aaronkelley
n3wb
First of all, my apologies for the long thread. I have been reading / thinking about doing a system for over a year and found this forum to be very helpful. I pulled the trigger on my Blue Iris machine (will be here in a couple days), so it's time to figure out the first cameras. I am good to go slow and learn with time, but just want to do a sanity check on my thinking to kick things off. We have a large and complex property, so I realize this will take time.
To summarize, I will start with my thoughts on what I am thinking, with likely more details than needed to explain my overall long term goals / challenges. Map attached.
Summary of initial thoughts
Property and Plan Overview
Our house is on the frontier of an urban and rural area. We have an odd shaped property (outlined in red), as it’s a number of different parcels assembled together. The road in front of the property (at the bottom of the map) is a busy route into the local touristy town (about 3 miles away). Across this street and to the right are fairly dense neighborhoods. The ones closest to us are fairly quiet neighborhoods. We have natural barriers to the houses closest to us with a large ditch and 6 foot fences. There is a service road that comes up by D that has pretty frequent activity to maintain the waterway (sometimes with the crew walking down the service road towards my house).
At the top of our property is several hundred acres of private property where no one is allowed and it’s patrolled by security almost daily (a bit random). Due to the large body of water and lack of human activity, this area acts as an animal preserve, so we have significant amounts of animal activity that we would like to capture as it comes onto our property. We have a 6 foot fence separating allo this, but there are large gaps on the left and right sides where animals tend to migrate through (locations B and C).
To the left is a 7 acre vacant and fenced property and again, we have good natural barriers with a large ditch. We do get randoms coming off the busy road to the far left (a few hundred feet past this picture) and once a mentally ill homeless person that wandered in from that busy road on the left side (near A) - who went on to ask me for drugs. There is a large trucking facility perhaps a mile away (it would be to the top left), so a very high amount of activity up there, but we are down the road, so most of the time it does not get to us. The neighbors also had a homeless person enter their house and start to make a sandwich in the middle of the night. The fence blocking the service road on the left is easy to walk besides - hence the randoms at times.
We also get randoms driving down our driveway to just see what is back from the road, as it's hard to see. I’ve had people bike down our driveway and a number of shady people walk through the property (chased off twice by our landscaper). All that to say, our property tends to attract attention.
We have three young girls, so I want to make sure I have a good awareness of anyone entering the property. We have LOTS of delivery drivers (my wife’s Amazon) habit. But we should not have anyone walking down our driveway. We also had a mountain lion attack (killed two goats) and numerous coyote attacks on our chickens, so there are other safety concerns. I also have a large rescue dog with lots of anxiety that likes to bite strangers (she failed out of multiple training classes unfortunately). So I really need to know who is on the property when she is out, as she will go after delivery drivers, service crew and randoms. She is trained (mostly) to not cross the bridge (by L).
My goal is to start small and learn how to build out the right system. I have a lot of cable to run if I want to cover all the locations at the edges of the property. I am open to other ideas (maybe camera’s with a high optical zoom to cover the far reaches of the yard if I can get line of sight past the trees?). And I generally have a lack of lighting the further out you get.
I have an Omada based network with plenty of POE room and ability to add more POE switches as needed. I’ve started running network cables through the yard (all CAT6) - mostly for wired access points, but that does open up opportunities for wired cameras. My Blue Iris used desktop computer is on the way (plenty of CPU power - will need to add storage in time).
So perhaps to start - I am considering the locations of K, H and L. Those are all easy to add POE cameras. G is fine too if it makes sense to focus on the main entrance first. E is high on my list, as it’s a current blindspot and where most people park that come to work on something at the property. Its nice to know if someone is here before I let the dog out and currently I have to go outside and look or try to figure out who has come and gone from the driveway cameras.
Below are the detailed notes on notable locations and potential camera spots. I don’t have any in the “backyard” area by the pool / guest house. We did have an elk walk onto our pool cover (destroyed it), so maybe capturing motion at night would be good. So I might want to add the backyard in general if my wife is ok with seeing cameras around our social gathering location.
What else am I missing?
Map Details
A - Far side of property with ring spotlight connecting to Wifi at M (about 150 feet away). Very dark and lots of animal activity. I have gotten random people entering the property from a service road past this point on occasion.
