Pre-wiring Help

[Pady1234]

I recently signed new home and one of the decisions I made was if I needed security cameras and locations. At the time I forgot about this forum . But when checking for NVR prices on Slickdeals user mat2000 there ( I think @mat200 in this forum) referred to ipcamtalk. So came here started reading cliff notes and one bullet pointed me to this post where it is suggested by @Fastb and @mat200 to add as many pre-wires as possible. Deadline to make changes for pre-wiring was last week, but I think I can still request the changes if it is needed. So this is kind of urgent.



Now about my decision, to pre-wire each cable builder was charging $300 (I thought that was ridiculous) , I still budged and picked 4 corners for CAT6 cables to be wired. When I searched online, I learned I can use one CAT6 cable for 2 cameras using a splitter like this one . So I thought, with two front entry doors will have two cameras (another upgrade I added is to add another CAT6 cable for doorbell for second entry door) and main entry door comes with low voltage doorbell pre-wiring as a standard from the builder. So I figured 8 POE (4x2) cameras plus two doorbell cameras will be enough. Also, I added one conduit (Future Proof Conduit from NVR location to Attic). But when I read above mentioned post, I am wondering if I made a mistake. Is it worth to add more CAT6 cables. Shall I request a change?

I don't know if it matters, but this house is generally in a safe neighborhood with walking score = 1. At least 10 minutes drive from anything.

I appreciate all your help in advance.

 

[The Automation Guy]

Just keep in mind that putting cameras on the corners of your house will likely not provide anything but an "overview" of what is going on. What I am trying to say is that odds are none of the cameras would be able to provide enough resolution on a subject to actually be able to identify a person. If all you want is overview, then that is fine.

Generally speaking having cameras installed right at doorways or other "points of interest" (like your driveway, etc). They purpose of these cameras won't be to provide an overview, but rather very specific coverage of an areas where you would expect people to go. Furthermore, because the view of view is tighter on the "purpose driven" cameras, it is more likely that you can capture "identifiable" footage should you have an event where you need to identify someone.

So looking that your design, the cameras at the left garage, side entrance, and the front door are all what I would call "purpose driven locations" (if those are even camera locations at the doors. I honestly don't know from the icons), However the cameras on the other three corners of the house are only going to provide an "overview" and stand little chance of getting identifiable footage. Of course this is all a gross oversimplification of the situation and actual results will depend greatly on the actual cameras being installed at each location. But it is important to understand the difference between "overview" and "purpose driven" camera locations IMHO. Personally I think you are going to be disappointed with the results the cameras on the four corners of your house will give, and I think you should rethink your camera locations to be more "purpose driven".

For example, even the single camera at the corner of the left garage is not going to be sufficient to cover the expanse of the driveway to the second garage. I personally would plan on putting another camera on the second garage's corner pointing at the driveway. This way you have the driveway covered from both sides and stand a decent chance of getting good footage. I would also place the data drop at the front door on the other side of the door. I say this because I have to assume there is a walkway from the driveway to the front door. All things being equal, I'd rather have that camera face the walkway (which is to the left) vs having the camera point at your front yard and not the walkway. However if I am wrong and there is a walkway going to the right of the house or straight ahead from the front door, then having the data drop on the left side would be fine.

 

[Pady1234]

Just keep in mind that putting cameras on the corners of your house will likely not provide anything but an "overview" of what is going on. What I am trying to say is that odds are none of the cameras would be able to provide enough resolution on a subject to actually be able to identify a person. If all you want is overview, then that is fine.

Generally speaking having cameras installed right at doorways or other "points of interest" (like your driveway, etc). They purpose of these cameras won't be to provide an overview, but rather very specific coverage of an areas where you would expect people to go. Furthermore, because the view of view is tighter on the "purpose driven" cameras, it is more likely that you can capture "identifiable" footage should you have an event where you need to identify someone.

