Would Newer Cameras Help?

[woody3000]

I live in a rowhouse in a major US city on a one way street, next to an alley. The house itself is just a flat-faced rectangular block, with no overhangs at all. Right out front on the sidewalk (about 7ft away) is a streetlight.

About 5 years ago I installed 2x 3MP Hikvision DS-2CD3132 2.8mm dome and 1x Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I bullet cameras, mostly for package thefts (the bullet covers our back gate, one dome covers the alley, and the other dome covers the front door). 2 years ago I added 2x Hikvision 4MP DS-2CD2042WD-I to cover each end of the street. I also have a Nelly's NSC-DB2 3MP doorbell camera next to the front door.

Except for the doorbell camera, they're mounted on the bottom of our second floor, maybe 20ft off the ground. Initially I was more concerned about someone damaging them so I figured this was actually a good idea. I know this isn't even close to ideal for license plate or face ID, but short of tearing down much of the drywall on the 1st floor again (wife might kill me) I don't have an easy way to move them.

Alley Day:


Alley Night:


Street North Day:


Street North Night - Color:


Street South Night - B/W:


Doorbell Day:


Doorbell Night:


Above door Day:


Above door Night:


Street South Day:


Street South Night - Color:


Street South Night - B/W:



Front camera locations, 3 above door + doorbell:


Alley camera:


Recently I've had detectives asking for footage to help in their cases investigating e.g. carjackings, assault, thefts, etc... and as I'm sure most of you can already guess, my footage is barely helpful. What I'm wondering is whether upgrading to e.g. IPC-T5442T-ZE domes, IPC-B5442E-ZE bullets (or something else?) would improve images to the point where the footage might be more useful, both day and night? With the streetlight, it's definitely not dark by any means at night.

I'm finally learning how to tweak the camera settings a bit better (e.g. exposure time helps quite a bit at night). Assuming I get the footage looking as best as these cameras can, would newer cameras in the existing locations be a significant improvement? Any suggestions for camera settings or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Follow up question if new cameras: What would be the best way to mount them? Right now the bullet cameras are small enough to mount to the side of the box, but I assume new cameras would have a larger base and would not fit. Just mount them all next to each other on the brick?

Thanks again!

 

[wittaj]

Some of those viewpoints are horrible LOL. Place them at locations to please the wife until something happens and the footage is no good LOL

Some of those could be improved with varifocals where you can angle them further down the walkway to try to get a more level shot (less of an angle due to distance).

 

[Flintstone61]

I really like the performance of my 5442 turret. I put it up as the 3rd camera at this location, and it's by far the best at consistent motion and good captures, I had the IPC-T2431T-AS 3.6mm as the second camera. It was pretty good but didnt see in the dark as well as the IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED. But it might work were you seem to have more light than I do near your street light areas, and its a little less expensive than the IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED. But I dont like the easy-off tab to remove the camera with no tools.

 

[woody3000]

Some of those viewpoints are horrible LOL. Place them at locations to please the wife until something happens and the footage is no good LOL

Some of those could be improved with varifocals where you can angle them further down the walkway to try to get a more level shot (less of an angle due to distance).

It's more that changing where the cables come out through the brick is a very big project. These kinds of houses don't have an attic or crawlspace, so when I ran the cables the first time I had to tear out much of the drywall in our living room and run them through each stud. Our living room was covered in plastic and drywall for like 3 months So far the cameras have been useful in catching cars hitting ours on the street (or our house in the alley...) and getting their insurance to accept fault and pay up.

I really like the performance of my 5442 turret. I put it up as the 3rd camera at this location, and it's by far the best at consistent motion and good captures, I had the IPC-T2431T-AS 3.6mm as the second camera. It was pretty good but didnt see in the dark as well as the IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED. But it might work were you seem to have more light than I do near your street light areas, and its a little less expensive than the IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED. But I dont like the easy-off tab to remove the camera with no tools.

The 5442 cameras do seem like the best option. I think I'd get varifocals as replacements just to fine tune them. I'm mostly concerned with whether even those would be much of an improvement over what I have now, given the angles and lighting.

 

[wittaj]

It appears you have 2.8mm and 4mm lens cams all installed on the 2nd floor. As you have probably seen, how close does a complete stranger need to be to a 2.8mm lens in order to ID them.

Take a look at this chart - to identify someone with the 2.8mm lens that is popular, someone would have to be within 13 feet of the camera, but realistically within 10 feet after you dial it in to your settings.

