Camera Placement

[Pnuts]

Hi, I just ordered the following:
HIKVISION DS-7608NI-E2/8P + 4tb Purple drive
2x DS-2CD2032F-I (Orange & Tan)
1x DS-2CD2042WD-I (Red)

I don't have much of a budget so I am starting with 3 cameras with room to add more later. Here is an old floor plan of my house from before thins were changed, but the outside\front is still the same. Does this placement look good or should I think of something else?

There is almost always a smaller SUV in the driveway.
The idea for this placement is that Orange covers most of the front and approach from the right. Red covers the blind spots on the other side of the parked SUV and left approach as well as walking up to the front door on the path. Tan Covers the entry way and garage door.

At a later date I can add something down the left side of the house and the back. I already pulled wire through the attic for the Orange\Tan Cameras and just need to wire it up. Red will come in the next day or so as its much easier access via the garage.

Thanks for any advice on better placement!

 

[nayr]

bring the tan camera near your front door so you can get id shots on the approach to your entry.. or plan for adding another camera there so when someone's at the door you can look at the feed and see a face, not a rear or side from 20ft.

your front door will be alot more interesting than your garage door, dont overestimate how far those 90 degree angle cameras will ID in the dark.. hint: not very far.

 

[Pnuts]

bring the tan camera near your front door so you can get id shots on the approach to your entry.. or plan for adding another camera there so when someone's at the door you can look at the feed and see a face, not a rear or side from 20ft.

your front door will be alot more interesting than your garage door, dont overestimate how far those 90 degree angle cameras will ID in the dark.. hint: not very far.

I do not really have a great place for that. The porch is low and the door basically goes right up to the ceiling so I cant put something above it. There is a security door that opens outward and due to clearance, nothing can go to the left of the window there.

The only real option would be to the right of the door, but it would still mostly be a side shot.

Maybe something to the right side of the window there facing down the walkway would be better? Only catch there is I would not see the door then unless I added a 4th camera.

I'll hopefully have the Orange\Tan cameras up today to see how it actually looks.

 

[nayr]

sounds like you may have to compromise, but check this out http://ipvm.com/calculator

Once you drop below 100ppf, at night your abilities to ID someone are basically non existant... wide angle cameras can see no further than ~15ft at night.

 

[jasauders]

sounds like you may have to compromise, but check this out http://ipvm.com/calculator

Once you drop below 100ppf, at night your abilities to ID someone are basically non existant... wide angle cameras can see no further than ~15ft at night.

Hate to hijack but I have a question relevant to what you just said.

Wide angle cameras can see no further than ~15ft at night. Okay, fine. But at the same token, your typical onboard IR wouldn't be able to stretch all too far to be able to ID somebody with a really narrow lens at a distance (at night), right? It sounds, if my understanding is correct, that there's a huge magnitude of push/pull/give/take between lenses, night time, IR, visibility, identification, etc.

 

[nayr]

most camera's IR is better than 15ft, but yeah there is a limit and its for each camera.. Ive got a 6mm LXIR on the side of my house and it has no problem lighting up an area 50ft out.. but LXIR = Long Range IR.

and then you have visible security lighting that does much better than IR.. pretty easy to lightup an area larger than most cameras will see.. most any camera worth a shit will have enough IR to reach out 25-30ft.

 

[jasauders]

most camera's IR is better than 15ft, but yeah there is a limit and its for each camera.. Ive got a 6mm LXIR on the side of my house and it has no problem lighting up an area 50ft out.. but LXIR = Long Range IR.

and then you have visible security lighting that does much better than IR.. pretty easy to lightup an area larger than most cameras will see.. most any camera worth a shit will have enough IR to reach out 25-30ft.

Oh certainly. It's just when I read conversations about wanting to hit 50, 75, 100 feet out, I kept sitting here thinking that the simple math suggests while that lens would be bomb diggity crazy slam dunk awesome in daytime, it (by itself, assuming no external lighting sources) would be kind of a bummer at night.

But hey, makes sense. Just wanted to confirm my suspicion.

 

[nayr]

my big black face Dahua has no problems lighting up an area 100ft away.. even up to 200ft away its pretty damn good.

and my LPR camera is reading plates at 1/500 shutter nearly 180ft away, both have optics good to 60mm and appropriate IR lighting..

neither were cheap cameras tho, to see those distances at night with good quality.. you pay for the capability.

 

[Kawboy12R]

At night, it's not just a lens, megapixels, and a ppf calculation after reading the spec sheet on how good the manufacturer says the IR is. @nayr is right. 100ppf is where you want to be for a really good ID shot, plus you want the target to be perfectly still, preferably with a fair bit better lighting than just built-in IR.

2.8 and even 4mm lensed cameras aren't always much good except up close without extra light. Lens calculators don't figure in things like IR hotspots, washed out faces, and motion blur into their calculations. Better cameras reduce these complications, sometimes by a lot. If you're fussy and have the time, tune your lighting by adding more and get your exposure times down while still having a fairly low-grain picture. Shoot for at least 1/60th, 1/120th for the gold standard at night. If they keep moving, even a little bit, 1/30th is often disappointing when you freeze frame and grab a snapshot. I had one guy spend quite a bit of time stealing from my car 15-20' from a 4mm Hik 2032 once and I got what I considered one barely adequate freeze frame of his face after maybe 9 minutes. I replaced both driveway cams after that. Hik Darkfighter in one driveway and 6mm 3345-I in the other. The 3345 has been replaced with a 10x Huisun since then.

 

[horseflesh]

You've already ordered so my advice is late, but here it is anyway: get one camera and a loooong cable, and temporarily mount it in your locations of interest. You can make plans all day but nothing will be as instructive as actually trying it out. Buy the rest of the cameras once you're sure your locations and lenses meet your needs.

I very carefully planned my setup, bought one camera, and threw away about half of my previous plans once I tried it out. You may be faced with more compromises than you have anticipated.