Intro / front placement advice

Dec 16, 2015
3
0
Hi, my name is Jim nice to meet ya. Hey let's get to it right away!:

I am just getting started with a surveillance system and want to begin small with two cameras I have a single story stucco home so the cameras will be in reach, especially at the front door. For that reason I was thinking a DS-2CD3132 up in the corner to the left of the door and either another dome or a 2032 on the eve to the right of the garage. The door camera I was thinking 2.8mm but not sure about the other one. Would up on the gable be a better option?

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Welcome!

I'm going to be lazy by quoting myself. The point is this: carefully define your objectives and requirements or else you may do a lot of work and fail to achieve what you ultimately realize you need...

If face recognition is a requirement then this is a prime example of a camera placement which fails to achieve the objective. Of the 23 cameras I run I believe that only one (my lobby camera) is capable of providing clear and identifiable face images...and that was an accident. The rest of my cameras are in positions which allow us to identify general activity, which is the requirement I built the system for when I started 2 years ago. However, I've come to realize that if I want to identify a person's face then I would have to place additional cameras, with spkecific lens installed, located at strategic choke-points. I like my system and it serves us well, but frankly all it's capable of is providing "Oh shit! Did you see that?" overview images. In my opinion, if you want evidentiary video then you're going to need some serious experience and know-how to build a system which provides the results which meet that requirement. Newbie Q™ was Qlueless 2 years ago. I'm less so now...but I still gotta loooong way to go.