Hello From Philly!

neelpsu

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Hi all, my name is Neel. I'm from Philadelphia and my wife and I recently moved into a new rowhouse in the city last year. Since then, I've been on a hunt to find the right security set up for us. Looking forward to pick everyone's brains and learn a thing or two along the way!

Oh! I learned about this site from mat200 when I messaged him on another website! Thanks for steering me here, brief skim shows a TON of information!

Here are the basics:
- just moved into a new row home last year in Philadelphia so I only have a front door and garage door in the back. I am in a community so I am not too concerned with the garage side.
- I wired a Ring Pro doorbell to the front door in the meantime
- I have Ubiquiti Unifi products for my home network using Cat6 (I can run more Cat6 to the cameras so that is not a problem)
- HOA will not let me mount the cameras directly to the brick on the front of the house so I will need to get creative on how to mount them

Wants:
- monitor my front door and sidewalk in both directions. My front door is about 5-6 feet away from the sidewalk and elevated with a couple steps to the landing. A single camera above the door will only capture the entryway and sidewalk directly in front of the door (Ring Pro already captures this but it's not continuous) so I think I will need three cameras.
- something that will work flawlessly (I do not have a budget in mind. I feel like I've seen prices all over the place)
- be able to view my cameras remotely
- continuous recording (maybe up to a week? My understanding it depends on HD space.)
- NVR system so everything is PoE
- 4K preferably

Questions:
- What systems should I be looking at? Hikvision? Ubiquiti?
- What cameras should I be looking for? Bullet? Dome? Need something that is HD at all lengths and does a good job at night as well
- What are the different mounting capabilities?
- What other questions should I be asking myself and what else should I be considering?

Any other information or guidance in the right directions would greatly be appreciated. Thank you!
 

mat200

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Welcome Neelpsu

I believe @NM4D has a similar situation as you do, with the exception of the HOA restrictions.
Hello Everyone, new member from New York

Also take a look at the videos @RJF has shared with us:
Garbage truck takes out my neighbor's car
Persons of interest in local shooting

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.
 
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RJF

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Welcome! If I could pass along just one piece of advice that I learned the hard way it is that the number of pixels should not be your highest priority. I bought a Lorex 8MP 4K camera and a Amcrest 4MP HD camera out of the gate and those are my two worst cameras. The Dahua 2MP starlight 5231s I bought after that are much, much better, and I would highly recommend them. (The post above about "Persons of interest in local shooting" has footage from those two cameras, but my exposure settings were not optimal then so the stills are not great.) I now also have a Dahua 8MP camera but still think the 2MP starlights are hard to beat.

In terms of mounting ideas, it would be helpful to see a picture of your house. I live in a rowhouse in Capitol Hill in DC and don't have the HOA restrictions you have, but I have still creatively mounted a few of my cameras using custom 3D printed mounts I designed (I used to be an engineer).

I love the Ubiquiti products. I have gone full geek in my house with Cat6 and enterprise Ubiquiti equipment so I can, among other things, isolate IoT devices and cameras from the rest of the network.
 

neelpsu

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Thank you for the information and sorry for the delayed response. It has been a crazy hectic month so I am finally catching up on this thread and the information.

Welcome! If I could pass along just one piece of advice that I learned the hard way it is that the number of pixels should not be your highest priority. I bought a Lorex 8MP 4K camera and a Amcrest 4MP HD camera out of the gate and those are my two worst cameras. The Dahua 2MP starlight 5231s I bought after that are much, much better, and I would highly recommend them. (The post above about "Persons of interest in local shooting" has footage from those two cameras, but my exposure settings were not optimal then so the stills are not great.) I now also have a Dahua 8MP camera but still think the 2MP starlights are hard to beat.

In terms of mounting ideas, it would be helpful to see a picture of your house. I live in a rowhouse in Capitol Hill in DC and don't have the HOA restrictions you have, but I have still creatively mounted a few of my cameras using custom 3D printed mounts I designed (I used to be an engineer).

I love the Ubiquiti products. I have gone full geek in my house with Cat6 and enterprise Ubiquiti equipment so I can, among other things, isolate IoT devices and cameras from the rest of the network.
Here are some pictures of my front entrance area: https://photos.app.goo.gl/zykquvi41SaNtN5B2
 

RJF

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If the mounting limitation is only for the brick itself, I could see mounting cameras along these lines, which would give you a decent view of the front of your house. You could obviously add as many cameras as you want. Painted black, they wouldn't be that noticeable. You could also mount one above your door to capture anyone that comes in that direction.

Picture3.png
 

neelpsu

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If the mounting limitation is only for the brick itself, I could see mounting cameras along these lines, which would give you a decent view of the front of your house. You could obviously add as many cameras as you want. Painted black, they wouldn't be that noticeable. You could also mount one above your door to capture anyone that comes in that direction.
Thanks! Would bullet cameras mounted there cover the sidewalk or they need to be placed over the brick somehow?
 

RJF

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Each camera would have this approximate field of view, depending on the viewing angle of the camera:

picture7.png

Two would look something like this with overlap between them:

picture4.png
 
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neelpsu

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This is great @RJF! I think the blind spot will be extremely minimal from how you have it set up in the diagram.

Looking at some of your posts, I am assuming that you recommend these cameras: IPC-HDW5231R-Z | Dahua Technology - Dahua Technology Two on the side per your diagram and then one above the door to supplement the Ring Doorbell? Might do a similar set up around garage door in the back as well.

Do you use a combination for color and B&W cameras pointed in the same direction? Would it be overkill to have your setup? Do you still have a license plate reader camera (your post says you changed it)?
 

RJF

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This is great @RJF! I think the blind spot will be extremely minimal from how you have it set up in the diagram.

Looking at some of your posts, I am assuming that you recommend these cameras: IPC-HDW5231R-Z | Dahua Technology - Dahua Technology Two on the side per your diagram and then one above the door to supplement the Ring Doorbell? Might do a similar set up around garage door in the back as well.

Do you use a combination for color and B&W cameras pointed in the same direction? Would it be overkill to have your setup? Do you still have a license plate reader camera (your post says you changed it)?
Yes, I would definitely recommend that camera. One above your door would be good too but you would want to configure/locate it to really capture faces coming to your door by zooming in (a wide viewing angle there is not going to help you anyway because it will get cut off by the walls). I might start with two and play around with the locations to get a hang of them. You'll learn a lot by tinkering with the cameras.

The cameras are both color and B&W. When the light gets too low for color, it will switch to B&W. You can also set up profiles to force it to do one or the other depending on your circumstances. There is a good thread on that and related software that @bp2008 wrote to manually switch profiles. Dahua day/night switch utility - DahuaSunriseSunset
 

neelpsu

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I'll definitely take a look.

What NVR system do you use? Any posts worth reading through to decide what I'd need/want?
 

RJF

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I am using Blue Iris on a PC. I highly recommend it, but don't have experience with others. There is a whole section of the forum devoted to Blue Iris. Good luck!
 

RJF

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Also, since you have Ubiquiti products I'm guessing you're pretty tech savvy, but regardless what kind of cameras you get you'll probably want to isolate them from your main network(s) and also prevent them from accessing the internet.
 
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