Please assist with finding camers (I am 0 for 2 attempts)

[gbecker79]

I need to watch over my property, exchange of kids, and kids at the bus stop. I rushed out and purchased a lorex system from [local store] to learn that the IR was crap, the DVR was crap, and camera quality was poor as well. So then I purchased a FOScam 9828W and learned that all I did was upgrade my crappy cameras to an OK picture and decent IR (when it worked), but poor recording quality and it the camera is full of buggy software. By the way I will freely share my really bad FOSCam footage and issues log with anyone. DO NOT BUY a FOSCAM 9828W.

So now I am looking to go back to 2 or 3 stationary cameras and I need great night vision. If i can do it with two cameras that would be best. I am looing to spend a total of $600 for all three cameras, I am okay with different quality cameras. My requirements are simple. Cameras must by Wifi or IP, Cameras must be for outdoor use and must pick up fluid motion 15 fps or higher. I currently use ISpy software for recording. Below are three pictures of what I am needing.

[Image 1]

This camera needs to see people in the yard and cars on the street. this is more for distance less finer details. (average camera here is okay, wider view is ok)

[image 2, sorry its blurry]

This is the camera that needs to be really clear. Distance to the other curb is about 55ft and I need to see who the person is walking on the other sidewalk and entering property.

[Image 3]

the key here is up the street and the drive way. I want to see the kids waiting for the bus stop. this is more for distance less finer details. (average camera here is okay, wider view is ok)


Thank you for your help

 

[fenderman]

Welcome to the forum. Almost everyone makes the foscam mistake, they are junk. For the cameras to the sides you can use the hikvision or dahua 3mp cameras that go for about 100 on aliexpress. For the center camera, to see across the street you might consider a varifocal camera like the hilvision 2632 or 2732. Most varifocals are manual, so you need to set it while mounting it. This way you could adjust the zoom to get the clearest picture. Note that higher megapixel cameras actually perform worse at night (in general). For example the Dahua 1.3 mp cams perform better at night with ir than the 3mp. Another option for the center camera is this http://wrightwoodsurveillance.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_16&products_id=384 its a bit above your price range but its performance is exceptional. Also avilable here fore less but with no real warranty (make sure you select ntsc) http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2Mp-Full-HD-16x-Digital-Zoom-12x-Optical-zoom-DAHUA-Network-IR-PTZ-Dome-Camera-SD59212S/1942878235.html

 

[icerabbit]

I'd like a bit more input from gbecker.

What is the cause and what is the goal here?

Typically we're all just looking for intrusion detection and identification of people entering / leaving our properties, home, structure, ... Keeping an eye on our mailbox, driveway, car parked in the street.

When it comes to monitoring the kids at bus stops, several properties across the street and who enters them ...

Whose kids?
Whose properties?

It's one thing to watch over one's own property and catch a bit of what is going on around you (curb, part of the street); but your project sounds like neighborhood surveillance, when you need 500ft wide coverage left to right, clear details of people and vehicles up and down the street, pedestrians on the other side of the street including them entering other properties.

 

[LittleBrother]

Welcome to the forum. Almost everyone makes the foscam mistake, they are junk.

I sure did. And amazon is full of shill reviews, so you get the camera and do what so many have done, which is waste a number of hours trying to work with hardware that doesn't even deserve to be plugged in and will never be satisfactory.

 

[gbecker79]

Icerabbit-
Just sent you PM. It is justified reason.
Thank you

I'd like a bit more input from gbecker.

What is the cause and what is the goal here?

Typically we're all just looking for intrusion detection and identification of people entering / leaving our properties, home, structure, ... Keeping an eye on our mailbox, driveway, car parked in the street.

When it comes to monitoring the kids at bus stops, several properties across the street and who enters them ...

Whose kids?
Whose properties?

It's one thing to watch over one's own property and catch a bit of what is going on around you (curb, part of the street); but your project sounds like neighborhood surveillance, when you need 500ft wide coverage left to right, clear details of people and vehicles up and down the street, pedestrians on the other side of the street including them entering other properties.

 

[icerabbit]

Thank you, gbecker.

