Looking for some opinions on my setup concept

Symber

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Hello everyone, longtime forum stalker, first time poster/installer. Recently bought a house, quiet, rural area. We're mainly looking for the ability to monitor the kids while at work inside. We're frequented by the occasional bear, etc. We've also had some teenagers screwing around in the neighborhood recently. They've been mostly harmless, drinking and partying in the woods nearby, but since they started ringing doorbells at 3am, we decided to get cams set up before there's any actual damage done.

I'd like some feedback on my initial thoughts. Not looking for maximum security per se, mostly just an overview of the property and better monitoring of the entryways. Here's the property:
Security-Cams.jpg
The 3 semi-circles would be Detect/Observe cams mounted at 2nd story roofline. Thinking 3x IPC-Color4K-T180 for large FOV and the lack of IR attracting less insects/cobwebs. They're going to be hard to reach so I'm hopeful these cams will need cleaning less often. I have a small concern that the backyard (purple semicircle) might not always have enough light. If so I would need to switch that to a different wide ~180 degree cam or two overlapping cams. I do have floods, but they aren't motion triggered (atm).

The overlapping FOVs on the driveway would be for a IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 (booby cam). I'll probably shift the mount closer to the corner of the house, further from the driveway door. One would be angled to watch the door for packages with views driveway/garage doors. The other would be angled level to the ground to look at the raised yard area where a playset is set up. The ground there is about 6' above the driveway, the overhang I'd be mounting on is about 8-9' high.

That leaves the red sections, which I'm most unsure about and undecided on what cam would work best. I'm currently thinking the 3.6mm IPC-T5442TM-AS or the varifocal
IPC-T54IR-ZE. The main purpose of these would be to Identify anyone approaching the entryways into the house, mainly at night. For that reason I'm leaning towards fixed aperture cams. I marked the angles of approach for normal people and/or sight lines from the entryways. I'd be open to wider FOV cams so long as its not sacrificing their main purpose. Placements can be tweaked as well, they don't need to be exactly where the entryways are located, things are pretty flexible.

I'm aware that there's some notable gaps in security for a particularly creative actual criminal. That's not really something I expect to encounter, but I believe the Detect/Observe cams have enough overlapping FOV to spot an approach despite there being ways to avoid the Identify cams. As I mentioned, this would mainly be used for outdoor monitoring 99% of the time and to hopefully deter annoying drunk teenagers from waking me up at 3am.

All suggestions on improving this setup are very welcome! As would be any suggestions on the best NVR to run this setup. Added cams in the future are possible, but unlikely unless there's a glaring issue after initial setup. I also have a mailbox 650ft away, but I don't think there's anything useful I can do to monitor that one. Thanks for reading!
 

Symber

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Any thoughts at all? Never set up a system before so would really appreciate a second opinion before I just go crazy with it lol
 

Mike A.

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You have a lot here but just to hit a few key points:

Start small with a couple of cams and use them to learn better what you want/need. Expect that your plans for how things will work on 'paper' very likely will change quite a bit once you're actually into it more and have cams there and see how they work in different locations.

Get the vari-focal as a first cam. It's a relatively small difference in cost over the fixed and will give you a lot more flexibility for different placements and you'll be able to see how you might better frame things. You'll be able to use it pretty much no matter where it may end up over time.

Unless you plan to light things up there quite a bit, not sure that the color cams are going to work very well for you. Doesn't take a lot of light but you do need probably more than you have as ambient light out there alone with no streetlights, etc.

The 'boobie cam' is convenient and can work well in some cases, but it's not really all that great of a cam as cams go. Think I'd want something better as a primary cam watching your vehicles/garage entry.

I like BI vs an NVR myself. It's basically just a more capable, flexible NVR. There's a learning curve but not that much different than learning an NVR beyond the initial setup.
 

Starglow

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I think you will regret mounting cameras on the 2nd story for many reasons. You might consider pole mounted cameras in your application and then you can deploy 360-degree PTZ cameras and fixed cameras, plus the system can be easily expanded or modified as desired. I only have one camera mounted on my house plus the doorbell camera but the other six cameras are all pole mounted which has worked very well. The install takes some time and labor but isn't terrible.
 

wittaj

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Keep in mind that if you run the full color cams with the built-in white LEDs, they attract bugs just as well, if not better, than the infrared cameras.

I started with four 2.8mm cameras and I was like "I can place one on each corner of the house and see my whole property and the whole neighborhood." A newbie loves the wide angle "I can see the whole neighborhood" of the 2.8mm fixed wide angle lens. I LOVED IT WHEN I PUT IT UP. I could see everything that would be blocked looking out the windows.

It is easy to get lured in to thinking the wide angle "see the whole neighborhood" because you are watching it and you see a neighbor go by and you are like "Look at that I can tell that is Heather out walking." and "Yeah I can tell our neighbor 4 down just passed by". Or you watch back the video of you walking around and are like "yeah I can tell that is me".

