New system to protect my house

[bertnl]

Hi I am new here and hope this is the correct location for my question\

I am living in a house at the end of the street so on the corner.
There is a path on my property with a low fence.


Now My window has been broken twice because someone threw stones at it.
I will make the fence higher to about 2 meters. But I also would like to add some camera's
The police asked me for images and suggested to install a few,

now I am thinking on adding two bulletcamer's at both ends of the pathway
IPC-B5442E-ZE 4MP Wdr Ir Bullet Ai Netwerk Camera 2.7Mm ~ 12Mm

and a PTZ or turret IPC-B5241E-ZE 2MP Starlight Wdr Ir Bullet Ai Netwerk Camera 2.7Mm-13.5Mm
in the front



This connected to an NVR
THis will be my starter system.
Would yhis be a good setup or are there better/cheaper suggestions?

 

[samplenhold]

Welcome to the forum. Please read the Cliff Notes and check out the WIKI. There is a lot of info there for you.

Since you are here, then you have made the decision to do your camera system yourself. That will mean making all of the decisions, doing the install, and troubleshooting any issues that come up. That also means learning your recording system. IPCAMTALK is a great place to get info and help to do this.

You need to understand what you want from the system. And I mean specifically, not just 'I want to be able to monitor the house'. What does that mean specifically? Front door coverage? Back door coverage? Do you have your cars parked on the street or in the driveway? How are you going to get ethernet to those locations? So basically you need to start making a plan.

It is important to understand what views you will get from a specific location. You really should make a plan that states what you wish to accomplish by putting a cam in a specific location. I know it is easy to just say "put a cam at each corner in the soffit and one by the garage", but without stating exactly what you expect from a cam in that location, if you have an incident and don't get a good useable shot, you will be pissed. Or like the guy down the street that installed several Ring cams and got blurry video of the person pilfering through his truck. His wife said, basically "You spent a grand on those cams and you can't even tell if it is a guy or girl?"

It is good that you are asking for comments. I would advise you to not go and buy a bunch of cams and install them right away. Start out small. I suggest one varifocal cam, like the 5442 turret varifocal (HDW5442T-ZE aka T5442T-ZE). Place it on a test rig as described in the Cliff Notes and test your plan. Do not run wires or mount cam until you are happy with the proposed location. Here is my test rig:
Make sure you walk it at night.

Are they throwing stones from your walkway or over the fence? Your proposed cam height on each corner will not get you good face shots at night. The cams would be mounted too high. As a person gets closer to a cam mounted above head height, you loose the face and get only the top of the head. As the person goes further from the cam, the angle gets shallower and the face becomes viewed. But unless you have the cam zoomed in to that area, you will not get a big enough shot of the face to get facial details, hence you cannot recognize them.

 

[bertnl]

You need to understand what you want from the system. And I mean specifically, not just 'I want to be able to monitor the house'. What does that mean specifically? Front door coverage? Back door coverage? Do you have your cars parked on the street or in the driveway? How are you going to get ethernet to those locations? So basically you need to start making a plan.

It is important to understand what views you will get from a specific location. You really should make a plan that states what you wish to accomplish by putting a cam in a specific location. I know it is easy to just say "put a cam at each corner in the soffit and one by the garage", but without stating exactly what you expect from a cam in that location, if you have an incident and don't get a good useable shot, you will be pissed. Or like the guy down the street that installed several Ring cams and got blurry video of the person pilfering through his truck. His wife said, basically "You spent a grand on those cams and you can't even tell if it is a guy or girl?"

It is good that you are asking for comments. I would advise you to not go and buy a bunch of cams and install them right away. Start out small. I suggest one varifocal cam, like the 5442 turret varifocal (HDW5442T-ZE aka T5442T-ZE). Place it on a test rig as described in the Cliff Notes and test your plan. Do not run wires or mount cam until you are happy with the proposed location. Here is my test rig:
View attachment 72486 Make sure you walk it at night.

