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[Timusius]

I just got my DCS-2332L today. I bought it for being the top of the line (For home use) outdoor and wireless enabled D-link camera.

Now.. 3 hours later I'm starting to doubt if this camera is even a serious product.

Installation:
First, I don't care for the D-link cloud, but the installation leaflet and CD ONLY allowed me to go this way.

Well I didn't get to it anyway.
The software on the CD updated itself and after that it was unable to find the camera... Great.

I looked at my router's device list and saw that the camera had gotten an ip, and a few seconds later I was at the configuration page. I had too google the (blank) password first though. D-link didn't bother to put this in the manual.

Configuration:
The configuration page is a mess. Sometimes it will time out, and sometimes the fancy javascripted buttons will fail, and give me some sort of message that some variable was missing or whatever. All over the place the recommendation is to use firefox or safari 5.01 or up.. but thats exactly what Im doing.

On Safari the liveview won't show, because the plugin is disabled. Usually this is a simple matter of clicking the "plugin disabled" and then allowing it to run... but the D-link page has some overlay that does not allow one to click on the message. So using Safari on a mac is not possible.

So I switched to Windows, and things seem to work better there. At least I can use IE where the ePTZ should work. But it does nothing except zoom into the middle of the image. The cursor says "Move mouse to pan" but it does not work. Well, who needs ePTZ anyway.

I play around with the Video Profiles.
Nr. 3 is always greyed out, so I have no clue about why it's there, but at least I can play around with 1 and 2.
Theres a frame size and a view window area... but the view window area always jumps to the same size as the frame size whenever I save, so I have no clue what it's supposed to do.

Next I set up the timezone and everything. But the time on the live image is one hour wrong. Since it's summer I enable daylight saving, but the only result is that the time is now TWO hours wrong.
Using NTP also gives the wrong time, so I was left with setting the time manually.

Next up is motion detection. The nice wizard tells that step 1 is to specify motion detection areas... but since this camera uses some IR sensor there are no areas to set. There's only a % setting, but no indicator of when an event is triggered, so it's impossible to test this without doing a lot of trial and error.

And to do this, I need to make the camera store an image or a video whenever it detects something. So I move on to Event setup. I add a Network storage. First ofcourse with a user/password etc. and later with a simple share with no password etc.
The only result I get is: "Test Error", not a single mentioning of what went wrong.

I decide to go back and try the setup wizard, so I download the newest version from the support page.
I receive a zip archive with a txt-file and a corrupted file named: "unconfirmed 393886.crdownload" ...

Try for yourself:
ftp://ftp.dlink.eu/Products/dcs/DCS-2332L/driver_software/DCS-2332L_sw_revA1_%201-04-02_all_en_20130408%20(SetupWizard).zip

The D-viewcam:
I had a laugh installing this. Without asking or anything it disabled UAC, and prompted me to restart my pc.
LOL, this is 2013... you shouldn't need to disable UAC.
The program manged to keep me interested for about 5 minuttes. Then I uninstalled it. It was crap compared to Zoneminder and my Synology Surveilance station.

As you see, there is pretty much not one thing that wasn't bugged in some way.
I'm actually starting to wonder if D-link even bothered to have a few people test this crap before they let it loose on the market.


Finally... the image quality:
I was honestly expecting it to be better for an HD camera.


All in all in all my years of buying IT-equipment... (I've been through a lot of stuff. I worked as a technichian at an IT-store, and tested out all sorts of stuff.)  this camera is probably the poorest deal I've ever seen. It would probably be ok if the price was cut 75%...

So, is this just because the camera is sort of new on the market?
Should I expect firmware fixes in the next few months or?

I really would like to keep it... but at this price I think I need to return it to avoid the feeling of being robbed. 

Does anyone else have the same feeling?
Are there better options for this price range?

[chamberc]

I definitely don't like D-View CAM because of the UAC issue, but have not experienced the other issues on my 3 2332L's.

You should note, this is just about the lowest end, weatherproofed HD WIFI camera you can buy, so your expectation may be a little too high.  Many of your problems appear to be related to signal strength to the camera.

[RYAT3]

"I play around with the Video Profiles.
Nr. 3 is always greyed out, so I have no clue about why it's there, but at least I can play around with 1 and 2.
Theres a frame size and a view window area... but the view window area always jumps to the same size as the frame size whenever I save, so I have no clue what it's supposed to do."

