Installing over stucco with tyvek homewrap

I tried putting one of these new cameras in that spot at night and...damn, they can't see for crap at night. I'm not sure if I'm just configuring it wrong, but my old DS-2CD2032-I camera does a hell of a lot better at night. They claim 93ft range in darkness, but I can't even get them to go that far. Anybody know what's up with this? Again the model is E891AB.

Also, is it possible to fit these cameras with a 4mm lens like my old camera has?
 
ArmoredDragon said:
I tried putting one of these new cameras in that spot at night and...damn, they can't see for crap at night. I'm not sure if I'm just configuring it wrong, but my old DS-2CD2032-I camera does a hell of a lot better at night. They claim 93ft range in darkness, but I can't even get them to go that far. Anybody know what's up with this? Again the model is E891AB.

Also, is it possible to fit these cameras with a 4mm lens like my old camera has?
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Q / issue: They claim 93ft range in darkness
See the DORI section in the cliff notes. With a wide FOV the pixel density quickly decreases. An 8MP camera with that FOV angle will have about 20 feet range to the 100 ppf mark. That is the spec we like to use for calculating the ID distance.
 
mat200 said:
Q / issue: They claim 93ft range in darkness
See the DORI section in the cliff notes. With a wide FOV the pixel density quickly decreases. An 8MP camera with that FOV angle will have about 20 feet range to the 100 ppf mark. That is the spec we like to use for calculating the ID distance.
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I think there's maybe a little more at play. I literally walked right in front of the camera and all I could see in the picture was a silhouette. The old camera works fine switching modes without even needing a NVR to tell it what to do. The new one needs the NVR just to tell it when to switch to night or day, and even then, it doesn't seem to work right. There has to be something I'm missing, either that or the technology has gone backwards over time.

By the way, can blue Iris drive all of the features of this camera, and if so, are there any threads where people talk about working with it from a VM?
 
For mounting junction box on top of stucco, You should be able to use long 3"-3-1/2" wood/deck screws and lag them into the exterior sheeting behind the rigid insulation. Just be careful you dont torque the screws to much, otherwise you will cave in the stucco behind junction box. Unless its the old style stucco with no foam behind it?

d9888q-171192ed-cd35-42ea-bd5f-8d8518fccb20.jpg
 
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I'm not sure whether mine has that sheathing on it. I know there is the homewrap stuff first, then I'm wanting to say that's followed by the foam, but honestly I haven't seen how they build the exterior wall after the homewrap is added. Whatever they do after that point they seemed to do rather quickly, I never really even saw the chicken wire
 
ArmoredDragon said:
I'm not sure whether mine has that sheathing on it. I know there is the homewrap stuff first, then I'm wanting to say that's followed by the foam, but honestly I haven't seen how they build the exterior wall after the homewrap is added. Whatever they do after that point they seemed to do rather quickly, I never really even saw the chicken wire
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Most of the newer places I have seen built use vertical mulch ( OSB ) board as the base providing rigidity to the wood frame structure... sometimes they have foam board on top of that - sometimes not... then a wrap, then the stucco related materials.
 
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The diagram above is mostly on newly built homes around this area. Depends on how old the house is, Yours could have the original wood slats behind stucco/wire/house wrap.
 
@ArmoredDragon - thanks for the additional pic. Still doesn't spell out what you want to capture and other cameras you are considering.

If you have a spare section of 1/2" PVC, hold that against your stucco wall and see if you're okay with that look. Get buy-in from your wife as well. More important than your opinion.
In my testing phase I considered using conduit against the stucco for two cams and it looked like crap so we're taking a different approach.

It's great that you have extensive IT skills. Lots of users here use WIN10P on a stand-alone used or refurbed computer of various flavors, but mostly a decent Intel CPU, running Blue IRIS and are very satisfied. Personal choice for you to make. Windows auto updates can be disabled. I did so after receiving a tip from SouthernYankee on this forum.