Are they throwing stones from your walkway or over the fence? Your proposed cam height on each corner will not get you good face shots at night. The cams would be mounted too high. As a person gets closer to a cam mounted above head height, you loose the face and get only the top of the head. As the person goes further from the cam, the angle gets shallower and the face becomes viewed. But unless you have the cam zoomed in to that area, you will not get a big enough shot of the face to get facial details, hence you cannot recognize them.
View attachment 72487

Thanks for your comments, I am planning this as you suggest.
I also had a look at cliffs notes to
I want indeed start with just one cam and see how usefull this will be.
I already have a good idea how to get the POE cables to the proper locations.
During this research I decided where the NVR will be placed.

There is a lawn at the other side of the fence now with about 1 meter high the can drive by with a scooter accross the law and easy throw some stone or rock.
With the new fence, the fence is the same height as the window and they have to 'climb' to throw a stone with enough force.
I expect that this will bring faces good in view
I might decrease the height that I mount that camera on the side of the house.

For the front garden where my car is parked I want so have footage if there is damage to my car or someone wants to enter the front door.
There is always quite good light conditions there.
There a public light on the street and a permanent light next to my door.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Just remember, a video surveillance system is for surveillance. An alarm system is for protection.

 

[bertnl]

Just remember, a video surveillance system is for surveillance. An alarm system is for protection.

I also have an alarm system. But when the alarm goes when am away and I can see on camera the police will show up. At least two technical events are required.
There will also be 1 or 2 cams inside the house later, but first I want something for the perimeter

 

[SouthernYankee]

If you are expecting to identify the bad guy with those camera locations it will not work. Your camera location will tell you what happened, but not who did it. To identify the bad guy do not mount the cameras higher than 7 ft . Test your camera location at night with a friend wearing a hoodie, sunglasses and a baseball cap looking at the ground if you can not identify him, change the camera location.
======================================

My standard welcome to the forum message.

Read Study Plan before spending money
Cameras are for surveillance to get information for after the fact.

Please read the IP Cam Talk Cliff Notes and other items in the IP Cam Talk Wiki. (read on a real computer, not a phone). The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) If you do not have a wired monitored alarm system, get that first
2) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras if you need good low light cameras.
3) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
4) Do not use wifi cameras.
5) Do not use cloud storage
4) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
5) Do not use wifi cameras.
6) Do not use cloud storage
7) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
8) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
9) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
10) Do not use reolink, ring, nest, Arlo cameras (they are junk), no cloud cameras
11) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
12) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)
13) use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
14) (Looney2ns)If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 7ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
15) Use a router that has openVPN built in (Most ASUS, Some NetGear....)
16) camera placement use the calculator... IPVM Camera Calculator V3
17) POE list PoE Switch Suggestion List
18) Camera Sensor size, bigger is general better Sensor Size Chart
19) Camera lens size, a bigger number give more range but less field of view. Which Security Camera Lens Size Should I Buy?
20) verify your camera placement, have a friend wearing a hoodie, ball cap and sunglasses looking down approach the house, can you identify them ?

Cameras to look at
IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED . Review IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED (Full Color, Starlight+) - 4MP starlight
.................... Dahua IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED review
IPC-T5442TM-AS ..... Review-OEM 4mp AI Cam IPC-T5442TM-AS Starlight+ - 4MP starlight+
IPC-HDW5442t-ZE .... Dahua IPC-HDW5442T-ZE 4MP Varifocal Turret - Night Perfomance testing -- variable focus 4 MP Starlight
IPC-B5442E-ZE ...... Review - OEM IPC-B5442E-ZE 4MP AI Varifocal Bullet Camera With Starlight+
IPC-HFW7442H-Z ..... Review - Dahua IPC-HFW7442H-Z 4MP Ultra AI Varifocal Bullet Camera -- MP variable focus AI
IPC-T2347G-LU ...... Review of the Hikvision OEM model IPC-T2347G-LU 'ColorVu' IP CCTV camera. (DS-2CD2347G1-LU)
IPC-HDW2231R-ZS .... Review-Dahua IPC-HDW2231RP-ZS Starlight Camera-Varifocal
IPC-HDW2231T-ZS-S2 . Review-OEM IPC-T2231T-ZS 2mp Varifocal Starlight Camera
IPC-HDW5231R-ZE .... Review-Dahua Starlight IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 800 meter capable ePOE
IPC-HFW4239T-ASE ... IPC-HFW4239T-ASE
IPCT-HDW5431RE-I ... Review - IP Cam Talk 4 MP IR Fixed Turret Network Camera
IPC-T5241H-AS-PV ... Review-OEM IPC-T5241H-AS-PV 2mp AI active deterrence cam
IPC-T3241-ZAS ...... Review-OEM IPC-T3241-ZAS 2mp AI Lite series Varifocal -- 2mp AI Lite series Varifocal
IPC-HFW2831T-ZS ... Review-Dahua IPC-HFW2831T-ZS 8MP WDR IR Bullet Network Camera -- 8MP Bullet 1/1.8” sensor variable focus.
DS-2CD2325FWD-I
N22AL12 ............ New Dahua N22AL12 Budget Cam w/Starlight -- low cost entry
IPC-T2347G-LU....... Review-Loryta OEM 4MP IPC-T2347G-LU ColorVu Fixed Turret Network 4mm lens & Junction Box -- 4MP ColorVu
.................... Review of the Hikvision OEM model IPC-T2347G-LU 'ColorVu' IP CCTV camera.

