Driveway Camera and Lighting - Best Practices?

himey97

himey97

n3wb
Nov 4, 2015
16
8
Yorktown, VA
Newb with no cameras installed at the moment.
Have 3x HDW5231R-Z and 1x 2.8mm HDBW4231F on hand. Open to alternatives.
My goal is simple driveway/vehicle monitoring. My house pic attached.
I have a cheapo two flood motion sensing light above the garage.
I've read a ton of the forum posts on the subject of driveway monitoring and haven't found the ONE answer so I pose the question, what's the best way to monitor your cars in the driveway with camera and lighting recommendations?
 

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Welcome Hiney97,

Those are great cameras! iirc seeing a number of tuning questions associated with watching driveway areas at night.

For a 2 car garage, I like to have 2 cameras mounted on each side of the garage at the height you have marked out.

By the front door I like to have the camera mount about 5-6 feet high pointing at the approach to the front door to get the maximum chance of a facial image.
( so lower than your suggested current position )

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.
 
H97 - may want to go through Forums/Camera Captures to see all the driveway 'door checkers' to see how home owners best captured video on the oh-dark-thirty zombies. From reviewing the various videos available on this website, it seems that if there's two cars (side by side) parked in a driveway, the zombie often walks between the two cars to gain the physical concealment/privacy to access the door handles. So if you were going to put just one camera under your motion lights then zoom it nice and tight between your cars for facial recognition.
 
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himey97 said:
Newb with no cameras installed at the moment.
Have 3x HDW5231R-Z and 1x 2.8mm HDBW4231F on hand. Open to alternatives.
My goal is simple driveway/vehicle monitoring. My house pic attached.
I have a cheapo two flood motion sensing light above the garage.
I've read a ton of the forum posts on the subject of driveway monitoring and haven't found the ONE answer so I pose the question, what's the best way to monitor your cars in the driveway with camera and lighting recommendations?
Click to expand...
I'd put the 'wedge' (hdbw) down kind of low in the vicinity of the door on one of those three walls by the by the green line in this image. Without knowing how things are framed its hard to say if any of those should be excluded. A siding mounting block designed for the profile of your siding can be a nice way to install these and is very helpful with vinyl.

I'd consider a soffit height camera on the right of the garage angled to the left

That high corner by the font door and and location by the downspout wouldn't be my fist choices. A lower location for the wedge camera makes more sense. The downspout could block the camera and pointing it at those lights won't yield the best results. A location in the soffit would be better suited (green circle above the window), just try to keep it away from the light a little.

You've made some good choices so far. The best advice at this point is to experiment before you mount them permanently. Mount them to a 2x4 in a bucket of rocks or temporarily anchor them to the house and experiment the settings a little. Sometimes moving a camera as little as a few inches can have a huge impact on the resulting image. Take it slow. There's no need to try to do it all at once, learn from your mistakes as you go.

What kind of siding is that? It kind of has the look of vinyl.

The gate to your back yard is another location you may want to cover.
upload_2017-11-28_16-11-57.png
 
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Also when experimenting with locations make sure you try walking in the frame and try them at night with IR on. You want to minimize things in frame that IR will reflect off of like walls.

Depending on where you put the hdbw you may want to rotate the image so it's bigger in the vertical direction. It's also desirable to minimize the amount of direct sunlight on the dome of the hdbw.

The best way to secure your car at night would be to make room in the garage :p
 
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Thanks guys for all the great advice on camera placement. That thread on the front door camera is what made me get the 4231and beside the door with a siding block is the way I’m planning to go. Anybody have some suggestions on lighting which I think is my main area of concern. Is the consensus to light the driveway with IR or deploy some better spot/flood white lighting?

Knew I should have closed the damn garage!
 
himey97 said:
Thanks guys for all the great advice on camera placement. That thread on the front door camera is what made me get the 4231and beside the door with a siding block is the way I’m planning to go. Anybody have some suggestions on lighting which I think is my main area of concern. Is the consensus to light the driveway with IR or deploy some better spot/flood white lighting?

Knew I should have closed the damn garage!
Click to expand...
More light is always better for cameras, but you have to decide what's enough light.

I'd recommend keeping most of your cameras in B&W with IR at night and maybe 1 in color. A still image make look nice in color at night, but the real test is moving objects. Put on a baseball cap or hoodie and walk or jog to see just how blurry your face looks. 1 color cam can help capture things like clothing and car colors.

You can adjust the lighting later if you want. The thing that's hard to change is the camera location. The main consideration should be positioning the cameras so that lights you have don't interfere with the image. Experimenting a bit with a temporary mount is the best way to do this. You could swap out the coach lights by your front door with something that has an integrated led bulb.

There are lots of different siding blocks. Find one that matches your siding. Arlington | Quality Electrical Products and Fittings makes quite a few
 
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