Help deciding on new install locations around house

My only concern about the corner placement is he has floodlights above in that corner, so it would take more trial and error to ensure the floodlights do not blind out the cams at the critical moment.

And given the design of the house, it looked like under the shutters might be a good way to kinda hide them. I'm not sure if this is a bi-level house or another configuration, but that bottom window in the front adds another challenge that placing them at the shutter will take care of.
 
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mat200 said:
Hi @conner05

As you have a brick house, you can also look to run conduit up / down and around .. I'd consider conduit drops from the attic / soffit areas down a bit to a junction box .. and the water rain gutters look like good places you can put a conduit run up / down with little issues.
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Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is a conduit drop? And why would I do that over Ethernet since I'd need Ethernet to connect to the network anyway?
 
wittaj said:
My only concern about the corner placement is he has floodlights above in that corner, so it would take more trial and error to ensure the floodlights do not blind out the cams at the critical moment.

And given the design of the house, it looked like under the shutters might be a good way to kinda hide them. I'm not sure if this is a bi-level house or another configuration, but that bottom window in the front adds another challenge that placing them at the shutter will take care of.
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I need to make a similar size object to a camera and put it on the shutter to see what it looks like. I no joke had a dream last night that I got the camera in and it was bigger than a basketball and me and wife were pissed because there was no way that could go anywhere on the house let alone the shutter. :lmao:
 
conner05 said:
Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is a conduit drop? And why would I do that over Ethernet since I'd need Ethernet to connect to the network anyway?
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I typically look to drop the conduit down from the soffit more than this amount .. goal is to get a good angle for a facial ID at the distance I have the camera set up for.
 
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A turret camera like the 2231, 3241, 5442 series, are all about 7" in diameter to give you a general size idea. Bigger than a softball sure, but smaller than a soccer ball by far and not even close to a basketball.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
A turret camera like the 2231, 3241, 5442 series, are all about 7" in diameter to give you a general size idea. Bigger than a softball sure, but smaller than a soccer ball by far and not even close to a basketball.
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7" ?? Those turret models are more like 4.5" to 5" in diameter. If most turrets were approaching 7" then we would be creeping up towards beach ball or soccer ball size.

Yes to the rest of your comparisons.
 
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wittaj said:
Quick thoughts to get the discussion going (proposed locations in yellow) and critique until we land on the ideal spots.

Given the layout of the house - I would stick two black cams under the shutters on the front. They would blend in and would give great shots of people coming up the sidewalk. Still need something at the front door.

On the back at the garage - two at head level. Maybe also consider a cheaper overview cam on soffitt.

One minimum at the back door at head level or a little higher.

One or two at the end of the awning looking back at the house - perps don't think of cameras looking back at them as the leave.

Still need to figure out the sides.


View attachment 124309
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For the rear entrance, where would the camera at the corner be looking? Maybe facing the door? Maybe there should be two there: one facing the door, another facing the driveway? And what about to the left of the rear entrance? A boobie cam facing down and another facing outward, capturing the stairs to the right of the door?
 
conner05 said:
For the rear entrance, where would the camera at the corner be looking? Maybe facing the door? Maybe there should be two there: one facing the door, another facing the driveway? And what about to the left of the rear entrance? A boobie cam facing down and another facing outward, capturing the stairs to the right of the door?
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Now I like your thinking! Yes, you have so many great opportunities with that awning and easy wiring once you get it out from the house.

It is why I said one or two, but I would certainly consider more if you budget allows or grow it over time.
 
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Ok, I feel like I'm starting to get the idea here. I don't need to box myself into soffit only mounting. Heck, I could run cable out to my tree in the front yard if it'd help get a better shot. I'm going to do some more imagining and I'll report back - maybe in a new post, with all the locations and cameras for each. And, it's clear this stuff can be a moving target so nothing is set in stone. I want to ID my top 3-5 locations first and focus on those.
 
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YES!!!!

You will find if you search this forum, many here have put a camera in a tree, in a bush, in a birdhouse, in a hose reel.

Someone took one of those craft WELCOME signs that are popular at front doors and cut out the O and that was the camera lens.

Someone took landscaping accent lighting and took out the light and put the camera in there.

Lot's of ways to go about it and get incredible coverage and help blend it in and keep it off of the #1 mistake people do - sticking them up on the soffit.

A soffit has its place for good overview cams and PTZs and strong varifocals, but to get the ID close to the house, we need these cameras lower and if we can blend them in with the surroundings, even better!
 
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So, AT&T did NOT run cable for me. That's been a mess dealing with and another story entirely. I actually had a low voltage contractor come out today and he's going to get me a quote in the next few days. Apparently running cable in my house is quite difficult.

Thanks for asking!
 
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That's a bummer. I thought it sounded too good to be true with AT&T, but hey you never know.

Take a look at if there are any runs you can do yourself and then only use a contractor for those difficult ones. I ran most of mine myself, but I had a few that I knew would be way more difficult and nerve-wracking and hired a contractor that had the gear and experience and punched out those two in no time at all.
 
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I'm gonna ask him to just run to the soffits and leave enough slack for me to deal with myself since I'll have to order the cameras in anyway. It looks like I have 10 drops for the exterior that will come from the attic and then at least 3 planned for the interior. All of those will be PoE. So, for the attic I'm gonna ask for 13 drop zones and 7 extra cables just sitting there in the attic for anything else I might need. Then I have one or two runs from the server rack not going to the attic.
 
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conner05 said:
I'm gonna ask him to just run to the soffits and leave enough slack for me to deal with myself since I'll have to order the cameras in anyway. It looks like I have 10 drops for the exterior that will come from the attic and then at least 3 planned for the interior. All of those will be PoE. So, for the attic I'm gonna ask for 13 drop zones and 7 extra cables just sitting there in the attic for anything else I might need. Then I have one or two runs from the server rack not going to the attic.
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imho:
If you're ok doing the conduit drops and junction boxes yourself, you should be able to crimp the ends also .. leave enough cable in case you need a few tries and a bit of a slack so you have room to work with it.
 
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conner05 said:
What do y’all think about the cable? Should I just run cat5e? I feel like cat6 would probably be overkill for the cams, right?
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Cat5e or Cat6 .. either works .. the price difference on the cable used to be small so I mostly bought a few boxes of Cat6 to run ..

The most important part is thicker wires, solid copper, good sheath ..
 
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