Camera suggestions/words of wisdom - upgrading from "cheap" 4MP cameras

P

Perplexed

Getting the hang of it
Sep 5, 2022
72
98
USA
Circa 2018 (I think?) I installed a Revo 4MP camera system using their NVR (I'm fairly certain it's just rebranded Uniview). I didn't have alerts and was blissfully ignorant of everything going on that I missed over the years.

Fast forward to last year, my NVR died and I migrated to Blue Iris using a i7/8700, 32 gb ram, Win10. I currently have a NVME for boot/OS stuff, and 2-4TB Surveillance style HDDs for storage (although I plan on upgrading in 2024 for longer retention). Thanks to this forum, I got it up and running, alerts configured and pushover integrated.

Holy crap.... ignorance truly was bliss. My quiet neighborhood... have had people just walking around my property like they own the place, the typical car-door checkers, but then everything changed a few weeks ago.

Had a car-door checker run down my driveway with a gun in his hand. At that point I realized that while I could identify people during the day, at night the system wasn't really helpful. While I game planned a camera upgrade, I purchased a Z12E and mounted it for LPR. Fortunately I was able to get an angle to the only entrance/exit to my street, so I should be able to capture a lot of data. Spent the day tuning it and so far I'm rather happy with the results (I'm sure there will be more tuning in the future).

So now I'm onto upgrading the cameras for the front of my house which is currently occupied by 3 bullet cameras.

Current camera specs:
1/3" CMOS
4MP (well, 3.7 rounded up)
3.6mm lens F/1.8
90.5 degree FOV
built in microphone

Initially for an upgrade I was thinking 8MP either Color4k-X or B58IR style cameras. I want to avoid emitting white light from the cameras so the Color4K is out -- I just don't have the ambient light in my area for them.

After reading a ton of reviews/threads on this site, I started to think that the 8MP cameras might be overkill and I'd be better served with a B54/5442 camera. This is where I hit a roadblock. I would like to keep an approximate 90 degree FOV from each camera, to get the coverage I want. I'm only worried about identification if they get to my vehicles or close to the structure of the house. Figure a 20-25' ID range would suffice for that.

I don't know why, but I really, really don't want to lose the microphone on the cameras. I've heard some interesting things over time, and that seems like it would be a big loss from a security & evidence standpoint. So far, the only camera that I've seen that "Tics every box" is the B54IR-ASE. 4MP, 1/1.8, microphone, decent IR, and the 3.6mm lens has a 88 degree FOV. The B54IR-ZE and SE lose the mic. I have one turret camera and wasn't too thrilled with how much of a pain in the butt it was to aim/re-aim.

I've been checking out cameras on empire tech; I was very happy with the Z12E and the timely responses to questions.. and I'd like to maintain doing business with them.


Am I on the right track sticking with 4MP on a higher quality camera versus the 8MP?


My driveway is about 80' long. My goal is to be alerted if someone is walking on my property from the street (current cameras do that), and be able to do some sort of identification beyond "human blob" inside 20' at night. I've messed with the settings and come to the conclusion that my current cameras are just not high enough quality.
 
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You are on the right track.

Most people say 4MP is the sweet spot for surveillance cameras.

Especially between the two cameras you are looking at that are on the same size sensor - the 4MP will beat the 8MP at night.

At 20-25 feet, you will need a varifocal for IDENTIFY at night. A 3.6mm fixed lens won't cut it.

And with the turret version of the ZE you get a mic.

See this thread for the most commonly suggested cameras based on distance to IDENTIFY and represent the best overall value in terms of price and performance day and night:

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
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I appreciate that. After reading your link I'll likely go with the T54IR and do proper junction boxes this time (previously they were just anchored to the stucco wall).

I'll end up painting them to somewhat match the color of the house. While I'm the paranoid guy on my street, I don't necessarily want to LOOK like the paranoid guy on the street.
 
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Doing well @Perplexed .. 90 degree fov and the DORI ID range 20-25 foot means you will need more cameras .. not unusual once you start to learn more about cameras that you discover you need a few more than originally planned.
 
Overall I'm running 14 cameras, 3 were facing the driveway to capture various angles. With the reduced FOV, I just won't have as much overlap as I used to have, however I should be pretty good overall.

Now it's onto project scope creep. We've had a ring doorbell forever, and since I'm up in the attic doing stuff... I thought I might as well pull a Cat5e cable to the doorbell area and run it off POE. Thanks to this forum, I chose the Reolink POE doorbell.

