Ideas for coverage? See Pictures

Ipcamncvr

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I have a building that has pillars with an carport area that extends out to the other half of the parking. We need coverage from both ends as well as in the middle area of both the walkway/carport and the outer parking.

We are having blind spots issues for not having enough cameras and the pillars are in the way and block view

What suggestions would work best with least number of cameras and wiring is what I’m trying to see. An extra camera if needed is doable.

Let me know what the thoughts are!

Ty
 

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mat200

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I have a building that has pillars with an carport area that extends out to the other half of the parking. We need coverage from both ends as well as in the middle area of both the walkway/carport and the outer parking.

We are having blind spots issues for not having enough cameras and the pillars are in the way and block view

What suggestions would work best with least number of cameras and wiring is what I’m trying to see. An extra camera if needed is doable.

Let me know what the thoughts are!

Ty
Hi ipcamncvr,

Issue: ..having blind spots issues..
Solution: More cameras, more cameras,...

Issue: ..What ..would work best with least number of cameras
Response: You're going to need to understand what the threat areas area, and prioritize cameras based on that.
Question: what is the threat you are attempting to counter?
 

IAmATeaf

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I estimate that you’d need 16 cams to cover all the cars. So 2 cams per pillar mounted in a zig zag formation so that 1 looks over the 2 cars looking out and it’s partner mounted looking in towards the walkway in front of the cars.
 

Ipcamncvr

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Thanks for replying in all! I knew more cameras for sure. Plan to go with a 32 channel and have in mind to run 24 from what I’ve counted up so far for the building and parking.

I’m trying to get a good radius of coverage to be able to see if and find what occurred on playback. This has been problem sin past with our current layout. See photos for current layout of only 3 cameras!

This is just how the camera guy did it 4-5 years ago. Time for planning it out right.
Makes it impossible to cover the parking the way that it it

I penciled out 7 which would include the front entrance lpr bullet to be able to see playback of 60-70 ft away.

Let me know what you guys think!
 

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Ipcamncvr

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We just need to be able to produce playback and see what occurred in the parking lot. Say if there was a break in, or a unwanted person or vehicle on property, or if something was stolen, etc. to catch the bad stuff

Not so much to watch live on display for monitoring but solely for having coverage of 50-60ft on playback with big loss of quality
 

Ipcamncvr

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Is 50-70ft more than reasonable to expect out of a 4mp dahua 2.8mm, of course with right lighting etc?
 

Ipcamncvr

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At moment yes we can not cover well.

Any recommendations on camera lens to go with if I stagger them about 50ft.

I will have some along the walkway, thinking of 4. One at end end and two in middle looking outwards to cover the blind spots

For the open parking area I expect to run with 3 cameras, one for the main entrance and two mounted near the balconies to see the uncovered parking.
 

SouthernYankee

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I will give the standard recommendation that I give everybody starting out.
Start with ONE good variable focus camera, use a test mount to verify the mounting location and lens type. Always test at night with motion. Use a "BAD GUY" wearing a hoodie , sun glasses and ball cap at night, can you identify him. Will the picture work for the police ?

IPC-HDW5442t-ZE .... Dahua IPC-HDW5442T-ZE 4MP Varifocal Turret - Night Perfomance testing -- variable focus 2.7 mm-12mm 4 MP Starlight

Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras if you need good low light cameras.
Use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 7ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
 
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mat200

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Thanks for replying in all! I knew more cameras for sure. ..
What is the purpose of the cameras ?

Each spot/place in the parking area needs to be covered by a minimum of two cameras. Each camera must be seen by another camera. The purpose of the camera is to identify the bad guy not jut see what happened.
HI ipcamncvr,

Again, it would help if you really shared what your goals are, as right now we're givin suggestions based on what each of us think your goals could be.

Thus our suggestions may not most effectively cover what you want to do.

Issue: ..What ..would work best with least number of cameras
Response: You're going to need to understand what the threat areas area, and prioritize cameras based on that.
Question: what is the threat you are attempting to counter?
 

Ipcamncvr

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I gotcha. I’ll give it some more thinking.

I was hoping maybe someone had a similar install and could throw some tips out with regards to the pillars in view and blocking when camera is positioned at angle.

