Hello everybody! In the summer I decided to upgrade my surveillance system and my home network. Until then, I had 4 wireless Foscam cameras with a Foscam NVR and the quality was terrible especially at night. I am an IT professional, but I haven’t dealt with CCTV systems in the past, so that was my first installation.
That was my rack cabinet before the upgrade:

After some research I decided to go with Dahua IP Cameras with an NVR. I wanted to build something that will last so I chose 8MP Cameras supporting 4K resolutions, especially:

I have Cat6 cables running through the house, but I had to install new cables from inside to the garden and that was the hardest part as the house is surrounded by tiles. So, I chose the shortest corridor and I cut the tiles in order to install a tube under the ground:








After that, the remaining installation was easy. I buried the cables underground and led them to the Camera positions. I installed a small 10” rack in the boiler room where all the camera cables terminate and installed a D-Link POE managed switch. Also, I left 4 cables inside the garden junction box for future use and I installed the Cameras:










Now it was the time for the Rack cabinet. I decided to put the NVR inside the cabinet and distribute the signal through a DVB-T Modulator. Since I was out of slots in the rack, I installed a 6U short rack and placed another patch panel in the side to hide all the cables for the cabinet devices.





The chaos during the cable patching:

Did the required testing:

And the final result with a small 8” monitor that I installed for some basic NVR configuration:


And that was my setup. It took me almost 1,5 months working only on the weekends.
Now I have a question, I want to create an automation so when someone hits the doorbell the camera with the varifocal lens zooms in and the NVR switches to 1 full screen view of this camera. I found the Dahua HTTP API and I was able to Zoom In and Out programmatically through a node.js server running on a raspberry pi but I couldn’t instruct the NVR to switch to 1 full screen view. Is there any way to do this? Or perhaps using the RS485 interface of the NVR?
That was my rack cabinet before the upgrade:

After some research I decided to go with Dahua IP Cameras with an NVR. I wanted to build something that will last so I chose 8MP Cameras supporting 4K resolutions, especially:
- 3x IPC-HFW4831E-SE (Bullet) – 2.8mm Focal length
- 2x IPC-HDW4831EM-ASE (Dome) – 2.8mm Focal length
- 1x IPC-HFW5831E-ZE (Bullet) -Varifocal (2.8mm-12mm)
- 1x NVR5208-4KS2 (With 2x2TB WD Purple Disks)

I have Cat6 cables running through the house, but I had to install new cables from inside to the garden and that was the hardest part as the house is surrounded by tiles. So, I chose the shortest corridor and I cut the tiles in order to install a tube under the ground:








After that, the remaining installation was easy. I buried the cables underground and led them to the Camera positions. I installed a small 10” rack in the boiler room where all the camera cables terminate and installed a D-Link POE managed switch. Also, I left 4 cables inside the garden junction box for future use and I installed the Cameras:










Now it was the time for the Rack cabinet. I decided to put the NVR inside the cabinet and distribute the signal through a DVB-T Modulator. Since I was out of slots in the rack, I installed a 6U short rack and placed another patch panel in the side to hide all the cables for the cabinet devices.





The chaos during the cable patching:

Did the required testing:

And the final result with a small 8” monitor that I installed for some basic NVR configuration:


And that was my setup. It took me almost 1,5 months working only on the weekends.
Now I have a question, I want to create an automation so when someone hits the doorbell the camera with the varifocal lens zooms in and the NVR switches to 1 full screen view of this camera. I found the Dahua HTTP API and I was able to Zoom In and Out programmatically through a node.js server running on a raspberry pi but I couldn’t instruct the NVR to switch to 1 full screen view. Is there any way to do this? Or perhaps using the RS485 interface of the NVR?
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