B - Backs onto hundreds of acres of private property. No people, lots of animals. This is patrolled by security along the fenceline, so very little human activity, but lots of animals. The ring spotlight camera connects to a mesh wifi access point at N. I do have power at N, but not currently any network cable. I do like to use B to see when security is patrolling. This area is very dark. About 210 feet from M.
C - This is a desired camera location to catch wildlife and possible entrance to the property as there is a gap in the fence. Very rarely are people down here (only seen it one time), as this is patrolled by security. The distance to O (closest power and network location) is about 230 feet. This area is dark, but may have a bit of lighting from houses to the right. I would also like another point to see when security is patrolling.
D - This is a service road entrance to maintain the ditch and has regular worker activity. I did have one person enter the property from this side at one point. The current ring camera connects to the access point at P. This area does not have any lighting, but will have some lighting from the neighborhood to the right.
E - Current location of a wired mesh network and fairly easy to add additional additional wires, as I have a POE switch close to this location and attic access to drop cables through the soffit. This is currently a blind spot in my camera system, as I cannot see who is doing what down my driveway. Makes sense to add a camera here early on. This will be dark at night. I do have lamp posts up and down the driveway that I could keep on all night - but currently they go off at 10 to save power (8 lamposts throughout yard, 15,000 lumen LED’s - 125w each)
F - The current camera connects to the AP at M. We have chickens here and would like to monitor this area for animals getting after the chickens. We’ve had a mountain lion attack here before we enclosed it (got the goats) and kids sometimes leave the coop open (just lost 10 chickens a couple weeks ago to coyotes). No lighting, but we do have power close. About 90 feet from M.
G - Current ring camera connecting to AP at H. This is the main driveway into the property and I like the fact the ring spotlight cam lights up with motion. Maybe put a ring spotlight (no camera) here along with a camera? This is the best place to capture cars / license plates. We do have landscape lighting, but it goes off at midnight.
H - This is the gate and a great place to initially record cars / people coming into the property. I do get random people driving down my driveway to just take a look when the gate is open, as you cannot really see the house from the road, but it's obvious it's a home with the gate and landscaping. I may put a POE switch here to power this camera and the camera at G (moving it to the left side of the driveway, so I don’t have to cross the driveway with a cable at G). I do have some lights in pillars that are always on at night, so modest lighting here. To the right of the gate is a low split rail fence that is easy to slip through. I could just ignore that, as we really have not had issues with it and a camera on the bridge would catch people coming into the main yard.
I - We have a treehouse here that can be accessed through the neighbor’s yard or through a swampy area. We did have a random person in the treehouse at midnight, so I am thinking about putting a camera here to make sure we don’t have someone trying to move in. It’s very dark. About 300 feet from L.
J - Current Ring Doorbell. Similar to E, we don’t keep the driveway lampposts on at night and landscape lighting goes off at midnight. We also don’t keep front door lights on, as it tends to attract bugs / spiders in the summer. We could reconsider driveway lights if we want to run 1,000 watts all night. No network cable here and very difficult to add.
K - There is an unused ethernet cable coming up from the ground to the soffit area. It would be very easy to add a camera. Similar lighting to J.
L - Power and current location of POE switch. Easy to add cables here. This is a choke point, so a good area to add another camera. This is the one and only lamp post that is always on.
M - Power, ethernet and wired mesh access point. I may add a POE switch here and branch out to A, B and F.
N - Power location (and current wireless mesh wifi access point). May wire access point at some point or eliminate AP if I wire B.
O - Power location and adding wired ethernet very soon. Will likely have a POE switch here (to change a wireless AP to wired). Easy enough to add additional cables.
P - Power location (and current wireless mesh wifi access point). May wire access point wire at some point.
Q - Power Location.
R - Small gate that I’ve had a neighbor enter my property through (without permission). Not a huge priority if I can capture activity on the bridge, but maybe something to consider in time.
S - Not sure if this is a dumb idea, but I was thinking of adding a camera at the top of my house looking out of the lake / land behind us. It would be great to control zooming remotely and detect movement in general, as there should not be anyone back there - just security patrols and wildlife.
I know that's a lot! Appreciate any thoughts to help kick off this journey.
To summarize, I will start with my thoughts on what I am thinking, with likely more details than needed to explain my overall long term goals / challenges. Map attached.
