Spec me a CCTV System

Ajax integrates extremely well with Dahua cameras and I can thoroughly recommend the 5MP TiOC just running SD cards internally or with an NVR. They can be set to run as alarms with loud sirens and flashing lights. I recently installed some in a posh cafe in Attleborough and, as chance would have it, they got burgled. Well, they made it as far as the till, at which point the 8MP TiOC positioned over the till lit them up like Christmas trees and scared the bejebus out of them. It was lovely to see.

If you don’t already have one, I strongly recommend a high resolution camera over your till. This gives you protection against anyone skimming and also it gets round all those “I gave you a tenner” discussions because you can zoom right in and see that it was fiver etc. The other thing we do a lot is link the POS machinery to the NVR so the orders taken appear on the images captured which again gets around a lot of skimming issues but also let’s you check when someone claims their order was wrong. Possibly not so much use if it’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide ordered and you give them a Player’s Handbook which is half the size if I recall correctly!

We also do a roaring trade in 360-degree fisheye cameras for shops with shrinkage issues. The Dahua 12MP fisheye is a true thing of beauty and one camera will cover most small-medium stores.
 
WJA96 said:
Ajax integrates extremely well with Dahua cameras and I can thoroughly recommend the 5MP TiOC just running SD cards internally or with an NVR. They can be set to run as alarms with loud sirens and flashing lights. I recently installed some in a posh cafe in Attleborough and, as chance would have it, they got burgled. Well, they made it as far as the till, at which point the 8MP TiOC positioned over the till lit them up like Christmas trees and scared the bejebus out of them. It was lovely to see.

If you don’t already have one, I strongly recommend a high resolution camera over your till. This gives you protection against anyone skimming and also it gets round all those “I gave you a tenner” discussions because you can zoom right in and see that it was fiver etc. The other thing we do a lot is link the POS machinery to the NVR so the orders taken appear on the images captured which again gets around a lot of skimming issues but also let’s you check when someone claims their order was wrong. Possibly not so much use if it’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide ordered and you give them a Player’s Handbook which is half the size if I recall correctly!

We also do a roaring trade in 360-degree fisheye cameras for shops with shrinkage issues. The Dahua 12MP fisheye is a true thing of beauty and one camera will cover most small-medium stores.
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So we don't actually take cash, it's all card now days, so no till either. Potentially have to get one at Xmas, but we've just been using sum-up style card readers for everything. Sounds cool that you can link it to the POS side of things, like having a photo receipt of each order which is sweet.

I'll have a look for that Duhua. How easy is it to set up without an NVR with having that flashing light nonsense go on, as that sounds pretty effective. Is it just a case of sticking a decent-sized internal SD card in it and away we go? I assume if I want to view the feed live on my phone, I'll need an NVR and whatever else?

Thanks again!
 
No, you don’t need an NVR, although it does help.

The DMSS app on your phone will do everything you need - even read the saved SD Card files so you can use them.

For £140-ish you can have a decent recorder with a 2Tb surveillance HDD and that, plus 1 or more £110+VAT cameras will do what you want. You will need them cabled up obviously but yiu should be able to run cables yourself if you’re in any way handy.
 
I currently have two Nest WiFi cameras. I’m thinking of going PoE route with 4 new cameras and an NVR unit. Camera wise possibly something from Dahua and I have three questions…

Can we still access these hard wired type of systems on our phones to watch a live feed
?

If we were away, can we watch recorded footage on our phones?

Would we see a big jump in energy consumption, we live in a busy cul-de-sac and my wife works from home as a hairdresser so even if the cameras were set to motion detection there would be quite a bit
 
I just checked the PoE status for my switch and all the active ports are only drawing about 3-5W each and they all record 24/7 in 4k at max bitrate. Each standard POE port has a max draw of 15W, which should run most PoE cams. Some of the bigger PTZs need 30-60W.

Even with the built in LED at 100%, power draw only went up to 6W.
 
UberTiger said:
I just checked the PoE status for my switch and all the active ports are only drawing about 3-5W each and they all record 24/7 in 4k at max bitrate. Each standard POE port has a max draw of 15W, which should run most PoE cams. Some of the bigger PTZs need 30-60W.

Even with the built in LED at 100%, power draw only went up to 6W.
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Thank you
 
Just a quick thank you to @WJA96 for the advice, two cameras installed for parents, third to be done when external 5e arrives tomorrow. I’ve got to spec something up for my home when I get back, but pretty impressed with the day and especially night mode so far.
 
Avalon said:
Just a quick thank you to @WJA96 for the advice, two cameras installed for parents, third to be done when external 5e arrives tomorrow. I’ve got to spec something up for my home when I get back, but pretty impressed with the day and especially night mode so far.
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What setup did you go for?
 
