NAS and surveillance advice

I will buy one in case I need it. I thought they were needed to hide the extra cables that are attached to the camera? Assuming if I cut those off I will void the warranty?

P.S is the correct junction box this one: DH-PFA130-E ?
 
fobose said:
I will buy one in case I need it. I thought they were needed to hide the extra cables that are attached to the camera? Assuming if I cut those off I will void the warranty?

P.S is the correct junction box this one: DH-PFA130-E ?
Click to expand...

I think when you’re buying trade you have to realign your ideas on warranty. If it’s fitted by a Dahua installation partner then no, it wouldn’t void the warranty if you chopped off the extra cables.
 
Fair enough. Hopefully once its tested and working it'll last a very long time.

I've been doing a lot of thinking (very dangerous I know) about best placement for the camera's, where I am going to run my network cable to the front of the house etc etc. I am a bit stuck on where the best place for a camera would be on the front of my house. My garage is set back from the house slightly so no where seems ideal. Ideally I am only really after having the camera keeping an eye on my garage/drive and the gate next to it.

Would a dome camera be best suited where I have indicated the red arrow (as in, on the underside of the white fascia)? I have checked in my garage loft and I have access to that area along the whole of the front.

Actually, maybe bang in the middle of the garage would be best, as it would spot people walking across from where my front door is (blue door). I have gravel next to my car in front of the house.
 
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If you put it in the corner then you won't get the whole area in view. so that's not great. If you put it in the middle then you'll see a LOT of wall of the house. I would consider a small arm bracket and mount the camera over the garden gate lining up one edge of the field of view with the edge of your property. That way you get the garage door, the whole driveway and the garden gate. It's not going to look amazing although you'd be surprised how quickly you just zone it out.
 
I really appreciate the advice, thank you. Is the camera you recommended still suitable or would a turrent/dome type be better with the arm mount?

Dahua DH-IPC-HDW3549H-AS-PV WizSense TiOC - looks similar to the one you have recommended

Dahua DH-PFB303W - with this arm mount maybe?
 
I was actually thinking more like https://www.aerialsandtv.com/product/1-25-inch-x-3-foot-l-section-plate-mount-satellite-mount with a pole-mount bracket PFA-152E (the smaller one).

It doesn't need to be massive - just enough to clear the edge of the garage so you get an unobstructed view.

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Remember that you can adjust the camera almost through 360 degrees on the axis mounts so you could use the bend horizontally and put the camera on top of the bracket to give you as much height as possible over the gate.
 
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Dang, that thing is a beast! That looks like it will be plan A then, she wont be pretty :D

What are your thoughts about placement of my rear camera where I have marked with the blue cross, would it be too high there? I mainly want to view/have detection of anyone trying to get in to the back of the house through any of the lower level windows/patio.

P.S my office is the window next to the blue cross. That is where I will be drilling out of - I am planning to have the exit hole behind the down pipe to mostly hide the cable. A second cable will go down to the patio where I have gravel all the way around my property (I will remove this and run the cable around to the garage for the front camera).
 
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I may have some mixed news for you. Your office is brilliantly placed, but the camera would be way too high where the cross is. Much better would be just above the skirting board under your window. Put a 2-port RJ45 socket on the wall and it’ll look great inside. But I think you want two 3.6mm cameras to cover the whole garden.
 
Would you consider panoramic cameras? You’d just screw one to the wall front and back and you get a 180-degree view of the front of the house and the garage. Not full colour night vision though.
 
@WJA96 For now I am not too worried about covering the whole garden, I quite liked the camera's you recommended due to the quality and the alarm they have on them, I think that would be quite the deterrent for anyone attempting to gain access. What panoramic camera would you recommend if I used those instead? Are they the 'fish eye' type camera's?

I was planning to put data points in my office to make it neat inside (I am a bit OCD with things like that), I was even considering adding two extra points (4 in total) and have the cables outside coiled up and left inside a sealed bag for future expansion (appreciate I would need to buy more licenses for the synology though.

