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POE over wireless is the right move. I have used both, and charging/changing batteries on unpowered ones is aggravating.
This guy has some good 4K camera kit with NVR over POE reviews, he compares them side by side.
He recommends Reolink in this video, but take note they are not Onvif compliant, so you would need to purchase more Reolink cameras to expand the system above the 4 in the kit.
If you are primarily interested in smart phone notifications triggered from motion, keep in mind that pixel monitored motion detection is not an exact science, and that is what 99% of these systems use. False notifications are the norm.
I have a hybrid system with PIR/mag/glass break sensors that are hard wired into dry contact inputs on my NVR. Sensor activity then sets up macros for the cameras, such as frame rate, position, etc....., and are tied to my phone notifications. But that is $$$$ to do it that way.
I am sorry but could you explain what is onvif is? Is that like plug and play on the computer?
Quote:
Originally Posted by z28lt1
To address a few things posted and a few other thoughts:
- Higher MP is only better to a point. Generally, the higher mp cameras do poorly in low light situations. If you have plenty of light, by all means go 4K. If you want good low light shots for nighttime with little light, you probably need to go down. Some of the best IP cameras for night are 2MP. I compromised and have mostly 5MP cameras (and a 4 somewhere in there). I find at 5MP I get plenty of detail in day, and seemed to be better than the 8MP camera I tried. Note, there is more to all of this than MP. Sensor size and other things matter as well, so this is a general rule of thumb, and not all 4MP cameras will be better than all 8MP cameras in low light.
It's dark in the back yard and side yard and also front door. I have light motion detector front of garage so i assume that is good enough to light up for the camera?
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- As for storage, you have to figure out what you really want to do with it. Are you planning on recording 24x7? Or only when motion is detected? Are you planning to watch these like regular TV and want 24-30fps? Or are you good that for security purposes 12-18fps (or even less) is just fine, even though the video will be jerky -- you'll record what you need. For recording, I do a mix. I have the camera on the driveway and by the cars rolling 24x7. I have most of the doors recording on motion only. If you do motion only, and/or a low frame rate, storage isn't an issue. If you have a handful of 4k cameras rolling 24x7 (many NVRs drop 4k cameras to 15fps anyway) you'll want a decent amount of storage. Swapping the hard drive to a bigger one is usually easy though.
I plan to have front of the house on 24/7 and rest on motion recording only.
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- I highly recommend getting something with some intelligent motion detection. If you are just tracking motion, the spider webs at night (spiders seem to love the night LEDS) the heave rain at night, birds flying in frame, etc will all trigger the motion events. You can eliminate some of them with better intelligence on motion tracking.
is this software base or hardware that i would need to make sure have it?
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- Buying a kit is easiest. However, don't be afraid to mix and match if you need to (as long as it is compatible). Some areas you may want a camera with better daylight details. Some night. Some you may want a wider angle lens, some a more narrow. If it's all similar, kit will be best.
When looking at amazon i honestly do not see camera angle, do i need to download the manual to get that information?
I am sorry but could you explain what is onvif is? Is that like plug and play on the computer?
It's dark in the back yard and side yard and also front door. I have light motion detector front of garage so i assume that is good enough to light up for the camera?
I plan to have front of the house on 24/7 and rest on motion recording only.
is this software base or hardware that i would need to make sure have it?
When looking at amazon i honestly do not see camera angle, do i need to download the manual to get that information?
- ONVIF is a standard that lets IP cameras and security devices communicate. So, similar to plug and play (although it's not usually that easy, sometimes you have to change some setting on the camera unless it is a certain "class" of ONVIF) -- but, in general if you have an ONVIF NVR, you can attach ONVIF cameras form other manufacturers. Note that what you can do with those cameras does not always meet the full camera specifications. It may or may not be able to handle advanced features, such as adjusting motion
detection sensitivity and such.
-Your garage motion light should provide enough light for a camera.
- For intelligent motion detection \mostly, each camera manufacturer does their own thing. However, it is part of the camera. Many NVRs will deal with the camera's motion function, but you may need to set it up in the camera. One reason it may be better to match the cameras (at least some of them) with the NVR to make setup and compatibility easier.
-For the camera angle, it may be listed as "field of view", or they may just say something like 3.6mm lens (focal length). In the case of focal length, lower number is a wider, less zoomed view, and a larger number is a narrower, but more "zoomed" view, as long as the sensor sizes are equal. If you have different sensor sizes and different focal lengths, there's a little math.
After doing some research for the last 3 hours and watching video's on youtube about cameras reviews, wifi vs wire etc it seems like best thing to go with is POE. What i am still confused about is 3mb, 4mb, 5mb, 12mb really make a difference especially at night?
POE is the way to go. Buy 75-100ft cat6 cables on Amazon, and you can put a camera anywhere you can run the cable. I have my NVR in my closet, and I ran the cables up the wall to the attic. The cables run through the attic and pop out of the eaves on the corners of the house. Running the cables myself wasn't that hard...