Other dahua 4MP starlight

https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dahua-4mp-starlight-lineup.42000/#post-388253

My preferred indoor cameras
DS-2CD2442FWD-IW
IPC-K35A Review-Dahua IPC-K35A 3mp Cube Camera

If interested in Blue Iris and other setup items see the following post

Newbie Starter Guide to IP Cam System – VPN setup – Computer Hardware – Blue Iris – Dahua Cameras

This is an intermediate / newbie guide for people just starting out looking for a surveillance setup. I know this setup might not be for everyone and there are many options. You can find a lot of this information in the Wiki: IP Cam Talk Wiki | IP Cam Talk A great place to start in the Wiki...

ipcamtalk.com

Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Test do not guess

 

[bertnl]

Thanks for that nice list of cams.
The starlight cams look most promising for me.
If I want to identify people what will be better? 2MP of 4MP.
I know 2MP has larger pixels so I assume better for low light conditions.
At the front of my house is a 5W LED lamp and on the pavement there is at about 10 meters a public lamppost so in front of the house it is never really dark.
At the side of the house there is a PIR controlled flood light above the path.
How fast will cams in general react to switching on a floodlight at the side of my house,

 

[samplenhold]

If I want to identify people what will be better? 2MP of 4MP.
I know 2MP has larger pixels so I assume better for low light conditions.

The current prosumer cam for low light color performance is the Dahua 5442 series, which is a 4MP 1/1.8" sensor. It is not just the number of pixels, but also the sensor size that impacts the low light performance.

Read the Cliff Notes!

Most cams take a few seconds to react to a floodlight turning on and off. But if there is already a lot of light, the reaction is minimal.

 

[bertnl]

I'm reading the cliff notes. I think I must see how bad this is otherwise I must find a solution for this. maybe adding some permanent light to reduce the blinding of the cam. That side of the house is currently rather dark. That is why I have the floodlight there,

 

[catcamstar]

Hi @bertnl it's never cool when people force you to invest in expensive material, which may (or may not) have a positive return on investment. Hence our suggestion to do your huiswerk, ploughing through the Cliff Notes etc.

My personal tips are:

• don't install camera's too high: although they may be protected against vandalism, shooting shots from too high will never give great facial ID material. Especially if you know that thugs like that wear hoodies or caps anyway
• the more the merrier: if you have deployed a cam, you can try to cover that cam position with another cam, so you know at least who destroyed it
• in follow-up to #2: have a look at IPVM Camera Calculator V3, it draws cones of the Point Of View (with DORI - read your huiswerk for that) of each camera, so you know exactly if you cover everything you want and need
• sometimes stupid = better: there are projects here on ipcamtalk where people install a cam in a mailbox: first off: noone expects a cam in the mailbox, and secondly, you'll have higher chances to have a frontal ID shot and more importantly: when running away, they won't wear their masks anymore
• higher MP does not always mean "better images"

Good luck!
CC

 

[bertnl]

@catcamstar good advise
I will have camera's which observe the others on the most ciritical (outdoor) places.
And I will order at least one varifocal , but probably all will be varifocal /autofocus

I have read all cliff notes great info but are the preferred cams in the notes (2018) still the preferred ones now in 2020? Technology has advanced so it could well be that newer models will get the advantage?
What about all those AI functions in the camera's? I am thinking of connecting the all to a NVR of the same brand, Probably Dahua. Is there still an advantage to have all that AI in camera?