This is probably because, like the 2230, only 2 of 3 profiles are enabled from the start.  You have to turn on #3.

[Timusius]

You should note, this is just about the lowest end, weatherproofed HD WIFI camera you can buy, so your expectation may be a little too high.  Many of your problems appear to be related to signal strength to the camera.

You're right. My expectations were quite high. But on the other hand why shouldn't they be. Camerawise you can pay 1/3 more and get a GoPro digital camera with great image quality and you can throw it off a mountain, and it will survive, and it has wifi. So overall a GoPro is a "box filled with the same kind of electronics" except the IR illuminator. And here we're dealing with a product that the entire world agrees is the best!

My problems were not related to signal strength. I mostly played around with the camera in wired mode. However, the timeouts etc. dissappeared when I moved to Windows and started using IE.

Still, I'm not able to have the camera do a simple thing as just upload a picture to a network share. Because of this, it fails completely. This feature should have been documented, coded, and tested better. Not just a lame "Test Error".

This is probably because, like the 2230, only 2 of 3 profiles are enabled from the start.  You have to turn on #3.

Yeah, I thought so too. But the the Video profile 3 is running all the time. I can connect to it via VLC/Browser. But I just can't configure it, and I can't find any way to "turn it on".

[cmontyburns]

OK, let's break some of this down.

I just got my DCS-2332L today. I bought it for being the top of the line (For home use) outdoor and wireless enabled D-link camera.

Now.. 3 hours later I'm starting to doubt if this camera is even a serious product.

Installation:
First, I don't care for the D-link cloud, but the installation leaflet and CD ONLY allowed me to go this way.

Well I didn't get to it anyway.
The software on the CD updated itself and after that it was unable to find the camera... Great.

This is an IP camera, meaning it has its own web server onboard, and thus you do not need the installation software at all.  As you found, if you know how to find the camera's assigned IP address you can go right to it in your browser.  The installation guide does mention this.  Of course it only goes into details on using the installer software, but that is not unreasonable.  I did not install the software so I can't vouch for whether it actually works or not -- only that it is not needed.   

I looked at my router's device list and saw that the camera had gotten an ip, and a few seconds later I was at the configuration page. I had too google the (blank) password first though. D-link didn't bother to put this in the manual.

It is on page 24 of the manual.

Configuration:
The configuration page is a mess. Sometimes it will time out, and sometimes the fancy javascripted buttons will fail, and give me some sort of message that some variable was missing or whatever. All over the place the recommendation is to use firefox or safari 5.01 or up.. but thats exactly what Im doing.

On Safari the liveview won't show, because the plugin is disabled. Usually this is a simple matter of clicking the "plugin disabled" and then allowing it to run... but the D-link page has some overlay that does not allow one to click on the message. So using Safari on a mac is not possible.

I use Safari 6 on OS X Mountain Lion and it works fine.  The live video is displayed through the QuickTime plugin.  I have only seen two limitations with this configuration.  First, the motion detection configuration page requires IE (more on this in a second).  And second, the live video sometimes will not load when accessed from outside your LAN.  This problem has been thought to be with QuickTime and not with the D-Link stream per se (there are other threads on this forum about that); however I've seen that with the latest firmware the video loads fine in Safari from both the LAN and WAN.  I do not challenge your experience, rather I'm offering assurances that it really does work and something about your setup or your particular camera may be an outlier.

I play around with the Video Profiles.
Nr. 3 is always greyed out, so I have no clue about why it's there, but at least I can play around with 1 and 2.
Theres a frame size and a view window area... but the view window area always jumps to the same size as the frame size whenever I save, so I have no clue what it's supposed to do.

Not sure here; this works for me.  I don't really understand what the purpose of making them different is, however.

Next I set up the timezone and everything. But the time on the live image is one hour wrong. Since it's summer I enable daylight saving, but the only result is that the time is now TWO hours wrong.
Using NTP also gives the wrong time, so I was left with setting the time manually.

I agree here; it's one hour off.  Some of the daylight savings stuff doesn't work properly, either.  I ended up just setting my cameras to one time zone "over" to get the time right.

