New system recommendation with some weird parameters

M

mangler

Getting the hang of it
Feb 12, 2019
56
29
Port Huron, MI
Hello,

I will be moving to a new property soon and would like to have it under surveillance before the official move in date. Here are the specifics:

-Property is delimited by a 90' cliff on 2 sides, and access to the house is basically only down a 650' driveway.
-I don't like buying cheap, but I have limited cash flow right now, so I would not mind a basic system to start (say a 8 channel NVR and a single camera pointed down the driveway) that I could expand at a later date.
-I have laid some cat6 underground cable along the driveway, from the road gate to the house. Would be nice to have a camera at the gate. Problem is the run is obscenely long (700'+). Is there a mega POE that could reach that far? Or am i better running a little solar station at the gate?
-So far from my very limited research I am leaning towards Dahua branded hardware, but I am willing to consider anything else if it offers better value.
-I have a lot of wildlife on the property so having the flexibility to run excellent nightvision cams would be a plus (even if I am not getting them right now).
-I am very power conscious, so I would like to avoid running a pc and additional hardware if i can.
-Not expecting this to become a hobby, so anything with good motion detection with cameras that can make out faces and license plates is all I need.
 
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mangler said:
Hello,

I will be moving to a new property soon and would like to have it under surveillance before the official move in date. Here are the specifics:

-Property is delimited by a 90' cliff on 2 sides, and access to the house is basically only down a 650' driveway.
-I don't like buying cheap, but I have limited cash flow right now, so I would not mind a basic system to start (say a 8 channel NVR and a single camera pointed down the driveway) that I could expand at a later date.
-I have laid some cat6 underground cable along the driveway, from the road gate to the house. Would be nice to have a camera at the gate. Problem is the run is obscenely long (700'+). Is there a mega POE that could reach that far? Or am i better running a little solar station at the gate?
-So far from my very limited research I am leaning towards Dahua branded hardware, but I am willing to consider anything else if it offers better value.
-I have a lot of wildlife on the property so having the flexibility to run excellent nightvision cams would be a plus (even if I am not getting them right now).
-I am very power conscious, so I would like to avoid running a pc and additional hardware if i can.
-Not expecting this to become a hobby, so anything with good motion detection with cameras that can make out faces and license plates is all I need.
Click to expand...
Officially, Ethernet is limited to 100m (328'), and you'd need power and a switch every 100m. In practice it can go farther especially at slower link speeds.
Dahua has a line of products that support what they call ePoE that are supposed to work over longer distances.
A pair of long range wifi devices would also work.

If you want a motorized gate opener solar is your best option for power at that distance.
 
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ePOE advertises up to 2624 feet. If you think you ever might go beyond 8 cameras, spend a few bucks more now for an nvr with more channels. It doesn't add a whole lot to the price. I'm on a few acres and started out with 2 cameras, then adding more one at a time. I'm up to 14 now, and buried about 1000' of conduit over a few years.
 
tigerwillow1 said:
ePOE advertises up to 2624 feet. If you think you ever might go beyond 8 cameras, spend a few bucks more now for an nvr with more channels. It doesn't add a whole lot to the price. I'm on a few acres and started out with 2 cameras, then adding more one at a time. I'm up to 14 now, and buried about 1000' of conduit over a few years.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that I'd trust it at the full distance they claim
 
Thanks all, 2624ft is a LONG pull. What are the thoughts on NVR vs homebuilt? Ilike the fact I can get the POE integrated in the NVR, but I don't know if you can you get 48v or long range in an NVR? Also not sure if i will ever need 8 channels, let alone 16. But I am sure these words have been spoken quite a few times in an NVR upgrade thread, so I will take it into consideration :)

Also while I like the simplicity, lower cost and likely lower power consumption of the standalone NVR option, I am worried about Chinese backdoors for something that may be connected to my network. Are the security and ease of connection/configuration improvements worth it when you go to a blu iris or Milestone machine with additional poe switch? Is there such a thing as flashing a proprietary NVR with open source software?
 
tangent said:
Are you connected to the power grid or are you "off the grid" with onsite solar / wind? The way you worded a few things left me wondering.
Click to expand...

Connected to the grid. I'm just energy conscious (some less charitable people would call it cheap). To be fair electricity in our parts is outrageous. And this is going to be a 24/7 continuous load.
 
mangler said:
Connected to the grid. I'm just energy conscious (some less charitable people would call it cheap). To be fair electricity in our parts is outrageous. And this is going to be a 24/7 continuous load.
Click to expand...

If you want to be energy conscious, ever thought about investing in a Tesla Powerwall & solar to supplement your grid use? OK capital investment up front, but in the longer term your cctv system and probably many other house systems could be running for free or subsidised, depending on the time of year.