 

[bertnl]

I think I will start by ordering this camera form Andy
IPC-T3541T-ZAS

Would this be a good choice to gain some practical experience with camera height and play wit different zoom angels and to see how good or bad the available light is.
or could I better start with this one

IPC-T3441T-ZAS 4MP
I also concidered
IPC-T2231T-ZS-S2 this has no sound, No clue if that is very important

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'm not familiar with the 3441 series but suspect it's a 4 or 5MP on a 1/2.7 or 1/2.8" sensor. That combination, MP and sensor, will have problems in low light. The 2231 you mention is a 2MP on the same sensor size and has excellent low light performance. The 2231 does not have audio, though, which can be a negative in some cases but for a test camera, to determine locations and focal length, is an excellent choice.

 

[bertnl]

I'm not familiar with the 3441 series but suspect it's a 4 or 5MP on a 1/2.7 or 1/2.8" sensor. That combination, MP and sensor, will have problems in low light. The 2231 you mention is a 2MP on the same sensor size and has excellent low light performance. The 2231 does not have audio, though, which can be a negative in some cases but for a test camera, to determine locations and focal length, is an excellent choice.

IPC-T3441T-ZAS
4MP Lite AI IR Vari focal Torentje Network Camera
] 4MP, 1/3 "CMOS beeldsensor,
So 1/3 so I assume even worse
So that one drops out
then the
IPC-T2231T-ZS-S2 is now on top of my list
IPC-T5442T-ZE 4MP
could be better 4MP, 1/1.8 "CMOS beeldsensor But 60 euro's more expensive

 

[sebastiantombs]

At 1/3" that camera will be an even lower performer under low light conditions.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The 5442 series is the current "king of the hill" but comes with a few caveats besides the price. The firmware is still a work in progress and they take a little "tweaking" to optimize them, more than the normal "tweaking" from my own experience with them. On the other hand, their low light performance is very good.

 

[samplenhold]

Yesterday I installed a IPC-T2231T-ZS-S2 on my front porch. Love that cam. But I do have a shit load of light there. Here are some day and night caps. Realize that I have yet to optimize the cam settings.

Installed location Daytime captures, gloomy, rainy day.



Night time cap


While I do not have a varifocal 5442, I did install a fixed lens turret on my porch, the 2.8mm. Here are a few caps. I have done very little tweaking of the cam controls as this was just installed Wednesday.

Installed location and daytime caps.


Night captures


All of these captures are snapshots taken from Blue Iris videos.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I, also, just got a 2231T-ZS and it's installed for testing at the moment. Tomorrow when the rain stops I'll move it to its' real location. For a 2MP camera it performs very well, easily on a par, or even better than the 5231. Low light performance is excellent, but I can't leave it in color 24/7 because it's on the north side of the house and gets very little, to no, ambient light unless there's a full moon or we turn on the floods back there. I do have a couple of external IRs back there so I can keep the IR off on the camera itself. I'm planning on another as an overview on the front of the house as well in the near future.

 

[SouthernYankee]

@samplenhold

I like the camera mounted on the post at 6 ft up. Nice job. How did you run the ethernet cable to it? Does not look like fun.

 

[samplenhold]

How did you run the ethernet cable to it? Does not look like fun.

Not fun. I have access to the attic over the garage. But there was no access from the garage to the porch. At least without doing major surgery to the brick veneer. So I ended up running five cables through a 3/4" flex conduit from the soffit on the garage to the beam that the 2231 is mounted on. You can actually see it on the install pic of that cam. Then ran the cables inside the beams and down the columns. Had done extensive recon to see if it could be done. Used an endoscope and later a Gopro cam to get footage of inside the beams and columns. Had to cut access holes and cover them with blank dual gang switch plates.

Once I get the final two cams installed (LPR), my plan is to do a thread on the whole project. Like thought behind it, planning, investigating, running the cables, and the final views.