Next up is motion detection. The nice wizard tells that step 1 is to specify motion detection areas... but since this camera uses some IR sensor there are no areas to set. There's only a % setting, but no indicator of when an event is triggered, so it's impossible to test this without doing a lot of trial and error.

Here is where the camera requires IE to make full use of the configuration interface.  (This is documented in the manual.)  There is an ActiveX control required for the motion detection page, which you use to "draw" the detection area on the preview image.  The control will try to install automatically using IE; of course you get no option for this on any other browser.  Basically, you cannot use motion detection unless you have IE.

And to do this, I need to make the camera store an image or a video whenever it detects something. So I move on to Event setup. I add a Network storage. First ofcourse with a user/password etc. and later with a simple share with no password etc.
The only result I get is: "Test Error", not a single mentioning of what went wrong.

Yes, this can be frustrating.  The error messages provide no context, and the server setup process is not well-documented.  For e-mail and FTP, I found that some of the fields did not do what you would think they did, and so it took some trial-and-error to get those functions working.  But I can assure you that if you provide the right settings, they do work and you'll get a "test succeeded" message.  At the same time, I found network storage a little tougher to make work -- and even once I got the settings right, and the camera was indeed writing out to my network disk, the test would still return a failure message.  Overall you have to know what you are doing here, but it does work.

I decide to go back and try the setup wizard, so I download the newest version from the support page.
I receive a zip archive with a txt-file and a corrupted file named: "unconfirmed 393886.crdownload" ...

Try for yourself:
ftp://ftp.dlink.eu/Products/dcs/DCS-2332L/driver_software/DCS-2332L_sw_revA1_%201-04-02_all_en_20130408%20(SetupWizard).zip

The D-viewcam:
I had a laugh installing this. Without asking or anything it disabled UAC, and prompted me to restart my pc.
LOL, this is 2013... you shouldn't need to disable UAC.
The program manged to keep me interested for about 5 minuttes. Then I uninstalled it. It was **** compared to Zoneminder and my Synology Surveilance station.

UAC?  This is why I use a Mac.    Can't offer anything here.

Finally... the image quality:
I was honestly expecting it to be better for an HD camera.

On this, it depends on what you were expecting.  The camera will do 720-HD resolution and do so at 30 FPS if your pipe will support it, which is reasonable.  Color is decent.  The picture is pretty soft especially in the middle distance, but I don't think that is unreasonable... we're not talking SLR optics here.  Night vision is pretty poor; not a surprise given the single IR lamp.  Overall I think it is an acceptable picture for the price.  If you were expecting 720P TV quality, then sure, you'll be disappointed.  But I feel the camera certainly meets its HD label.

Should I expect firmware fixes in the next few months or?

My understanding is that D-Link stops actively supporting cameras faster than most of us would like.  But I will say they've released a couple of firmware updates for the camera already.

I really would like to keep it... but at this price I think I need to return it to avoid the feeling of being robbed. 

Does anyone else have the same feeling?
Are there better options for this price range?

No and no. 

I've tried a bunch of consumer-level IP cameras and all of them have shortcomings of one type or another.  And almost (or entirely) nothing at this price point will give you an HD-resolution image, outdoor use, SD card slot, wireless or wired use, NAS support, RTSP streaming, and other features of the camera.  It's not perfect -- I've got a wishlist as long as my arm for the 2332L -- but it's a decent camera in an overall underwhelming lot.

[GaryNY]

A few comments of my own:

These cameras can work pretty well, but they're not for the faint of heart. You have to be patient and pretty good with technology to get everything set up and working well.

... the live video sometimes will not load when accessed from outside your LAN.

I've noticed a variation of this problem... I have multiple cameras, and if I access one of them from outside the local LAN, the "Live Video" screen shows video from another of my cameras.  My DCS-942L's page shows the video feed from my DCS-2310L.

I agree here; it's one hour off.  Some of the daylight savings stuff doesn't work properly, either.  I ended up just setting my cameras to one time zone "over" to get the time right.

My DCS-2332L has this same problem with the time. The auto daylight savings time is 5 hours off. I used manual daylight time instead, and the on-screen time is right, but files are stored on my SD card with a different timestamps than what's shown by the on-screen clock (video seems to be right, but it creates a corresponding log file with the wrong time).  And during the last 5 hours of the day, the log files are stored in a folder with tomorrow's date.  And I think some of the motion detection time options use the wrong time.  I also have a very nearly identical DCS-2310L (just like the DCS-2332L except it has no wifi), the firmware menus all look identical, but that one does not have the daylight savings time problem.  All the times are right on that camera.

