Hello all!

D

Darkyz

n3wb
Apr 29, 2014
8
0
London
Hello everyone,

New to the forum and new to this world of IP cameras, surveillance, etc.

Planning to setup a new home surveillance system so looking forward to learn from this community and share my experiences.

Thanks everyone!
 
Thanks!

I just start looking because someone damaged my car on my drive... I must confess that I don't understand much about it and I haven't had the time to do detailed research. I am looking to cover my drive/garage area and the entrance/garden of my house. I believe I can do this with two cameras - not sure which ones yet and I was planning to use the camera surveillance software that comes with Synology NAS (I just ordered the DS412+) although I am open to suggestions and/or recommendations - I have heard good comments about the Blue Iris software.

As you can see early days for me but I seriously need to install a decent system.
 
Darkyz said:
Thanks!

I just start looking because someone damaged my car on my drive... I must confess that I don't understand much about it and I haven't had the time to do detailed research. I am looking to cover my drive/garage area and the entrance/garden of my house. I believe I can do this with two cameras - not sure which ones yet and I was planning to use the camera surveillance software that comes with Synology NAS (I just ordered the DS412+) although I am open to suggestions and/or recommendations - I have heard good comments about the Blue Iris software.

As you can see early days for me but I seriously need to install a decent system.
Click to expand...

I fought with ZoneMinder for a few weeks, I looked at pretty much everything out there and unless you want to spend a lot, Blue Iris is pretty much all you get, it's been a nice program so far though, been running it solid for about a week now. Also has a nice smartphone app.
 
hmjgriffon said:
I fought with ZoneMinder for a few weeks, I looked at pretty much everything out there and unless you want to spend a lot, Blue Iris is pretty much all you get, it's been a nice program so far though, been running it solid for about a week now. Also has a nice smartphone app.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the heads up! I will take that into consideration for sure. May I ask you what setup do you have?
 
Darkyz said:
Thank you for the heads up! I will take that into consideration for sure. May I ask you what setup do you have?
Click to expand...


Pretty modest right now, I was robbed only about a month ago, give or take. Someone gave me a desktop computer with a dual core cpu and 8 gigs of ram, 500 gig hardrive. I have the two cameras in my signature, the hikvision 4mm bullet and the varifocal bullet. I have another varifocal bullet on the way from cctv camera china on aliexpress. the first two I got from amazon prime through nellysecurity and paid way to much but I wanted to get a few cameras right away before they try to rob me again. the varifocal doesn't have the two way audio or alarm hookups. the one I ordered from china has everything. I am running windows 8.1 enterprise on the desktop and using the microsoft one-drive integration, I point the blue iris alerts, stored, and new folders at it. I do recording on motion detection and the snapshots and video clips are saved to the drive and immediately synced to the cloud. It has been working very well. This way if they steal my blue iris computer it won't do them any good, I still have the evidence off-site. This may not scale too well but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Got a few other issues going on in life right now to deal with and hoping to move as soon as my lease is up at the end of august. Oh yeah I have an Asus RT-N16 wireless router and the WS-POE-8-48v60w passive Power Over Ethernet POE Injector from amazon. My network setup also won't scale too well but I'll also deal with that when I need to. It's not a crazy setup, but it's growing. My girlfriend's boss even wants me to set up a camera system in his business so we will see how that goes. :)
 
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Welcome.

I think you found a pretty helpful place.

I've used Synology for a while. Mine is a bit older, I'm on the fence about ordering a new one, to deal with the increased load from running surveillance station and adding some cameras. I think the one you ordered is a solid selection. Synology disk stations are pretty good. Just be careful about updating your system software early on whenever they announce new version. It always seems like there's some bugs that still need to be worked out.

Depending on how much area you need to cover, you probably need two cameras. A indoor camera can look outside through the window in the daytime, but is useless at night once the infrared comes on, it just bounces off the window and gives you a white hotspot on the camera feed. I picked up two Foscam's locally but they're for indoors. 720p gives enough resolution to recognize people. In my trials with the 720p it did not have the resolution to read a tag on a vehicle coming through the driveway. Resolution and details are key for identification. So I went back to looking for better megapixel cameras. Tumbling down from high end to value (looked at Foscam but got tired of their constant sales pitches & spam when I asked a question) finding my way to hikvision, the networkcameracritic website and this forum. Just received my first outdoor hikvision, 3megapixel, infrared, compact, power over ethernet (one wire to deal with) ... Excellent value. Still have to install it, but I think you'll hear and see from other people that they are pleased with them, value for money.

Other important considerations:
- wired or wireless camera ... Wireless may suffer from interference, when you're dealing with neighbors's other networks, other equipment, etc. Plus depending on range and other LAN & online activities, at some point it may saturate your wifi network. H264 video encoding helps as it reduces the size of the video that is transmitted.
- using cameras that are compatible with surveillance station ... if you are going that route.

By the way. The disk station only includes one camera license. Additional one time licenses need to be bough to run more. Some people have gotten stung by that detail.
 
PS: Since you will be getting the Synology, it wouldn't hurt to start with one camera from the compatibility list. I'm pretty pleased with Surveillance Station, and still think I"m going to run with it for the time being. That's why I ordered a Hikvision, inexpensive, to get my toes wet.