Just pulled the ring off the wall to find out the old doorbell wiring is Cat5. I don't have much sticking out, but it may be enough to recess a jack to the wall and use a small jumper cable to connect the doorbell. Will know more once it comes in. Would be a hell of a lot easier to re-use that cable versus trying to fish a new cable through a small opening in the wall, through a fiberglass filled wall w/fireblock.... that's a job I really wouldn't look forward to.

Once the cable exits the top of the wall, it crosses over to the garage to get to the transformer, and then back to the hallway to fire the chime. I should be able to get to the wire from the attic sufficiently & intercept the wire to tie into my camera network.
 
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That’s awesome. Really appreciate yall taking time to help me out.

Got really really lucky with my doorbell. Turns out they used cat5 and just cut the extra wires. Was able to put a female rj45 jack in the wall. Then put a mail jack in the attic and used a shielded connector to run it to a new cable, going to my camera switch (only had shielded, no other reason). Had left some cable pulling line in place the last time I ran something, so it was an easy pull to the switch from there.

Took the opportunity to pull an additional cable. Had picked up one of those 20w IR blasters off Amazon a few weeks ago. Rather than deal with the wall wart, picked up a Poe splitter. Running off of POe+, it powers the blaster perfectly. I’ll just power that off my POe ubiquiti gear for my primary network. As a side note, I hate wall warts, convert to POE whenever it’s practical.

Wish we could have flood lights. I’ll never live in a HOA ever again.
 
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Perplexed said:
Need to do some minor stucco repair, but this should work.

View attachment 177715
Click to expand...
Looks good, but don't forget to pack that connection with dielectric grease (always a good idea on an outside connection, but absolutely vital if you have little else to waterproof/seal that connection). Not sure if you have a means to pull that cable out from the wall when finalizing this, but do what you can to seal it up.
 
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Yeah, I am going to seal it well once the equipment gets here.

That area is tucked back really far in the entry way, even in the most aggressive rain, it’ll stay dry. Unfortunately I’m only able to get the cable about 2” out of the wall. This was an easier solution trying to pull new wire trough fiberglass, a fire block, to a small hole in stucco. I’d of preferred to run new wire, but this will work good enough. The cable run tests well, so I’m happy in that regard. I was hoping to find a better solution for a surface mount or recessed jack in that location, but I didn’t locate anything that I liked.
 
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Welp I went ahead and ordered some new cameras. Have 3 of the IPC-T54IR-ZE-S3's coming from empire, along with some junction boxes. Picked up some spray paint that mostly matches the house to help hide them a little bit. Will bench configure & test them out before painting, just in case.

Appreciate all the information on this site that helped me make a decision there. I'll play around with the zoom and angles to get the coverage I want. I will lose some overlap, but in the grand scheme of things I can live with that.
 
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I learned a bigger sensor is better for low-light situation, so 1:1/8'' should be better than 1/2:8''.
But I see:
IPC-HDBW5442R-ASE 1:1.8'' 4MP has 0.0007lux
PC-HDBW5541R-ASE 1:2.7'' 5MP has 0.0009lux
It's not that great difference, is it?
So, to quickly identify a low light winner, is it better to look directly at minimum lux instead of the combo sensor - MP ?
The best Dahua low-light camera are those with "Deeplight" instead of "starlight"? (I seem to remember years ago starlight was the best low-light. but it seems today are surpassed?)
 
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Starlight and Deeplight are simply marketing terms and mean nothing.

The 5MP on the 1/2.7" sensor will perform much worse than 4MP on the 1/1.8" sensor regardless of what the LUX says.

Regarding minimum illumination (LUX rating), many do not pay attention to the minimum illumination specs...because those are under ideal situations with so many factors not known.

Almost every camera will say 0 LUX with infrared or white LED on, and we all know how poorly Reolinks perform at night in low light yet that is their spec....or even two different good cameras. The 5442 4MP2.8mm fixed lens camera will beat the socks off the 5241 2MP 2.8mm fixed lens or a Reolink and they both say 0 Lux with IR on.

Heck darn near every camera will say 0 LUX with IR on....

Once upon a time manufacturers would at least say at what shutter speed that rating was based on. Most would say a 1/3 shutter. That is way to slow for anything. You need to run minimum 1/60 shutter to start to minimize blur.

