Commercial Setup

D

Didact74

Young grasshopper
Jan 1, 2017
62
13
Hello all,
For some crazy reason I have been put on a team here at work to assist in setting up a complete security camera system. We currently have roughly 35 cameras combined (indoor and outdoor) around the building that are very old (20yrs or so) and are failing. My company wants to upgrade our system to something more suitable for monitoring individuals inside the building as well as cars and roads outside. We will be purchasing all rack mount POE switches and our own crews will handle pulling the cable. I am looking for suggestions on equipment that would include:

- 35 - 40 POE IP cameras with a resolution of at least 4mp @ 20fps. Roughly 40% of the cameras being outdoor weatherproof type mounted roughly 20' above grade with a focal point between 20' and 80' away. Also with night vision capabilities.
- An NVR capable of storing 20 -30 days of video for all cameras. We can adjust the frame rates on some cameras that do not need as much coverage to supplement storage capacity.

And any other general help you can offer. We have a budget around $30k
 
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Didact74 said:
Hello all,
For some crazy reason I have been put on a team here at work to assist in setting up a complete security camera system. We currently have roughly 35 cameras combined (indoor and outdoor) around the building that are very old (20yrs or so) and are failing. My company wants to upgrade our system to something more suitable for monitoring individuals inside the building as well as cars and roads outside. We will be purchasing all rack mount POE switches and our own crews will handle pulling the cable. I am looking for suggestions on equipment that would include:

- 35 - 40 POE IP cameras with a resolution of at least 4mp @ 20fps. Roughly 40% of the cameras being outdoor weatherproof type mounted roughly 20' above grade with a focal point between 20' and 80' away. Also with night vision capabilities.
- An NVR capable of storing 20 -30 days of video for all cameras. We can adjust the frame rates on some cameras that do not need as much coverage to supplement storage capacity.

And any other general help you can offer. We have a budget around $30k
Click to expand...
read the threads on low light cameras...most are 2-3mp...
you have a large budget...
Consider Avigilon it is a great enterprise vms.
Another vms to look at is digital watchdog.
 
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Didact74 said:
Hello all,
For some crazy reason I have been put on a team here at work to assist in setting up a complete security camera system. We currently have roughly 35 cameras combined (indoor and outdoor) around the building that are very old (20yrs or so) and are failing. My company wants to upgrade our system to something more suitable for monitoring individuals inside the building as well as cars and roads outside. We will be purchasing all rack mount POE switches and our own crews will handle pulling the cable. I am looking for suggestions on equipment that would include:

- 35 - 40 POE IP cameras with a resolution of at least 4mp @ 20fps. Roughly 40% of the cameras being outdoor weatherproof type mounted roughly 20' above grade with a focal point between 20' and 80' away. Also with night vision capabilities.
- An NVR capable of storing 20 -30 days of video for all cameras. We can adjust the frame rates on some cameras that do not need as much coverage to supplement storage capacity.

And any other general help you can offer. We have a budget around $30k
Click to expand...

Hi Didact74

Sounds like you are in for some fun

Have you done a requirements list? Or just starting?

I would look at the IPVM calculator.

I am guessing a combination of Starlights, 8MP or even higher cameras would be what I would look at.

You're probably already seen these notes, just in case you have not I'd like to share them with you.
It's easy to get swamped with information here, so I wanted to share some notes with you

Please check out @giomania 's notes:
Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

I have also made notes which are a summary of a lot of the reading I've been doing here,:
Looking for some advice and direction!

Have fun joining us here.
 
I recommend not buying terribly expensive cameras (at least not many of them) since after about $200 apiece you pay a lot more for relatively little benefit. Also depending on the brand and where you buy them from, you could easily pay $400+ per camera and end up with worse video than if you had spent $100 each on the right thing. 40 cameras at $200 each is $8000 which is a big chunk of your budget just for cameras, not including network infrastructure or NVR/storage systems.

