Need help and introduction

[jaredb42]

Hello, my name is Jared I am a homeowner in Pinellas County Florida. I have recently encountered some unfortunate situations in my new home. I believe that installing cameras is my solution. I reached out to members on Reddit for advice but have not found anybody well versed. They did however refer me here to you guys! I am needing to purchase a system asap and hoping someone could help walk me through the process. I am going to copy my post to this thread.

Hello, I live in Pinellas County, Florida. I have been shopping around for a cameras system all day following the theft of property from the side of my house. I live in a dense residential neighborhood, no more than 20ft between adjacent homes. We are a nicer area however theft is seemingly on the rise here. I plan to install both floodlights and 4-6 outdoor cameras. I am looking for a DVR/NVR setup offering a wired system, ideally POE (power over ethernet). I want to have 4k(8MP) and a live feed. I am hoping to have a phone app that is consistent with viewing 24/7 wherever I may be. I am looking for suggestions from users who have made similar purchases. I was about to jump on simpli-safe today, $630 for 4 exteriors and one interior camera. Upon reading Reddit reviews I am hesitant as to the functionality seems to be lacking and inconsistent and low-quality footage via the wifi app and poor detection etc. I want me and my housemates to be safe in our home and not worry about being an easy target. Thank you all very much for your time and any advice you may offer. I can provide further information upon request. The ideal budget would be under 1,000 with a full setup(4-6 quality wired cameras).
Here is a layout of my house I have designed and posted in Imgur:
If you cannot use the link please read below.
edit: 1100SQ FT home. dimensions as follows(estimated) as if viewing from the street.
Front face property: on the left one window ( my bedroom), middle two windows and front door/porch (living room), right side garage door
left side of the property: one window ( my bedroom), further down another window(second bedroom)
the right side of the property: one small window (garage bathroom), further down Two large windows( guest bedroom)
back of property viewed as if you were looking directly at it from our back fence line:
starting near the guest bedroom is a two-panel sliding glass door, then in the middle is a small screened-in back porch with another two panels sliding glass door, then near the second bedroom is a bathroom window then the bedroom window. This completes the layout of the exterior home, I will upload a rough hand-drawn photo shortly.

Also to add I have a huge issue with a drunk older neighbor who is mentally ill. I need to have quality audio as well. If needed I am willing to pay for a professional's time. All my local camera installation companies are trying to mark up the costs of the cameras quite a bit and charge me very steep installation fees and are not very customer service oriented or I would have considered that route.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'd suggest you read the material in the Wiki in the blue bar at the top of the page. There's a ton of solid information in there regarding all aspects of a video surveillance system. Remember, cameras are for surveillance and a good alarm system is for detection.

My experience is that to achieve good coverage you'll need at least two cameras on all sides of the house. They should be placed at the ends and look back toward each other to capture anything trying to be done to them as well as provide overlapping coverage. Our house is smaller than yours and I have an addition camera on the "long" sides, front and rear, to further fill things in and reduce blind spots, especially approaches.

It's best to buy one decent varifocal camera like the Dahua 5442T-ZE and set it up on a test rig with a long ethernet cable so it can be moved from location to location to test each location. The advantage of a varifocal is that it allows adjustment of the focal length to get optimal coverage. The amount of zoom can be converted into an approximate focal length so it can be replaced with a fixed lens version. When I say test, that means both day and night by having someone walk by the camera playing bad guy to see if you can get an actual identification shot. Cameras should be mounted no higher than 7 to 7.5 feet to be able to get that identification shot. If the view is from further away it can be mounted higher but that requires more zoom, longer focal length, to be able to get that shot.

Each camera also needs to be adjusted to match the actual lighting conditions both day and night. That can be accomplished easily by using the web GUI of the camera. The prosumer cameras preferred here on IPCT allow all the adjustment necessary for brightness, contrast. gain, exposure(shutter speed), exposure compensation and a lot of other features. Unfortunately, there is no plug and play that will actually provide useable video.

Above all, stay away from Reolink, Wyze, Blink and all the other "popular" consumer grade cameras. Stay away from cloud based cameras. None of them will achieve what you seem to be looking for.

 

[Old Timer]

Welcome, stick around a while, there is a ton of information available just for the reading of posts.