Here is where the camera requires IE to make full use of the configuration interface.  (This is documented in the manual.)  There is an ActiveX control required for the motion detection page, which you use to "draw" the detection area on the preview image.  The control will try to install automatically using IE; of course you get no option for this on any other browser.  Basically, you cannot use motion detection unless you have IE.

I agree, several things only work well in IE.  And the setup software wouldn't work on my very old XP system, I had to use a newer Windows 7 system.  This can be frustrating if you try to use other software, things partially work, and you may not realize why.  Only after a bunch of trial and error did I figure out things work better in IE.

The camera will do 720-HD resolution and do so at 30 FPS if your pipe will support it, which is reasonable.

 

720p is about the minimum you can call HD, most digital cameras and even cellphones are higher. Overall I think it does OK. It's definitely clearer than my SD DCS-942L, and even better than my bottom of the line DCS-930L.

Night vision is pretty poor; not a surprise given the single IR lamp.  Overall I think it is an acceptable picture for the price.

For outdoors the IR is weak, but otherwise I think it works OK. It sees well until very late dusk, only when it's completely dark does the image become very dim. I have mine near an outdoor porch light with a motion detector. When that turns on, the camera sees well (one 75W light bulb). This makes up for the weak IR, if anything moves my porch light comes on then the camera can see.  My bare bones DCS-930L with no night mode can't see nearly as well with this light.  So the IR is weak in total darkness, but otherwise the night mode does improve low light visibility.  You could always install a separate IR light.

Other comments:

I can't find any setting for cyclic recording on the SD card. My DCS-2310L doesn't have a setting for this either.  My DCS-2310L deletes old images to make room for new ones, but I just noticed when my DCS-2332L card filled up, it stopped recording. One difference: I only have a 4G card in my DCS-2310L, my DCS-2332L has a 16G card.  I've been thinking of getting a bigger card for my DCS-2310L, but now I'm wondering if this lack of cyclic recording is due to the camera or the different card size.

Each of these cameras has slightly different firmware. Even though these HD models are the "high end" cameras, I think in some ways the SD DCS-942L's firmware is better.  It has a setting to enable or disable cyclic recording on the SD. I can't find this on the HD cameras.  The DCS-942L has PIR sensitivity setting of low, medium, high. These HD cameras only have on/off, and mine are so sensitive I can't use PIR outdoors (and these are supposed to be the outdoor cameras!). If I do they're triggering all day long.  The DCS-942L supports multiple events better than these HD cameras. But in favor of the HD cameras, they allow more choice in how many images are sent for a motion detection event. And I can update the motion detection area remotely (using IE of course), I can only do this from the local LAN on my DCS-942L and DCS-930L cameras.

On these HD cameras, if you try to change a video profile that's not used in any of your events, it seems to not remember your changes.  If you add the profile to an event then you can go back and change the profile and the change will save.  This seems like a bug.  Also, if you change your event setup, alerts may not work right. Images can get stuck, and get sent out during the next motion even instead of the current one. Rebooting seems to get it working right again, so I normally reboot the camera after changing my event setup.  And the ePTZ functions work better in IE, they're only partially functional in Firefox (I haven't tried other browsers).

All of these cameras could use better motion detection for outdoor use.  Using visual detection, you have to put up with a lot of false motion detection alarms due to changing light, even when some real motion of small things might not be detected. And you have to fiddle with the area and sensitivity settings, with the danger you get a flood of alerts if you set them too sensitive.  And with mine, if I use PIR, I get too many false alarms.

Still, despite all these shortcomings, my cameras are doing what I wanted well enough that I've bought more to monitor more areas.

[Timusius]

Thank you both cmontyburns and GaryNY for taking the time to write these informative posts.

I spent some more time playing with the camera but I've now finally decided to ship it back.

I bought the camera to:
1. Run motion detection on it, and let it decide when to upload to my NAS.
    This would include monitoring my driveway to se if anything goes on a night, and just for fun "what are the cats doing at night"-movies.
2. Make interval shots during the day... for the fun of it.. and save them to the SD-card.

And the camera can't do any of these things properly.