How much light do you have to work with (at night)? If not a lot, then you would be better served by 2MP starlight cameras than by 4 or 8 MP that have worse low-light sensitivity. This is a great reference for Dahua's 2MP starlight cameras which are very popular: Dahua 2MP Starlight Lineup

Calculating the required storage space is easy. Multiply number of cameras (40) times bit rate (4-8 Mbps probably?) times the amount of time. Google can help with unit conversions. 40 * 8 Mbps * 30 days = 103.68 terabytes for very high quality continuously recorded for 30 days. That isn't impossible, but it is freaking huge. I'm not sure what kind of storage capacity the big enterprise VMS systems are designed for, but if I was to build a FreeNAS with 100 TB usable capacity it would end up costing somewhere in the ballpark of $7000-$8000 and that wouldn't even include software licenses for a VMS capable of that scale.

Motion detection, even extremely sensitive motion detection that is false-alarming all the time, would cut the storage requirements down drastically.

PoE switches with 24 PoE ports and a set of gigabit uplinks are going to cost about $300-500 each.

Save some money for a few 4K monitors for live viewing. LG 43ud79-b is a fantastic choice, though ordinary 4K televisions can be had a bit cheaper if you don't mind the input lag and on-screen display spam.
 
I setup a large 44 camera setup with Avigilon a few years back for a friend’s retail. Avigilon really is very nice software. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles but it is super-efficient. We have it running on an old Dell 510 server (dual Xeon CPU) and it runs at like 5% load. That server has 12 8TB SAS drives configured into 2 RAID 5 Volumes for a usable space around 70 TB. We have retention set for 90 days and the drives are around 70% full.

We used Hik cameras all set to 1080 (before starlight’s came out). All cameras are set for motion only recording. 12 are outside and they record a lot since they look at busy roads. The inside camera’s get around 10 hours a day. We have a 48 port POE switch that physically segments the camera’s on their own LAN. The server has 2 NIC’s and one goes to the POE switch and the other to the main networking switch.

I think we spent around 20K without labor. I’m sure I could dig up my spreadsheet.
 
Is that your budget with installation as well, or are you guys handling the install? I think you can get a decent system for that price.

I would definitely map out key coverage areas and minimum resolution and storage requirements before moving forward.
 
We are moving slowly on this project, but still moving :)

We have purchased (4) IPC-HFW5431E-Z and (4) IPC-HDBW5421E-Z cameras respectively.

After about a month of testing we are happy with the product and are ready to make the next move to purchasing higher quantities (roughly 25 of each model).

We are also scouting the field for NVRs and this is where I am looking for a bit of help. Here is what the company wants to do:

Record all cameras 24/7 @ 2k resolution 15 fps and a history if 14 days minimum.

I have looked at the Dahua DHI-NVR6A16DR-128-4KS2 but I am unsure if that will meet the requirements of what we want. Can someone shoot me some advice?

H.264 vs H.265?
Required Mbps?

Thanks,
 
I can't speak for the NVR since I know nothing about it, but if you can figure out a bit rate you are happy with you can plug it in here to find out how much raw storage space you need.

Assuming 58 cameras: 58 * 3 Mbps * 14 days

H.265 will be better quality for a given bit rate, so I encourage using that if the NVR doesn't care either way.
 
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Thanks for the info.

The cameras we have purchased are capable of H.264H or H.265. They are 4mp cameras that require 8mbps of bandwith per camera @ H.264 or 4.2mbps @ H.265. Assuming 50 - 55 cameras using H.264 results in 400 - 450mbps total, so I am going to exceed the thoroughput of most of the NVRs I have reviewed. Using H.265 is an option, but there seams to be so many asterisks (*) that go along with this format that I am leary of using it. In addition, some reviews I have seen indicate great live view performance, but playback is effected due to the high CPU demand H.265 requires. Its looking more and more like the direction to head in is (2) NVRs capable of handling 384mbps each using H.264 and separating those cameras into (2) groups. From that point I can calculate the drive space required and try to narrow down the search. I am still looking for opinions, real world reviews, or suggestions about which NVR to go with. I like the Dahua DHI-NVR6A16DR-128-4KS2 because it matches the brand cameras I have (if that matters). Just not a huge fan of the price as it will eat into 1/3 of my budget for two units with the drive space I need.

