Milestone is one of the leaders in NVR software. About a year ago, they release a free version call “Go” that’s a limited version of their commercial software. The key advantages to XProtect is the wide variety of device support that is updated regularly with drivers for over 1,000 cameras from almost 100 different manufacturers.The “Go” version has limitations and it’s geared for a home or small business user.
Key limitations include;. 8 cameras maximum. 5 days maximum retention on recorded events. single user version (only one concurrent user connected at anytime). You have to register every year to get a license key. Splash screen reminder that you can upgradeUpgrading to XProtect Essential removes these limitations at the approximate cost of $50 per camera license.There’s two programs, the Management Application and Smart Client. Configuration, for example, adding cameras and setting motion detect events is done in the Management Application.
Viewing the cameras and recorded events are done in the Smart Client. All this runs on Windows only.
Free IOS and Android applications are available to access the cameras remotely.When you launch the Management Application, it starts in their wizard screen which includes the ability add cameras, configure recordings, set motion detectoin and add users.The first thing you will do is add cameras and there’s several options here. I tried Express and Advanced without much luck so I chose Manual.In the manual configurations, you enter in the camera address, port number, userid & password and click Auto-Detect and it finds the appropriate driver. Selecting the driver manually did not work (Next button is grayed out and you can’t proceed). This worked on most cameras available to me, but was not able to add an Axis Q6035-E, even though this specific model was available in the hardware device drop down.Once the cameras are setup, you can setup motion detection for recording. You can motion detect the entire screen or quickly draw boxes of motion detect areas and set sensitivity levels. This worked very well, easy to use, and was effective at capturing motion.While it only supports one user at a time, you can setup multiple user accounts.The available wizards are a great start, but day to day configurations changes are made from the windows style menu tree on the left and is easy to navigate.The Smart Client is their viewer application.
There isn’t a web browser based interface. When you start the application, it will default to a certain view.
In my case, the 4 cameras I added are displayed. From this screen you can click setup and add views (camera layouts) and drag/drop cameras into the sections of the screen you want. You can zoom in using your mouse scroll wheel. As you can see, cameras that are actively recording are noted on the window.Recorded events can be viewed the by clicking the playback tab. Initally it shows the window below with the most recent events and a vertical timeline display on the right. Scrolling the timeline shows the relavent events on the camera display in the middle.There’s also a thumbnail view at the camera level wher you click on a thumbnail to play that event.ConclusionIf you can live with the limitations and the product works with your cameras, free is hard to beat. If you can’t live with the limitations, then the $50/camera price is comparable to ExacqVision Start that I previously reviewed.
The two differ in the way they work in many ways, including the way motion detection is handled, the operating systems supported, web browser vs. Client/server approach. XProtect Go uses a lot of resources, making my quad core server seems slow with just 4 cameras so make sure you have a decent sized server to handle the amount of cameras you intend to use. Also, derived from commercial grade software, it should be a reliable and stable solution.Support comes in the way of community support on their forum. This seemed weak to me as they have not really built up a community like Zoneminder has (previously reviewed).
Milestone Xprotect Essentials
There’s people on the forum complaining that something doesn’t work, but rarely seen helpful responses.More information, specs and download available on Milestone’s website by clicking. I am having an issue with the Bitdefender Internet Security 2015 Firewall allowing Milestone Mobile server to function correctly.
Milestone Xprotect Essential Crack
I am trying to view the Milestone Mobile Server running on my home computer using the Android app Milestone Mobile. If I turn off the Bitdefender firewall, everything works great. I have contacted Bitdefender for help on their firewall with no success- none of their recommended settings solved the issue.I am using port 8082 for the mobile server and mobile app.
