Advice Needed - CAT6e POE DVR & Cam Set Up

Johnwewingg · Sep 26, 2024

Home is wired with external drops cat6e. I have central network location and need to make decision on DVR and camera system. I live in neighborhood with trees on 1 acre lot. There are street lights, but minimal lighting at rear of home. We have deer, beaver and geese in the yard. Looking for cam with good color night vision and audio recording capability. Drawings attached. Cam location in blue (1-8)

wittaj · Sep 26, 2024

Nice home!

The 54IR series camera is tough to beat.

Color at night is sometimes chasing the unicorn - do not be sold by the marketing.

All cameras need light - either visible light or infrared.

The full color cameras do not see infrared so you cannot add it later.

While streetlights are good, it creates a backlit situation and faces are then black. Light needs to be coming from the vicinity of the camera projecting to the object. If the object is between the light source and the camera, it is difficult to get good images.

See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

Johnwewingg · Sep 26, 2024

Appreciate the summary. Any updates to the cams in this post?
Recommendations

tangent · Sep 26, 2024

Johnwewingg said:
Home is wired with external drops cat6e. I have central network location and need to make decision on DVR and camera system. I live in neighborhood with trees on 1 acre lot. There are street lights, but minimal lighting at rear of home. We have deer, beaver and geese in the yard. Looking for cam with good color night vision and audio recording capability. Drawings attached. Cam location in blue (1-8)

Is the home under construction still or is construction finished (wording implies finished)?

How did they leave wires in locations for cameras? Is there a junction box? A wire dangling from the wall? How high off the ground are most of the wires for cameras?

Johnwewingg · Sep 26, 2024

Construction 100% complete. All wires are home run to IT room in basement, All are suspended 12 ft above ground level. Single cat6e in jbox.

wittaj · Sep 26, 2024

Those are the most recent camera recommendations. Even though the post is dated, it is updated as new stuff comes out.

12 feet high will get you good looks of tops of heads and hoodies. You will want to consider varifocals and go for a distance further put to lessen the angle.

steve1225 · Sep 27, 2024

Two very important thing:

1) in this drawing (camera locations), You should draw in which direction each camera will be looking.
And how wide the Fields of View will be (usually it is 110 degrees for 28mm cams and 90 degrees for 36mm cams).
Also draw distances from cam in those Fields of View for Identify, Recognize and Observe.

For 4MPx 28mm cams: Identify 6m/20ft, Recognize 12m/40ft, Observe 24m/80ft
For 4MPx 36mm cams: Identify 7m/23ft, Recognize 14m/46ft, Observe 28m/92ft

You will find that for that big property, You need more cams..
Especially if You want ability to full identify people at each place around house..
In your case it will be usually 2 cams per each location You selected, each looking at different direction around house.

2) You should not only monitor house & surroundings but also all main paths from/to plot exits and possible paths someone can break in into plot..
And for this You need zoomed cams (28/36mm cams have very short identify distances) which don't look at house but at exit/entrance/break-in paths with strong optics zoom (to have good faces details)...

About camera selection:
5442 (28/36mm fixed lens and zoomed variants ZE for short zoom and Z4 for long one) are very universal and have good night performance.

There is also a new product called TIOC-PRO which have hybrid lights (switchable IR & white) plus alarm functions (siren/speaker, red/blue lights).
It's 4Mpx with big 1/1.8" sensor - like 5442. But in this model Dahua used sensor from different source and it is more sensitive and less noisy comparing to 5442.

I'm installed those cams in 3 installations (mixing them with 5442) and all owners asked me to have more TIOC-PRO (not 5442) due white light (activated by motion at night) and alarm/siren functions... And I must say that I like more TIOC-PRO night performance comparing to 5442.

Two minuses: limited lens selection (no varifocal models) and very basic AI - SMD, basic IVS (tripwire / intrusion), basic AcuPick 1.0 (no human attributes like age, sex, clothes colors & types), no animal AI model.