Hi to all, new member just seeking a bit of advice.

[Dave82]

Hello everyone.

I have been toying with the idea of setting up some security cameras at my place and would appreciate a gentle push in the right direction.

I live on a pretty decent sized property and have a large shed at the back of my block. The shed is powered but has no wired internet, I am currently using a netgear wireless extender down there to get wifi from the house. The extender has ethernet ports and I have my solar and playstation hard wired into it and they seem to get stable internet connection even to have video streaming on my PS3. Digging a trench to run an ethernet cable isn't really doable at the moment either due to concrete footpaths.

So my question is, should i run two independant NVR's with one being for the house and the other for the shed and try and get them running on the same network to be able to either remotely view them or view them locally off the same computer, or is there a better way I could do this.

Rummaging around on this forum I have found "Blueiris" software being mentioned a lot and have gone and looked at the webpage which doesn't really provide a lot of information. I have a few pc's about the place but could get my hands on a cheap i7 desktop to use if that would suit better.

I am looking to run atleast 2 cameras from the shed location, one being inside and the second outside looking over the back yard. The house will have a couple of cameras to start with but may expand as the renovations are completed.

I am by no means an electronics master and quite frankly reading stuff about bandwidth and compresion scales freaks the hell out of me. I will read to research if pointed in the right direction though.

I really appreciate any input some of you may have.

Kind regards,

Dave.

 

[mat200]

Welcome Dave,

You may want to try powerline adapters and see how well they work.

 

[Dave82]

I think from what I understand of the research I have conducted. I can have one DVR in the main house connected to the router. I should then be able to have the house IP cameras connected to a poe switch that also connects to the router. The IP shed cameras will connect to the wireless extender via a poe switch also. I should then be able to locate all the cameras by their IP address and record all of them on a single NVR.

 

[TonyR]

+1^^^, I've had a pair to "talk' to a cam in my garage for 3 years now, no attic access to pull CAT-5e. It's been rock solid.



P.S. - If this don't lift your skirt, holler back...we can also do a wireless layer 2 transparent bridge with 2 Ubiquiti 5 GHz radios IF you have Line Of Sight from house to shed. It does cost more, approx. $100 total.

 

[Dave82]

Hi guys, only issue with the powerline adapters is that my shed runs on its on fuse box so it's not the same circuit as the house. But thanks for the idea.

I have been looking into all different options. I have a spare modem that I could chuck down in the shed and creat a wireless bridge between the shed and house rather than use wireless range extender as I don't think IP cameras plugged into the range extender will work as I won't be able to locate their IP's.

Just another question. Will an NVR/DVR record straight from the network or do the cameras have to be wired directly into the NVR/DVR?

There is a route in the back yard I could take with a cat 6/7 cable to get to the shed but we are talking about 50m cable length at least.

 

[mat200]

Hi guys, only issue with the powerline adapters is that my shed runs on its on fuse box so it's not the same circuit as the house. But thanks for the idea.

I have been looking into all different options. I have a spare modem that I could chuck down in the shed and creat a wireless bridge between the shed and house rather than use wireless range extender as I don't think IP cameras plugged into the range extender will work as I won't be able to locate their IP's.

Just another question. Will an NVR/DVR record straight from the network or do the cameras have to be wired directly into the NVR/DVR?

There is a route in the back yard I could take with a cat 6/7 cable to get to the shed but we are talking about 50m cable length at least.

Hi Dave

looks like it still may work

Google result:
In general Powerline networks work across the circuit breakers, as long as the circuit breaker is closed. The connection between the powerline devices could be good or bad depending on the attenuation/noise level on the electrical line.Dec 14, 2016

 

[TonyR]

Hi guys, only issue with the powerline adapters is that my shed runs on its on fuse box so it's not the same circuit as the house. But thanks for the idea.