In the Bitdefender firewall rules, I am setting the Milestone mobile server service to allow TCP in both directions over port 8082 from my home computer IP address. When I run a port scanner with the Bitdefender temporarily set to allow port scanning, the port is closed. When I turn off the firewall, the port is open and I can access the server from my phone app.If you have experience with Bitdefender, please let me know what I am setting wrong wrt application rules. Otherwise, please recommend a good firewall application to use instead of the one provided with Bitdefender Internet Security 2015. Seems only one of my cameras is supported, albeit with old firmware, although I couldn’t get that to work with dual streams either;“Thank you for your e-mail. As you can see from our list of supported hardware devices only the model DS-2CD2032-I is officially supported only tested and compatible with firmware: 5.0.0 build 130412 and added with the driver: HikVision8x3The other two cameras are not officially supported and we cannot guarantee that they will work correctly and be able to use all of their options with Milestone.”. Not the best customer service!Despite following their instructions to remove the software to reinstall in an attempt to reset the expiration of the trial license.
And it not working.“Dear Richard,In this case there is nothing we can do. When software is installed in 30-day trial mode and is allowed to expire, there is no way to extend that 30-day counter.Have a nice day!”I’m really trying to like this software but without being able to fully trial the features I’m interested in, (I appreciate I had the original 30 days and effectively squandered them), and now coming up against this kind of customer support it’s becoming difficult. And this is where I have found the issue. If I check dual streaming I get no video and now I understand why. Checking again on the web site I found a comparison chart. It would seem the Go version does not support dual streaming.I appreciate this is a limited version but this is a huge over-site I feel, and detracts from the overall usefulness of the software.
This either means no usable web interface, (so why have it), or I have to lower the resolution of the cameras themselves which is annoying as I bought them because of their 1080P resolution.There are other limitations that would encourage people to upgrade without crippling it in this way. Setup the cameras in Milestone management app by clicking on the camera, click on the camera button, click on video and set the check box for dual streaming and set the resolution to your liking, the highest is 704×480. This will use that lower resolution, bitrate (no more than 1K) and frame rate for live viewing, but will still record at max resolution.
I get full frame rate through the browser on all 10 cameras at once. Sure, on the internet it’s slow as you say, but I only have 1.5MP upload speed, so it is what it is, but still very usable. I have setup the XProtect GO now on a Windows 7 computer to act as a server. I basically purchased a small form factor Asus eeeBox and mounted it to my monitor so it is all self contained.
I am driving 8 cameras and it is working quite nice. Indeed, running the Client software on it is slow. But the mobile Android client is working very well. So far, the only concern I have is the fact that I can only store 5 days of data. I am going to assess if it is worth shelling out the extra cash for unlimited storage capacity.I wrote an article on my journey and findings here. I just tried Axxon and wow, with just two 1.3MP 8FPS cameras armed with motion detection I was at 100% CPU on my quad core computer. If you read the fine print, they claim to use the camera’s detectors only for Axis and Sony.
I tried to get it to recognize a couple of Axis cameras from the low end M1011-W to a Q6035-E and no luck. No luck with the ubiquitous Panasonic BL-C230A either. It did recognize various ACTi cams. It was actually working well until I armed the camera which in their terminology means active event recording. As for which process is the culprit, it’s a program called AppHost.exe sucking up my CPU, even without the client running, just the server with two cameras armed. avoid this free app.
It's a stand alone server running Windows 7.The error log states:1/29/2017 2:20:15 PM Error An error occurred: 'Error authenticating user, service is down'. The first thing to know is the computer name of 'NVR' doesn't work. Yet 'NVR001' does. So I'm guessing there's some issue with short computer names.This is also what I did to get it working after 4days of trying things on VMs.Fresh install of Windows 10 Pro 1803. (I did this on a HyperV VM).Pause Windows Updates.Turn UAC to second from the bottom setting.Add current user account to IISIUSRS group.Make sure current user is part of Administrators group.Make sure IIS and Windows Process Activation Service are not checked in Windows Features.Download and run.NET 3.5 SP1.Let.NET 3.5 SP1 download a few more files and let it install. Should say.NET Framework 3.5 (includes.NET 2.0 and 3.0) has installed successfully.Restart.Renamed PC to NVR001.Restarted.Download and run as administrator Milestone XProtect VMS Products 2018 R2 System Installer.exeSuccessful.