Cameras through windows. Temporary Ghetto Rental install.

C

Chukah

n3wb
Dec 27, 2021
6
5
CA
Noob here about to move to a ghetto rental downtown. I can see Tweakers in the park next to the house from my dinning room window 50ft away over the fence. Luckily I have a long driveway and I am behind another house.

Is setting up a blue iris system and getting 1-2 of the nice popular outdoor poe AI cameras reasonable if I install them inside the house. Id mount on shelves attached too a window and point them through windows for front driveway and rear deck with exterior lighting.

I'm trying to avoid drilling into my rental unit eves/exterior and avoid doing cable runs while still future proofing my long term security build out. It would be a temporary solution until I buy a house in 1-3 years and I may move rental in 1 yr to another rental depending on the real estate market. Or should I just get shitty ring cameras/subscription for now while I'm renting.
 
The problem is these cameras need a lot of light to be in color at night. Infrared behind a window is a bad combination. Even in color you get glare and other issues. If you can place it right up against the window and box around it to not allow reflections, it may work.
 
wittaj said:
Infrared behind a window is a bad combination. Even in color you get glare and other issues. If you can place it right up against the window and box around it to not allow reflections, it may work.
Click to expand...

Good idea on the boxing out interior lighting. I was planning on turning off IR lights / flood lights to prevent glare and focusing on exterior lighting.
 
Maybe you can put a fake bird house on a short pole or a fake rock/ or intoxicated gnome/ sleeping crackhead/ in a garden/landscape area. Then try to squeak an ethernet cable back into the house some how? Yeah your in a tough situation renting.
My gf's sister is a renter and is using a Blink system with 4 cameras to watch the doors downstairs and one blink doorbell. And she put these battery operated chimes on the door to sound off, if somebody where to come in while she's upstairs the chimes would give her time to react. and she has those bars you put between the door and the floor to physically keep the doors closed if somebody is forcing them. download (1).jpgdownload.jpg
My 2 nephews have wifi camera's outside that work ok. If it's just one or 2 cameras and you have a decent wifi 6 router, you won't notice the bandwidth. The purists have to realize your in a short term solution and not start the blah blah blah about wifi cams.
I have the Amcrest door bell ( wifi) and my housemate has her Wyze cam ( wifi) set up to look at the garage door. Plus the Amcrest xvr, plus the Blue iris, plus 6-10 smart phones at any given time.
and everybody is getting a good experience. The Arris cable modem wasn't good with all that stuff running on it. So now it's in bridge mode, with an Asus rt-ax55 wifi 6 router doing a fine job.
 
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If the windows open, figure some way to get a shelf that is held in by the window. Close the window down on a thing piece of metal or wood. Block any openings with foam and block the window from opening, since the lock will have to be disengaged. It will work fine and no damage. I have setup cameras through glass before, and it is very difficult to get enough light, as @wittaj mentioned and IR rarely works through glass.
 
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Flintstone61 said:
Maybe you can put a fake bird house on a short pole or a fake rock/ or intoxicated gnome/ sleeping crackhead/ in a garden/landscape area. Then try to squeak an ethernet cable back into the house some how? Yeah your in a tough situation renting.
Click to expand...

Hahaha like that idea although it scares me to get a nice camera taken while I am away if its at ground level and sadly I don't have a lawn or hedge or any natural place to put something since its just a fence, a narrow paved driveway and neighbors house to my front door. May make the amount of cameras/sensors I need easy though as theirs realistically only one likely entrance.

Yeah doing a 3-6 camera ring system and maybe some basic home automation door/window motion set up was one of my alternative plans and maybe a cell phone or raspberry pi w/ motion eyeos and buy less cams.
Basically would be stealing this idea.

Ring Cameras on shelves velcroed to the windows and solar lights mounted near or to the max distance of the detection range of the cameras. 6 Cameras would cover my main entrance, house sides, and the two stair cases up to my rear deck. Luckily their are windows that give good vantages. Though I doubt anyone would attempt to jump the fence in backyard / tweaker park side as its leaning a lot and would likely fall over.
It seems based on the quality of a the nicer cameras one front and one rear camera could do what 4 cameras would be doing with better range and identification. My thought was replacing ring cameras in this video with some Hikvisions/dahua's but I guess I won't know in reality how this works out until I am testing.

Guess I am trying to avoid having multiple overlapping eco systems / less total investment and get quality>quantity gear eventually but I guess their is an argument to be had for having a both in terms of them each filling different roles and I've seen that a lot of people really into this have multiple setups. Just from what I have seen if you don't have decent cameras and lighting its impossible to get identification. Because of that I could see myself selling the ring and not wanting to pay the subscription fee if I was able to transition to a BI / deepstack setup as having to pay for live recording/ recording events is stupid AF. Cell phones can do that but sadly the detection range isn't as good on those.

edit - words hard
 
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My nephews place, we run the cord under the window, used foam, etc.
Used a suction cup to stick the camera to the outside of the window. This was acceptable to building managment.
After almost a year the suction cup started falling off, so we used double sticky tape under the cup. Building managment
was still happy with the "suction cup" and never knew we used tape. When he left, it came off pretty easy.
 
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Old Timer said:
My nephews place, we run the cord under the window, used foam, etc.
Used a suction cup to stick the camera to the outside of the window. This was acceptable to building managment.
After almost a year the suction cup started falling off, so we used double sticky tape under the cup. Building managment
was still happy with the "suction cup" and never knew we used tape. When he left, it came off pretty easy.
Click to expand...

Interesting this sounds like an amazing set up but I am confused. Can you go into more detail how it would be possible for you guys to be able to run it under the window? Like a spray foam or wrapped the cable in foam to insulate/seal the area? Was the window still able to be remain closed/locked for heating/cooling/security?

Edit: I found this video - is this way you did it?
 
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Have you thought about talking to the Land Lord and explain how YOU will buy, install a system and leave
(you will replace in a couple years anyway), to HELP HIM protect his property? Of course free 24 hr.
monitoring at no charge too.
 
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garycrist said:
Have you thought about talking to the Land Lord and explain how YOU will buy, install a system and leave
(you will replace in a couple years anyway), to HELP HIM protect his property? Of course free 24 hr.
monitoring at no charge too.
Click to expand...
Hmm no haven't thought of that. . Tho I wouldn't want to leave the cameras there after the fact if I'm spending any significant amount of money on them. Maybe if he's interested in buying them at a discount rate. I'll have to assess the response.
 
garycrist said:
Have you thought about talking to the Land Lord and explain how YOU will buy, install a system and leave
(you will replace in a couple years anyway), to HELP HIM protect his property? Of course free 24 hr.
monitoring at no charge too.
Click to expand...

I'd budget and spec it out and go to them with the cost of laying the cable properly and buying decent kit that will last a long time. Ask them to cover the cost of kit, then offer your time to install and configure it for free and he obviously keeps it all once you move out. I wouldn't offer to pay for it it was to be left there after I left.
 
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I installed a camera peeking out of a window in my attic. It works just fine. I obviously turned off the IR illuminator and pointed a separate illuminator out another window in a closet to light everything up. You do get some loss of quality, but it's still quite good, even at night.
 
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