Lets just say that I'm "pretty fluent in computer" if you catch my drift. My home LAN is "nerdy": Routers running DD-WRT and Tomato, 2 VLANs, 2 NAS-servers, 3 access points, and a bunch of networked equipment, smart TV, Surround receiver etc.... so I'm used to setting these things up, updating firmware, making things work that require hours of reading, testing and figuring out.

I never got the motiondetection working. Newest Java and IE, Windows 7, compatability mode on/off.. still no result.
(This is 2013... and I simply does not know why D-Link would use such technologies anyway. An interface in HTML5 should be plenty do display video and configure the motion detection, would work without Java, and in pretty much any modern browser.)

I never managed to have the camera upload images or video to my NAS. I experimented with all kinds of hostname/IP, WINS & Workgroup settings the camera had, but it never gave me anything else than "Test error". (And there was never anything uploaded.)

I managed to take some snapshopts, and put them on the SD-card. However the way to set up events is a perfect example of how NOT to present this kind of thing to a user. It's like... with this camera you never really know if anything is going to work, until you wait for a while and see if it did work.

Thus with this uncertainty of "does it work?", and the failure to do the most basic things I wanted it to, I'm not happy about the camera at all. So it's already in its box, on the way back to the store.

For users that are happy with the stupid D-Link cloud it might be ok, but for people who want something a little more serious, this camera simply has too bad firmware. Hardware wise the only error I see is that D-Link stripped it down to only one IR-LED. "Come on.. the camera is meant for outdoors... you know? where it's dark at night?"

It may very well be the best Wifi+HD+Outdoor camera on the market right now... but then I'll just have to wait a few years more.

[chamberc]

Thank you both cmontyburns and GaryNY for taking the time to write these informative posts.

I spent some more time playing with the camera but I've now finally decided to ship it back.

I bought the camera to:
1. Run motion detection on it, and let it decide when to upload to my NAS.
    This would include monitoring my driveway to se if anything goes on a night, and just for fun "what are the cats doing at night"-movies.
2. Make interval shots during the day... for the fun of it.. and save them to the SD-card.

And the camera can't do any of these things properly.

Lets just say that I'm "pretty fluent in computer" if you catch my drift. My home LAN is "nerdy": Routers running DD-WRT and Tomato, 2 VLANs, 2 NAS-servers, 3 access points, and a bunch of networked equipment, smart TV, Surround receiver etc.... so I'm used to setting these things up, updating firmware, making things work that require hours of reading, testing and figuring out.

I never got the motiondetection working. Newest Java and IE, Windows 7, compatability mode on/off.. still no result.
(This is 2013... and I simply does not know why D-Link would use such technologies anyway. An interface in HTML5 should be plenty do display video and configure the motion detection, would work without Java, and in pretty much any modern browser.)

I never managed to have the camera upload images or video to my NAS. I experimented with all kinds of hostname/IP, WINS & Workgroup settings the camera had, but it never gave me anything else than "Test error". (And there was never anything uploaded.)

I managed to take some snapshopts, and put them on the SD-card. However the way to set up events is a perfect example of how NOT to present this kind of thing to a user. It's like... with this camera you never really know if anything is going to work, until you wait for a while and see if it did work.

Thus with this uncertainty of "does it work?", and the failure to do the most basic things I wanted it to, I'm not happy about the camera at all. So it's already in its box, on the way back to the store.

For users that are happy with the stupid D-Link cloud it might be ok, but for people who want something a little more serious, this camera simply has too bad firmware. Hardware wise the only error I see is that D-Link stripped it down to only one IR-LED. "Come on.. the camera is meant for outdoors... you know? where it's dark at night?"

It may very well be the best Wifi+HD+Outdoor camera on the market right now... but then I'll just have to wait a few years more.

All three of mine work great recording to my Synology 4 disk array.

[cmontyburns]

(This is 2013... and I simply does not know why D-Link would use such technologies anyway. An interface in HTML5 should be plenty do display video and configure the motion detection, would work without Java, and in pretty much any modern browser.)

I am 100% with you on this.  Unfortunately, almost every camera in this class still uses ActiveX, Java, or both; and some -- including some other D-Link cameras -- require a special browser plugin for H.264 video.  It's maddening.  That said, you should see the firmware on some of the other cameras out there.  It's downright primitive.  The D-Link firmware on these cameras was a breath of fresh air by comparison, the technology limitations notwithstanding.