+1 to @mat200 's info:
If that fuse box is fed by the load side of the utility company's meter that also supplies your house, then it still should work and would be my first choice. Early PLC / PLA units had to be on the same leg of a 120/240 split phase service or a capacitive coupler had to be installed between the 2 hot legs. Not any more.

Just another question. Will an NVR/DVR record straight from the network or do the cameras have to be wired directly into the NVR/DVR?

IP cams can be 'seen' or streamed to any recording (NVR) or viewing device on the LAN within the same subnet. Analog cams must be connected to the DVR directly.

There is a route in the back yard I could take with a cat 6/7 cable to get to the shed but we are talking about 50m cable length at least.

You can run CAT-5e, 6 or 7 to 100m / 328 feet, but if you live in the SE U.S. (AL, GA, FL, MS, LA, SC) because of the area's extreme lightning storms I would use a wireless bridge (2nd choice) or at the very least, install surge suppression where the cable enters your house to help protect your LAN inside and it's hardwired members (last choice).

 

[MingoDynasty]

Hey, I actually tackled this same kind mini project a couple of weeks ago.

What I did was I used a TP-Link N300 travel router to act as a client to my wifi. Then I connected my camera to the TP-Link N300.

The whole connection looked like this:
wifi access point <-> TP-Link N300 <-> PoE injector <-> IP camera

It doesn't seem like you are worried about your internet security; i.e. if someone breaks into your shed and unplugs the ethernet cable and then plugs in their own device, they would be able to access your network. However with the TP-Link N300 combined with some mac filtering on your firewall, you can provide some sort of protection against this scenario.

Any questions, let me know.

 

[TonyR]

What I did was I used a TP-Link N300 travel router to act as a client to my wifi. Then I connected my camera to the TP-Link N300.
The whole connection looked like this:
wifi access point <-> TP-Link N300 <-> PoE injector <-> IP camera

Those are great devices. I might have used a dozen of its older cousin, the TL‑WR702N N150, in several screnarios: turned a networked Canon laser printer at a County EMA office into a wireless printer (client mode), hooked to Ethernet port on a church's media laptop to pull in their DSL's weak wireless router down the hall (client mode) and my favorite: plugged it into 5VDC USB charger in cigarette lighter socket to power it in the cab of my truck, put the TP-LINK in Access Point mode, gave it a static IP, mounted old iPhone with ipCam app (by SKJM) with a gooseneck & suction cup on tailgate, assigned it a static IP, used iPad in cab also with static IP, got all 3 onto the TP-LINK's in-cab Wi-Fi and used the old iPhone as a hitch cam and iPad as monitor when backing up my truck to the trailer coupler. Took 3-4 minutes to hook up, worked great and stored in glove box (and probably saved my marriage).

 

[fenderman]

use point to point wireless.
You dont need an i7...i7 is a meaningless term...for example the first gen i7 is terrible for BI... many i7 laptop processors are weaker than i3 desktop processors....
see the wiki at the top of page.

 

[Dave82]

Wow guys, thanks for all the responses.

Going from a response by TonyR,
If i were to purchase an 8ch NVR with 8poe plugs could I run 4 or 5 wired cameras around the house directly plugged into the NVR and plug the NVR into the home network router. Then either (run a cable from the router to the shed/or try a powerline adapter) with a POE switch in the shed that has 2 or 3 cameras plugged in to it. Will doing it this way allow me to search for the cameras on the network and have the NVR record from all the available channels and not clog up my network to much. I just want a single recording device that I can put in my roof space where the modem/router is and be able to view/download from any computer I connect to the network either wired or wireless. I will figure out how to get it on my phone later.

I will probably keep my wifi extender on down in the shed to help with signals for mobile phones and laptops though.

 

[TonyR]

Somewhat. But note that, in the scenario you described, the cams tied directly to the NVR's POE ports will be on a different subnet (like 192.168.10.xxx) than the cams on the POE switch in the shed and your LAN (192.168.1.XXX). This is because the NVR has it's own DHCP server for its POE ports.