This is just a random google result, but it seems to suggest solar may pay in Ontario: Ontario homeowners to reap solar benefits in 5 years, association says

Btw, if you don't want to go the solar route, then 1 of the biggest savings you can make is switching all your light bulbs over to LED. In my house that reduced every 60W bulb to 8w, with the 8W's looking nearer to 100's. More to the point though, change 10 bulbs and you have 600W vs 80W, albeit not all of the bulbs will be on all of the time. Can make similar savings with floodlights and outside lights.

Beyond that, ensure your new property has a modern energy efficient boiler. Something at 94 or 95% efficiency can make a huge difference to your heating bills.

All those savings, should offset the cost of CCTV power and pay for themselves in any event in the long run.
 
mangler said:
Connected to the grid. I'm just energy conscious (some less charitable people would call it cheap). To be fair electricity in our parts is outrageous. And this is going to be a 24/7 continuous load.
Click to expand...
An efficient pc running blue iris or another vms will consume 30w or so on your low load. It is well worth the slightly higher cost.
Dahua has several epoe switches so that technology is not limited to NVR's. The camera simply needs to support it.
There are other similar devices that allow you to extend poe range.
 
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fenderman said:
An efficient pc running blue iris or another vms will consume 30w or so on your low load. It is well worth the slightly higher cost.
Dahua has several epoe switches so that technology is not limited to NVR's. The camera simply needs to support it.
There are other similar devices that allow you to extend poe range.
Click to expand...

30w does not sound bad. If I can keep the whole thing (with poe switches) around 60w continuous I'll be happy. I guess I could steal my wife's Optiplex 9020 and build her a new rig (she actually uses the computer, and sometimes it overheats anyway). What are the "real" minimum specs to run blue iris, zone minder or Milestone, with say 8 4Mp cameras at 15fps?
 
CCTVCam said:
If you want to be energy conscious, ever thought about investing in a Tesla Powerwall & solar to supplement your grid use? OK capital investment up front, but in the longer term your cctv system and probably many other house systems could be running for free or subsidised, depending on the time of year.

This is just a random google result, but it seems to suggest solar may pay in Ontario: Ontario homeowners to reap solar benefits in 5 years, association says

Btw, if you don't want to go the solar route, then 1 of the biggest savings you can make is switching all your light bulbs over to LED. In my house that reduced every 60W bulb to 8w, with the 8W's looking nearer to 100's. More to the point though, change 10 bulbs and you have 600W vs 80W, albeit not all of the bulbs will be on all of the time. Can make similar savings with floodlights and outside lights.

Beyond that, ensure your new property has a modern energy efficient boiler. Something at 94 or 95% efficiency can make a huge difference to your heating bills.

All those savings, should offset the cost of CCTV power and pay for themselves in any event in the long run.
Click to expand...

Powerwall still has a terrible return on investment with no incentives. Only makes sense if you are forced to go off-grid. If you are connected to the grid unless you REALLY need/want the outage convenience you are much better off with net metering. Garage is solar ready, but the pay for solar program ended before I could enter. Right now unless I install the panels myself the cost for a 10kw system is too high (30k). All my bulbs are LED, and water heater and furnace are both gas at 93% plus.

BTW even for a modest power draw system (say 60w total, running continuously), that would still cost me about $0.25 a day, or $7.50 a month. I don't consider that negligible.The only thing that would consistently cost me more to run per unit is my fridges and freezers. And I want to remain a food chiller, so that's considered a necessity.

More on topic, I would consider turning off some cameras when I am home (maybe with geofencing), if that was possible with current software and it had a proportional impact on the electrical consumption
 
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I potentially disagree on the powerwall. If you have spare electricity in the day, which most people who work do, then you get to use it at night to power your lights and appliances. That has the potential to pay for itself very quickly. If you stop and think about it, the average home uses very little energy during the day. In fact, if you're out at work, it's probably only going to be a couple of watts of power on clocks and on meters etc, and the timer on your heating system, and maybe the for a short period the pump if the heating kicks in, plus your fridge. Other than that, it all goes to waste, albeit you may get paid for feeding it back into the grid.

Don't know how the US / Canadian system works but in the UK you get paid for what you generate irrespective of whether you feed it back in, so long as you are grid connected. So it might as well go into a battery instead of the grid.

Even if you don't earn a tariff on your side of the pond unless it physically goes to the grid, then you still have to offset that against the electricity you'e going to use all evening and night and that's in addition to the day requirements above, lighting throughout the house, including security lights outside, several tv's @ several hundred watts each, thousands of watts if you cook electric, run aircon or heating from electric, washing machines, clothes dryers, hair dryers, shower pumps, and if you eventually get an electric car, thousands of watts charging the car overnight. The Powerwall can supply a good proportion of that depending on the net draw / gain during the day and dependant on the weather.
 