I fed the cable from the outside into the hole I drilled under the eaves. Then I used a long wire with a hook on the end to grab the wire in the wall space and pull it through the wall. If you're pushing the wire from outside into the attic and can grab by hand in the attic, even better. For feeding the wires down the wall into the closet, I drilled a hole in the wall in my closet, put a flashlight in the hole, and looked for the light in the wall void while in the attic. I dropped the wire down the wall and used the wire hook to pull it out the hole in the wall.
I have 3MP cameras with 4mm lenses that suit my needs just fine. Anything around 2.8mm should be "fish eye", and cameras around 12mm would zoom about 80 feet to see a road or mailbox. There are YouTube videos that compare lens sizes. I also have a Hikvision "Colorvu" camera that sees full color at night. Watch a YouTube video about it, it's pretty amazing. There are 2 or 3 brands that have that feature, and I think it will become more available.
Try to find an NVR that supports "ONVIF". Then you can buy several brands and plug-and-play.
POE is the way to go. Buy 75-100ft cat6 cables on Amazon, and you can put a camera anywhere you can run the cable. I have my NVR in my closet, and I ran the cables up the wall to the attic. The cables run through the attic and pop out of the eaves on the corners of the house. Running the cables myself wasn't that hard...
I fed the cable from the outside into the hole I drilled under the eaves. Then I used a long wire with a hook on the end to grab the wire in the wall space and pull it through the wall. If you're pushing the wire from outside into the attic and can grab by hand in the attic, even better. For feeding the wires down the wall into the closet, I drilled a hole in the wall in my closet, put a flashlight in the hole, and looked for the light in the wall void while in the attic. I dropped the wire down the wall and used the wire hook to pull it out the hole in the wall.
I have 3MP cameras with 4mm lenses that suit my needs just fine. Anything around 2.8mm should be "fish eye", and cameras around 12mm would zoom about 80 feet to see a road or mailbox. There are YouTube videos that compare lens sizes. I also have a Hikvision "Colorvu" camera that sees full color at night. Watch a YouTube video about it, it's pretty amazing. There are 2 or 3 brands that have that feature, and I think it will become more available.
Try to find an NVR that supports "ONVIF". Then you can buy several brands and plug-and-play.
Thank you for that detail reply. The way my house is designed, it appears my choice of running a cable to the attic is very limited. It appears i only have 2 choice in terms of running the cable 1) use poe hub that i can install in the garage and run the wire from it to the bedroom where i can plug it in to the house network. I can also set my NVR in the attic and run the cable to it from my router or 2) drill hole in to the attic outside as I do not see any attic access to the outside of the house.
Here photo of my house. on the front i plan on putting 1 camera where front door is and on the each side of the front of the house and then on the side of house going all around.
some picture some how got uploaded on the sided, sorry i got no clue how to fix it.
Last edited by looker009; 06-13-2020 at 10:17 PM..
I have begun assembling/deploying a home surveillance system. I'm going with IP cameras, so they can be replaced independant of any package/pre-bought system. Also-grow-as-you-go. In one case I'm using a camera on a 15 foot USB cable, as that provides power like PoE and the data cable, but doesnt consume wifi bandwidth to record (you use bandwidth when you view the LiveStream, however).
I started with a 7w android aarch64 based system, but I may give in and go with a 65w Intel x86 based system.
If you get deep into the camera specs, it is entirely possible to replace lenses or the whole camera as your needs change. For instance, you may want infrared (IR) cameras on like your nighttime exterior cameras so they can operate in low light or NO LIGHT. But the red glow of IR LEDs will make their appearance obvious.
A higher end camera will have "auto-iris" so the camera can adjust for night/dawn/noon/dusk conditions.
I'm finding that 720p@24fps seems fine, tho as a poster mentioned above if it is your expectation to capture faces in motion, license plates, and even audio recording you may have to go higher. higher means more bandwidth, less cameras, more storage burden. My cameras do 1080p/30-60fps but that seems unneccesary.
I refuse to have any cloud-subscription-service where someone else has my footage and I have have to pay them to get it off their cloud server, and you have to pay a monthly fee. My system is all-internally-hosted.
A door-bell system like "the Ring" seems ideal for motion-detected, but in other cameras where its the long-shot-no-audio-no-motion-detection is seems like continuous recording is the way to go. I'm still finding my way on cameras inside the house...
In regards to footage retention, you may say "oh well it has to overwrite the files every 7 days" because of how much storage it consumes. But I ask you in a realistic way: what if your neighbor goes on vacation for 2 weeks, comes back and says "I was robbed, did you see anything?!?" oh jeez let me check what I have for "May 30, 2020 around 6pm..." I'm aiming for 30 day retention, starting with 2TB HDD and see how it goes.