[cmontyburns]

I can't find any setting for cyclic recording on the SD card. My DCS-2310L doesn't have a setting for this either.  My DCS-2310L deletes old images to make room for new ones, but I just noticed when my DCS-2332L card filled up, it stopped recording. One difference: I only have a 4G card in my DCS-2310L, my DCS-2332L has a 16G card.  I've been thinking of getting a bigger card for my DCS-2310L, but now I'm wondering if this lack of cyclic recording is due to the camera or the different card size.

I don't have SD cards in mine so I can't check this myself, but -- when you set up a new recording, there is a "cycling recording size" field under "recording settings".  It definitely works for writing to a network disk; are you saying this option is not there when you pick SD Card as the destination?

[GaryNY]

I bought the camera to:
1. Run motion detection on it, and let it decide when to upload to my NAS.
    This would include monitoring my driveway to se if anything goes on a night, and just for fun "what are the cats doing at night"-movies.

From my experience, detecting a cat in the driveway would be very difficult with the motion detection, unless you have the camera near ground level. I have mine 1 1/2 stories off the ground to reduce the risk of somebody damaging the camera. At this height, vehicles are easy to detect, but even people are not a sure thing especially if they're farther out in the driveway.  A cat, you can pretty much forget at this distance.  My DCS-2332L is fairly new so I haven't caught many animals, but my similar DCS-2310L has been running for months (before this wifi camera was available) watching a driveway, and has caught deer, turkeys, a woodchuck, a raccoon, possum, something that looks kind of like a cat but I think it's actually a weasel (not clear enough picture to be sure), birds (which started landing on top of the camera, captured on motion detection video, until I taped some nails with the points facing up on top of the camera), wasps, and at night, the weak IR is very good at illuminating moths and things that fly close by, and spiders building webs. I even got a video of a deer that took off running when lightning struck nearby.  Over time, you can get some interesting photos of what's happening.  Some of the above, like the woodchuck and weasel were by luck, when the camera false triggered on moving clouds or shadows.  Other things like the nocturnal raccoon and possum triggered my porch light, and the camera sees this as motion. Shadows are a big problem for me, my entire monitored area has tree shadows at one part of the day or other that move around in the wind. A sunny, windy day creates many false alarms. Lightning also creates lots of alarms, I have night-time photos that look like day due to lightning. All these events keeps me busy deleting email alerts.  But between these, I have got some good photos of people and things that are really what I wanted the camera to capture.

2. Make interval shots during the day... for the fun of it.. and save them to the SD-card.

This is possible if you use 1 of the events.  Otherwise you can use the record option to save video (continuously between specified hours).

I managed to take some snapshopts, and put them on the SD-card. However the way to set up events is a perfect example of how NOT to present this kind of thing to a user. It's like... with this camera you never really know if anything is going to work, until you wait for a while and see if it did work.

Thus with this uncertainty of "does it work?", and the failure to do the most basic things I wanted it to, I'm not happy about the camera at all. So it's already in its box, on the way back to the store.

You're right the user interface for events is not well designed. Once you figure it out and set it up and test it out to verify your settings, which should not take more than a few days of experimentation (which you may have to do anyway just to verify the motion detection sensitivity under different conditions) you probably won't change it often, so I don't see that as a reason to return the camera.  3 profiles, 5 servers, 5 media, 2 events, and 1 recording that all interact is too complicated (and different from how the DCS-942L does it).  I have no idea why this supports 5 servers and 5 media, when you can't use more than 3 (2 in the events, and 1 for recording). I'm using 1 event to send myself email alerts, 1 to record video of the event, and this uses up all the event settings. This is rather limiting. I have none left to even use PIR along with motion detection. I've sometimes used the recording function too, to have a record just in case motion detection fails to capture something.  But I really prefer motion detection with alerts to a surveillance system that just records. I don't want to have to review hours of video. And I want to know if something happens as soon as possible, instead of when I get home which may be hours or days later. And I like the mobile app so I can check on things anywhere, anytime.

I can't explain why you couldn't set up the motion detection area. I have no problem as long as I use IE, and on some of my cameras, but not this one, am on the same LAN. Maybe your complex home network is blocking some traffic?

