Critical Camera Selection

[XTREEMMAK]

Greetings all,

So I'm in the process of selecting cameras for our home; still very new to this. I've downloaded the IP cam guide and surveillance handbook offered on this site and will take a look shortly, but I wanted to get some feedback on the cameras I selected thus far based on what I could find on this site.

So for outside, I'm interested mainly in three locations:
1. Front Door (we have a sitting area and plan to have a camera pointed towards the front door)
2. Garage (pointed at the cars in the driveway)
3. Backyard (mounted on the second floor)

for this task I selected so far:
1.DAHUA IPC-HDW5231R-ZE (Front Door) - Amazon is unavailable atm, but I did find it on EBAY....I think? (Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 2MP 2.7~13.5MM Lens POE IP67 IR Eyeball Network Camera | eBay)
2.Empire Tech IPC-HFW1831E (Garage Door)
3.Empire Tech IPC-HFW1831E (Back Yard Door)

I've read to stay away from dome cameras for outside since they fog up and especially with Florida's humidity, pretty sure that's going to happen easily. I also just read (today) that I might want to avoid bullets because of spiders?

Thanks in advance and if there is a better selection in that similar price point (under $200/cam) then please let me know!

 

[looney2ns]

Welcome, study this: Cliff notes.
The two best cams taking nighttime into consideration are.
Dahua Starlight IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 800 meter capable ePOE | IP Cam Talk for any location.
If you don't need audio, then you can save a bit with this cam: Review-dahua-ipc-hdw2231rp-zs-starlight-camera-varifocal

Take your time, study the cliff notes, and read the many camera reviews that are avallble here.

We have a reliable vendor that is a member here, you can PM him here @EMPIRETECANDY or here is his stores.
Andy's ipcamtalk vendor forum: link
Andy's AliExpress store: link
Andy's Amazon store: link
Andy's Email: kingsecurity2014 (at) 163 (dot) com

 

[XTREEMMAK]

Will do thanks!

 

[aristobrat]

I've read to stay away from dome cameras for outside since they fog up and especially with Florida's humidity, pretty sure that's going to happen easily. I also just read (today) that I might want to avoid bullets because of spiders?

Knock on wood, no issues with fog on domes up here in coastal VA. We're not quite as humid as FL, but it gets pretty dang sticky up here July-October. The issue I've had with domes is that if you point them at something big (i.e. towards a door), the dome's IR is likely to reflect off of the object and back towards the camera, which can cause the image to ghost and/or be spotty. A popular front door camera is the 4231 wedge mini-dome, but that usually gets mounted next to the door and faces out, away from the house, like this:
Front door ID camera IPC-HDBW4231F?

If you're going to mount something on your porch and point it towards the door, a turret or bullet would probably do better. If you have to go with a dome, you can manually reduce the IR levels to reduce the bounce-back problem, but you'll have a darker image than if you used a different style.

IMO, no camera style is 100% spider-proof so I wouldn't write off bullets because their square front might be a little easier for spiders to spin webs across vs. a turret. Just be aware that that while bullets/turrets usually have their IR emitters setup the same way, domes usually do IR completely differently and IMO tend to attract more spiders.

Also IMO, the 1831/2831 models are probably the best 4K models when it comes to low-light situations, Dahua doesn't consider them to be low-light cameras. If your driveway is pretty bright at night, they might do OK, but if not, they'll be more likely to blur details as folks move about. It's harder to ID someone when their facial details are blurry. Also since the 1831 is a fixed-lens model, you've got to think about which lens size to purchase (2.8mm, 3.6mm, 6.0mm, etc). The size of the lens determine how wide the image is, and also determines how close someone needs to be to the camera to ID. The trade off is that the wider the image, the closer someone has to be to the camera before they can be ID'ed. A lot of folks initially gravitate to 2.8mm lens (because it gets a nice wide image .. they can get their entire driveway and front yard in the shot, for example), but quickly find out that unless someone is damn close to the camera, it's hard to ID someone. A better driveway choice in many situations is the 6.0mm.... it's narrow ... so it won't get much other than the driveway in the shot ... but it can ID folks 2x further away from the camera than a 2.8mm lens can. This is where the IPVM Camera Calculator V3 tool can be awesome. Type in your address, let it pull up a Google Maps image of your house, add up to three cameras to the image, set the camera model numbers, position them around your house, and then view simulated images from the cameras...

 

[XTREEMMAK]

Ohh wow! Great to know! With that in mind, I might change the intended door camera to the garage then, and the bullet to the front door (if I even still go with either camera that is). But even with that (thanks to your information about the lens size) I'm going to read a bit more on those cameras and try that tool. Will also take a look at the cliff notes.

Thanks. That was very informative and helpful.

 

[TL1096r]

made a little section of all cams people normally choose. I will look into adding product links into the thread:
Dahua Cameras - Quick Reference Guide (Cam Specs & Reviews)

I got 2 of the IPC-HFW1831E and like them so far. They also came with the new updated firmware which I was impressed with as it just came out.