It sure sounds like a stressful prolonged situation and I understand the neighbors are aware of it.

Yes, with three cameras, you can look forward across the street. Then one to each side. Rather then putting them on each corner and looking outward from there, you could possibly cross them over looking the other way, which may help in capturing activity around your vehicles, or not, depends on how wide the field of view is and the tilt up to get more view into the distance, but it would at least look like you are surveilling your own property.

Forget wifi. It is a headache, easy to interfere with and requires a wire for setup and troubleshooting anyhow. Plus, wifi needs a nearby outlet for the wall wart. Much easier to do Power Over Ethernet. Crisp network signal that carries the power to the camera up to 300+ feet.

I suggest having a quick look at this ipcam calculator http://www.jvsg.com/online/# to input target distances and see what field of view width you would need, as you are wanting more depth than width to look left and right where the bus stops. Switch online tool to ft, leave camera at 1/3 4:3 then set camera height, image resolution, lens mm, etc. and watch the interaction between target distance and field of view width.

That's the only easy way to know which fixed lens to spring for with inexpensive fixed lens cameras (~$100). Looking forward in front of your house, you may be looking at 4 or 6mm. To the left and right for distance details you are looking at 12mm ~ 20 degree field of view, 100 ft you get 40ft wide view on screen. Otherwise just 6mm and 100ft out you get 80ft wide. Obviously the street is narrower. Really depends how much detail you want / need in the distance.

Also with 12 left and right aiming out and 4 or 6 mm forward, that probably will not give you a left to right panoramic overview however. You could have a narrow slice to the left, gap, front coverage, gap, narrow slice to the right. So you may need to do four. Or cross over the two outward ones from the garage corners. Then in the middle of the garage do the forward one.

These 3MP have been very popular, as they are pretty small and can be found inexpensively. I have a pair of them, running at 1920x1080 (which I find to give me better image fluidity and detail)
http://www.hikvision.com/en/Products_show.asp?id=7326&showid=1

The also popular turrets require more mounting space.
http://www.hikvision.com/en/Products_show.asp?id=7872&showid=0

If you want to conceal where the cameras are looking at. There's domes with the darker glass. Bit more work to install. The varifocal model lets you dial in the zoom between 2.8 and 12mm then adjust the focus. A bit finicky to install though.

Night time obviously the ones that look off into the distance obviously won't be useful. Getting infrared to reach where the vehicle is parked and useful footage there may require some extra illumination. Again depends on distance details. Some more expensive cameras offer better IR but then their housing is substantially larger.

But plotting distance and target areas to determine field of view and lens size is step 1. Then aesthetics and practicalities of installation determine to go with small bullet, large cans, turrets, domes, ...

Then it is pretty much a choice between Hikvision or Dahua. And maybe some camera or another to get a bit more infrared illumination.

 

[LittleBrother]

I'm too much of a newb to offer much here, other than to say that wifi is considered poor by everybody, as mentioned, though I can vouch for Dropcam cameras being quite robust and working quite consistently (have had a couple for a while). They are wifi. However, their image quality is also not fantastic at range, and outside night vision you can forget (even if you mount one under an eave), so even though I have had one looking outdoors for months (replacing it now), it's not ideal. For a situation that is important, like out of the house, it has to be wired.

icerabbit's initial question is very on point. I think it's incumbent that you setup your cameras to "monitor your own property". Catching things off that property, like on the street inadvertently is going to happen and not a cause for concern, but I wouldn't want too much of a neighbor's house in-frame. That said, you can mask out what you don't want, real-time by blacking out portions of the image, which would go far if somebody accused you of spying on their house.

 

[icerabbit]

dropcam is quite overpriced for what it is, plus who wants to record to the cloud? has the local wifi and internet bandwidth? And wants another utility bill?

gbecker indicated via pm an ongoing series of serious incidents, that have happened to his/her property and children, the latter which would cause me to aim my cameras up a little higher too.

I was just uncomfortable at first to give pointers under the scenario of here's a few blurry photos, need to monitor kids and properties up and down the street.