ChrisD. said:
What setup did you go for?
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3 x DS-2CD2347G2‘s with a DS-7616-K2 with 4TB surveillance drive - I may have gone slightly overkill on the NVR, but the NVR was cheap and at worst it’ll get moved to a larger install at a later date. Unfortunately we’ve just had a run in with a neighbour repeatedly trespassing at another property with larger grounds.
 
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Avalon said:
3 x DS-2CD2347G2‘s with a DS-7616 with 4TB surveillance drive - I may have gone slightly overkill on the NVR, but the NVR was cheap and at worst it’ll get moved to a larger install at a later date. Unfortunately we’ve just had a run in with a neighbour repeatedly trespassing at another property with larger grounds.
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Thanks. I’ve got most of the year off work so I’m going to make an effort to get CCTV installed.

I’d prefer a VM/docker based option for the NVR as I already have storage so will do some research.
 
ChrisD. said:
Thanks. I’ve got most of the year off work so I’m going to make an effort to get CCTV installed.

I’d prefer a VM/docker based option for the NVR as I already have storage so will do some research.
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I seemingly have 4 systems to roll out over the next few months, this is the first and a stand alone, it just needs to be fire and forget as it’s an 800 mile round trip to fix. For home I will likely look to do a BI test environment with a trial, but not docker as the BI workflow is horrible this way. Like you local storage isn’t a problem, I have disk shelves of the stuff, but I would likely go bare metal and use Quicksync hardware support via iGPU or pass a GPU to the VM if going virtualised. I just know if I shove it on a shared box that I have to take down occasionally for updates or fixes, you can bet that will be the time when something happens where I wish I had CCTV :eek:.
 
ChrisD. said:
Thanks. I’ve got most of the year off work so I’m going to make an effort to get CCTV installed.

I’d prefer a VM/docker based option for the NVR as I already have storage so will do some research.
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The NVR itself is usually a VERY inexpensive device and I see loads of people start out planning to virtualise this or that and after multiple iterations of it not quite working they end up running some form of hardware NVR. QNAP and Synology make a half-decent NAS/NVR compromise. A powerful Dahua or Hikvision NVR is usually £150-ish plus drives. Unless you’re running dozens of cameras you can usually get away with a very low-powered device (Intel Atom etc.) and something like Blue Iris, DSS/DSS Pro, iVMS etc. don’t need massive CPU power so other than the challenge of running it on a VM it’s usually a fairly unfruitful proposition. You’ll give it a go anyway, I’m sure.
 
@WJA96 Have Dahua released colour night cameras that turn off spotlights when there is nothing being detected yet? One of the things that put me off those is they stay lit up like a Christmas tree all night long which is a no no for me.
 
TNA said:
@WJA96 Have Dahua released colour night cameras that turn off spotlights when there is nothing being detected yet? One of the things that put me off those is they stay lit up like a Christmas tree all night long which is a no no for me.
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Yes, TiOC 2.0 have this feature.
 
WJA96 said:
£150 and yes, stick with the 5MP for best image quality.
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Cheers. Might consider doing it in the summer. Did you say a DVR is around £150 also (no hdd in it I assume)? Would be for 4-5 cameras. Probably stick a 8 or 12tb drive in it so can keep data for longer.
 
So, the initial Hikvision set-up is doing well at parents, I have few minor annoyances in terms of administration and management when not in front of a screen/browser issues, but I will work it out. Next up is where to take things going forward. I need to cover a total of 4 properties, the next two are quite simple 2-3 external cams and likely a doorbell cam set-up. So my first question is simply what is the best way to scale this up? It appears the Hikvision consumer app is single site/device only, is the installer app my best bet or does something like the Dahua scale better?

For the next property a basic 2 cam set-up is all that’s needed with some form of video doorbell, due to a shared access path, next doors owner has provided written permission for a video doorbell as his tenant wasn’t keen on a CCTV camera (yep, I know), so I am taking the east win here. I am aware Hikvision sell its doorbell camera under different brands, is something like an EZVIZ cross flashed the way to go here?
 
What minor annoyances are you having?

You can add multiple DVR/NVRs to the single Hik Connect app, either by just adding them to your existing Hik Connect account or add each DVR/NVR to its own Hik Connect account and then share from these additional accounts with your “main” account.
 
Morning all
From someone who is keen to have a first foray into security cameras, I have what should be (but I bet it isn’t going to be) a straightforward question which I’m having trouble answering.
If all options are on the table; wired/wireless, cloud/local storage, POE/battery, etc, if one of my overriding requirements is to be able to use what I believe to be termed ‘privacy masking’ is this a feature I can expect on most/some/very few systems?
The reason for wanting this is that my rear garden overlooks playing fields and I do not want them to be recorded.
Any advice - literally anything - would be welcome as I am starting from almost zero knowledge.
Many thanks.
 
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