Front house / door camera location help

pondo

n3wb
Sep 16, 2015
8
1
Shearwater Front Elevation.jpg My first post and long time lurker! I'm building a new house and my data/telecom walk through is this week and I need to finalize where i'm going to drop CAT6 for the cameras. I'm planning on one by the garage shooting down the driveway (center the camera or place in corner?) and then another to cover the front door.

Where is the best place to see people's faces for the front door? What elevation? Above the door? To the side and down? In the corner of the porch? I've read a bunch of threads and haven't seen anything conclusive. Also, it seems there's no real good solution for the doorbell camera either.

I plan to use all Dahua cameras and utilize a PC running blue iris + VPN server and a few virtual machines (homelab).

Thank you!
 
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Use a ip intercom from Dahua and the wedge 4431as for overview your front from above the door.


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Make sure to look in the installation pics and captures forums for example pictures.

upload_2018-2-12_21-22-43.png

A camera in one of the yellow locations is a good idea, I'd point it towards the path from the driveway. Choose the location that makes more sense as far was how things are framed.

By the front door a lower camera like the purple location will get better face shots, actually even lower would work better. A video intercom may be more agreeable than a camera. Porch lights are not shown in this rendering and are very relevant to camera locations. I'd consider a camera tucked in the corner of the porch (green) to help you see packages that might be left anywhere on the porch as well as another angle on people.

There are lots of different places you could put cameras on the garage. You can probably change things or add more relatively easily after the fact here. I'd put 2 cameras on the garage.

One other area you may want to cover is the gate to the back yard.
 
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After doing test shots, I'm a fan of having the front door camera as low as practical. Your door is elevated as it is. Having the camera above it would be nearly useless for face shots.
 
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If you mount your door camera just above your doorbell on the side of the door it works well. When folks reach to ring the doorbell, tehy naturally are looking at what they are reaching for and you will end up with a nice clear face shot. Roughly eye level is a good height. Above the door often times puts things a little high and a hoodie or a hat can obscure enough to make ID impossible.
 
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