So looking that your design, the cameras at the left garage, side entrance, and the front door are all what I would call "purpose driven locations" (if those are even camera locations at the doors. I honestly don't know from the icons), However the cameras on the other three corners of the house are only going to provide an "overview" and stand little chance of getting identifiable footage. Of course this is all a gross oversimplification of the situation and actual results will depend greatly on the actual cameras being installed at each location. But it is important to understand the difference between "overview" and "purpose driven" camera locations IMHO. Personally I think you are going to be disappointed with the results the cameras on the four corners of your house will give, and I think you should rethink your camera locations to be more "purpose driven".

For example, even the single camera at the corner of the left garage is not going to be sufficient to cover the expanse of the driveway to the second garage. I personally would plan on putting another camera on the second garage's corner pointing at the driveway. This way you have the driveway covered from both sides and stand a decent chance of getting good footage. I would also place the data drop at the front door on the other side of the door. I say this because I have to assume there is a walkway from the driveway to the front door. All things being equal, I'd rather have that camera face the walkway (which is to the left) vs having the camera point at your front yard and not the walkway. However if I am wrong and there is a walkway going to the right of the house or straight ahead from the front door, then having the data drop on the left side would be fine.

Thank you. I really appreciate you taking time to answer my questions.

Yes, the walkway is to the left. The data point in the image is inside the house for wired mesh, that main door only has low voltage doorbell as standard, I was going to use that for wifi doorbell camera. If POE doorbell is better, I will ask if I can add one data point there. I will also, add second one CAT6 for 2nd garage.

Is there anyway I can salvage the other 3 corner cameras? Is it not a good idea to cover all sides of the house? Is it right to assume you would not have added those 3 locations pre-wiring?

Also, I see some NVRs with Fusion Wifi cameras, how good are these cameras? If I get a good Wi-Fi connection to any camera location, are these cameras similar to POE cameras?

 

[The Automation Guy]

It just comes down to your goals. Personally, I don't have any "overview" cameras because there simply isn't enough going on in my yard that I am worried about capturing. (I don't have a pool, my kids are grown, etc). I do have purpose driven cameras around my doors, driveway, storage sheds, etc because if someone wants to mess with that stuff or enter my garage/house, I want to be able to provide clear footage with enough resolution on the subject to give to the police for a proper identification. If my cameras can't provide that kind of footage, they are basically a waste for my use case. In my situation, I don't need 100% coverage of my entire property and instead just focus on the key locations that are going to be most enticing to someone with bad intentions.

On the other hand, if I had young kids that I wanted to watch playing in the backyard via an overview camera, that would be a completely legitimate reason to have one. But that goal is very different than being able to give the police good enough footage to identify someone because they stole something from my garage when it was opened. An overview camera is not going to be able to do that. An overview camera will capture someone.... but without nearly enough information to be able to help the police.

 

[wittaj]

Wifi and cameras do not go together.

There are always ways if you don't want to run an ethernet cable.

You need power anyway, so go with a powerline adapter to run the date over your electric lines or use a nano-station.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel

And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams.

 

[Pady1234]

It just comes down to your goals. Personally, I don't have any "overview" cameras because there simply isn't enough going on in my yard that I am worried about capturing. (I don't have a pool, my kids are grown, etc). I do have purpose driven cameras around my doors, driveway, storage sheds, etc because if someone wants to mess with that stuff or enter my garage/house, I want to be able to provide clear footage with enough resolution on the subject to give to the police for a proper identification. If my cameras can't provide that kind of footage, they are basically a waste for my use case. In my situation, I don't need 100% coverage of my entire property and instead just focus on the key locations that are going to be most enticing to someone with bad intentions.

On the other hand, if I had young kids that I wanted to watch playing in the backyard via an overview camera, that would be a completely legitimate reason to have one. But that goal is very different than being able to give the police good enough footage to identify someone because they stole something from my garage when it was opened. An overview camera is not going to be able to do that. An overview camera will capture someone.... but without nearly enough information to be able to help the police.

Thank you, I will try and change my current locations and add new one 2nd garage.