I should also correct one other thing... it is possible to select whether to overwrite old data on the SD card or stop recording when full.  But this is only selectable via the MyDlink website. It's not in the camera's own setup menus, which I thought covered everything

[GaryNY]

I don't have SD cards in mine so I can't check this myself, but -- when you set up a new recording, there is a "cycling recording size" field under "recording settings".  It definitely works for writing to a network disk; are you saying this option is not there when you pick SD Card as the destination?

As I just replied on another post, I found it. I have settings for the size of each recording, but managing the whole SD card is different. The camera's own menus don't have a selection for what happens when the card fills, but there is a setting for this available through the mydlink.com website (which has far fewer settings than the full menus on the camera). 

[cmontyburns]

As I just replied on another post, I found it. I have settings for the size of each recording, but managing the whole SD card is different. The camera's own menus don't have a selection for what happens when the card fills, but there is a setting for this available through the mydlink.com website (which has far fewer settings than the full menus on the camera). 

I'm afraid I still don't understand. 

Under the settings on the camera interface (i.e. not via MyDLink) for recordings, there is a field called "total cycling recording size".  Per the manual:

"Please input a HDD volume between 1MB and 2TB for recording space. The recording data will replace the oldest record when the total recording size exceeds this value. For example, if each recording file is 6MB, and the total cyclical recording size is 600MB, then the camera will record 100 files in the specified location (folder) and then will delete the oldest file and create new file for cyclical recording."

Which is to say, if the recording you are setting up goes to your SD card, then in that field you would put the size of your card.  Once the total of all the recordings equals that size, it will start deleting old ones.  i.e. the card will never fill.

Is that not what you are looking for?

[GaryNY]

I'm afraid I still don't understand.  

Under the settings on the camera interface (i.e. not via MyDLink) for recordings, there is a field called "total cycling recording size".  Per the manual:

"Please input a HDD volume between 1MB and 2TB for recording space. The recording data will replace the oldest record when the total recording size exceeds this value. For example, if each recording file is 6MB, and the total cyclical recording size is 600MB, then the camera will record 100 files in the specified location (folder) and then will delete the oldest file and create new file for cyclical recording."

Which is to say, if the recording you are setting up goes to your SD card, then in that field you would put the size of your card.  Once the total of all the recordings equals that size, it will start deleting old ones.  i.e. the card will never fill.

Is that not what you are looking for?

OK, now I think I understand what you're saying. I do have that option, under "Recording", but I think this applies only when using the recording option, not for other things saved by motion detection events.  I took this to mean this is how much of my SD card can be used by the recording option. I had 8GB entered there from when I had recording turned on (I have a 16GB SD card).  I thought 8GB would be used by continuous recording, and the other 8GB would be left for motion events. Maybe this isn't true.

Recently, I didn't have recording turned on. I had event 1 sending me email via motion detection, and event 2 saving video to SD via PIR (which triggers far too often).  The PIR events eventually filled up my entire 16GB, and nothing more was saved.  This while I had that recording option set to 8GB, but recording also turned off.

There's these completely separate setting on the MyDlink website camera controls (on the settings tab, right under the More Settings divider) that seem to prevent motion events from filling the card:

When SD card is full:

• Continue recording and overwrite the oldest video.
• Stop recording and notify me (if notification is enabled).

Maybe if you don't have an SD card the website doesn't show this?

For whatever reason this option doesn't appear anywhere in the camera's own setup menus (but on my DCS-942L, the camera setup menu does have an option like this).

Before I found this, I formatted my SD card to clear it out. It's going to take a while before it fills up again to confirm if this option works.  But my DCS-2310L was already set to continue recording, and it is doing that.

[cmontyburns]

Ah!  I think we are synced up now.  You had originally said you wanted cycle management for "recording", and my mind immediately went to what this camera calls a recording, i.e. the scheduled stuff.  I wasn't thinking about event-driven recording. 

Thanks for the info about the options through MyDLink.  I would not have known about those, but then I don't have my cameras connected up to the service.  It doesn't really offer anything I want (unless there are more hidden settings out there!) and it adds a layer of security risk to these already poorly-secured cameras.  (Come to think of it, I should add my security gripes to the wishlist thread.)

Thanks for the dialog.  I'm happy to see a little activity on this forum.  Wish there were more -- there is lots to talk about with these cameras!