Welcome to me

[Railgun]

Howdy all,

Needless to say, I'm new here. I'm finally starting to fortify my house with some security measures, the first of which has been to install a Hikvision IP intercom to replace an extraordinarily basic voice only intercom. This house is a new build (3.5 years old now) that we didn't build, but fortunately the guy that had intended to live here had enough foresight to wire things well. Not completely the way I'd have done it, but enough to make upgrades and changes pretty easy. What would be great is if I can roll in the existing house alarm pieces into this system. I'm sure that there's something that can be done to integrate it...so we'll see.

I've got a flat roof, where I've extended my network to a weather proof box where I have a controller for some Christmas lights as well as one of a myriad of Unifi PoE switches to easily run cameras to.

No cameras have yet been installed, but I'm starting with at least two DS-2CD2785G0-IZSs to cover the front door and the front gate.

The outside of said gate has a KD8003 with its corresponding indicator panel and a blank for the time being, the latter of which I may use for a card reader if I get the rest of the things lined up; eg magnetic lock for the gate and lock for the front door. The door isn't wired at at all so that will take a little effort.

I have a VM host that will serve up NVR duties at some point, though what that is TBD.

I'll probably need at least four cameras for the rest of the house to cover where I want to cover. I'd rather not go PTZ as 1) way too bulky and 2) I can piecemeal the deployment and spread the cost.

As the saying goes, I don't know what I don't know, but so far, things are coming together well enough. I'll be doing all the installation myself; I'm a network engineer by trade, and while that doesn't entail this kind of thing, it's not all that difficult in the grand scheme of things being technical in nature.

Looking forward to getting ideas here and perhaps passing along any helpful things based on my experience setting all this up.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Below is my normal greeting message, it is long, please take the time to read and understand it.

Good decision on the PTZ, the general rule is that the camera will be pointing away from the action when it occurs.

Read, study, plan before spending money.... plan,plan,plan
Go slow and learn as you go.
----------------------------------
My standard welcome to the forum message.

Please read the IP Cam Talk Cliff Notes and other items in the IP Cam Talk Wiki. (read on a real computer, not a phone). The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) If you do not have a wired monitored alarm system, get that first
2) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras if you need good low light cameras.
3) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
4) Do not use wifi cameras.
5) Do not use cloud storage
6) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
7) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
8) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
9) Do not use reolink, ring, nest, Arlo cameras (they are junk), no cloud cameras
10) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
11) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)
12) use a test mount to verify the camera mount location. My test rig: rev.2
13) (Looney2ns)If you want to be able to ID faces, don't mount cams higher than 8ft. You want to know who did it, not just what happened.
14) Use a router that has openVPN built in (Most ASUS, Some NetGear....)
15) camera placement use the calculator... IPVM Camera Calculator V3
16) POE list PoE Switch Suggestion List


Cameras to look at
IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED Review IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED (Full Color, Starlight+) - 4MP starlight
IPC-T5442TM-AS Review-OEM 4mp AI Cam IPC-T5442TM-AS Starlight+ - 4MP starlight+
IPC-T2347G-LU Review of the Hikvision OEM model IPC-T2347G-LU 'ColorVu' IP CCTV camera. (DS-2CD2347G1-LU)
IPC-HDW2231R-ZS Review-Dahua IPC-HDW2231RP-ZS Starlight Camera-Varifocal
IPC-HDW2231T-ZS-S2 Review-OEM IPC-T2231T-ZS 2mp Varifocal Starlight Camera
IPC-HDW5231R-ZE Review-Dahua Starlight IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 800 meter capable ePOE
IPC-HFW4239T-ASE IPC-HFW4239T-ASE
IPCT-HDW5431RE-I Review - IP Cam Talk 4 MP IR Fixed Turret Network Camera
DS-2CD2325FWD-I
N22AL12 New Dahua N22AL12 Budget Cam w/Starlight -- low cost entry

