Trying to design system for my home

[program2]

Hi all. I am a complete newbie here looking for a little advice. I have everything I need except my cameras (Computer, CAT5, PoE Switch, etc). I want to make sure I am getting decent enough coverage. The back right of the house has a ton of soccer stuff for my son (pro-level goal, rebounders, etc) that I want to keep an eye on. I want to make sure I cover the front door and as much of the yard as is practical.

A few years ago I had a car broken in to. I live in a very rural area where people don't expect that stuff to happen, and I only wish I had video.

Being rural, there is zero artificial light sources around me. In fact, I have large fields on 2 of my 4 sides.

I am looking at getting 4MP Hiks (what's preferred 2mm or 4mm?) or the variable Dahua Starlights (e.g. - IPC-HDW5231R-Z) for the cameras.

I appreciate anything you experts can provide me.

 

[looney2ns]

Use this if you haven't yet: Camera Calculator / Design Software Keep PPF > 100

2mm makes it very hard to get a facial id. The IPC-HDW5231R-Z negates this issue, you can tune the field of view as needed as it's varifocal. You want to know who did it, not just what happened. You don't need anything above 2mp. More megapixels means worse performance at night as a general rule.

 

[randytsuch]

Since at night it must be really dark, I'd go with the varifocal starlight if it was me. I have a varifocal, but unfortunately I bought it before I knew about the starlights. It is nice to be able to zoom in and out, until you find the right setting.

I bought one camera to start, mounted it on the end of a 2x4, and moved it around to different locations, to see how it looked during the day and at night. After some experimentation, I bought some cheaper fixed focals for specific locations around my house. Still haven't finished, but getting there lol. Oh, and buy a spool of ethernet wire so you can make a long cable to move the camera around.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Go with 5231R-Z Starlights over the Hiks. Spend the extra money and be happy. You'll also be able to adjust the lens to zoom in more after reviewing test footage (everybody tests for quality and teaks things, right?) and figuring out that more pixels on target (the face) beats having a wide field of view. 2.8mm lens is popular with kit systems but tells you a lot of WHAT went on, not necessarily WHO did it besides BOLO details. For example, skinny white male with medium length hair, long pants, and a t-shirt. The actual face shot could be anybody because even their momma might not recognize 'em.

I had one guy take something from work. Just drove into the yard in a UTV, walked around a bit, hung out, looked around, picked something up, threw it in his trailer, and he takes off. Broad daylight, 2mp camera, 3.6mm lens, 20ish feet away from the camera, perfect conditions. 20' isn't that far outdoors. Anyway, I watched and rewatched the video, blew up his face, printed it out, stared at it some more. Put it away, looked at it later, and just before calling the cops I thought there was half a chance I knew the guy. Showed the pic to his grandfather and he knew him immediately. I've known him for 20 years and he lives next door. He had a little scruff on his face and I didn't recognize the clothes he was wearing. The UTV was new and I hadn't seen it yet but his grandfather had. Not enough pixels to give good detail even though I knew the guy. I just threw the 3.6mm cam up quickly because the 6mm 4mp I had on order for that spot hadn't arrived yet. Now that place is well covered in the daylight. "Zoom" is important. If I'd had a 2.8mm in that spot I would've been lucky to tell if he was male or female besides his clothes.

 

[nayr]

Thats why those Costco kits suck; if they came with all 6mm lenses the'd be a few orders of magnitude of a better deal; but they are just catering to what people want.. wide angles; everyone thinks thats what they need.. no blind spots.. and they could not be more wrong.

fuck wide angles, blind spots are fine.. no reason to watch your grass all day long, zoom the bitch in on where the activity is going to be and put the FOV on high value targets and choke points..

 

[shmookles]

@nayr im in the same boat and new to building out my ip camera system. I'll be ordering the starlight you reccomend for the outside like the op but was wondering what you and @Kawboy12R would reccomend for an inside the house camera. Like in a hallway.

Lastly, for my kids rooms and some family areas I'll be purchasing either dahua or hik cube cameras. I prefer to stay with one. Rand but it seems dahua doesn't offer poe for their cubes and sound seems bad for other reviewers. I also know hik has the 3mp and 4mp cubes that support wifi and poe. Thoughts?

