Hello from Sunny Malaysia! How's this setup?

[avaxis]

Never knew there's a community dedicated to surveillance in such a passionate manner. Hey guys!

I've attached the layout below, the house is a terraced house (I think in USA you call it townhouse) and taking suggestions on where to place the cameras, and where to aim them.

Most of it is external camera, with only 1 internal camera upstairs facing the stairwell.

Questions
1.Is this sufficient coverage to monitor around the house?
2.Is the orange position better, or the yellow position better? Considering the black camera is there. The yellow is much easier to install as there's the wall/roof there, whereas for the orange camera I would need to put up a pole and install it there. The objective of this camera behind is for IDS purposes - alert via smart phone?
3.What cameras should I choose, and the viewing angle? I'm pretty set on getting the Dahua NVR 5216, but not sure if I should get built in PoE or external PoE switches.

Appreciate the help!

 

[looney2ns]

Welcome, read the cliff notes in the Wiki at the top of this page to get started.

 

[bp2008]

1. It could be. Looks like you have no points of entry on the sides which is good, and the ends are narrow so there isn't a lot of area to cover and shouldn't need a lot of cameras.

2. I'd suggest the yellow position. Remember if you mount a camera too high you'll have trouble identifying people especially if they wear a hat.

3. Dahua starlight cams are the way to go. Varifocals are easiest to start with if you can afford the somewhat higher cost. They have slightly better low light performance than the fixed lens versions too.

You might want to run more than one PoE switch, one at the front of the house and one at the back so you don't have to run as much network cable. If that is the case then I'd say go with the external PoE switches option. Otherwise it could be nice having it all built in to one device to keep the clutter down.

 

[avaxis]

Welcome, read the cliff notes in the Wiki at the top of this page to get started.

I did, which is why I know roughly about NVRs, POEs etc. But I am seeking opinion on my application. Where experienced members can see the blind spots I may not realise until I fire up the cameras.

1. It could be. Looks like you have no points of entry on the sides which is good, and the ends are narrow so there isn't a lot of area to cover and shouldn't need a lot of cameras.

2. I'd suggest the yellow position. Remember if you mount a camera too high you'll have trouble identifying people especially if they wear a hat.

3. Dahua starlight cams are the way to go. Varifocals are easiest to start with if you can afford the somewhat higher cost. They have slightly better low light performance than the fixed lens versions too.

You might want to run more than one PoE switch, one at the front of the house and one at the back so you don't have to run as much network cable. If that is the case then I'd say go with the external PoE switches option. Otherwise it could be nice having it all built in to one device to keep the clutter down.

1.Yup, the benefits of an intermediate terraced house is that I'm sandwiched between 2 houses. The disadvantage is I'm sandwiched between 2 houses. Such is life.

2.I'm leaning towards the yellow position as well, as it would be easier to install and mount. My primary usage for this is to have IDS so I am alerted if someone is hiding in a corner waiting to ambush me and rob my house.

3.Actually I was thinking of keeping the lights on where the cars are parked, so the camera nearer to the entrance can be a non-starlight one. And then deploy motion sensor floodlights for the front & rear of the house, so when there's intrusion it will light up the area and a non-starlight cam would be able to pick it up as well. does this make sense?

Reason why motion sensor floodlights, its also an immediate indicator for people inside the house to know someone or something is there.

Noted on the external PoE switch. Because the NVR has only 1 Ethernet port, I suppose I will have to connect it to a normal switch, and the front and rear PoE switch will also need to connect to the normal switch. Is this arrangement correct? Or does the "normal" switch needs to be a managed switch?

 

[bp2008]

No switch needs to be managed, but it provides useful features sometimes like support for VLANs, traffic sniffing if you want it, the ability to remotely reboot the entire switch or one port at a time. PoE switches are just the same as normal switches except they can provide power on some or all ports. If you get gigabit PoE switches and have enough free ports then there is no reason at all not to just link them directly to each other.