Cam #5 and #6 are up (includes dual starlight)

M

Mr_D

Getting comfortable
Nov 17, 2017
596
527
Southern California
This is a followup to my last post detailing cams 3 and 4:
Cam #3 and #4 are up

Parts used:

Dahua 3.6 mm IPC-HDBW4231F-E2-M/M12 2x2MP IR Mini Dome on PFB203W Water-proof wall mount bracket (outside)
Dahua 2.8 mm IPC-HDBW4231F-AS 2MP IR Mini Dome on PFA139 Water-proof Junction Box (garage)

The east side of the house has all the bedroom windows and is close to the neighbor's house. After testing a bunch of potential locations, some of which would have been much harder to access, I settled on the dual starlight, centered between the windows, aimed opposite directions to cover all 4 windows. I drilled from the inside of the attic, as low as I could get which puts it about 8.5' from the ground outside. The camera labeled East Back is aimed more toward my house than I would have liked, but this was necessary to keep the neighbor's kid's bedroom windows out of view.

house.jpg EastFront.20180924_102114366.jpg EastBack.20180924_102110961.jpg

The camera in the garage is partly for security and partly for keeping an eye on the kids. Once I got the cameras on the front of the house, I found I really liked being able to keep an eye on them if I had to go inside. I was originally going to mount the camera to the ceiling, but I liked the lower perspective a lot better even though there's only a foot difference. So I added a box and conduit to protect the cable on its way into the attic.

garage.jpg Garage.20180924_102103098.jpg
 
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By request, here's a video at night. My neighbor has sensor lights you can see coming on and off whenever I move. My kid was able to move without setting them off. It's very dark on that side of the house. I found that enabling BLC with manual IR power let the cameras see farther into the darkness, especially EastBack when looking toward the bushes, without exposing for the wall too much. I have the shutter speed set to 0-25ms (1/40th min). Higher shutter speeds do reduce motion blur, but also increase noise considerably. Anyway, my main goal for this camera is detection. I'm still tweaking settings trying to optimize the image quality.

 
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Looking at this camera for the same purpose of covering the full length of one side of my house. How much of a dead zone is there in the middle between when one camera loses site of you and the other picks you up?
Point being, would there ever be the possibility of someone walking perpendicular toward the house right in line with at the camera and not be in either field of view?
This is corridor mode you are using, correct?
 
Nice job @Mr_D

nbstl68 said:
Looking at this camera for the same purpose of covering the full length of one side of my house. How much of a dead zone is there in the middle between when one camera loses site of you and the other picks you up?
Point being, would there ever be the possibility of someone walking perpendicular toward the house right in line with at the camera and not be in either field of view?
This is corridor mode you are using, correct?
Click to expand...

Hi @nbstl68

You can adjust the angle of each lens so that there is no "dead zone" ( edit: between the cameras ).
 
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Yes, these are in corridor mode. There is a triangular blind spot perpendicular to the house. So they could theoretically hop the wall and stand between the windows undetected. But if they made a move toward either window, they'd come into view. As stated in the first post, I needed to keep the neighbor's kids' windows out of view. Without that constraint, I'm sure the cameras could be aimed to minimize the view of my house and eliminate blind spots.
 
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@Mr_D Thanks for posting all the details above. How do you find it has fared with rain/sun on those domes over time? Do you ever have to clean the domes?
 
Rebs said:
Does anyone think that this bracket could work?

Rain Shade of Dome Camera PFA200W
Click to expand...

My guess would be, probably not. It is more designed for the bigger dome models.

Maybe it could fit, but you would have to measure the base of the camera, and look at the mountingholes pattern.

Here you have the datasheet of the PFA200W, and a picture i made from the datasheets to compare the Shade with the size of the HDBW4231F-AS

Comparison.jpg
 

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Mr_D said:
I found that enabling BLC with manual IR power let the cameras see farther into the darkness, especially EastBack when looking toward the bushes, without exposing for the wall too much
Click to expand...
Looks like the face is overexposed though. No identification will be possible. Do you have the camera to detect movement to sound alarm or alert?
 
Rebs said:
@Mr_D Thanks for posting all the details above. How do you find it has fared with rain/sun on those domes over time? Do you ever have to clean the domes?
Click to expand...

I've only had them up a few months but I should probably clean them. There's some cloudiness in the corners at night when the IR is on that's probably just dirt. The turrets show no such issues.
 
How has everything been holding up so far? I have one spot that I'd use in a similar fashion in corridor mode to cover a side of the house, and another that might be good for an oddly shaped corner. However, while the one would be shielded from the rain and sun, the other would likely be fully exposed.
 
YYZed said:
How has everything been holding up so far? I have one spot that I'd use in a similar fashion in corridor mode to cover a side of the house, and another that might be good for an oddly shaped corner. However, while the one would be shielded from the rain and sun, the other would likely be fully exposed.
Click to expand...

So far so good. I do need to clean one of the domes in particular. I don't know where you live, but if you get a lot of rain, I'd strongly favor the turrets. If you search my user name, I have a post with a side-by side picture of this camera in the rain with IR on vs. off vs a turret. I can get by with the domes because it doesn't rain much here but they still suffer a bit compared to the turrets even without rain.
 
Mr_D said:
So far so good. I do need to clean one of the domes in particular. I don't know where you live, but if you get a lot of rain, I'd strongly favor the turrets. If you search my user name, I have a post with a side-by side picture of this camera in the rain with IR on vs. off vs a turret. I can get by with the domes because it doesn't rain much here but they still suffer a bit compared to the turrets even without rain.
Click to expand...

I'm also in sunny southern California. Unless we have one of those unusually rainy El Nino winters, then it's practically nothing. I went and found the image with the IR that you posted and I totally can see when the rain would be a problem. All of my cameras that are outdoors, current and planned, are turrets or bullets. The side of the house that is covered from rain and sun I think it would work fine. It's that other odd location that has been a bit of a mystery so far.
 
@Mr_D

Question about the way you mounted this camera in the first picture. If you mounted the camera horizontally (where the base is mounted against the wall of the house) instead of using the extension bracket, would you still be able to orient the camera enough to where you can get the angle properly?

My understanding is that there may be a limit as to how far you can tilt the camera in parallel to the body and you may not get a picture of the wall of the house. Is that true? Have you tried?
 
MakeItRain said:
@Mr_D

Question about the way you mounted this camera in the first picture. If you mounted the camera horizontally (where the base is mounted against the wall of the house) instead of using the extension bracket, would you still be able to orient the camera enough to where you can get the angle properly?

My understanding is that there may be a limit as to how far you can tilt the camera in parallel to the body and you may not get a picture of the wall of the house. Is that true? Have you tried?
Click to expand...

I don't believe the mounting orientation would have been a problem either way. The mini eyeballs have a pretty good range of motion. I used the bracket hoping for slightly better sunlight resistance by having the domes pointed downward rather than outward.
 
Mr_D said:
I don't believe the mounting orientation would have been a problem either way. The mini eyeballs have a pretty good range of motion. I used the bracket hoping for slightly better sunlight resistance by having the domes pointed downward rather than outward.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Have you had to clean the lens in any way? How long have you mounted them for? been thru any rainy seasons?
 
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