 

[nayr]

I'll be getting one of these for the kids playroom: IPC-HDBW4231F-AS | Dahua Technology

I have one of these in the Living Room because IR was undesirable: Dahua Starlight Mini-Dome 3.6mm (IPC-HDB4231C-AS)

and the Dahua Mini Black Face PTZ (SD29204S-GN) is going to be moved to the Kids Bedroom because I'd like to zoom in on the baby crib and my son's bed discretely as they sleep.

Low light performance inside residences is a good thing to have, espically since I have almost all lights on dimmer switches.. if it was a well lit retail store mebe it'd not be so important, but even though you should have ID on everyone in the house, its still nice to have good detail if your going to go through the trouble.

 

[shmookles]

So you are not big on the cubes then I'm assuming?

Also, I have a 8TB NAS. Can I send the camera footage straight to my NAS and then use a BI server pointed to my NAS with the camera footage? Or do I still need an NVR?

 

[Kawboy12R]

I like nayr's recommendations if you plan on being there a while. Portable has its advantages as well though too. I've got a couple of crappy little vga wifi cams given to me that came with a relative's branded security system. He canceled and ended up with the hardware. Haven't a clue who made them. They work, they're free, and low enough res they don't screw up the rest of the wifi by being bandwidth hogs. I leave 'em in the living rooms except when the grand munchkins come to visit and then I stick them where they're sleeping. I'd keep one in the spare bedrooms permanently except that older guests wouldn't appreciate cameras on them when they're sleeping/changing/whatever so I move them back to the public rooms. Sooo, depends on location, use, etc. Nothing wrong with permanent ones in the main living areas but portable ones in spare bedrooms might be better. For a "real" cube camera that also does wifi, Hik makes a nice one with a real PIR. DS-2CD2432F-IW. Keep it wired on hi-res when you can, and if you want to move it occasionally you can run it on wifi. The Amcrest portable stuff isn't bad for what it is, either. Just don't expect portable cams, particularly wifi ones, to be as reliable as a wired minidome so stick domes in where you can. Someone's often bumping the portable ones so you can't always depend on them even pointing in the right direction.

 

[nayr]

yeah im not a fan of WiFi Cams, I'd rather run a wire.. got plenty of ports.

 

[shmookles]

any chance you guys can provide some insight on leveraging my NAS with a server running BI and not needing an NVR?

 

[nayr]

just shove more disks into your BI Server and forget the NAS.. otherwise you require two machines to be online for recording.

most people's home NAS archive video, photos, and backups.. uptime is not critical as data integrity.. video surveillance is the opposite; a bunch of garbage data being constantly written and data integrity is not nearly as important as uptime.

In other words, the expected downtime when my NAS has a disk issue: days at minimum, perhaps weeks to get everything off backups or redownloaded.. If I get an email tonight saying a disk has failed I'll immediately make another backup of the most important stuff, then turn the server off and replace and rebuild at a very casual pace so nothing important is gone..
expected downtime when my NVR has a disk issue: almost none, just drop the disk and write to the other disk at reduced capacity while failed disk is replaced.. no efforts taken at all to recover data almost always.

You gotta dedicate hardware to a NVR, so make the storage local; RAID is not needed at all for video surveillance, if you require redundancy then run a 2nd NVR and get better redundancy.

 

[Deali]

I would always go for an NVR. I tested all available software on Linux and on Windows, and i was not happy. I have my 8 channel NVR up and running for more than one year. I can watch the NVR in my Windows Explorer and also managing things. These little devices are produced to do one thing, surveilance.
If you have 4 cam´s take a NVR with 8 channels, so you have spare. You don´t need 4MP cam´s, 2MP will do the job fine

 

[shmookles]

I would always go for an NVR. I tested all available software on Linux and on Windows, and i was not happy. I have my 8 channel NVR up and running for more than one year. I can watch the NVR in my Windows Explorer and also managing things. These little devices are produced to do one thing, surveilance.
If you have 4 cam´s take a NVR with 8 channels, so you have spare. You don´t need 4MP cam´s, 2MP will do the job fine

@Deali is there an NVR you can recommend so I can do a little research?