I personally would not use that Lorex bullet cam. I think you can do much better with a pro grade Dahua starlight series cam, either turrets or bullets. Most prefer turrets. Latest versions are 4MP. My suggestion is for you to take a few steps back and scour this forum for installation tips and what others have done. Read over the WIKI, which is driven home to every new person that comes on the forum, with good reasons. Share as much info about your requirements as you want to showing your entire system layout, pics of the house, where you want to install cams, etc. You'll get lots of great help and ideas you never considered. Even small suggestions from others will turn the light on in your design thoughts. I've been at this for six months now with three of five cams installed and BI running smoothly. Planning really pays off.
 
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I just received word back from the builder on how they build the exterior walls, and they sent me this. From left to right: insulation, tyvek, foam, chicken wire, brown coat, and stucco.
 

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I've been rethinking this a bit, and I've decided on another approach: I'll mount all of these in a place that is both easy to get to and there is no need for any to wiring or conduit. Basically, there are two ideal spots for a camera underneath my front porch archways that will have them mounted less than 8ft from the foundation, and right above the stucco is plywood that I can mount directly to using a toggle bolt or something similar.

IMG_20200411_160646.jpg

I think what I'm looking to do is have two long range/license plate cameras that point down the street in both directions. Those cameras will be like this one:

Amazon.com: Loryta IPC-T5442TM-AS 3.6mm Fixed Lens 4MP Starlight+ WDR IR Eyeball AI Network Camera English Version: Home Improvement

Amazon.com: Loryta IPC-T5442TM-AS 3.6mm Fixed Lens 4MP Starlight+ WDR IR Eyeball AI Network Camera English Version: Home Improvement
www.amazon.com

Then I will have four close range high resolution cameras for watching side gates and then both sides of the driveway, and I'm thinking maybe 4k with 2.8mm lens and 1/1.8" or bigger CMOS, ideally with bright LED lights and a mic, and some kind of alarm or otherwise having a speaker.

I've drawn cone shapes to indicate which ways the cameras will face, with that rightmost camera being behind the pillar

front.png

The gate cameras are out of view from here, but the right gate cam is the view I have been showing earlier in this thread, and I will have it mounted further up. It's only function is to get a good shot of anybody attempting to enter my back yard, or on the other gate, tampering with any of the utility stuff at the side of my house.

That left-most camera has the ethernet cable already added by the builder, so again no need for external wiring as I can just mount directly to the steel gang plate already there.

I think I might get a camera that can double as a wildlife camera for this spot, PTZ and all. Has anybody ever done this before? Does it work out well? Any software that can automatically set the PTZ back to its safe position after it hasn't been touched in a while? There's a nice mountain view in front of the house that I'd like to take advantage of, and having a good zoom range would be neat.

Any suggestions for what I ought to get for the close range cameras and/or the wildlife camera if I use it for that purpose?

Any other thoughts? Is this overkill? This is my first real attempt at making a comprehensive plan of my front yard.
 
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I guess one other concern with this approach could be how any moisture is supposed to drain, as normally with cameras I mount to the side to make a C pattern with the silicon sealant. Could I mount a turret camera directly to the arch without having to worry about any condensation building up and damaging the internals? Or is it basically obligatory to have a junction box? I'd prefer to avoid using one.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
Really wanting to run a software NVR on a virtual machine. Call me picky, but I don't like running standalone windows computers 24/7. Especially non-server versions of windows, which force you to constantly deal with updates. Not sure if Blue Iris would be a good solution for me because I haven't been able to determine how suited it is for virtual environments. Besides, I'm a big IT nerd and a single physical computer just isn't HA enough :)
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This is not accurate. Windows runs perfectly stable 24/7 and if you wish updates can be disabled. I have over 20 blue iris servers running perfectly.
There are plenty of VMS packages available if you dont like blue iris. Most do far less at a significant premium.
 