Little do we realize how much WE can identify a known person just by hair style, clothing, walking pace, gait, etc.

Then one day the door checker comes by. Total stranger. Totally useless video other than what time the door checking happened. I was so furious my system let me down.

Then you realize that this wide-angle see the whole neighborhood comes at a cost and that cost is not being able to IDENTIFY who did it. These 2.8mm wide angle cameras are great overview cameras or to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet of the camera if the camera is installed less than 9 feet hight. At 40 feet out or a higher install you need a different camera.

And like most, I stuck these wide angle cameras on the 2nd story to be able to see even more, which then means any IDENTIFY distance is lost vertically. Someone needs to be within 10-13 feet to identify someone with a 2.8mm lens. A camera placed 16-20 feet up means the entire IDENTIFY distance is lost in the vertical direction. They could be one foot away horizontally, but at 20 feet high, you will only get a good shot at the top of the head...

So then we start adding more cameras and varifocal cameras so that we can optically zoom in to pinch points and other areas of interest to get the clean IDENTIFY captures of someone. While the varifocals are great at helping to identify at a distance, they come at a cost of a reduced field of view, just like the wide-angles are great at seeing a wide area, but they come at the expense of IDENTIFY at distance.
 
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Start small with a couple of cams and use them to learn better what you want/need. Expect that your plans for how things will work on 'paper' very likely will change quite a bit once you're actually into it more and have cams there and see how they work in different locations.
Everyone's experience is different. But this ^ advice is spot on. Until you experiment with a cam, you cannot appreciate what it can and cannot do. Be aware that your initial plan will change. If it does not, then you are doing something wrong.

Get that one good varifocal cam. Put it on a test rig (as stated int he WIKI) and try it out in different positions. Walk it day and night. Do this BEFORE you run cable or mount the cam. There is nothing wrong with only using good varifocal cams in your ID zones. Yes, on paper the fixed lens cams look better. But from what I can tell with my own experience, I do not see any difference. Certainly not one that makes or breaks an ID.

There is nothing wrong with having cams tasked with overview mounted high up. Sometimes that is all we can do or it is the best place for them. I have three cams tasked with overview in second story windows. They are great for that task and have proven invaluable for several issues around my place. But I would never expect them to be the only cams covering that area and get an ID from them.

Here are a few threads that discuss these sort of issues.

About using test rigs and comparisons.

Discussions where high mounted overview cams helped out.
 

mat200

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Any thoughts at all? Never set up a system before so would really appreciate a second opinion before I just go crazy with it lol
Hello everyone, longtime forum stalker, first time poster/installer. Recently bought a house, quiet, rural area. We're mainly looking for the ability to monitor the kids while at work inside. We're frequented by the occasional bear, etc. We've also had some teenagers screwing around in the neighborhood recently. They've been mostly harmless, drinking and partying in the woods nearby, but since they started ringing doorbells at 3am, we decided to get cams set up before there's any actual damage done.

I'd like some feedback on my initial thoughts. Not looking for maximum security per se, mostly just an overview of the property and better monitoring of the entryways. Here's the property:
View attachment 175995
The 3 semi-circles would be Detect/Observe cams mounted at 2nd story roofline. Thinking 3x IPC-Color4K-T180 for large FOV and the lack of IR attracting less insects/cobwebs. They're going to be hard to reach so I'm hopeful these cams will need cleaning less often. I have a small concern that the backyard (purple semicircle) might not always have enough light. If so I would need to switch that to a different wide ~180 degree cam or two overlapping cams. I do have floods, but they aren't motion triggered (atm).

The overlapping FOVs on the driveway would be for a IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 (booby cam). I'll probably shift the mount closer to the corner of the house, further from the driveway door. One would be angled to watch the door for packages with views driveway/garage doors. The other would be angled level to the ground to look at the raised yard area where a playset is set up. The ground there is about 6' above the driveway, the overhang I'd be mounting on is about 8-9' high.

That leaves the red sections, which I'm most unsure about and undecided on what cam would work best. I'm currently thinking the 3.6mm IPC-T5442TM-AS or the varifocal
IPC-T54IR-ZE. The main purpose of these would be to Identify anyone approaching the entryways into the house, mainly at night. For that reason I'm leaning towards fixed aperture cams. I marked the angles of approach for normal people and/or sight lines from the entryways. I'd be open to wider FOV cams so long as its not sacrificing their main purpose. Placements can be tweaked as well, they don't need to be exactly where the entryways are located, things are pretty flexible.

I'm aware that there's some notable gaps in security for a particularly creative actual criminal. That's not really something I expect to encounter, but I believe the Detect/Observe cams have enough overlapping FOV to spot an approach despite there being ways to avoid the Identify cams. As I mentioned, this would mainly be used for outdoor monitoring 99% of the time and to hopefully deter annoying drunk teenagers from waking me up at 3am.