Summary of initial thoughts
- Camera K (Soffit front of house): Color4K-T180? Good spot to get an overview of the driveway.
- Camera H (Gate): B54IR-ZE. Will need to have something with a short focal length since this is so close to the road.
- Camera L (Bridge): Color4k-X? Good choke point to identify. Should have light always.
- Camera G (Driveway entrance middle): For license plate / car, is the B52IR-Z12E-S2 still the best choice? Definitely want to get notified on any people walking down.
- Camera E (Driveway back, past house): Color4K-T or Color4k-T180? - Do I have to leave the large driveway lamp posts on? Overview is probably fine, as I just want to see what is going on and anyone will have passed other cameras to get here.
Property and Plan Overview
Our house is on the frontier of an urban and rural area. We have an odd shaped property (outlined in red), as it’s a number of different parcels assembled together. The road in front of the property (at the bottom of the map) is a busy route into the local touristy town (about 3 miles away). Across this street and to the right are fairly dense neighborhoods. The ones closest to us are fairly quiet neighborhoods. We have natural barriers to the houses closest to us with a large ditch and 6 foot fences. There is a service road that comes up by D that has pretty frequent activity to maintain the waterway (sometimes with the crew walking down the service road towards my house).
At the top of our property is several hundred acres of private property where no one is allowed and it’s patrolled by security almost daily (a bit random). Due to the large body of water and lack of human activity, this area acts as an animal preserve, so we have significant amounts of animal activity that we would like to capture as it comes onto our property. We have a 6 foot fence separating allo this, but there are large gaps on the left and right sides where animals tend to migrate through (locations B and C).
To the left is a 7 acre vacant and fenced property and again, we have good natural barriers with a large ditch. We do get randoms coming off the busy road to the far left (a few hundred feet past this picture) and once a mentally ill homeless person that wandered in from that busy road on the left side (near A) - who went on to ask me for drugs. There is a large trucking facility perhaps a mile away (it would be to the top left), so a very high amount of activity up there, but we are down the road, so most of the time it does not get to us. The neighbors also had a homeless person enter their house and start to make a sandwich in the middle of the night. The fence blocking the service road on the left is easy to walk besides - hence the randoms at times.
We also get randoms driving down our driveway to just see what is back from the road, as it's hard to see. I’ve had people bike down our driveway and a number of shady people walk through the property (chased off twice by our landscaper). All that to say, our property tends to attract attention.
We have three young girls, so I want to make sure I have a good awareness of anyone entering the property. We have LOTS of delivery drivers (my wife’s Amazon) habit. But we should not have anyone walking down our driveway. We also had a mountain lion attack (killed two goats) and numerous coyote attacks on our chickens, so there are other safety concerns. I also have a large rescue dog with lots of anxiety that likes to bite strangers (she failed out of multiple training classes unfortunately). So I really need to know who is on the property when she is out, as she will go after delivery drivers, service crew and randoms. She is trained (mostly) to not cross the bridge (by L).
My goal is to start small and learn how to build out the right system. I have a lot of cable to run if I want to cover all the locations at the edges of the property. I am open to other ideas (maybe camera’s with a high optical zoom to cover the far reaches of the yard if I can get line of sight past the trees?). And I generally have a lack of lighting the further out you get.
I have an Omada based network with plenty of POE room and ability to add more POE switches as needed. I’ve started running network cables through the yard (all CAT6) - mostly for wired access points, but that does open up opportunities for wired cameras. My Blue Iris used desktop computer is on the way (plenty of CPU power - will need to add storage in time).
So perhaps to start - I am considering the locations of K, H and L. Those are all easy to add POE cameras. G is fine too if it makes sense to focus on the main entrance first. E is high on my list, as it’s a current blindspot and where most people park that come to work on something at the property. Its nice to know if someone is here before I let the dog out and currently I have to go outside and look or try to figure out who has come and gone from the driveway cameras.
Below are the detailed notes on notable locations and potential camera spots. I don’t have any in the “backyard” area by the pool / guest house. We did have an elk walk onto our pool cover (destroyed it), so maybe capturing motion at night would be good. So I might want to add the backyard in general if my wife is ok with seeing cameras around our social gathering location.
What else am I missing?
