General > General Technical Chat

Cameras for home monitoring

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wraper:
Also think about choosing ecosystem as a whole. Generally you don't want to buy cameras and NVR from different brands. Often you can get it work together but it may be pain in the ass to get it configured or you may lose part of functionality. You may also want door intercom and indoor station all in the same ecosystem. It may be pain in the ass if you want something from different manufacturer added later.

beanflying:
Unless you like hammering your NAS just don't go down that path! Plenty of glowing (falsely) reviews on YouTube without any consideration to what you do to the drive life or performance of the NAS when doing double duty. If you have a serious NAS and can live with the other downsides then it works well.

Earlier in the year I picked up 4 cameras and an NVR eBay auction: #394407728602 The Cameras run internal batteries and will take an SD card as a backup to the NVR if you are keen. I have Solar panels on two of them and two mains supplied for charging. This suits my current situation over running a POE/Wired solution.

Overall simple setup and range is 'ok' at up to 20-30m from the base station through a few walls and some tin.

Added a WD 1Tb SSD internally which worked straight up so don't buy theirs or feel you need spinning rust.

Software on the NVR works well and external monitoring is where it gets a little mixed.

The PC software I run is EseeCloud which in spite of it's name actually pulls the data off the SSD and NVR as I am only pinging my home network address.

The Mobile Apps overall SUCK as they randomly stop sending push notifications and also rely of sending video and data via random servers. I have actually uninstalled them.

In conjunction to this I do run Door and Gate sensors that do have reliable push notifications so if it seems out of the ordinary I can login and check the cameras and unless someone comes in over the fence I think I am well covered.

Anyway just some potted thoughts on what I got in Oz that works.

** Should have mentioned too it runs it's own WiFi network which is hidden and a wired LAN to my main Network for access.

LaserSteve:
Check your attic if your placing cameras under the eaves. I found  perpendicular 2x6s, long edge up, capping the sills at the edge of the roof.  We can have Tornados here, so the 2x6s reinforce the roof junction.

Right angle drill head, parachute cord,  and fiberglass flexible pole  resulted in adding  80 USD to the mission as my flabby body cannot get in tight to the shallow  pitched roof, and the roofing nails hurt your back and neck. So I drilled the 2x6s and probed from the outside to find my passageway. That was a PITA.

Summer heat, crawling in an attic with no floors,  small hatches,  wasps, lack of suitable assistant, and fiberglass insulation itch can be factors.  Pulling POE in a modern house  really wasn't a problem. The last half meter was the problem. 

Expect to need spray foam or RTV if things can get wet, the cameras generally come with seals for the POE junction to the short jumper extending from the camera.

In my case the POE can rub on sheet metal, so split loom tubing went around the POE at the sill and through the eave.  Probably overkill, but good practice.

Hopefully 1 TB SSD is in my future, but "spinning rust" was far cheaper at the time.

Good cameras come with template stickers. However the Amcrest self tapping screws were not for sheet steel,  I replaced the screws with #6 self tapping sheet metal screws, stainless steel.

In three years of operation in farmland, I have cleaned the domes twice,  and repositioned  the ccd board inside a dome once on a camera on the windward side. Outdoor side is low maintenance.

  We have serious winters here, but the internal heat from the IR leds and camera core has been sufficient to deter fogging and icing.

Amcrest's Camera  AGC drives the IR  Leds and receives an evaluation of "Awesome".

Creepy neighbor used his cell phone camera, according to another neighbor, to map the IR pattern.  My upper  cameras are aimed somewhat parallel to the house walls, so there are no sneak paths, but have plenty of angle left to cover out in the yard and 20 meters to the local road.  The cameras are adjusted not to see in my windows, but do view the house walls and  windows.

Something to think about if using OEM /experimenter grade camera is the day/night transition.

My cameras have a RCA plug with bias for an electret mic and a contact closure input   for a standard NC sensor. The DVR supports audio over Ethernet from the camera, the contact closures, and scheduling for each camera if needed.   Also have SD card for stand alone.

My neighbor was harassing , teasing and perhaps extorting  my late, elderly Mom. Key word " Was".

  Net cost 700 USD, spread out over time. Plenum POE cable that meets fire regs for the attic  was a major cost. That does not include the LCD monitor. I caught a closeout sale for the cameras.

The Homeowners Insurance offers a discount for fire alarms, Co2 alarms, and security systems. Not much, but it will offset some of the cost per year.

RFI on the  over the air TV nixed using un-shielded  Ethernet  cable for two attic runs.  Our TV antenna is a massive YAGI inside the attic roof with a parallel run of 300 Ohm Twinlead to the pre-amp. I suspect the actual emitted RFI is very low.

Make sure you can export the video in a common format with stills.

Cloud Option added 19.95. a month for very  limited storage. Decided it was cheaper long term to store on site.

Steve

fourtytwo42:
Try this site https://www.jvsg.com/calculators/cctv-lens-calculator/ to sort out your fields of view and resolution, no good having camera's that do not provide sufficient quality for evidence purposes!
I use Reolink here in the UK, good price/performance, good range of products and compatible with just about any 3rd party software. Also manages remote access without the security problems of port forwarding BUT does call home, just a little!
I found Hikvision software simply did not work and that along with there reported security issues and higher cost was enough to put me off.

soldar:

--- Quote from: AG6QR on December 25, 2023, 05:58:38 am ---I have almost exactly that sort of thing, except with just five cameras instead of eight. A hardwired network is faster, more reliable, and harder to jam than WiFi.  If it's not too inconvenient to run the wires, hardwired is the way to go.  You've got to run power anyway.

I'm using Amcrest cameras, model IP5M-B1186EW-28MM.  They have a web interface, so I can watch them from a web browser in my home.  If I configured the right port forwarding in my router, I could get at them from anywhere on the web, but that seems to open more opportunity for privacy violation than I prefer.  I don't use any cloud storage for my cameras.

The cameras are set up to detect motion, and save video clips whenever they detect motion.  They can save the clips locally on the camera's microSD card, or (what I do) they can be set to copy video files to a local computer (or to the cloud).  I have mine copy the video clips to a small linux computer that's running a web server.  The linux computer then publishes the clips on a password-protected web page, using apache running on that same linux computer.  I shrink the video resolution down for a quick preview, and then also save the full high-resolution original clips.  So at any time, from anywhere, I can watch all the motion detection events detected in the previous month, or watch a sped-up concatenation of all the motion detected on a particular day, or see a real-time instant snapshot from each of the cameras.  Getting all this working involved writing some fairly simple scripts to copy files around on the web server machine.  There's a basic .php script that goes out and grabs the instant snapshots and displays them when I ask for them.

Previously, I had used Raspberry Pis to handle the cameras and motion detection.  I had purchased a housing that was marketed as a dummy camera, then I hacked the Raspberry Pi and camera into the housing. The Amcrest cameras are nicer in many ways, with higher resolution cameras, built-in infrared lighting, and a nicer looking compact weathertight housing.  And they were less fussy to set up.

Consider putting your POE switches on a UPS, to keep the cameras going during a power outage.
--- End quote ---
I agree on hardwire. WIFI is too easy to jam either deliberately or not.

Motion detection is strictly for indoors and closed windows. Anything outdoors or through windows will trigger it. Outside light changes, car reflections, etc.

My cameras are all on the outside so no privacy issues but they record 24/7 to a separate NVR. Make sure you use special HDD for NVR.

In any case, I would not connect that LAN to the internet, Better to isolate it and VPN into it from outside.

You can set up a really cheap system for very little but for me it is a given that I do not trust ANY camera. None.

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