Solutions to Mount PoE Cam to 1 Gang Box

[lorenzoe]

Hello Everyone,

My wife and I will be closing on our new home at the end of this month and I am currently making plans to mount security cams around the house. During the design meeting with the builder, we prewired the exterior of the home for 2 security cams (1 in the front next to the garage and 1 in the back on the opposite side of the home). Also should point out that the garage is on the right side of the house.

Fast forward through construction, the builder prewired 2 cat6(upgrade) cables in each 1 gang junction box for the cams and placed a plastic blank plate on top of it. Now that I have two cables in the front and 2 in the back, I thought to add cams to the sides as well using 1 of the cables from each of the junction boxes. I purchased 4 Lorex Fusion 4K Bullet AI PoE cams when they were on sale and plan to mount 1 on all 4 sides of the house. Do you guys know a clean way to mount the cams on the front, back, and sides? The base of the cams are round with three screw holes. I thought to buy a metal 1 gang cover and drill a few holes to mount the front cam and just buy a Lorex junction box to mount the side cam but unsure of clean way to route the extra cat6 cable from the front junction box to the side cam. Any help is much appreciated!

The below image is the floorplan where I highlighted the two areas where the junction boxes are placed.


Here is a image showing how one of the junction boxes were placed. The cam on the side will be positioned to monitor only the side of the house.

 

[bp2008]

Hello! Congrats on the new house.

Some people would probably grind out a channel between bricks and embed the cable in there and re-grout over it so that you never saw the cable from the outside.

There are a few other options I can think of:

• Paint the cable to match the brick and let it be visible, but camouflaged. Maybe glue it to the brick/grout to keep it straight? I don't really have any experience with brick so I don't know what works.
• Use a small plastic cable/cord channel to conceal the cable as it spans to the corner and around.
• What I actually did in my current house, just run the cable inside the garage along the wall, drill in through the wall so the cable exits the outdoor siding exactly where you want it.

 

[DsineR]

Lorex makes this mounting box for your cams, which is large enough to cover the 1-gang box.
Install over the 1-gang opening, secure mounting box to the brick wall.

 

[TonyR]

I'd mount this gangbox adapter on the single gang box (purchase here.)
Then mount the junction box that is made for the camera onto the adapter.
The JB (junction box) will house the bulky camera pigtail and protect it.
Since the cams are under a roof eave the cables will be fairly well protected from direct exposure so I'd run CAT-5e or 6 out one of the on the junction box's ports the best way, either straight up to the eave trim and then around the corner or out to the right and around the corner to the other cam's location.
Wrap the CAT-5e with 3M #35 white vinyl electrical tape.
Plug the unused JB holes with the furnished screw-in plugs, plug the hole that carried the CAT cable out with duct seal.
Secure to mortar joint with these screw clips. You could drill the mortar joint with a 1/4" masonry bit and tap in 1/4" plastic anchors, the screws from the linked clips will fit those anchors.
Paint the wrapped CAT cable to match your bricks.
Before mounting cams, be sure to test the terminated CAT cable then use dielectric gel and weatherproof the RJ-45 connections as outlined here.

P.S. - Welcome to IPCT and congrats on the new house!

 

[Starglow]

Security cameras don't mount to standard electrical junction boxes and the builder's electrician should have known that and installed the correct security camera boxes.

You could go with something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GJ84642/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Or this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JR0JNKQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Currently Unavailable)


I currently have Lorex cameras installed on both of these mounts.

For the other two cameras I would just use soffit mounted boxes and run new LAN cables to them. Personally I think having cables running along the outside of the house looks tacky and someone could easily just snip the exposed wire if they wanted to disable your security camera.

 

[lorenzoe]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I appreciate it. I'm glad to know that there is an adapter that will go over that single gang junction box. That will make things easier.

I'm kind of split on if I would use a single cable tray or just have the cat6 exposed. I guess there are pros and cons for each.

 

[Starglow]

Thanks for the tips everyone! I appreciate it. I'm glad to know that there is an adapter that will go over that single gang junction box. That will make things easier.

I'm kind of split on if I would use a single cable tray or just have the cat6 exposed. I guess there are pros and cons for each.

Just one more thing to note for your awareness, spiders LOVE IR cameras and will build spider webs that cloud the lens view, so between that and the light you have mounted right below the camera location, that corner will be a magnet for attracting spiders. My cameras are mounted on a post 13' feet off the ground and I still get spider webs. I have a fuzzy duster on a long pole I use the clear away the spider webs, but it doesn't take long before they're back. Spiders look kind of cool when they crawl across the lens in night vision mode....you can almost see through them.