But now they don't even provide that, so in most cases it is a wide open iris, slowest shutter the camera allows, and gain and brightness cranked to 100 so that they can get the lowest illumination number possible.

But nobody would run the camera in that configuration.

Some of the older cameras would give these kind of specs so you knew how the camera was setup to come up with the minimum illumination.

0.002Lux/F1.5 ( Color,1/3s,30IRE)
0.020Lux/F1.5 ( Color,1/30s,30IRE)
0Lux/F1.5 (IR on)

So of course, the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed.

To minimize blur with motion, you need to run a shutter at at least 1/60 shutter - once you start doing that, the LUX specs are out the window.

But as more competition came out, manufacturers started playing games and tweaking the settings for getting the lowest lux possible, but that came at a cost of a configuration nobody would use. So they wouldn't say how the camera was configured to capture that minimum illumination rating.

They play these marketing games to make it look like the camera is better than it is for someone that is just chasing minimum illumination numbers. Kind of like how we rarely get the miles per gallon a car is rated for.

It is a tool, but I would prefer to see the reviews here with settings provided and make an educated guess as to if my light is more or less than the reviewer.

You need to get a camera on the ideal MP/sensor ratio, which is anything in green:

1699970747988.png
 
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Reolink doorbell is up and running.

Due to the dual network card configuration for my BI implementation, the doorbell does not get connected to the internet.... so the phone app is largely useless. I was able to get everything configured with the desktop app installed.

I passed through the doorbell button press to flag a pushover alert, otherwise I have BI handle motion alerts filtered via code project; seems more reliable than the on-board motion alerts in my limited testing.

I did run into an issue with the chime, it wouldn't pair after a reset/pair request. Just to save someone that may run into this... I was trying to run the chime in the outlet closest to the doorbell, and other outlets in our hallway. The doorbell and the chime refused to pair.

Out of frustration I moved the chime to the other end of the house, an outlet about as far from the doorbell as I could possibly get. The chime immediately paired, fired and everything worked. Go figure.

edit to add:
I may play around with some port forwarding from the doorbell on the computer and see if I can get the app to work with just limited ports forwarded. Not sure yet. WIll play around with things over the weekend likely.
 
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An update to this project.

The cameras from Andy arrived yesterday. First thing I did was assign static IPs in my camera network’s range. Then took the turrets apart, masked them off and scuffed everywhere that I am going to paint with a paint prep pad so that the rustolium can adhere better. Used a micro fiber cloth soaked in mineral spirits and then did a light first coat. The lens face and mic were masked off, along with a few other areas.

After an hour I’ll throw a second coat on. Tomorrow I’ll re-assemble and install them.

Really happy with the image quality when I tested them in the office.

Once they are up and configured I’ll pick a spot for the 20w IR blaster. The LPR needs a little help at about 175ish feet.
 
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Thats good to know. I just hope the angle of it doesn’t cause an over exposure for the other cameras facing that direction.

Time/testing will tell.
 
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Installed the new cameras today... did a little cheating. I labeled the wires on each camera indicating their position and assigned them static IP's to match the cameras they were replacing.

Had a little updating to do in BI as far as camera communication, but otherwise it was plug and play. Still have some tuning to do & will spend a time adjusting the optical zoom to cover the areas I want covered and the detail I want -- however, so far these cameras are a night and day difference. The daytime picture is simply stunning.

Can't wait for the sun to go down and really see how they perform!
 
Awesome! Sometimes you get what you pay for!

Some before and after pics of old and new camera images would be great!
 
Here we go. Still have a lot of configuring to do. It's not a 100% fair comparison, as the old camera's capture was from earlier in the morning with slightly lower light - but the crispness is incredible in the new one.

I did mount the camera in this angle a few inches lower on the wall of the house, using some EMT. When I originally deployed the system this was the first camera to go up & I ended up catching the overhang of the house a bit, which caused an issue with IR. The fix was to simply disable the IR on this camera and it was good enough. I am happy that I'll be able to use the IR on the new camera with its' new position.

New cameras were mounted via boxes (doing it correct this time) & sealed to the stucco of the house to prevent water intrusion. That'll work great, provided I never have to remove them.

Old camera

Screenshot 2023-11-19 at 10.23.13 AM.png

New Camera

Screenshot 2023-11-19 at 10.22.47 AM.png

And yes, I need to clean my driveway.
 
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