New house, new security camera installation

[vscheuber]

Hey all y'all!

I joined this forum last week and have already greatly benefited from its wise members and great informational posts.

As always with a new topic, I still struggle to apply all the great wisdom from other threads to my own very specific situation. I know this will get easier as I go. But for now, I feel like I would benefit from some direct wisdom as it pertains to my situation. If any of you has any wisdom, advice, warnings to share, it might help me avoid some big and costly rookie mistakes.

I'll try to layout the important facts I'm dealing with:

I live in a relatively dense neighborhood with smaller lots. Between my house and the fence to the neighboring property is a 6ft corridor, so my neighbor's house is 12ft from my house. Front and backyards are bigger but not huge.

Today I have a single installed camera above the entry door. I have a big, deep, and narrow covered front porch, so the door camera is "blind" to anything outside the covered porch because of the height at which it is mounted and the walls that block its sight to the sides. I also own 2 PTZ cameras and 1 dome PTZ, which I am going to install over the next few weeks:

1. Hikvision Bullet (DS-2CD2032F-I) - currently installed
2. Amcrest PTZ (IP2M-863EW-AI)
3. Amcrest Dome PTZ (IP2M-866EW)
4. Amcrest PTZ (IP2M-863EW-AI)

Here is my main struggle that I wold really like some input on: How do I best cover my 6ft narrow and long side yards? Do you recommend I add another two PTZs, one for each side, or do I mount a dome PTZ vertically to the wall of my house? I was looking for an affordable fisheye that could cover the side yards but I wasn't able to find anything I liked. Originally I had hoped to mount the 2 powerful PTZs on one of the front corners and one of the rear corners, each covering half the circumference of the house, but I decided against that, due to my house being a one story house and if I mount these big PTZs as high as possible on the corners, they are still only 6-7ft off the ground. That just doesn't feel right and also means they can't effectively peak over our 5ft privacy fence. So I decided on the design marked in the attached drawings, but that leaves my side yards uncovered.

I realize it's a lot to ask to read through all that and to look at plans and then to offer advice for free, and yet here I am. I am grateful for any response and advice I can get.

Have a blessed Sunday!

Cheers.
Volker

 

[mat200]

Hey all y'all!

I joined this forum last week and have already greatly benefited from its wise members and great informational posts.

As always with a new topic, I still struggle to apply all the great wisdom from other threads to my own very specific situation. I know this will get easier as I go. But for now, I feel like I would benefit from some direct wisdom as it pertains to my situation. If any of you has any wisdom, advice, warnings to share, it might help me avoid some big and costly rookie mistakes.

I'll try to layout the important facts I'm dealing with:

I live in a relatively dense neighborhood with smaller lots. Between my house and the fence to the neighboring property is a 6ft corridor, so my neighbor's house is 12ft from my house. Front and backyards are bigger but not huge.

Today I have a single installed camera above the entry door. I have a big, deep, and narrow covered front porch, so the door camera is "blind" to anything outside the covered porch because of the height at which it is mounted and the walls that block its sight to the sides. I also own 2 PTZ cameras and 1 dome PTZ, which I am going to install over the next few weeks:

1. Hikvision Bullet (DS-2CD2032F-I) - currently installed
2. Amcrest PTZ (IP2M-863EW-AI)
3. Amcrest Dome PTZ (IP2M-866EW)
4. Amcrest PTZ (IP2M-863EW-AI)

Here is my main struggle that I wold really like some input on: How do I best cover my 6ft narrow and long side yards? Do you recommend I add another two PTZs, one for each side, or do I mount a dome PTZ vertically to the wall of my house? I was looking for an affordable fisheye that could cover the side yards but I wasn't able to find anything I liked. Originally I had hoped to mount the 2 powerful PTZs on one of the front corners and one of the rear corners, each covering half the circumference of the house, but I decided against that, due to my house being a one story house and if I mount these big PTZs as high as possible on the corners, they are still only 6-7ft off the ground. That just doesn't feel right and also means they can't effectively peak over our 5ft privacy fence. So I decided on the design marked in the attached drawings, but that leaves my side yards uncovered.

I realize it's a lot to ask to read through all that and to look at plans and then to offer advice for free, and yet here I am. I am grateful for any response and advice I can get.

Have a blessed Sunday!

Cheers.
Volker

Hi Volker @vscheuber

Narrow sides are always a bit of a challenge imho as most of us want to respect the neighbors while covering our own concerns.