Map Details
A - Far side of property with ring spotlight connecting to Wifi at M (about 150 feet away). Very dark and lots of animal activity. I have gotten random people entering the property from a service road past this point on occasion.
B - Backs onto hundreds of acres of private property. No people, lots of animals. This is patrolled by security along the fenceline, so very little human activity, but lots of animals. The ring spotlight camera connects to a mesh wifi access point at N. I do have power at N, but not currently any network cable. I do like to use B to see when security is patrolling. This area is very dark. About 210 feet from M.
C - This is a desired camera location to catch wildlife and possible entrance to the property as there is a gap in the fence. Very rarely are people down here (only seen it one time), as this is patrolled by security. The distance to O (closest power and network location) is about 230 feet. This area is dark, but may have a bit of lighting from houses to the right. I would also like another point to see when security is patrolling.
D - This is a service road entrance to maintain the ditch and has regular worker activity. I did have one person enter the property from this side at one point. The current ring camera connects to the access point at P. This area does not have any lighting, but will have some lighting from the neighborhood to the right.
E - Current location of a wired mesh network and fairly easy to add additional additional wires, as I have a POE switch close to this location and attic access to drop cables through the soffit. This is currently a blind spot in my camera system, as I cannot see who is doing what down my driveway. Makes sense to add a camera here early on. This will be dark at night. I do have lamp posts up and down the driveway that I could keep on all night - but currently they go off at 10 to save power (8 lamposts throughout yard, 15,000 lumen LED’s - 125w each)
F - The current camera connects to the AP at M. We have chickens here and would like to monitor this area for animals getting after the chickens. We’ve had a mountain lion attack here before we enclosed it (got the goats) and kids sometimes leave the coop open (just lost 10 chickens a couple weeks ago to coyotes). No lighting, but we do have power close. About 90 feet from M.
G - Current ring camera connecting to AP at H. This is the main driveway into the property and I like the fact the ring spotlight cam lights up with motion. Maybe put a ring spotlight (no camera) here along with a camera? This is the best place to capture cars / license plates. We do have landscape lighting, but it goes off at midnight.
H - This is the gate and a great place to initially record cars / people coming into the property. I do get random people driving down my driveway to just take a look when the gate is open, as you cannot really see the house from the road, but it's obvious it's a home with the gate and landscaping. I may put a POE switch here to power this camera and the camera at G (moving it to the left side of the driveway, so I don’t have to cross the driveway with a cable at G). I do have some lights in pillars that are always on at night, so modest lighting here. To the right of the gate is a low split rail fence that is easy to slip through. I could just ignore that, as we really have not had issues with it and a camera on the bridge would catch people coming into the main yard.
I - We have a treehouse here that can be accessed through the neighbor’s yard or through a swampy area. We did have a random person in the treehouse at midnight, so I am thinking about putting a camera here to make sure we don’t have someone trying to move in. It’s very dark. About 300 feet from L.
J - Current Ring Doorbell. Similar to E, we don’t keep the driveway lampposts on at night and landscape lighting goes off at midnight. We also don’t keep front door lights on, as it tends to attract bugs / spiders in the summer. We could reconsider driveway lights if we want to run 1,000 watts all night. No network cable here and very difficult to add.
K - There is an unused ethernet cable coming up from the ground to the soffit area. It would be very easy to add a camera. Similar lighting to J.
L - Power and current location of POE switch. Easy to add cables here. This is a choke point, so a good area to add another camera. This is the one and only lamp post that is always on.
M - Power, ethernet and wired mesh access point. I may add a POE switch here and branch out to A, B and F.
N - Power location (and current wireless mesh wifi access point). May wire access point at some point or eliminate AP if I wire B.
O - Power location and adding wired ethernet very soon. Will likely have a POE switch here (to change a wireless AP to wired). Easy enough to add additional cables.
P - Power location (and current wireless mesh wifi access point). May wire access point wire at some point.
Q - Power Location.
R - Small gate that I’ve had a neighbor enter my property through (without permission). Not a huge priority if I can capture activity on the bridge, but maybe something to consider in time.
S - Not sure if this is a dumb idea, but I was thinking of adding a camera at the top of my house looking out of the lake / land behind us. It would be great to control zooming remotely and detect movement in general, as there should not be anyone back there - just security patrols and wildlife.
I know that's a lot! Appreciate any thoughts to help kick off this journey.
