Reviewing the AMCREST 4k outdoor bullet poe camera

by

I have a number of PoE IP cameras outside the house and I have trialled budget brands including S3VC to more premium end Unifi G3-Pros.

The AMCREST IP8M model had a deal on Amazon so I thought I’d give it a go. My video of the unboxing and quick install can be found HERE on YouTube but in short, for the money a really good camera and I was installed and away within 15 minutes.

You will need the default username and password of admin:admin to access the camera’s control panel. You will be prompted to change this when you login for the first time. From there everything is really intuitive and easy to follow.

RTSP path: rtsp://user:pwd@ip:port/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0


Note you should add a new USER in the camera control panel and make sure it has read-only access to the live stream.

EASE OF INSTALL: 8/10. Demerits for a large hole needed for the RJ45 connector and redundant power connector. I also had to contact support for the RTSP path.

BUILD QUALITY: 9/10. Demerit as above.

IMAGE QUALITY: 10/10. Now also viewing at night the quality is good. The wide angle is great.

USER INTERFACE: 10/10. Very neat and has all the features I’d expect and more. I’m only scratching the surface of functionality and it looks like the camera is designed to join a much bigger eco system if you choose.

Whilst I am connecting this to Shinobi for CCTV monitoring, Amcrest provide a paid for cloud service and the admin control also appears to allow direct mounting for a NAS. I haven’t trialled these features yet.

Export a CSV from Excel with quote delimiters

by

I often need to export from Excel to a CSV and Excel cannot naively export with quote delimiters.

This handy macro does the trick:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291296/en-us

Sub QuoteCommaExport()
' Dimension all variables.
Dim DestFile As String
Dim FileNum As Integer
Dim ColumnCount As Integer
Dim RowCount As Integer

' Prompt user for destination file name.
DestFile = InputBox("Enter the destination filename" _
& Chr(10) & "(with complete path):", "Quote-Comma Exporter")

' Obtain next free file handle number.
FileNum = FreeFile()

' Turn error checking off.
On Error Resume Next

' Attempt to open destination file for output.
Open DestFile For Output As #FileNum

' If an error occurs report it and end.
If Err <> 0 Then
MsgBox "Cannot open filename " & DestFile
End
End If

' Turn error checking on.
On Error GoTo 0

' Loop for each row in selection.
For RowCount = 1 To Selection.Rows.Count

' Loop for each column in selection.
For ColumnCount = 1 To Selection.Columns.Count

' Write current cell's text to file with quotation marks.
Print #FileNum, """" & Selection.Cells(RowCount, _
ColumnCount).Text & """";

' Check if cell is in last column.
If ColumnCount = Selection.Columns.Count Then
' If so, then write a blank line.
Print #FileNum,
Else
' Otherwise, write a comma.
Print #FileNum, ",";
End If
' Start next iteration of ColumnCount loop.
Next ColumnCount
' Start next iteration of RowCount loop.
Next RowCount

' Close destination file.
Close #FileNum
End Sub