That one is a left over from the original cheap WIFI cams I bought BEFORE I found IPCAMTALK. It goes offline several times a day. But I like the view it gives me from that position. But not enough to replace it with a better cam. That would mean running a fourth
cat5e around the door frame and though the wall into my office to the POE switch there.
This is a cap of the six cams that cover the front door/porch. I started out with the four around the door and just recently added the two that view along the porch. Those were added since I was running cat5e for the LPR, I might as well run more and put more cams there, well because, why not?
View attachment 73708
So I started with a single Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE back in August of 2018. I took the recommendations that
@looney2ns and
@SouthernYankee and
@bigredfish gave me about getting just one cam and test spots before buying more. I knew that without major work to the porch, there was no way for me to get cable to the outside of the door frame. I am retired and prefer to do these kind of things myself rather than paying someone to do it. It has become a hobby for me. Doing it yourself is really the only way to fully understand the system and be able to get exactly what you want. I went the
Blue Iris route also. If I have questions or issues, I will work it out until I figure it out or can't and then ask here. So far this has worked for me and I have learned a lot.
So the testing at the front door gave me a lot of info. Since I had to mount the cams inside behind the glass, IR was not in the program. That meant having to run the porch lights all night long. Also, put brighter, higher temp LED lights in. Also have to keep the windows clean. Since the front door faces south, and there are some trees, and the pot light is centered in the door area, there are changing lighting considerations. Shadows cause issues with getting a good face shot. Also, I noticed that since the area right up against the door is narrow, people that come up to the door don't always look straight forward. Usually their head is turned one way or the other. So to increase the odds of getting a good face cap, I knew that one cam was not going to work. So I got three IPC-HDBW4231FP-AS MiniWedge cams in 3.6mm. Two are mounted at face level on either side of the door, and the third is mounted at knee level on the right side. I left the WIFI cam on the left side since it was already there. I chose 3.6mm based on testing with the varifocal. That gave me the best FOV in the lenses that the MiniWedge was offered in.
So why that cam? Well the IR could be turned off. It is a nice low-profile cam. It could be mounted sideways since the lens twists and turns and the video could be flipped 90, 180, and 270 degrees. It was 2MP on a 1/2.8" Starvis CMOS, which was the then current good sensor. It was also only $116 at the time. I could have put the same 5231 varifocal turret that I tested with, but the miniwedge did not stick out as much and the 5231 was $166 at the time. I really felt that the 5231 was more cam than needed.
The positioning was chosen to give me good face shots. Two at face level and then the two at knee level looking a bit up. People's heads are always moving. In my tests those height gave me the best chance of getting a good face shot. I had left the 5231 turret in the front door, along with two of those WIFI cams, there for several weeks in different lighting conditions, to convince myself those were viable positions. Then as proof of concept, I bought one MiniWedge and tested it in various positions in the front door windows for a month. Then I bought the other two and did the permanent installs. As Looney said, a shot from below of the face gives a different perspective and can mitigate the issues with folks wearing caps and looking down.
Hope this helps and sorry if this hijacks the thread, but
@Plarsson had said he was interested too.