All suggestions on improving this setup are very welcome! As would be any suggestions on the best NVR to run this setup. Added cams in the future are possible, but unlikely unless there's a glaring issue after initial setup. I also have a mailbox 650ft away, but I don't think there's anything useful I can do to monitor that one. Thanks for reading!
hi @Symber

Great advice from everyone so far ..

Mike A.'s got the advice to start with ..
 

Ri22o

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Below is the link to my thread that I usually post whenever someone asks about cam placement and focal length. It shows the difference that can be had by changing mounting height or going with a more appropriate focal length. In some instances I would have thought that going full 12mm on the varifocal would have been life changing, but it wasn't. Compared to a similarly positioned 2.8mm it was night/day, but until you see what you can see (or not see) with a given focal length it can be hard to visualize what will work for a specific location.

And with my using the single cam version of the boobie cam, I would definitely not recommend it for the use case you are considering. I have one at my front door and one in the ceiling corner of a small room inside; any more distance to a subject and it would be about useless.

 

Symber

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Thank you guys for all the well thought out responses! I appreciate all the info to go over. Some I already knew and considered, like the 2nd story cams being useless for Identify, but the test rig stuff is particularly handy. Not sure how I missed that in all my reading. Too focused on cam specs like sensor sizes and apertures I guess.

I'll definitely grab a varifocal first to experiment with a bit, especially for the entryways. I'll scrap the boobie cam for two better single cams if they're truly not that great. Any opinions, from the image and intended coverage/uses, playset view, packages & garage door watching, on if I should mount both cams in the same mounting location (but different focal lengths or directions) vs two completely different angles (like one as marked angled toward the all 3 doors and packages and another at the corner back the other way)? I'll probably figure this out with the rig idea, but just curious if there's a 'best practices' type thing at play.

As for other cams, I'm glad there weren't any major quality objections to the choices. There were a couple mentions of the color cams being mounted up on the 2nd floor. Would they not work well for my intended purpose? Those cams were planned for Detect and Observe not for any actual meaningful Recognize/Identify image capture. Their most frequent use will be watching my kids roaming ~5 acres more than anything. They should be fine for that and spotting unexpected bear/humans at night? (pending ambient light of course)

And as for light, two of my neighbors have exterior floods on at night that illuminate my front yard a bit which is why I wasn't too concerned about the lighting (except in the backyard). I'm also not opposed to a flood myself so I'm not relying on others. Is there an accepted best recommended wide FOV cam to handle this backyard overwatch position instead if I didn't want to go with a backyard flood?

As people mentioned, plans change as you learn more and experiment with rigging things up, so maybe in the end I won't go with the 180 cams by the time I'm buying. Currently, I still think they're an alright kids overwatch cam though.

Again, thank you everyone for the great ideas. Very helpful as far as planning my next steps go.
 

mat200

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Thank you guys for all the well thought out responses! I appreciate all the info to go over. Some I already knew and considered, like the 2nd story cams being useless for Identify, but the test rig stuff is particularly handy. Not sure how I missed that in all my reading. Too focused on cam specs like sensor sizes and apertures I guess.

I'll definitely grab a varifocal first to experiment with a bit, especially for the entryways. I'll scrap the boobie cam for two better single cams if they're truly not that great. Any opinions, from the image and intended coverage/uses, playset view, packages & garage door watching, on if I should mount both cams in the same mounting location (but different focal lengths or directions) vs two completely different angles (like one as marked angled toward the all 3 doors and packages and another at the corner back the other way)? I'll probably figure this out with the rig idea, but just curious if there's a 'best practices' type thing at play.

As for other cams, I'm glad there weren't any major quality objections to the choices. There were a couple mentions of the color cams being mounted up on the 2nd floor. Would they not work well for my intended purpose? Those cams were planned for Detect and Observe not for any actual meaningful Recognize/Identify image capture. Their most frequent use will be watching my kids roaming ~5 acres more than anything. They should be fine for that and spotting unexpected bear/humans at night? (pending ambient light of course)

And as for light, two of my neighbors have exterior floods on at night that illuminate my front yard a bit which is why I wasn't too concerned about the lighting (except in the backyard). I'm also not opposed to a flood myself so I'm not relying on others. Is there an accepted best recommended wide FOV cam to handle this backyard overwatch position instead if I didn't want to go with a backyard flood?

As people mentioned, plans change as you learn more and experiment with rigging things up, so maybe in the end I won't go with the 180 cams by the time I'm buying. Currently, I still think they're an alright kids overwatch cam though.

Again, thank you everyone for the great ideas. Very helpful as far as planning my next steps go.
I like the boobie cam at the front door, basically at eye level .. one lens for the face of the person knocking on the door and the other watching the package drop area
 
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