 

[lorenzoe]

Security cameras don't mount to standard electrical junction boxes and the builder's electrician should have known that and installed the correct security camera boxes.

You could go with something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GJ84642/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

View attachment 169315

Or this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JR0JNKQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Currently Unavailable)
View attachment 169318 View attachment 169319

I currently have Lorex cameras installed on both of these mounts.

For the other two cameras I would just use soffit mounted boxes and run new LAN cables to them. Personally I think having cables running along the outside of the house looks tacky and someone could easily just snip the exposed wire if they wanted to disable your security camera.

Yea,I definitely complained when I saw the single gang up there but they told me it was standard for all of their homes. Smh

 

[lorenzoe]

Just one more thing to note for your awareness, spiders LOVE IR cameras and will build spider webs that cloud the lens view, so between that and the light you have mounted right below the camera location, that corner will be a magnet for attracting spiders. My cameras are mounted on a post 13' feet off the ground and I still get spider webs. I have a fuzzy duster on a long pole I use the clear away the spider webs, but it doesn't take long before they're back. Spiders look kind of cool when they crawl across the lens in night vision mode....you can almost see through them.

Well that's a bummer. Didn't think about spiders up there . Going to be our first time owning a home so i'm sure this is going to be fun. My colleagues at work tell me daily how things rarely break and if it does it is usually very cheap to fix it.

 

[mat200]

Hello Everyone,

My wife and I will be closing on our new home at the end of this month and I am currently making plans to mount security cams around the house. During the design meeting with the builder, we prewired the exterior of the home for 2 security cams (1 in the front next to the garage and 1 in the back on the opposite side of the home). Also should point out that the garage is on the right side of the house.

Fast forward through construction, the builder prewired 2 cat6(upgrade) cables in each 1 gang junction box for the cams and placed a plastic blank plate on top of it. Now that I have two cables in the front and 2 in the back, I thought to add cams to the sides as well using 1 of the cables from each of the junction boxes. I purchased 4 Lorex Fusion 4K Bullet AI PoE cams when they were on sale and plan to mount 1 on all 4 sides of the house. Do you guys know a clean way to mount the cams on the front, back, and sides? The base of the cams are round with three screw holes. I thought to buy a metal 1 gang cover and drill a few holes to mount the front cam and just buy a Lorex junction box to mount the side cam but unsure of clean way to route the extra cat6 cable from the front junction box to the side cam. Any help is much appreciated!

The below image is the floorplan where I highlighted the two areas where the junction boxes are placed.
View attachment 169311

Here is a image showing how one of the junction boxes were placed. The cam on the side will be positioned to monitor only the side of the house.
View attachment 169313

Welcome @lorenzoe

Looks like this will be a very nice home

a few quick notes:

Plan for more cameras in the future .. I normally want at least 2 cameras covering my driveway / garage entrance .. one on each side ..

also I want anyone walking to the front door to pass through at least 2 camera zones ..

Front Door, I prefer one camera at face level and one covering the package drop area

also I want one camera on each side of the house covering the sides ..

Thus typically .. 6 cameras + just to start ..

also, now I want more street coverage .. thus a few more cameras to catch the car info / driver info as sometimes package thieves / car checkers work with a partner

Remember to check that position for good angles on what you want to capture .. often we want cameras a bit lower than what I see in the picture to get a better angle for a facial ID image capture ..

If you have an air space behind the brick, you can often drop a cable lower and drill out a better location ..

Builders normally do not know enough on this topic ..

 

[mat200]

Lorex makes this mounting box for your cams, which is large enough to cover the 1-gang box.
Install over the 1-gang opening, secure mounting box to the brick wall.

FYI - Andy may also have access to this .. as well as other Dahua OEM vendors ..

this is the Lorex branded version .. ( they also have the 4 hole one )





Here's the Dahua models ( I like the PFA121 and PFA122 .. they share the same box, and you can change out the lids .. highly recommended )

 

[TonyR]

Just one more thing to note for your awareness, spiders LOVE IR cameras and will build spider webs that cloud the lens view, so between that and the light you have mounted right below the camera location, that corner will be a magnet for attracting spiders. My cameras are mounted on a post 13' feet off the ground and I still get spider webs. I have a fuzzy duster on a long pole I use the clear away the spider webs, but it doesn't take long before they're back. Spiders look kind of cool when they crawl across the lens in night vision mode....you can almost see through them.

