioned above that place this “Made in USA” product into the 3 star range.

2. Vian Says:
   March 10th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
   Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What’s this?)
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   Length:: 1:59 Mins

   I'd really like to give this a stellar review because I like the system, but it has a few too many downfalls.

   Pros:
   (1) Good quality video. Not amazing, but very good.
   (2) Nice notification system. You can set up what you want movement for which you want notification. I chose to have a video clip emailed to me so that I can easily view it on my phone.
   (3) Zones make it easy to exclude areas that are high traffic you may not want to get notifications for. I put a camera up in the front of my house and don't care about cars driving on the street, so I set up a zone for the street and exclude anything in that zone.
   (4) Instructions are easy to follow.

   Cons:
   (1) COST! It is way too expensive and then you also have to pay eight dollars a month for the service.
   (2) Glitches in the detection system. I had my car in the front of the house and unlocked it while inside. About 15 seconds later, I went outside and drove the car into the garage after walking around the car (the driveway and inside of garage are viewable). The system recorded the flashing of the lights when I unlocked it, but missed me walking out to the car and getting in it. The next thing you see is the car halfway in the garage. So, it appears that when two events are too close together some things are missed.
   (3) An external USB memory device really is a must. To overcome "missing" events, you need to have continuous recording, which requires an external memory device. Per their online support, "As a rule of thumb, continuous recording of video requires 1.4 GB of storage per camera, per day." In my opinion, continuous recording is required. Anything less and you really aren't getting enough security (especially for the money).
   (4) Service is REQUIRED. You cannot use the archerfish recording capabilities without the service. The box is a rock without using their service.

   So-So:
   (1) Installation. It can be a pain since it is all wired. The wires also have both the camera video wire and power wires together. They are not off-set. This made it difficult to feed through certain places and since I had the main box and the power cord in different directions, I had to have the power cord go past the wire to get to end and connect.
   (2) Zone setup. I didn't pay attention to the instructions for setting up zones and tried to do it on my own. I didn't do it right at all. I ended up with no defined zones. You must have zones defined to set up events. I couldn't delete the zones or reset them or anything. I ended up moving the camera from "camera 1" to "camera 2" to get a "new" setup. I got the zones done correctly so it is setup fine now. I haven't tried to go back to camera 1, but even after shutting down power to both the box and camera, it didn't reset, so I doubt it has reset after moving. Obviously, this is my fault for not reading the directions, but it should be easier to reset the zones. I searched through their support, but couldn't find anything on how to do this.

   Overall, I cannot recommend this product mainly due to the cost. It would be more cost effective to find a outdoor webcam that does not require the service.

   Edited to add: I've attached a video to show the quality in both day and night. The night video was actually recorded about 5pm PST, so it was still light out, but getting dark. You can see the car headlights and the light on the house illuminate. If you have continuous recording, you can export and save your video to your computer. My apologies because there is a wait of 10-15 seconds before the car shows up in the video. Archerfish allows you to save video in minute increments beginning on the minute and my video software did not recognize individual scenes.

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