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3xLogic VX VT 56
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PRODUCT TEST
3xLogic - VX-VT-56 Thermal Bullet Camera
What’s in the box? Thermal bullet camera Torx wrench Drilling template RJ45 protective cover Wall fixings & screws Quick manual
The 3xLogic VX-VT-56 is an IP66 bullet style external thermal camera with a 56° horizontal field of view. It is capable of detecting scene intrusion and creating alarms regardless of light levels and weather conditions
The 3xLogic VX-VT-56 is an IP66 bullet style external thermal camera with a 56° horizontal field of view. It has motion detection including video content analysis and temperature alarm capabilities built in. It is capable of detecting scene intrusion and creating alarms regardless of light levels and weather conditions. A variety of specialist analytics is included.
Getting started
The camera is PoE powered with an optional 12v DC input. The flying lead breaks out into an RJ45 network connector, a power jack, a BNC analogue test output connector and a 7-core cable for Audio In & Out, Alarm input and Alarm output plus associated ground connections.
The integral mount can be used for most orientations and has three fixing holes with the lead fed out through the centre of the base.
An analogue video output is available from the BNC connector on the flying lead, but this is for test purposes only as it does not show the full screen image and removes the OSD text.
The camera uses DHCP by default but does not appear to have any discovery software readily available, though this will likely be accessible through the 3xLogic website or technical support. The camera can be accessed with all major browsers but appears to be optimised for Chrome. At first connection the camera requires a new administrator password to be entered and enforces a strong combination of characters (more than 8 and at least 3 types). Once entered you must then log in using this new password and the camera’s web page is then displayed. This is a conventional camera control screen layout with controls to the left-hand side and below the viewing window.
Menu options
The VX-VT-56 browser window has a Setup button that opens a new window showing the 3xLogic configuration menu. This is a conventional set of drop-down lists arranged at the left-hand side with options opening up to the right. These are listed with content as follows:
Video & Audio: Video, OSD, ROI, Audio, Smart Stream, Privacy Mask configuration.
Camera: Profile, Image Enhancement.
Network: Status, Settings, Auto IP, ONVIF, UPnP, DDNS, FTP, SMTP, RTSP information.
Trigger Action: Action Rules, Image Transfer, Relay Output.
Events: Event Rules, Schedule Motion, System Temperature, Alarm Input, Thermal Temperature Alarm.
Record: Management, Storage.
Vigil All in One: Status, Site Information, Maintenance.
VCA: Enable, Rules, Counters, Calibration, Classification, Burnt-In Annotation, Top Notification, HTTP Notification, Tamper, Advanced, Licence.
Security: IP Address Filter, RTSP Authentication, IEEE802.1x, HTTPS, Certificates, Service.
System: Information, Diagnostics, Configuration Backup, Firmware Update, D&T Settings, DST Setup, User management, Language, Factory Reset, Restart, Open Source, Plug-in.
The on-screen time & date display only has options for American style date formats of mm/dd/yyyy or yy-mm-dd. The time can be synchronised to a PC, manually set or linked to NTP with a range of 5 US servers or a
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manually entered alternative.
Up to 16 privacy masking zones can be used and these appear as black rectangles.
Motion detection can be allocated to the whole screen area or up to 4 motion zones can be set.
A video noise reduction option is given that blurs the low-resolution pixels and smooths the edges which reduces image detail but does reduce bandwidth requirements.
By default, the image has hot items showing as increasing levels of white, alternatively these can be towards black or one of a range of 7 falsecolour settings although there was not a lot of variation in these.
An internal 128GB SD card is available in model numbers with the suffix “S128”. This can be used for alarm recordings and during communication loss (assuming PoE or 12v supply is maintained). These recordings can be set to auto-delete after 1, 7, 15 days or 1 month or never, overwrite is not set by default so if not enabled, such recordings would need to be managed.
VCA “Rules” include; Presence Polygon, Presence Line, Enter, Exit, Appear, Disappear, Stopped, Dwell, Direction, Removed, Abandoned, Tailgating, and Counting Line.
Performance
The Main stream, channel 1, has options for 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 and can be encoded as H.264, H.265 or MJPEG. Channel 2 is just 320 x 240 with the same encoding options. Channel 3 is 320 x 240 at MJPEG only. The camera has an uncooled Sun-Safe thermal sensor with 320 x 240 pixels so there is no image improvement noticeable at the higher resolution value. With the stream set to the default level the on-screen display including Time & Date is quite unclear. This can be improved by increasing the stream resolution to 640 x 480 and while this does not change the thermal image the text becomes much clearer. However, this could be seen to increase the storage requirement and bandwidth by around 33%.
Maximum frame rate for all channels is 9 fps and a quality setting of 1 to 10 allows some variation in image detail.
The motion detection has a range of settings to provide basic motion sensing or with VCA to provide more specific functionality.
The device can be set to alarm if the temperature in the scene exceeds or drops below a defined threshold value. Alternatively, the rate of temperature change increasing or decreasing within a time period can be used to trigger an alarm. An on-screen display of Max, Avg, and Min temperatures can be turned on and provides a screen overlay of temperatures within the field of view. This display in the top left corner could not be re-positioned. Any privacy masks set will not impact the temperature sensing that is active for the whole scene. Alarm handling will be dependant on the VMS used but a local relay output is also possible.
The specification sheet gives figures for Detection, Recognition and Identification of a Human subject as 76.2, 45.7 and 15.2 metres respectively. Detection and Observation would perhaps be more appropriate figures as Recognition and Identification of an individual would not be possible using a thermal image. A human target at 15 metres from the camera resulted in a screen height of approximately 20%.
Detection range
Conclusion
A very compact thermal bullet camera that is straightforward to install and set up.
8.0 out of 10
NOTE: This PSI Product Test was carried out by an independent third party, not editorial staff. The manufacturer had no input in the review or the final result