With regard to Blue Iris, i was under the impression it had better and more capability in terms of triggers, analytics, etc.? Is that not the case?

 

[Deali]

@Deali is there an NVR you can recommend so I can do a little research?

With regard to Blue Iris, i was under the impression it had better and more capability in terms of triggers, analytics, etc.? Is that not the case?

If you go for the excellent Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-Z then also buy an Dahua NVR. That is a must and work best together. They talk the same protocol. If you take a cheap chinese one, they will work together fine with Onvif. But better to stay at the same company.
It is like if you talk to your wife, most times you do not to have to say that you need a beer, she just know it. If you go to your neigbor that is not as smooth and you have to ask.
In your case, in your rural location go for the Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-Z and an Dahua NVR. As a beginner it will serve you best.

 

[fenderman]

I would always go for an NVR. I tested all available software on Linux and on Windows, and i was not happy. I have my 8 channel NVR up and running for more than one year. I can watch the NVR in my Windows Explorer and also managing things. These little devices are produced to do one thing, surveilance.
If you have 4 cam´s take a NVR with 8 channels, so you have spare. You don´t need 4MP cam´s, 2MP will do the job fine

This is complete bull. You never tested "all avalable software"..or you simply have no clue as to what you are doing...likely both...if you did there is no way you would go back to a standalone NVR box. There are MANY excellent vms software packages that blow away standalone nvrs...

 

[fenderman]

@Deali is there an NVR you can recommend so I can do a little research?

With regard to Blue Iris, i was under the impression it had better and more capability in terms of triggers, analytics, etc.? Is that not the case?

It is better with way more options and a much better mobile app. Deali does not know what he is talking about...also note that milestone essentials is free for up to 8 cameras. Always take "expert" advice given on the internet with a grain of salt particularly someone who has 26 posts. For example, he says a cheap Chinese nvr will work just fine when we all know that is not the case. Most are garbage. Then he lies and says he tested "all" available software for linux and windows and was not happy. Another lie. There is simply no way he tested all available software. Considering that end users pay 150+ plus PER CAMERA licensing PER camera, do you think they are doing that for shits and giggles when they can just by a 300 dollar NVR and get a better result as he implies? Logic 101.

 

[shmookles]

Thanks @fenderman inwas under similar thoughts that Blue Iris and similar software had more features but then again I'm still learning so I was surprised to hear that NVR was a viable option. In any case, I'm prob gonna go with Blue Iris given how many people use it and love it.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks @fenderman inwas under similar thoughts that Blue Iris and similar software had more features but then again I'm still learning so I was surprised to hear that NVR was a viable option. In any case, I'm prob gonna go with Blue Iris given how many people use it and love it.

The beauty if pc based NVR is that if you dont like the software you can always move to another...you can test many different platforms...with an NVR if you dont like it you are stuck...

 

[Deali]

yea, that ist the same like if you buy a big truck for your family. Sometimes you will relocate. Then you can take all your stuff and take it with you. All the other time you drive to work with that thing. Very clever. That has nothing to do with the amount of posts to understand that.
Windows is definetly oversized to do a job as a surveillance system. In the background there are running so many task which have nothing to do with your surveillace job. All printing stuff for instance. There are modified window versions which some people created to be optimized for gaming. Everyting has been taken out but graphic. I asked here some time ago if there are special Windows versions for surveillance, but there is nothing. Linux is better but you may have to learn it. Look through their recomandations what you should buy to serve 6 cams or so.
I looked up a small NVR for you to test is, it is below 50$. The only disadvantage, it has no internal disk. mini NVR
I have the same here in my home. i bought ist used on ebay for about 20$
Buy it and see how easy it is. You will never use a pc anymore for that job.
I can highly recommend this one SAE3000-N7932F it is very powerfull an is working without any errors for quite a while. And you do not have to sit at the console. My NVR is located in a small chamber with all modem and switches. I can administrate it from any pc in my house on IE.