fenderman said:
This is not accurate. Windows runs perfectly stable 24/7 and if you wish updates can be disabled. I have over 20 blue iris servers running perfectly.
There are plenty of VMS packages available if you dont like blue iris. Most do far less at a significant premium.
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It isn't that I don't like it, I honestly haven't tried it, I'm just leery about running something that doesn't have much in the way of headless support. I found some posts of people saying they're able to achieve it by passing through an xeon's embedded GPU to the BI VM, but those people all talk as if the host console is totally useless...but it's not, it's very important to have access to that as it's very critical to troubleshooting when your host is acting up. You can literally do anything with that if you have general linux knowledge and can google your way through esxcli.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
It isn't that I don't like it, I honestly haven't tried it, I'm just leery about running something that doesn't have much in the way of headless support. I found some posts of people saying they're able to achieve it by passing through an xeon's embedded GPU to the BI VM, but those people all talk as if the host console is totally useless...but it's not, it's very important to have access to that as it's very critical to troubleshooting when your host is acting up. You can literally do anything with that if you have general linux knowledge and can google your way through esxcli.
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I dont understand why you think BI has no headless support.
Running BI or any other vms on a VM introduces an entirely new set of issues. A surveillance appliance should be run on a modern bare metal machine.
 
ArmoredDragon said:
The comments I've read are to the effect of it being limited, and that the windows UI is the only way to use most of the features.



Why?
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That is incorrect. You can use another copy of blue iris as a full featured client (which can by purchased for 35 bux). You can also use any myriad of remote desktop software including windows built in RDP.
There are plenty of threads discussing issues with VM's. Late model low power windows pc's are cheap and plentiful.
I encourage you to try the other vms options out there.
 
fenderman said:
You can also use any myriad of remote desktop software including windows built in RDP.
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In my mind, headless means the software quietly runs in the background while providing its own remote interface. An example of that might be another one I'm looking at called zoneminder.

fenderman said:
There are plenty of threads discussing issues with VM's.
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Is this for VMS software in general, or is it for blue iris? If the former, I don't understand the reasoning for that as virtualization is used even in situations where somebody's life literally depends on some software running inside of a VM. I work in the health care sector, I've seen it :)
 
ArmoredDragon said:
In my mind, headless means the software quietly runs in the background while providing its own remote interface. An example of that might be another one I'm looking at called zoneminder.



Is this for VMS software in general, or is it for blue iris? If the former, I don't understand the reasoning for that as virtualization is used even in situations where somebody's life literally depends on some software running inside of a VM. I work in the health care sector, I've seen it :)
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You are not reading what I wrote. Blue iris can run in the background as a service and you can have a full fledged remote interface. Zoneminder is a joke and if that satisfies you, you have very low standards.

Most vms software makers will tell you that you can run it on a vm. My point is if you want 100 percent stability bare metal is the way to go. I know I know, you are the expert...ive seen that 1000. Use zoneminder. I was simply correcting your inaccuracies about windows and blue iris.
 
fenderman said:
You are not reading what I wrote. Blue iris can run in the background as a service and you can have a full fledged remote interface.
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If you have to rely on RDP or any other remote desktop software, then it wouldn't be running in the "background" per se.

fenderman said:
Zoneminder is a joke and if that satisfies you, you have very low standards.
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I'm not trying to argue the merits of one vs another, I'm just pointing out an example of what I mean by headless.

fenderman said:
Most vms software makers will tell you that you can run it on a vm. My point is if you want 100 percent stability bare metal is the way to go. I know I know, you are the expert...ive seen that 1000. Use zoneminder. I was simply correcting your inaccuracies about windows and blue iris.
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I'm not an expert, that's why I'm here asking questions :) Though I would argue that, as a general rule, virtualization offers more in the way of stability as it can guarantee higher uptime if implemented correctly. For example, it's much easier to recover from a hardware fault without suffering any kind of outage.

And speaking of outage, it makes more sense for me to stick to a virtual machine running on my existing hardware as it is already UPS backed. Adding another computer for just one application, even if the other computer is low power, will make my UPS not last as long in the event of a power loss.

Currently my UPS is able to keep my servers, my Cisco switch, and anything connected to them powered for 30 minutes in the event of a total power loss. Adding another computer will clip more time off of that, so it's something I'd prefer to avoid.
 
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