Basically, the entire parking could be potentially a threat for anything happening. With economy being the way it is, homeless, drugs etc we have noticed more activity. The motive is to deter as much of this and be able to cover near all angles of the parking so that we can see what happened when something does.

Thank you all for the info!
 
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The motive is to deter as much of this and be able to cover near all angles of the parking so that we can see what happened when something does.
You need a plan. What you state is not a plan, it is a general overall statement.

It has been asked, but you have not answered.

Do you want to be able to ID faces?
Do you want to be able to get descriptions of clothing?
Do you just want an overview to the point that you can say "yeah, someone backed into your car" or "yeah, some guy broke your window at 1:00am".
Do you want to be able to execute the plan at night?
 

Ipcamncvr

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I agree I plan and I have just been stating my concerns hoping someone could dial it in or know about commerical installation to be able to shoot me some info like a few have already.

I assumed that it was obvious that we would of course want to have coverage for the playback to be able to identify whether it was an in house guest involved or someone who may have come off the road.

The location is for a hotel setting, 24 hours operation with enough lighting at night.

typically when we need to view play back we are looking for all and any information, the questions which would be asked on report call by authorities. So yes, descriptions would be the most important. Face ID enough to be able to make out whether it was a guest who is staying or an outsider. Fender benders, vandalism, stolen item from truck bed, robbery, license plate we do want this feature and am already looking at the equipment needed.

The question really was how could I position or stagger the cameras to avoid blind spots as we have structure pillars in the carport. I’d like to have them positioned at angle angle view versus straight on. Maybe this is where I didnt clarify but any information helps.

good eye opener
 
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It is hard, at least for me, to get a feel for the property as a whole forma few pics. Maybe you could post a satellite view from Google Maps? Include the area around so one could get an idea of ingress/egress.

My guess is you would need a mix of wide angle cams to get info on where people came and went from your property, as well as narrow FOV cams focused on spots that people would have to pass through which is where you get face shots.

Are you planning on using an NVR or VMS?
 

Ipcamncvr

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I plan to use the dahua pro nvr. We plan to use dahua fixed and varifocal cameras. Do not plan to use the ptz camera.

I like the idea of the narrow fov. I was leaning towards varifocal or a split of them between fixed and varifocal. The budget is already crunching easily to $4k just for the equipment so I want to plan the camera locations so we don’t have to redo much or at all any.

I have some other photos I can share to show the building. As for the rear of building facing the open field, I have three cameras in kind to cover that area as there is minimal area to cover.

any and all suggestions would be appreciated!
 

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So I checked your property in street view. You have two lamp posts between the parking lot and the street. You might consider mounting several Dahua B5442E-Z4E cams there to cover the lot, both covered parking and the open area. Getting the cat5e to there might be hard, but since there is power there, you could do a POE switch at each position and use Nano stations to beam the feed to the office. At that distance you could mount them high enough to be out of arms reach and still get decent angles on faces across the parking lot.

Angle of attack.jpg

Is the open field still there or has it been developed? It is tough to go on just pics. It is so much easier to sit outside and just look, observe, and think of coverage and angles.
 

mat200

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I plan to use the dahua pro nvr. We plan to use dahua fixed and varifocal cameras. Do not plan to use the ptz camera.

I like the idea of the narrow fov. I was leaning towards varifocal or a split of them between fixed and varifocal. The budget is already crunching easily to $4k just for the equipment so I want to plan the camera locations so we don’t have to redo much or at all any.

I have some other photos I can share to show the building. As for the rear of building facing the open field, I have three cameras in kind to cover that area as there is minimal area to cover.

any and all suggestions would be appreciated!
Ah... I see you have a massive parameter to watch over... you're probably going to need to narrow down your priorities or you'll need a lot more cameras to cover that 360 parameter.
 

Ipcamncvr

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Right! It’s a lot. At first I was trying to be cheap on it, but realize that is not going to make sense and is not going to help with accomplishing what we need. The technology is great now than before so the new features will help.

I like the idea of the poles, but the issue is that guest room windows face that side for the 2nd floor over hang rooms. We just don’t want to spook out the guests.

I thought about finding 2-3 mounting locations along the building to have wide angle camera shoot out towards the parking to cover this space well

The rear field is still vacant. Those bullets you recommend I would like to consider. Looks like they can get a real narrow view if need be.

I will look up some YouTube videos on that bullet to see what can be done it it!
 
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