The neighbors who ask....

[sdkid]

I disagree. We live in neighborhoods and are suppose to look out (to a degree) for each other, even some neighbors are friends, as some of them have done for me. This would be different in a rural farm house setting. Seeing cameras out the front of the house is a basic deterrent. 1st line of defense....one that anyone walking by can see. There is no mention of the glock or shotgun, pitbull kill training, home alarm system that should remain private.

You nailed it right there.

BTW--- I am striking out trying to find actual SPECS on those cameras. Would love to be able to explain directly with those specs how bad a tiny sensor is.
One factoid that has been discussed here which I'd like to ask "True or False" is the rough comparison-- a 4K 8mp cam needs ~4 times the amount of light to produce a decent image compared to a 2mp 1080 camera of the same sensor size. I don't want to misrepresent those numbers.

 

[mat200]

I feel like the usefulness of this is a little exaggerated on the forum. None of this will unsmash your window, return stolen items, or bring family back from the dead. Might it lead to a plea deal, possibly. Might you get $20 reparations when that person gets out of prison, likely. Might that person have plotted their revenge for the last 18 months in their cell? You can bet your life on it, it's just a matter of whether they follow through or not.

I've only provided an ID once to a crime and I was worse off for it. I've only used surveillance to catch a vehicle thief once, and I won $20 after losing thousands. He was back on the street in under a year.

A lot depends on your local LEO / Agency / and City / Jurisdiction ..

Video evidence can be useful, and imho better to have a chance at some quality evidence than not to have it ..

..

BTW--- I am striking out trying to find actual SPECS on those cameras. Would love to be able to explain directly with those specs how bad a tiny sensor is.
One factoid that has been discussed here which I'd like to ask "True or False" is the rough comparison-- a 4K 8mp cam needs ~4 times the amount of light to produce a decent image compared to a 2mp 1080 camera of the same sensor size. I don't want to misrepresent those numbers.

hard to find the specs on many consumer products .. Swann or Night Owl for example ..

a 8MP / 4K camera .. by itself, does not need 4x more light .. it does however ( everything else being the same ) need a imaging chip which is 2x the diameter ( 4x the surface area ) .. and for price purposes what I am seeing in consumer grade products sold that the chips have gotten smaller .. ( example a 1/2.8mm for a 8MP camera ) .. of course there is more than just the imaging sensor size .. so much more, FOV, Focal Length, Chip design, DSP, .. algorithms .. so I just use the chip sensor size as a starting point ..

 

[sebastiantombs]

I agree with the basics of chip design, algorithms, DSP but given we're talking about consumer level cameras I think it's safe to assume that will all be bottom of the barrel technology. Focal length and lens speed are probably also governed by that same, low end, principal.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Ask her to install more big Bulb, or else only daytime work cams.

 

[sdkid]

Ask her to install more big Bulb, or else only daytime work cams.

I am working on getting you a new customer Andy!

 

[The Automation Guy]

I was worried when she asks, "Are you sure about Wifi being bad?" I mean she reached out to you because she considers you an "expert", yet immediately questions your knowledge. At least to her credit, she seems open to learning and having a conversation about it since they put their installation on hold until they can speak to you. Perhaps there is hope yet!

 

[Sybertiger]

If you have to run powerlines to each cam then it makes no sense (to me anyway) why anyone would prefer WiFi. Maybe they never heard of POE and just need to be advised of how POE works. Further, it the powering receptacles are nearby and that's the compelling reason then I guess they don't care to record during power outages.

 

[sdkid]

I was worried when she asks, "Are you sure about Wifi being bad?" I mean she reached out to you because she considers you an "expert", yet immediately questions your knowledge. At least to her credit, she seems open to learning and having a conversation about it since they put their installation on hold until they can speak to you. Perhaps there is hope yet!

For too many people-- WIFI is like ELECRICITY-- it's just there and we don't need to understand it or its limitations. When you say "WIFI is not good for this" they look and think-- "...but it has 2 antennas!" LOL. Worse than that--- all these companies pushing WIFI video cams know damn well it would take PERFECT conditions for them to work to the level of performance they claim. Their marketing just plays on that odd belief that WIFI just WORKS, while the companies LIE via omissions of the TRUTH about how limiting WIFI is.

I will go over tonight and see what they have going. Their house is about 10 years old, so maybe they already have some wiring going.

 

[sdkid]

Cool Update--

Went over this evening and had a really good discussion, and he had excellent questions. He had followed the link I gave him and got on the forum here and started reading! He gets it!!! @EMPIRETECANDY -- he's going to be ordering 4 to 8 new cams-- probably mostly 5442's. I told him about BI, getting a cheap desktop to run it on, and that he can get a used enterprise class POE network switch for cheap. He has even terminated network cables before. The "techy" things didn't bother him at all-- no deer-in-the-headlights look. I said I have been running BI for 10 years this December, and once the setup on it is done, you don't really need to mess with it. I did not get into the network security portion of things, and I will need to warn him about keeping those cams OFF the internet.

When I got there-- he had some PRINTED IPVM diagrams of camera placement on his own house. That was awesome to see. From the IPVM site, he already had a really good idea about the DORI concept, and it felt like he REALLY understood how bad that Swann system was. We walked around and looked at different placements. The only thing I had to caution him on was not to mount cameras too high. Beautiful imagery of the tops of heads doesn't help. So where possible, he will keep them under 8 feet or so. He has some decisions to make regarding networking, but he is already in a really good place with his thinking and pre-planning. I think the BEST thing to happen is that he started reading the "New Member" threads and saw so many who bought the kits, then realized the shortcomings. We'll credit IPCT for the Win.

We don't have line-of-sight between our properties-- but we will have another house in the neighborhood with a good system in place, and that makes us ALL just a little bit safer.