My future plans would be to add a third camera at the other end of my garden (I have a second gate around the corner up the other end). The garden is L shaped and I might put an out building (home office) if finances ever allow in the future, so I could run a network cable along my fence (there is a gap behind all the concrete posts for a nice neat install).

Is the blue cross (pic below) where you suggest the bullet camera should go? What about where I have put the blue circle? I might need a bracket to allow it to stick out a bit further to clear the down pipe, but I think it might give a slightly better view (as in angled downwards towards the patio door direction).

To save potentially bottle necking my network with any future expansion (the office connects to my under stairs cupboard with only 1 cat6 cable) I could install a NVR in the office (with its own monitor attached). I did not want to do this as its something else to heat the room (and I think they might be noisy?). I do have AC so I shouldn't really be worrying about the extra heat. That might be the best route if I decide to increase to 3-4 camera's in the future. However, if I do decide to do this I need to think long and hard before buying an over the top NAS to cover all bases.

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If you’re only having one then put it where the o is, but if you’re having two then you want them out at the edges or as central as possible. On a 3.6mm lens you’re covering just under 90-degrees and with 2.8mm you’re covering a bit over 90-degrees so centrally you’d be looking over next door’s gardens and outside you’d have more cover in the middle of the garden.

And yes, the panoramics I’d recommend are 360-degree fisheyes. If you’re using Surveillance Station on a Synology NAS then it does the de-warp and you can blank out the walls. So you get a flat panoramic image. But you’d get better value from adding more of the TiOCs.

The licences are quite pricey on Synology. If you’re going to end up with more than 4 cameras then the QNAP QGD-1600P has 8 surveillance station licences and is a heck of a device but maybe not the NAS you’re looking for without an expansion unit.
 
Ah I think I see what your saying. Perhaps I am being a bit too ambitious of what one camera (the bullet type) can actually cover from that location. It probably doesn't help you can't really see my whole setup so hopefully the pictures below will assist.

And just to confirm, for now, my main objective is just to deter anyone trying to break in to my house. The TIOC camera having that loud alarm when a human is detected looks ideal for this! I am not worried about having full coverage of my garden and I am keen not to cover my neighbors garden at all as I do not want to invade their privacy (they have a small child).

My original thought was to have 1 dahua TIOC bullet camera facing roughly this direction (blue arrow) to view the majority of the back of the house. Specifically; the patio door, single downstairs loo window at the back of the garage, and maybe the kitchen window next to the AC unit (but that might be out of view thinking about it).

The rest of the garden at this point would not be covered, so potentially someone could sneak down by my fence on the right if they were able to get in to the garden further up.

WAzAovOh.jpg.png


My future plan was to potentially put another camera, bolted a bit higher up on the fence post marked on the picture below with the blue cross (they have holes through them so can easily bolt a piece of timber to it). The camera could either point towards the gate (blue arrow), or towards my bin store.

People can potentially climb over that brick wall (it's only about 6 foot high on the other side where the cars are).

One last thing I should mention, there is a street light in between the two cars in the picture below. It lights up my whole garden normally, but it's been out of action for about a year. We are having trouble with the estate management co to get it sorted.

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Is there a fish eye camera that has the same features as the dahua TIOC (i,e the alarm)? If so that would probably be best suited in the middle of the property, one out the front, one out the back.
 
No, no fisheyes with alarms unfortunately.

Next door’s garden is only an issue in that you’d be wasting ‘view’ and you put in privacy zones that the camera doesn’t record and you can’t see in live view.

You’re going into this fully aware that you won’t have ideal coverage and yes, the alarm feature is useful on the TiOCs.
 
Ok, so I think I have decided what I am going to buy with regards to camera's for now. I can always expand in the future if I feel the need.

2x Dahua DH-IPC-HFW3549T1-AS-PV
2x Dahua DH-PFA130-E Outdoor Junction Box
1x Kenable External CAT6 Outdoor Use COPPER Ethernet Network Cable Reel UTP 100m Black - It won't be enough for everything below, I know. Maybe I should just cough up for the 300m reel.