Lastly, you know how video sharing sites (youtube, vimeo, whatever) make previews of videos where they show an animated Thumbnail? I found out that ffmpeg can make these programatically, there's a lot of tricks/techniques to make it seek for changed frames/light/action, and generate Thumbnails, and even email you summaries or place them in a new directory.
Good luck. in my opinion whatever system you build or buy your needs WILL CHANGE so the system will change over the years and your early purchase may now be labeled "junk". I consider CCTV + RGB cables + 420-line sony CCD + DVR devices just old tech, but thats what most your banks+liquor+retail stores use. 4k cameras seem 'decadent' but maybe it will be the bare minimum in 2022+
Only camera we have now is the honeywell doorbell camera. Honeywell is about the only company I trust now for this sort of stuff. We have friends that are associated with certain government agencies who know this stuff, and they all say Honeywell or Raytheon. Everything else is basically already being hacked by the dark web weirdos. I didn’t think that was true, until we switched over from Fios to Comcast Xfinity and started getting notices on the app of suspicious IP addresses trying to gain access to our cameras. These IP addresses were from places like Iran, Russia (a big one), England, US, all over the place (even saw one from Fiji). We ditched the cameras. Now, granted, these weren’t exactly Pentagon grade cameras, but they were about $150 a piece from Linksystem something of another. On any given week, we had about 150 blocked attempts. It started to interfere with our own ability to use them too.
My suggestion - make sure you understand all of the coding and security settings on your camera, router, and whatnots. If you don’t understand that sort of stuff (like how to port, and VPN and that type of lingo), then budget to hire someone to come and set it up for you correctly. If we ever decide to do it again - we’ll be going pro. Lesson learned by me - it may seem like an easy DIY, but there is a whole other layer or two to get it right and make sure it is safe.
Thank you for that detail reply. The way my house is designed, it appears my choice of running a cable to the attic is very limited. It appears i only have 2 choice in terms of running the cable 1) use poe hub that i can install in the garage and run the wire from it to the bedroom where i can plug it in to the house network. I can also set my NVR in the attic and run the cable to it from my router or 2) drill hole in to the attic outside as I do not see any attic access to the outside of the house.
Here photo of my house. on the front i plan on putting 1 camera where front door is and on the each side of the front of the house and then on the side of house going all around.
some picture some how got uploaded on the sided, sorry i got no clue how to fix it.
I'm assuming that is what they call stucco? Everyone around here has siding or brick. Either way, the wood at the top (around the gutters) is likely where you'd drill a hole to access the attic and mount a camera right by the hole. Go up in the attic, do some measuring, and see if there are any spots in the eaves where you can put a wire through a whole and it will come into the attic, instead of hitting something solid.
Another option is to run wire down the eaves to an area where you do have access. I have a camera I mounted that has about 30 ft of wire going across the eaves, and I painted it the same color of the house trim so it isn't noticeable. There are a handful of ways to mount cable securely to a wall.
You want the cameras as low as possible (first story gutter height), so you're more likely to see faces. Some people throw cameras up on their 2-story roof, and they're looking down at everything. You can tell because their footage is usually terrible.
I'm assuming that is what they call stucco? Everyone around here has siding or brick. Either way, the wood at the top (around the gutters) is likely where you'd drill a hole to access the attic and mount a camera right by the hole. Go up in the attic, do some measuring, and see if there are any spots in the eaves where you can put a wire through a whole and it will come into the attic, instead of hitting something solid.
Another option is to run wire down the eaves to an area where you do have access. I have a camera I mounted that has about 30 ft of wire going across the eaves, and I painted it the same color of the house trim so it isn't noticeable. There are a handful of ways to mount cable securely to a wall.
You want the cameras as low as possible (first story gutter height), so you're more likely to see faces. Some people throw cameras up on their 2-story roof, and they're looking down at everything. You can tell because their footage is usually terrible.
Yes it's stucco. I want to mount cameras around max 10 feet as anything higher seem to defeat the purpose of the cameras like you mentioned. Another issue is getting to the outside wall is hard as there many pipes in the attic.
started getting notices on the app of suspicious IP addresses trying to gain access to our cameras. These IP addresses were from places like Iran, Russia (a big one), England, US, all over the place (even saw one from Fiji).
Seems like a firewall issue. If your cameras only communicate internally to a DVR or server then they should never be exposed to the internet.
Or, if your cameras were communicating to the internet the firewall must have opened ports and the cameras at risk of attack.
I use wyze they do everything any other camera can do and I paid $20 bucks each. It gives 1080p with 110 degree FOV, 8x zoom, color, 2 way audio, free cloud storage but also has sd card slots which I use. Gives notification, night vision, person detection, zoning and so many other features. You can use outdoor with weather proof casing thats like $10 bucks. Only drawback is that I need to runs wire for them to an outlet. They are not PoE or wirefree.
Last edited by Capitalprophets; 06-20-2020 at 09:42 PM..
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