EDIT....lastly, which RAID is recommended for video storage? We use RAID 10 for everything server based but thats with much less storage than we are talking about for this NVR, plus RAID 10 cuts your drive space in half. Would I be better going with RAID 5 or 6 to preserve some of that space?

Thanks,
 
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You want a setup that is efficient with disk space, but still maintains good performance when a disk has failed and a rebuild is happening (keeping in mind that you're still going to have a lot of incoming data while the RAID rebuilds!). I just have no experience with a VMS of that scale so I am not much help.

I'd strongly encourage using H.265 since storage is going to be a big enough headache without trying to save 8 Mbps per camera 24/7.

Here are some NVRs to look at. They don't need to be > $1000. --4K Super Level NVR - Shop Cheap --4K Super Level NVR from China --4K Super Level NVR Suppliers at Empire Technology Co., Ltd on Aliexpress.com
 
You should have the camera's set to variable bit rate with a max of 8K. Most of the time they will only be streaming at about half of that. I think on the live view page of the Dahua's they display the current bit rate. Most likely you would come in under the max bit rate of 384Mbps in this 64 ch NVR.
Aliexpress.com : Buy NVR608 64 4KS2 64CH 2U 4K H.265 Network Video Recorder NVR608 64 4KS2,free dhl shipping from Reliable network video recorder suppliers on Empire Technology Co., Ltd

The NVR you had listed looked like it was $7K.
I don't have experience with the large NVR's. My 44Cam install is running on a server. With those cams set to 1080 my max incoming probably peaks around 200Mbps
 
Thank you for all the advice, comments, and suggestions.

@kheiney , its funny but I had actually landed on this NVR last week. Its the same as the one you posted but 32ch instead of 64ch. We are going to split the system between "exterior" and "interior" cameras. So this will allow us room to expand a little if we need to.

I wanted to follow up with (2) things.

First, here is the hardware we finally landed on for our system:
(20) IPC-HFW5431E-Z Cameras.
(30) IPC-HDBW5421E-Z Cameras.
(2) NVR-NVR608-32-4KS2 NVR's w/(8) 6tb drives in each.
Everything will run H.265

We have tested a handful of these cameras for a little while and are happy with the performance. So we will be purchasing the rest this week.

Last,
If I have one complaint it is the web plug-ins that these (an all) IP Cameras require when logging in directly to the camera. When you are only dealing with a few, its not a big deal, but when you potentially have to setup 50+ it will get very aggravating having to set up a plug-in for each address/camera. Why would they not just let one plug-in run for a range of IPs or Cameras? Any chance there is something I am missing here, and there is a much simpler solution?

Forgot to mention, we are dealing with a company out of New York for most of this product. Their name is HD Security Store. They have been accommodating with regard to providing information and being flexible with cost negotiations. Does anyone here have experience with these guys?
 
The Dahua Config tool does have some batch config tools. I haven't used them but I've seen it. Looks like you can batch modify IP's. There is also a settings template you can apply to a batch of cameras. Maybe play around with that.

I do question why you are ordering all vari-focal for indoors. You could save probably around $50 per camera if you choose the appropriate fixed lens for the given location.
 
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I will play around with the tool (sounds weird) and see what I can do.

As far as the vari-focal option.....I do not have a great answer for you other than this...

There are too many people here wanting to make decisions on a focal length, locations, positions, etc and it became quite the chore appeasing everyone. So I went the route I did if for nothing else other than to preserve what sanity I have left on the subject

I do like being able to fine tune the range but I agree we could have save some money going with fixed lenses. The company decided to put me in charge rather than outsource the job (as I suggested) so they get the best I can do with my limited knowledge :)
 
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I don't have to install the plugin again for each camera. If they are all running the same firmware version then it should just work once you've installed it a single time. Maybe you are using IE or something and having to authorize each IP address to load the plugin??

Try the Pale Moon web browser (32 bit version) if you aren't using it already. It still works with NPAPI plugins.
 
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Right, that is probably easier than using a browser and dealing with plugins, since all the cameras are dahua.
 
I am using IE. Chrome will not work at all.

IE seems to want to load the plug-in for each IP.

Shouldn't really matter once we get it all set up I guess. We will just view all cameras via the NVR



Thanks.
 
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