For me:

I would have cameras covering the following:

1x each side : Sides of the house, have a camera covering anyone hopping the fence / wall or opening the gate(s) from your front yard to your side of the house.
1x each door way: make certain you have a good coverage to get a nice ID chance at anyone entering a door to your home. For the Front Door I like at least 2 chances of getting a good facial ID image.
1x camera on each side of the garage door ..

 

[sebastiantombs]

With that front porch arrangement one camera won't work out well if you're trying to cover everything.

On the sides of the house I'd use two cameras, one at each end of the house looking back toward each other and take advantage of the "corridor" mode by rotating the camera 90 degrees physically and electronically to produce a portrait view.

 

[vscheuber]

Hi @mat200,

thank you kindly for your reply!

Narrow sides are always a bit of a challenge imho as most of us want to respect the neighbors while covering our own concerns.

That is exactly my line of thinking. I'm already a bit hesitant to put the big PTZ in my backyard... what do you think about that? SpotCrime+ indicates there are numerous burglaries occuring in my wider neighborhood and the pattern seems to be coming in through the backyards where there are fewer security cams. Hence I'm willing to pick a small fight over a camera in my backyard but not sure a big PTZ will create a small or a big fight..

I would have cameras covering the following:

1x each side : Sides of the house, have a camera covering anyone hopping the fence / wall or opening the gate(s) from your front yard to your side of the house.
1x each door way: make certain you have a good coverage to get a nice ID chance at anyone entering a door to your home. For the Front Door I like at least 2 chances of getting a good facial ID image.
1x camera on each side of the garage door ..

My side yards are very long (70ft) and narrow (6ft). You think a good bullet cam with variable zoom would cover that distance and get enough details in the distance in the dark?

I like your approach to front door. I read in the Cliff notes that they suggest a similar approach to yours and explicitly recommend placing a camera inside the house facing the door. That seems smart.

Would you mind elaborating on why you recommend 2 cameras for the garage door? Why 2 in each corner vs 1 in the middle?

Cheers!
Volker

 

[vscheuber]

Hello @sebastiantombs ,

thank you for your insights!

With that front porch arrangement one camera won't work out well if you're trying to cover everything.

Yes, agreed. I'm thinking eventually I need to install another camera where the front porch splits off from the entry way so I can cover that whole area.

On the sides of the house I'd use two cameras, one at each end of the house looking back toward each other and take advantage of the "corridor" mode by rotating the camera 90 degrees physically and electronically to produce a portrait view.

I am so hoping to avoid having to install 2 cameras per side but I might end up there! Trying to avoid as it seems like it's going to be a lot of work pulling all these cables. My roof comes down below the top of the walls so it's gonna be challenging to pull cables from the corners. But your recommendation confirms my own findings, that there seem to be no ideal single-camera solutions for my problem, except maybe PTZs, which I could install one in the middle of my long side walls and have it scan to both sides. But of course that creates dead spots where the camera is blind to one side while it is scanning the other...

Cheers.
Volker

 

[sebastiantombs]

Keep in mind that a PTZ will invariably be looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

 

[JNDATHP]

I had limited options for my backyard so decided on an autotrack PTZ that refocuses to our sliding glass door each minute. This, along with two side yard cameras has been working well for us.

Backyard:


East side yard looking back (I have one looking forward as well):



West side yard:





Not perfect, but gives us most of what we think we need to see. All window/door openings are covered.

 

[vscheuber]

Hi @JNDATHP,

I had limited options for my backyard so decided on an autotrack PTZ that refocuses to our sliding glass door each minute. This, along with two side yard cameras has been working well for us.
...
Not perfect, but gives us most of what we think we need to see. All window/door openings are covered.

Nice! And thank you for replying and sharing. I'll be doing something similar. Seems to have worked out well for you! It will take me a while to get all the cables pulled but soon... soon...

 

[JNDATHP]

I’ve since tweaked the PTZ settings...

 

[JNDATHP]

Also,

My setup is a retrofit. Since you are building, I mirror @sebastiantombs suggestions to use fixed turrets to overlap the areas of interest.

 

[looney2ns]

Don't mount cameras higher than 8 ft if you expect to get facial ids.

Above the door is typically too high.

Camera on each side of the driveway mounted no higher than the top of the garage door will give you the best coverage when you have cars parked in the driveway.

Don't try to do too much with one camera.

Usually more fixed cameras are a better option than a ptz.

 

[JNDATHP]