You are past that distance just in vertical distance.

My neighbor was bragging to me how he only needed his 4 2.8mm fixed lens cams on the soffits to see his entire property and the street and his whole backyard. His car was sitting in the driveway practically touching the garage door and his video quality was useless to ID the perp not even 10 feet away.

When we had a thief come thru here and get into a lot of cars, the police couldn't use one video or photo from anyone's system that had fixed 2.8mm or 3.6mm cams - those cams sure looks nice and gives a great wide angle view, but you cannot identify anyone at 15 feet out. At night you cannot even ID someone from 10 feet. Meanwhile, the perp didn't come to my house but walked past on the sidewalk at 80 feet from my house and my 2MP varifocal zoomed in to a point at the sidewalk was the money shot for the police that got my neighbors all there stolen stuff back.

You would benefit from the 5442 varifocals in that you can then optically zoom in to pinch points further out and flatten the angle to try to get more of the front of the face instead of the top of hoodies and bald spots like you get on this view LOL....



Now if you want to talk about cameras for capturing plates, then yes you have some good spots with the right camera to do that. We can certainly help you there as well.

I certainly here you on the difficulty of running wire. No easy task. I started with kits and made the mistake of placing these 2.8mm cameras on the 2nd story soffit and am like wow I can see the whole neighborhood....but to IDENTIFY a complete stranger at my front door, the video and still images pulled from it were useless.

While the ideal spots are lower like 7-8 feet high, with varifocals and pushing the field of view off your property and down or up the street, you can flatten that angle to get a more straight on shot.

Also, keep in mind there is a well kept secret that with a powerline adapter you can run internet over your electric wires....so a simple punch out from an outlet on the 1st floor to the outside can result in a lower camera location....Is it as good as an ethernet wire, no, but they do work and I have had one going for years now for a hard to wire location.

 

[Flintstone61]

It worked so well for so long, I forgot about my powerline adapters! There back collecting dust at the gf’s Apt. i should try them at this new house were at.

 

[IAmATeaf]

For some of the locations all you would need to do is run some trunking straight down from the current exit point for the cable, then just paint the trunking the same colour as the wall to try and get it to blend in.

 

[woody3000]

lol to be fair, that overhead view is mostly just to check for deliveries. If we don't grab packages immediately, they'll absolutely get taken by someone walking by.

Yeah I could probably grab some outdoor rated ethernet cabling and mount the cameras at least a little bit further down the walls. Our alley-side gets frequently hit by trucks that can barely fit, as well as kids doing dumb things like bouncing balls off the wall/windows, so I'd still have to keep them out of easy reach.

For the turrets, any concerns with mounting them flat on the walls with the junction box brackets and angling them down the street, or would they not rotate/angle enough? Or would you recommend the bullet style cameras instead?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[sebastiantombs]

A turret can be rotated in any direction needed. They can also be mounted directly to vertical surfaces and still cover any angle needed. I have three, at the moment, either mounted to tree trunks or vertical posts and have no problem getting the angles I need with any of them. A matching box is needed to protect the connectors from the elements, along with proper use of dielectric gel and tape.

 

[looney2ns]

Domes suck outdoors, you can see the problems in some of your shots from light bouncing off the domes, and your package cam dome is showing it's age, it's really fogged up.
The 5442 series turrets would work very well in your locations.
They would fit on your J box that you already have mounted above your door.
And one for the alley, mounted on a wall bracket, would work well.

 

[looney2ns]

For the time being, on your north st cam, you need to move the FOV to the right, and down a little. That would get the wasted pixels off the wall, and maybe help with the street light fogging the lens and affecting exposure. Unless your afraid of the bricks going someplace.
The alley cam, it would help if you flipped the picture into corridor mode, so your not looking sideways at the picture. This is done in the cameras setup screen.
Most any cam, leaving them at defaults is not getting their best performance.
Still pictures at night prove nothing, what do they look like with someone walking or running in the scene after dark?

 

[woody3000]

Yeah the lens cover on the dome looking down on the front door is pretty damaged from the sun. When I installed the 2 additional bullet cameras I tried to clean it some, but it's etched
into the plastic.

Good point on the alley cam. I had it setup as if you were looking straight down out of the window, but it's definitely easier to see cars/people with it rotated vertically.

I've attached a video of someone walking through the street south camera.