Hello guys! It's come to my attention that we have a Christmas light cord cutter in our development, which has been going on for 3 years now according to neighborhood facebook reports after I announced my own problem yesterday... This is the 1st year we had any holiday lighting, and our christmas light was in the yard only 4 days before someone cut its cord about 15ft from my front door. It was a clean cut so I stripped it back, spliced and reinsulated the cord within 5 minutes of noticing, putting it right back out in service like it never happened. I suspect this may antagonize the vandal, and I await their return.
For the sake of clarity and to respect your time/expertise as I seek your guidance, I've summarized wants and needs in the following sections:
Goals
Hardware/Software needs
Existing Equipment
Current Progress
Goals:
Hardware/Software Needs:
Existing Equipment:
Current Progress:
Please advise of better options or suggestions:
For the sake of clarity and to respect your time/expertise as I seek your guidance, I've summarized wants and needs in the following sections:
Goals
Hardware/Software needs
Existing Equipment
Current Progress
Goals:
- Record anything entering my front yard, with the potential to capture identifying characteristics of people in my yard at night
- Secondary goal - Cover as much of the surrounding yards as is reasonable. I live on a cul-de-sac (about 500 ft from stop sign to end, my attached garage is ~170 ft from the stop sign).
- Since I want active alarms on motion in my yard, I'd likely use separate cameras to monitor neighboring yards/street, so that I don't get alarms as my neighbors come and go
- High quality picture
- Phone alerts
- Recording. Quickly identify and view past periods with motion sensor activation
- Secondary goal - Live feed on my bedside tablet would be nice, but not a necessity
- Heavily prefer purchasing thru Amazon, ideally prime 2 day shipping.
Hardware/Software Needs:
- 3 wired PoE outdoor security cameras
- Front pointing North/South across yard - longer field of vision ideal to capture anyone entering yard from next door neighbors yards, front yard is only 50ft or so off street
- Back pointing West straight back - wider field of vision ideal, capture anyone cutting between houses from backyard
- Flood light - EXIR or regular?
- Is it helpful to use an External IR flood light for nightvision clarity/quality?
- Better idea to light up my yard like its daytime than try to improve night vision quality?
- I'd most like to apprehend the people responsible, so I'd lean towards IR/nightvision so as not to spook them
- Blue Iris - I want to record, detect motion, and get alerted on my phone. I want it to be device agnostic mostly, so I can expand and change equipment down the road. I'm under the impression this is the best solution.
Existing Equipment:
- i7-3770K (4 cores, 8 logical), 32GB RAM, 12TB spinning disks, 200GB SSD
- Vera automation controller, likely not tying this in directly, poor camera support
- cat5e & cable dragging skills
- Gig PoE switch
- Post lights in every yard on street from dusk-dawn, house lights thru evening, so there's some ambient lighting even at dead of night - not sure how this impacts night vision
- 2 story house, cameras likely mounted under eave of attached garage for aesthetic reasons, potentially could mount under eave on 2nd story, but this would likely result in too sharp a downward angle
- 80lb Rhodesian Ridgeback, 60lb Boxer - aggressive front window barkers
Current Progress:
Please advise of better options or suggestions:
- Reviewed Hikvision product comparison spreadsheet (Hikvision Product Comparison)
- I think I prefer bullet vs dome, correct me if this should not be the case.
- Based on spreadsheet, maybe I should be most interested in these cameras:
- Possible IR flood light: Amazon.com: CMVision-IR200 - 198 IR LED Night Indoor/Outdoor Long Range 300ft IR Illuminator w/ FREE 12V Power Adapter ( Up & Down Position Adjustment only): Musical Instruments
- By the way, this is about 4 times as expensive as the StarShower Christmas Laser projects you see at Walmart, but its WAY brighter, covers a larger area and its sturdy metal construction - despite the higher cost I'm happy with the purchase. I'm looking for similar satisfaction with security cameras, I'll pay for quality: Amazon.com : Almatess Christmas Laser Lights Outdoor Waterproof RGB Moving Landscape Star Projector with 19 Feet Long Cable Garden Laser Lights for Christmas Decoration, Holiday Lighting, Party, Disco : Patio, Lawn & Garden
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