Striking a balance of camera settings and wireless capability...

[nayr]

I have a dedicated monitor in my office showing running SmartPSS @ fullscreen, most of my cameras have audio now so I can click on it and it'll still play in background.. i have another display in the mudroom but that only shows exterior cams.

my nvr output goes to tv in living room, so you can change the input there and they are on screen.. really wish I had picture-in-picture, tha'd be awesome.

 

[jasauders]

I have a dedicated monitor in my office showing running SmartPSS @ fullscreen, most of my cameras have audio now so I can click on it and it'll still play in background.. i have another display in the mudroom but that only shows exterior cams.

my nvr output goes to tv in living room, so you can change the input there and they are on screen.. really wish I had picture-in-picture, tha'd be awesome.

Good stuff. At the moment I don't have many dedicated viewers. In my office area (finished basement), I have an old Core 2 Duo aluminum iMac that is next to worthless for everyday use. It's running Ubuntu Mate. It auto logs in + auto launches the Bluecherry client software. I edited sudoers to allow it to shut down with a single stroke of F3. It has one job and does it well. Frees up a monitor on my desktop, anyways.

Only other computer in the house as a dedicated station is my HTPC, which is just Ubuntu with display scaling blown up (I wanted a full OS for HTPC so I could, well, do whatever I wanted, such as open Firefox and read the local news). The client is installed there, so if the girls are down for a nap we can bring it up there. Works out well.

Some day I wouldn't mind having a wall mounted LCD in the bedroom for rolling feeds at night, but I've been procrastinating on my ultra slim PC wall mounted LCD idea for the dining room/kitchen area, which would stream our shared Google calendar and also present a reminder shopping list for whoever does the next grocery run. So many projects, so little time...

 

[jasauders]

An update: I sucked it up and went all in with this wiring thing. I didn't just pull one line for each Hikvision, but I pulled a total of 9 lines. Because why not.

Two lines to baby's current bedroom (one port being used for Hikvision 1)
Two lines to 2 year old's bedroom upstairs (one port being used for Hikvision 2)
Two lines to baby's future bedroom upstairs (0 in use, because it needs to be renovated, but they'll be ready when the room is ready)
Two lines to rear of house for cameras (one for deck/car port, one for back yard)
One line for driveway camera

It sucked. It was miserable. But I worked fast and managed to take care of a sick wife *while* still managing to pull these lines.

I have my wireless airspace back. I have all current cameras POE'd. Everything is gig, pure copper cat6, and running beautifully. I'm able to run the feeds at my typical/preferred FPS - 10. Everything is neat, clean, punched down, cover plates installed, etc.

It's 12:09 AM. My weekend starts now. But now is bedtime. Was it worth it? Oh hell yeah.

 

[nayr]

excellent work, yeah getting your airspace back is worth it alone.. kick all those bandwidth sucking video devices off the network and now your internet speeds get dramatically better.

When I found out you could plug a usb ethernet adapter into a nexus player I bought one for each room in the house, yanked in cables and finally had HD Nirvana in the house.. videos from Plex/Netflix/etc start the moment you click on em, no buffering/stuttering and seeking works alot better than they ever did on wifi..

Went to my sisters house 1k miles away and tried to play plex remotely on ps4 and it sucked, so I got her a powerline ethernet adapter and wha'd u know.. just as good as at home.

WiFi is for battery powered devices, as long as we keep it that way it works pretty damn well..

 

[jasauders]

I hear you. I was tempted to run the cables for the Hikvisions higher up on the wall to have more of a "seamless" effect, but I pumped the brakes on that idea. In most cases (certainly in this case), the logical location for indoor cameras does not match the logical location for wall mounted TVs, so it's not like I could re-use those ports for hard wired HTPC/Roku/whatever use in the future. Instead I just made some perfect-length patch cables and utilized those fancy double-sided-tape-plastic-wire-tie-clip-thing-a-ma-bobs to keep the patch cable neat and tidy as it traveled down the wall to the new wall port.

Something I did to make this more do-able with the least amount of damage is I worked with the blue plastic electrical boxes. I pulled the nails out, as they come pre-installed and are positioned on the top and bottom (but outside) of the box itself. Pulled them, shaved the tabs off, and after finding which side of the stud the existing electrical box was on, drilled a hole on the opposite side. Slid the box in to its appropriate depth, screwed it to the stud from the inside, bazinga. Approximately zero wall plates needed any form of drywall patching. Likewise, once the rectangle hole is cut in the drywall, (if need be) you can typically get one of those long flexible bits in there to drill through the 2x4 framing for the line pull.

I have to say, that flexible bit I got was the best 30 dollars I ever spent. Even if I never use it again, oh my gosh... well worth it.

It's a good feeling knowing your house is wired up for not only the current CCTV load, but the future load that the bedrooms may bring. I planned ahead and installed pull lines (where necessary) in the event Cat19e comes out someday and I want to upgrade.

These Hikvisions are going to come in stupid handy too. Having them be POE ready *and* wireless... gah. Brilliant. Someday when they are no longer needed as full time kiddo cameras, but say we go on vacation somewhere, I can plop one in place (anywhere, you name it) and let it murder my otherwise unused wifi with us being vacant. For those nuance use-case-scenarios, the wifi will be mega handy there. For the day-to-day use right now, I looove me some wired internets.