With any luck the light will attract the bugs more than the cam's IR so the spider will string her (?) web down there closer to the light fixture.
With MORE luck (and creative alignment an/or shielding) the fixture won't cause visible light glare into the cam at night.

 

[dmcIPCAM]

• ... just run the cable inside the garage along the wall, drill in through the wall so the cable exits the outdoor siding exactly where you want it.

Congratulations, lovely new home! ...that is why this seems like the better solution.

But in the bigger picture I might suggest that the tail is wagging the dog here. I realize the responses are to solve a specific problem, but please consider
as others have mentioned that four cameras, particularly where these four cables are installed, is probably not going to give you the coverage
you might have envisioned. The installed cables are driving your camera placement/security design. From a practical standpoint, however, I realize there
is not much you can do about it this stage of construction. As @mat200 describes in his response, there is essentially no camera covering the front
door, the home office, and the front bedroom #2.

There are other suggestions for the junction box, but for your reference here is one of Andy's black mounts: PFB203W-B (same one shown in
white in @Starglow post) attached (blue tape ) to a single gang old work box:





Best of luck, and while there is a steep learning curve, the folks on this forum on creative (bordering on brilliant) and helpful with all your questions!

 

[mat200]

btw - here is sort of my minimum setup I'd start with .. blue dots are approx camera placements I would try ..

 

[lorenzoe]

Congratulations, lovely new home! ...that is why this seems like the better solution.

But in the bigger picture I might suggest that the tail is wagging the dog here. I realize the responses are to solve a specific problem, but please consider
as others have mentioned that four cameras, particularly where these four cables are installed, is probably not going to give you the coverage
you might have envisioned. The installed cables are driving your camera placement/security design. From a practical standpoint, however, I realize there
is not much you can do about it this stage of construction. As @mat200 describes in his response, there is essentially no camera covering the front
door, the home office, and the front bedroom #2.

There are other suggestions for the junction box, but for your reference here is one of Andy's black mounts: PFB203W-B (same one shown in
white in @Starglow post) attached (blue tape ) to a single gang old work box:

View attachment 169328

View attachment 169329

Best of luck, and while there is a steep learning curve, the folks on this forum on creative (bordering on brilliant) and helpful with all your questions!

Thanks! I definitely plan to add more cams once I move in, I just regret not getting the exterior wired with more in the the first place.

 

[lorenzoe]

btw - here is sort of my minimum setup I'd start with .. blue dots are approx camera placements I would try ..


View attachment 169338

Thanks for this! We do have 1 doorbell cam that comes standard. I'm not a big fan of wireless cams on the exterior but it may be easier to just install some of those instead of adding more cat6 in other areas.

 

[wittaj]

Doorbell wifi is one thing as most of us don't consider that type of camera as mission critical. Wifi is also ok for pet or kid watch, but for surveillance, forget about it.

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.

 

[lorenzoe]

Doorbell wifi is one thing as most of us don't consider that type of camera as mission critical. Wifi is also ok for pet or kid watch, but for surveillance, forget about it.

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.

Sorry, should have clarified that my doorbell cam is hard wired.

The powerline adapter would have been perfect if we had sockets under the soffit or nearby but unfortunately we do not. I didn't realize that the wifi cams were that unreliable so I will definitely have to think of something to get to a hardwired solution.

 

[TonyR]

Sorry, should have clarified that my doorbell cam is hard wired.

The powerline adapter would have been perfect if we had sockets under the soffit or nearby but unfortunately we do not. I didn't realize that the wifi cams were that unreliable so I will definitely have to think of something to get to a hardwired solution.

You may be able to stuff one of these inside a box where you would like to add a cam to the existing wiring. It's essentially a POE-powered, 2 port POE switch. One CAT cable in with POE + data and 2 CAT cables out with POE + data. You must adhere to the max current (wattage) requirements:

Loryta PoE Extender Mini Passive 2 Port POE Switch, IEEE 802.3af/at POE Extender, POE Repeater, Ethernet Splitter, Powering 2 POE Devices (IP Camera) Over One Cat5/6 Cable PFT1300

 

[wittaj]

Sorry, should have clarified that my doorbell cam is hard wired.

The powerline adapter would have been perfect if we had sockets under the soffit or nearby but unfortunately we do not. I didn't realize that the wifi cams were that unreliable so I will definitely have to think of something to get to a hardwired solution.

How do you plan to power the wifi cams? It needs power anyway, so it needs a cord.

You do not want battery operated either. They do not stream 24/7 to a VMS like an NVR or BI and only work on motion and we have lots of posts here where people missed motion completely because of this.