If it is essential for you to have all cams individually accessible via your LAN you could run the NVR's LAN port to a POE switch and have 4 or 5 cams on that switch, then feed another POE switch in the shed with 2 or 3 cams. The NVR and all cams could then be on the same subnet, 192.168.1.XXX. Essentially you would NOT use the NVR's POE ports. You would also assign static IP's to all the cams and the NVR in the 192.168.1.XXX range.

Honestly, I don't have an NVR, I use Blue Iris on a PC but have installed several NVR's for others. That being said, let me check:
@alastairstevenson , is the above correct?

 

[Dave82]

Ok then I get what your saying. Might just be more user friendly and cost effective to do without the nvr. A switch in the roof of the house and a switch in the shed either (wired/point to point/powerline) and just get a stand alone PC. This way I wont ever really be limited to the number of chanels I could connect.

Currently i have a TP-link wifi modem in the roof (unsure what model) that is connected to the phone line for internet. I then have a netgear nighthawk R700 router wired to that modem which i have all my devices connected to (both wired and wireless). I was getting shocking wifi with the provider supplied TP-link modem hence the second router. I got the R700 thinking it was a modem router but it's just a router.

Which router would you suggest I connect the switches too or wont it matter?

Just thinking about this question I think I answered it myself. The wired connection between the TP-link and Nighthawk says "internet" on the plug that goes into the nighthawk so i'm guessing that's not a specific lan connection but rather internet only. Would it be safe to say that if I used the TP-link as the router for the switches then whatever PC I was to use as access into the sureveillence would also need to be connected to that router where if the switches were on the nighthawk then I could access the system from anywhere on the network.

 

[TonyR]

If the TP-LINK's router function (DHCP server) is enabled then the Netgear should have it's DHCP disabled and a LAN port on the TP-LINK would run to a LAN port on the Netgear, turning the Netgear into basically just a wireless access point with a 4 port switch.

If both the TP-LINK and the Netgear are performing routing and the TP-LINK LAN goes to the Netgear 'Internet' (WAN) then you have a double NAT and you should avoid that. It'll work but you have 2 different subnets and the double NATting can be slower.

If you set it up like I said in the 1st paragraph above, you should connect the PC (or NVR) to the POE switches that handle the cams. Then go from one of the POE switches to any LAN port on the TP-LINK modem/router. Other network wired LAN devices can go to the TP-LINK LAN ports or even to the Netgear LAN ports which is now essentially a wireless access point with a 4 port switch because it's DHCP server is disabled and the TP-LINK does all the routing, all one subnet.

 

[Dave82]

Cheers Tony, yeah I think I currently have it set up how you have it described in paragraph 2.

I will have a look at how succesfull I can be changing it around.

 

[Dave82]

Well that was a fun exercise, lol. I went in and disabled the DHCP on the R7000 without giving it a new static IP address. I also didn't switch over the ethernet plug on both the tp-link and R7000 to LAN positions. As you can imagine I lost all internet and had to force a factory reset on the R7000. Not having DHCP on the netgear also made all my connected devices have issues with not having an IP address assigned to them.

This however let me start the setup genie again on the R7000. It appears the genie can do all this set up for me. Now both the tp-link and R7000 have the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and the ethernet cable is from WAN of the tp-link to internet port on the R7000

IP address for tp-link and default gateway is 192.168.1.1
start ip address on the tp-link is 192.168.1.100 with end address being 192.168.1.199
the netgear IP address is now 192.168.1.100
^^^^^^does this look right to you.

Now that the genie is working correctly it appears that I can switch the router between "router mode" "AP mode""Bridge mode" or "Reapeating mode". I currently have it set AP mode with the R7000 dynamically getting an IP address from the TP-link.

I'm sorry, I really am just flying by the seat of my pants here.

 

[Dave82]

The more I look into all of this I think I am starting to decifer what I actually need to. Thanks for all the help so far.