If you look at the synology discussion forum for surveillance station section, you'll see a thread or two about what people consider needed improvements. (rather than rehashing that here)

By the way. Do you use a mac or pc? As Mavericks & JAVA tend to throw a little wrench in viewing some cameras directly and Surveillance Station requires Java6 (considered insecure and obsolete) until they come out with a new version, or as they told me a dedicated surveillance station program for mac.
 
Icerabbit,

Thank you very much for your response. You have pointed out several things I will need to look for.

I am aware of the extra licences that are required (at least that!). I am sure I will go for a POE camera (s) to avoid interference and any other possible problems that can happen when you exposed electronics to mother nature :) Hikvision seem to be a good option and I will do more research on it for sure.

At home I have PC and Mac although most likely will be using the PC for this. I will also have a look into the Synology forum about their surveillance software, as for the NAS i will for sure go to the 412+ with 3 WD red 3TB each.

Once again thank you for your response.
 
Darkyz said:
Icerabbit,

Thank you very much for your response. You have pointed out several things I will need to look for.

I am aware of the extra licences that are required (at least that!). I am sure I will go for a POE camera (s) to avoid interference and any other possible problems that can happen when you exposed electronics to mother nature :) Hikvision seem to be a good option and I will do more research on it for sure.

At home I have PC and Mac although most likely will be using the PC for this. I will also have a look into the Synology forum about their surveillance software, as for the NAS i will for sure go to the 412+ with 3 WD red 3TB each.

Once again thank you for your response.
Click to expand...

Nice thing about BI is it works in any web browser, mac, windows, linux, smartphones, everything.
 
I personally haven't ruled out Blue Iris. I may give it a go just to test it.

It's just that if my old syno or a new one can handle it:
- that'll be easier on the electric bill
- I can tap into the DS from any tablet, phone, computer, via LAN or WAN (mavericks/java7 is an issue until we get the dedicated surveillance app)
- it is a little bit more of an unbox & done solution

I can setup a compact DS no problem where broadband, cable, phone are distributed in small rack in the basement. Vs setting up a (compact) pc which then also is going to require a keyboard, mouse & monitor - at a minimum for setup, tweaking and troubleshooting. It is less install friendly for me. And I don't just want to put the load on a pc in the home office and have all that camera traffic up the line to the bedrooms. If anything I've thought about separating all surveillance traffic on its own dedicated network; and just switching onto that for viewing purposes. Depending on the load I will end up with. One 3mp camera isn't bad. Several starts to be a bit of traffic. I have yet to measure the net transfer rates.

Anyway, remote access to a synology is easy. To a regular pc is possible via screen sharing, but tools differ per phone, tablet, computer you are using. VNC and the like from a phone & tablet isn't the greatest. There may be a blue iris app though that alleviates a lot of that.

I've also briefly looked at the inexpensive NVR (network video recorders) from Hikvision and other brands, which seem favorable up to 720p & 1080p but have their own limits in FPS (just like a syno ds) they can handle in terms of # of cameras and # of frames per second once you start looking at 1080p, 3mp, ...
 
Hikvision 2432's and 2032's are working great for me... Blue Iris is also highly recommended... I put a USB drive on my attic wifi router and save clips to it... works good, ~$60 TB
 
dalepa said:
Hikvision 2432's and 2032's are working great for me... Blue Iris is also highly recommended... I put a USB drive on my attic wifi router and save clips to it... works good, ~$60 TB
Click to expand...


Thank you! I will check the cameras you have mentioned.

Which lens do you have in the 2032? 4,6 or 12mm?

Thanks
 
Last edited by a moderator:
dalepa said:
Hikvision 2432's and 2032's are working great for me... Blue Iris is also highly recommended... I put a USB drive on my attic wifi router and save clips to it... works good, ~$60 TB
Click to expand...

Now there's a thought I hadn't considered. USB drive directly on the router.

I know this is going off topic a bit, but how does blue iris tie into this? For live viewing? For recording?
I'm assuming the camera recordings (continuous or motion) go to the wifi router's USB drive directly (via some recording setting in hikvision settings page).
And not up to a PC running blue iris first and then back to the wifi router 's drive.

That would be most cost-effective. I want to delay upgrading my Syno till some new models come out (or switch to QNAP), ordered some SD cards for my Foscams, but at the same time would like to record easily start recording multiple cameras in one go; and a drive on the router sounds most cost effective.
 
icerabbit said:
Now there's a thought I hadn't considered. USB drive directly on the router.

I know this is going off topic a bit, but how does blue iris tie into this? For live viewing? For recording?
I'm assuming the camera recordings (continuous or motion) go to the wifi router's USB drive directly (via some recording setting in hikvision settings page).
And not up to a PC running blue iris first and then back to the wifi router 's drive.

That would be most cost-effective. I want to delay upgrading my Syno till some new models come out (or switch to QNAP), ordered some SD cards for my Foscams, but at the same time would like to record easily start recording multiple cameras in one go; and a drive on the router sounds most cost effective.
Click to expand...

Depends how you configure it, you can have them record directly to it, I do this with my microsoft one-drive account, this may not scale up too well as I add cameras but it works for now, I record on motion only. Or you can have it record to the computer and then when it moves it to "storage" that could be your usb drive on the router. You can set when it moves either by number of days or space it takes up on the drive. I don't know if I would recommend this for continuous recording USB isn't the fastest thing in the world but what the heck, try it out and see how it works for you.
 
I only have the 4mm lens.

Darkyz said:
Thank you! I will check the cameras you have mentioned.

Which lens do you have in the 2032? 4,6 or 12mm?

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
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