Other dahua 4MP starlight Dahua 4MP Starlight Lineup

My preferred indoor cameras
DS-2CD2442FWD-IW
IPC-K35A Review-Dahua IPC-K35A 3mp Cube Camera

If interested in Blue Iris and other setup items see the following post

Newbie Starter Guide to IP Cam System – VPN setup – Computer Hardware – Blue Iris – Dahua Cameras

This is an intermediate / newbie guide for people just starting out looking for a surveillance setup. I know this setup might not be for everyone and there are many options. You can find a lot of this information in the Wiki: IP Cam Talk Wiki | IP Cam Talk A great place to start in the Wiki...

ipcamtalk.com

Camera Sensor size info Sensor Size Chart Generally bigger is better

Before asking a question search the forum first...
The best way to search the forum is to use Google Advance search

Google Advanced Search

set site or domain to ipcamtalk.com
OR
in the google search window enter.. site:ipcamtalk.com ?????? ..where ?????? is the items/terms you are interested in.

Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Test do not guess

 

[gwminor48]

Hello, welcome to the forum.

 

[aristobrat]

No cameras have yet been installed, but I'm starting with at least two DS-2CD2785G0-IZSs to cover the front door and the front gate.

Two things to consider with that model:

Domes (vs. turrets/bullets) are more likely to have issues with IR getting into the image and causing it to wash out. This can happen if something reflects a good amount of the IR back towards the dome or if the foam ring around the lens of the camera pulls away from the inside of the dome (which can happen as the camera gets older).

While the image sensor in that model (8MP 1/2") is one of the better low-light ones when it comes to 8MP cameras, you're likely to get better low-light images from cameras that use either a 2MP 1/2.8" or 4MP 1/1.8" image sensor. If you rank those three sensors by their minimum illumination specs (which is one way to get an idea of their low-light image quality), the 4MP 1/1.8" sensor is the best (0.002 lux), the 2MP 1/2.8" is in the middle (0.006 lux), and the 8MP 1/2" comes in last (0.014 lux).

Going up to #7 on @SouthernYankee's Quick start tips, if you're like the thousands of forum members here that want to build a system that has the best chances of being able to ID someone when something bad at night happens, I'd recommend factoring a camera's minimum illumination spec higher than its megapixel count.

If I had to guess, I'd say that most folks here built their systems in pieces, so you're def. not doing anything unusual there!

A really cool tool to help validate your system before buying is IPVM Camera Calculator V3. You should be able to type in your address to bring up a Google Images map of your house, then position some cameras around the exterior. Each camera will have a marker you can move closer/further away. When you drop the marker it will show you an estimated image from the camera as well as give you some stats like PPF (pixels per foot). The recommendation is to have a PPF of 100+ in order to be able to ID someone.

Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of great folks here willing to help out!

 

[Railgun]

Thanks!

With respect to IR performance, I have enough ambient light on the front side of the house to not need to worry too much about it. And with respect to the back side of the house, though I don't now, I have wiring in place where I can easily pop up some IR blasters as required in more inconspicuous places. I've yet to determine how exactly I'm going to lay out the side/rear of the house so I'll cross that bridge when needed.

I've used that calculator a couple of times. Unfortunately the IQ of the images for my property kind of suck, and are obscured by enough tree to not be overly helpful. But it's given me an idea with part of the property, hence the cameras I have now.

I dabble in photography, so I appreciate the smaller pixel size lends itself to lesser low light performance. However, as I've not made the selection of cameras yet for those sides of the houses, I will certainly take it under advisement. The cameras I have now are for the stairs leading to my front door on the west side, on the south side facing the main entry gate part of that same path and the path along that side of the house. And a third will be to be in front of the garage. At a guess, at least three more to cover the bulk of the rear of the house. It's an oddly shaped house and property to it's not as straight forward as covering a couple corners.

As for the IR issue, I've only just purchased these so I will run a few quick tests to validate their performance. I have a way to roughly test the distance I'll be covering, and use the aforementioned ambient light.

Thanks for the pointers.