The personal property and family protection aspect is there, hopefully can capture repeat offenders and maybe deter stuff from happening; but it extends to where the kids get on/off the bus. It is about what happens between bus and safe at home, or I think, with the neighbors across the steet. So in that scenario, And with the neighbors across the street aware of the troubles, I'm happy to give some direction.

 

[LittleBrother]

dropcam is quite overpriced for what it is, plus who wants to record to the cloud? has the local wifi and internet bandwidth? And wants another utility bill?

Each cam takes up to around .5 mbps at the most. I still think the average joe who is either of limited technical skills or, despite technical competence just doesn't want to bother with something more complex, Dropcam fits a nice niche. Truly, you can open the box and within two minutes of plugging the thing in be up and running, with the connection made, all the storage taken care of, and it's remotely stored, so safe from local disaster. Dropcam has reliable apps and it is a really simple "Apple-like" solution.

There are drawbacks, though; image quality, particularly at night (being honest its night quality is terrible) can't compete with a similarly priced wired IP camera, and you do have a monthly bill. Also Dropcam has no outdoor-rated unit despite people asking on its forums for two years now (!) for one. I think personally this is because wifi through walls is terrible and Dropcam has yet to figure out how to solve it. This is actually why I'm going away from Dropcam now back to some wired cameras. For a person willing to spend the time, a non-Dropcam solution will give far cleaner picture and have no monthly bill.

Similar to what you allude to with the OP, I actually used a few vids of my neighbor's dog chasing my kids on our property as a motivator to call the town (neighbor was disinterested in dealing with it otherwise). Town took that seriously, particularly when I said I had video. Dog hasn't been a problem since. I don't have many issues around my house, but if I did I'd have the thing surrounded by even more cams and mercilessly monitor my own property. I think people should feel in complete control of their own property and not have to tolerate any monkey business on it at all. Good luck, OP!

 

[icerabbit]

True, dropcam has its market and not surprisingly, it is Apple like, as it is by Nest, which is founded (in part? forgot the specifics) by an iPod design/engineering team member, which then made the fancy nest learning thermostat.

The dropcams are nannycams really. I've got a similar one by one of the wifi/networking brands. Easy to implement but low on quality and features. Not suited for surveillance. Can't be integrated with other recording solutions. The cons just keep adding up, because they need to be kept warm, dry, in range of wifi, have to have wall power, ...

A single feed from a basic camera isn't necessarily network intensive, at least within a home or office network; but once you move into 2-3 megapixel territory, up the frame rate, feed details, etc. then you start going north of 500 KB/s per camera into 1MB/s. But even with average settings, a single 2-3MP camera's 500KB/s video feed already outclasses the average/typical US asymmetrical "broadband" connection of 3/.768 and 5/1 mbps, which equals 100KB/s & 125 KB/s net upload. You'd need either a symmetrical subscription or a high tier plan. Even if you had 50/10 mbps. Divide 10 by 8 ... 1250 KB/s. Two feeds to the cloud. And your ISP may drop you since they will consider it server activity and want you to be on a commercial plan.

 

[LittleBrother]

Yep, basically unless you're on a residential fiber you can't send clean high def to the cloud. That's why Dropcam compresses so much. The images are 1080P from the pro, but that's a bit of a bragging number, because really compression is very high. As you said, that MP from an IP cam will be in the 500 KB/5 mbps range, but Dropcam manages to send that resolution at a 10th of that bandwidth because it compresses heavily. Still, for indoors the Pro generates really very good images, and it can be placed very discreetly. On their site they have a bunch of sample cams. Dropcam also has a list somewhere of burglars caught on dropcams. Some people have created cases to let them work outside, but it's a hack and not a great one.

I'm sorry to hijack the thread. I have a tendency at times to sound like a Dropcam salesman, but I don't mean to. I just think it is a great product for the average joe. Nonetheless, I actually think a lot less of them in the past few months. Since Nest picked up the company, they have immediately cancelled one of their products (dropcam tabs), and also a major bug in their motion detection they released two months ago continues to not get fixed. I decided that for the value of two used cams plus an ongoing savings of $15 month I had for two cameras I could build something myself that would work better. The cost of entry level IP cams and network storage is so darn low now that the OP's budget, for example, buys something surprisingly decent.