CCTVCam said:
I potentially disagree on the powerwall. If you have spare electricity in the day, which most people who work do, then you get to use it at night to power your lights and appliances. That has the potential to pay for itself very quickly. If you stop and think about it, the average home uses very little energy during the day. In fact, if you're out at work, it's probably only going to be a couple of watts of power on clocks and on meters etc, and the timer on your heating system, and maybe the for a short period the pump if the heating kicks in, plus your fridge. Other than that, it all goes to waste, albeit you may get paid for feeding it back into the grid.

Don't know how the US / Canadian system works but in the UK you get paid for what you generate irrespective of whether you feed it back in, so long as you are grid connected. So it might as well go into a battery instead of the grid.

Even if you don't earn a tariff on your side of the pond unless it physically goes to the grid, then you still have to offset that against the electricity you'e going to use all evening and night and that's in addition to the day requirements above, lighting throughout the house, including security lights outside, several tv's @ several hundred watts each, thousands of watts if you cook electric, run aircon or heating from electric, washing machines, clothes dryers, hair dryers, shower pumps, and if you eventually get an electric car, thousands of watts charging the car overnight. The Powerwall can supply a good proportion of that depending on the net draw / gain during the day and dependant on the weather.
Click to expand...

Well if you get paid for the electricty you produce AND get to do whatever you want with it, then maybe the Powerwall would be a good deal. That's a double dip, I'm afraid that currently getting paid for the electricity you feed back in is not an option in Ontario, let alone getting paid and charging your battery with the electricity! Best "deal" right now is net metering, with no credit after a year if you produced more than you used.

At 8k Canadian installed, on top of the 30k for a 10kw array, the Powerwall just does not make sense. The time of use premium would have to be insane for it to be worthwhile for me, as offsetting high peak consumption with cheap off-peak saved electricty might start to make sense if say on peak was 5x as much as off peak. I seem to be on a set pricing at the new property, which makes it even less attractive.
 
10KW is a big system. Average uk is around 16-20 panels = 4.5KW with Suntech 280W panels at around $204 per panel (for self installation) = $3,240 for a 4KW system (+ mounts, cables, invertor etc). Prices have really fallen. A 180W panel would have cost 3-4 times that a year or more ago. Might be worth re-checking prices at your end.

Anyway, I diverge from CCTV, apologies. Fenderman gave your answer above if you don't want to self generate.
 
mangler said:
I am worried about Chinese backdoors for something that may be connected to my network.
Click to expand...
I'd just be worried about regular hackers unless you are a Defense Contractor working at home on a classified design. If you're worried about 50 Chinese agents storming the canyon, get one of these...Barrett M107A1 Semi Auto Rifle .50 BMG 20" Fluted Barrel 10 Rounds Suppressor Ready Muzzle Brake 18" Integrated Rail with 27 MOA Elevation Black Cerakote Receiver - 14084 - 816715012425
 
Not to get too far afield, but if you are using solar or wind as a way of being socially or environmentally conscious, you need to consider the extreme damage to the environment done by extraction (especially including refining) of the rare earth elements used for many battery types as well as magnets in generators and the materials needed to manufacture solar panels.

Solar and wind seem environmentally friendly on the consumer side of things, but if you realize how nasty the manufacturing end of things are, then they start to look considerably worse than large-scale coal and especially nuclear plants in terms of damage per megawatt capacity.

For me, solar and wind make sense for remote locations where running power lines to the main grid is impossible or too costly. But they're environmentally awful, especially on a large scale.

I live in Wyoming, and utilities here have been forced by (misguided) government regulations to install large scale wind generating systems. They're atrocious visually and with regard to wildlife. If you kill a protected raptor, you go to federal prison or are fined heavily. Yet wind farms are allowed to kill them by the thousands.

A friend's home is in a somewhat rural area. We used to photograph owls, eagles, foxes, deer, pronghorns, etc., right in his yard. A small wind farm went in a mile or so from his house, and we now see exactly none of that wildlife.

Where I used to work, we installed solar/battery systems to operate telemetry RTUs at some locations, and built power lines to others depending on costs and practicality. Solar is attractive mostly when ther is no other alternative.

Since most solar panels, and almost all rare earth mining and refining is done in China because US environmental laws simply will not allow it to be done here, what we're doing is outsourcing our environmental catastrophe to China when we buy solar and wind equipment. So I like to see it used sparingly, and far cleaner coal, gas, and nuclear used for the bulk of power needs.

Solar and wind are usually only practical for homeowners when the government skews (and hides) the real costs of different power sources through subsidies regulations, and taxes designed to push an agenda that may turn out to be wrong-headed when history looks back on it.

...steps down off of soapbox...
 
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Agreed they're manufacture isn't eco friendly. There are supposed to be saltwater based panels coming though to replace the heavy metals. In any event, it's possible to recycle them. In the EU it's free, paid for by the retailer. In the US it looks as if a small charge could apply. The company doing it is not for profit and claims recycle rates of 96% of the panel the remaining burnt for energy: Are Solar Panels Recyclable? | Earth911.com & PV CYCLE USA: PV waste in the US | PV CYCLE Association
 
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