Required cable runs:
Office -> back of house camera, approx 1-2m max.
Office -> front of house camera, approx 35m max. (I would love to run a second cable so I have a spare in the garage but I am limited to 4 data points).

Nice to have cable runs:
Office -> top of garden future camera, approx 30m
Office -> top of garden (furthest corner) for potential home office, approx 40-50m

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Due to all the cable future proofing I think its going to make the data point install tricky. I could just have all 4 cables through the wall but I really hate it when cables are like that (but solves all problems, even for having a second spare cable to the garage)

I am thinking my 22mm masonry drill should easily be big enough to allow 4x cat6 cables through without any issues (perhaps I could put a piece of conduit through too). My only concern is there is not much gap between the plasterboard and kingspan insulation on my outside walls (probably about 10mm), so I wont have much room to maneuver the cables so I might have to cut in to the insulation a bit to allow a bend - cat6 being pretty rigid, the external stuff is apparently more so (?).

So I have two options I think.

Option 1, drill in to my back box location (might need to drill inside out for this). I don't think 4 cat6 cables entering through the rear of the back box will give me enough room without putting nasty bends in the cables.
Option 2, drill about 200mm lower down than my back box, make the hole bigger so I can maneuver the cables in to the 10mm void behind the plasterboard and feed in to my back box. That should remove the strain on the cables in the back box.

If anyone else has a better idea re the cables, I am all ears!
 
I’d just go straight in and drill on a slight slope so water runs down out of the hole. The Kenable cable is soft as butter. It’s more like CAT5e than CAT6. I’m not sure how they get away with calling it CAT6 to be honest. 25mm conduit will carry 3xCAT6 cables so it should be straightforward enough. If you want to be 100% compliant with building regs then the sockets need to 0.5m off the floor (for disabled users) so then I’d drill low and fish the cables up.

You can feed the conduit in if you like (and you have a 25mm bending spring) but I normally just put a box over the hole and fill it with expanding foam. You can use mastic but if you want to work on the box later the foam just breaks up cleanly whereas the mastic is always a gooey mess.
 
Should I use a different cable instead of the kenable one? How thick are the cables you use? I've just checked some left over 'Neet® - Cat6 Cable - 24awg Copper Core' that I got from the rain forest last year and I can fit 4x those easily through a 22mm hole (perhaps even up to 7 cables!)

I will make sure I fit the socket at 0.5m from the floor as that is the standard in my house any way. I was only planning on putting a straight bit of conduit through the entry hole, I will now use expanding foam to fix it in place, then fill the opening around the cables as you suggest as that seems a much better idea than silicon as I had planned!

Should I run all the cables in conduit? My plan was to just hide the cables behind the guttering down pipe. The cable that leads to the front of the house I will bury in to the small 30mm gap between my patio/foot path and the house/garage. Unless there are some footings in the way, I need to check that out.
 
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No, the Kenable cable is fine, certainly for 100Mbps cameras.

I may have jumped to the conclusion that you were going to run it in conduit. If you weren’t and you’re using external grade cable and you can hide it, then why muck about with conduit? As regards to how many cables fit, please bear in mind that at some point you’ll want to bend those cables through 90-degrees to go around the outside of the house, and that’s not happening with a lot of cable in the pipe, especially if you use corner joints (I do).

If you have bought the cable yet, they also sell it in White in 100Mbps lengths and that will basically disappear against a white down pipe with a natural white zip tie holding it in place.
 
Ok great. I will just use the kenable cable for most of the install then (the 3 camera runs). The 4th cable could do with being able to support 1Gbps as that will eventually go in to the 'home office' at the other end of the garden, if finances ever allow.

Point taken re the corner joints! If I was using conduit I would be using them. I was really hoping not to need to run anything in conduit as it's a lot of extra faff so I will go down the route of hiding it. I chose the black cable as I have black guttering / AC trunking.

Thanks very much for all your advice!
 
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