 

[Pady1234]

Wifi and cameras do not go together.

There are always ways if you don't want to run an ethernet cable.

You need power anyway, so go with a powerline adapter to run the date over your electric lines or use a nano-station.

Maybe you are fine now one day with wifi cams, but one day something will happen. A new device, neighbors microwave, etc.

Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent, especially once you start adding distance. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.

So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.

Many people unfortunately think wifi cameras are the answer and they are not. People will say what about Ring and Nest - well that is another whole host of issues that we will not discuss here LOL, but they are not streaming 24/7, only when you pull up the app. And then we see all the people come here after that system failed them because their wifi couldn't keep up when the perp came by. For streaming 24/7 to something like an NVR or Blue Iris, forget about it if you want reliability.


This was a great test that SouthernYankee tried and posted about it here:

I did a WIFI test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a WIFI analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
WIFI does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So your devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a WIFI network. WIFI is fine for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ WIFI network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel

And TonyR recommends this (which is the preferred way IF you want to do wifi)

The only way I'd have wireless cams is the way I have them now: a dedicated 802.11n, 2.4GHz Access Point for 3 cams, nothing else uses that AP. Its assigned channel is at the max separation from another 2.4GHz channel in the house. There is no other house near me for about 300 yards and we're separated by dense foliage and trees.

Those 3 cams are indoor, non-critical pet cams (Amcrest IP2M-841's) streaming to Blue Iris and are adequately reliable for their jobs. They take their turns losing signal/reconnecting usually about every 12 hours or so for about 20 seconds which I would not tolerate for an outdoor surveillance cam pointed at my house and/or property.

But for me, this works in my situation: dedicated AP, non-critical application and periodic, short-term video loss.... if any one of those 3 conditions can't be achieved or tolerated, then I also do not recommend using wireless cams.

Wow... I learned something that is worth remembering for rest of my life. Everything you said makes so much sense and even though I know cameras save so much data on HDDs every day, I don't know why I didn't think it through even before considering Wifi cameras. When cliff notes said, doorbells are only exception for Wifi cameras, I just assumed it could be because of Wifi range issues rather than network congestion and causing traffic on network. I definitely want to avoid causing network issues, I can sacrifice the cameras because it is so annoying when Wifi is slow or drops connections.

A serious thank you for that enlightening reply.

 

[mat200]

I recently signed new home and one of the decisions I made was if I needed security cameras and locations. At the time I forgot about this forum . But when checking for NVR prices on Slickdeals user mat2000 there ( I think @mat200 in this forum) referred to ipcamtalk. So came here started reading cliff notes and one bullet pointed me to this post where it is suggested by @Fastb and @mat200 to add as many pre-wires as possible. Deadline to make changes for pre-wiring was last week, but I think I can still request the changes if it is needed. So this is kind of urgent.

View attachment 206204

Now about my decision, to pre-wire each cable builder was charging $300 (I thought that was ridiculous) , I still budged and picked 4 corners for CAT6 cables to be wired. When I searched online, I learned I can use one CAT6 cable for 2 cameras using a splitter like this one . So I thought, with two front entry doors will have two cameras (another upgrade I added is to add another CAT6 cable for doorbell for second entry door) and main entry door comes with low voltage doorbell pre-wiring as a standard from the builder. So I figured 8 POE (4x2) cameras plus two doorbell cameras will be enough. Also, I added one conduit (Future Proof Conduit from NVR location to Attic). But when I read above mentioned post, I am wondering if I made a mistake. Is it worth to add more CAT6 cables. Shall I request a change?

I don't know if it matters, but this house is generally in a safe neighborhood with walking score = 1. At least 10 minutes drive from anything.

I appreciate all your help in advance.

Welcome @Pady1234

I would have a lot more camera locations ..

$300 per drop .. must be inflation.

What is the current stage of the project ?

Can you pull your own cabling ? or hire your own low voltage contractor ?

ps - i will look closer at the layout later