NAS and surveillance advice
- Thread starter fobose
- Start date
The domes are a bit of a double edged sword.
There are big upsides to the domes; immune from spider webs, difficult for someone to see where the lens is pointing, lens is always protected inside the dome, much harder to damage a dome than a bullet or turret. They even have a special anti-stick coating on them so it’s easy to get paint and glue off the domes. That’s why they’re termed ‘vandal-proof’.
The downsides? You have to mount them in a pendant location as if you wall-mount them without a pendant bracket they immediately get rained on (you can get a hat cover but it’s not that effective), you have to be super-careful to get the rubber lens cover in place when you install the dome or you’ll get horrible infra red reflections inside the dome, and you need to clean them more often than bullets or turrets and they are bigger in terms of cleaning so it takes longer.
There are big upsides to the domes; immune from spider webs, difficult for someone to see where the lens is pointing, lens is always protected inside the dome, much harder to damage a dome than a bullet or turret. They even have a special anti-stick coating on them so it’s easy to get paint and glue off the domes. That’s why they’re termed ‘vandal-proof’.
The downsides? You have to mount them in a pendant location as if you wall-mount them without a pendant bracket they immediately get rained on (you can get a hat cover but it’s not that effective), you have to be super-careful to get the rubber lens cover in place when you install the dome or you’ll get horrible infra red reflections inside the dome, and you need to clean them more often than bullets or turrets and they are bigger in terms of cleaning so it takes longer.
I will see how I get on with the 2MP one you are selling. It's a cheaper way to find out if its any good in the location I plan for it (screwed on to the under side of the garage eave). Hopefully I can fit a piece of timber in place above the underside of the eave to give it something solid to screw in to. I also have the potential option to mount it under my porch outside my front door, I've been planning a cable route to that location.
P.S I had not noticed the 4MP one I mentioned was only B/W at night, whoops. Thanks for pointing that out.
P.S I had not noticed the 4MP one I mentioned was only B/W at night, whoops. Thanks for pointing that out.
@WJA96 I am thinking I might just buy a NVR rather than a high end NAS as an all in one. I was looking at this unit (Dahua DHI-NVR4108HS-8P-4KS2 Lite) but I have no knowledge of these types of devices so if you have any input or other recommendations it would be greatly appreciated!
I think I would only ever have 4 camera's maximum (5MP max I would have thought) but perhaps an 8 channel would be best for future proofing, or if I wanted to add a few internal camera's (unlikely though).
I think I would only ever have 4 camera's maximum (5MP max I would have thought) but perhaps an 8 channel would be best for future proofing, or if I wanted to add a few internal camera's (unlikely though).
I'd need to check with Dahua as there are several little "gotcha's" with some of these devices. I sold one recently and was appalled to discover that even though it was an 8-channel recorder the AI Smart features could only be used on 2 channels at once. Luckily the customer was very understanding and decided they could live with that. Since then I've been much more wary about recommending the different units as there are lots of different ones and they all do different things.
Because you have the intelligence built into your cameras there is much less strain on the NVR so the one you linked would probably be fine and I would definitely suggest you check out the Dahua DMSS phone app to make sure you like how that works. And they're pretty cheap (£150+VAT without HDD) unless you start buying the 5- or 7- series devices with the facial recognition and built-in ANPR functions.
The Synology NVR-416 is a great unit if you already have the hard drives and like Synology's software. The initial purchase cost (£200-ish +VAT), only 4 camera licences to start with and £50/camera to add new ones could be seen as an issue but the app is great and the support for new model cameras is almost unbelievably good. As an example, just after Christmas I got a camera on Monday, found it wasn't supported. I e-mailed Synology on Tuesday afternoon and they'd written a new configuration file for that camera by midnight on Tuesday when they e-mailed me to ask me to update the NVR and check it worked OK. And there are loads of reports like that on IPVM so I think that will continue in future as surveillance becomes a bigger thing for them.
Because you have the intelligence built into your cameras there is much less strain on the NVR so the one you linked would probably be fine and I would definitely suggest you check out the Dahua DMSS phone app to make sure you like how that works. And they're pretty cheap (£150+VAT without HDD) unless you start buying the 5- or 7- series devices with the facial recognition and built-in ANPR functions.
The Synology NVR-416 is a great unit if you already have the hard drives and like Synology's software. The initial purchase cost (£200-ish +VAT), only 4 camera licences to start with and £50/camera to add new ones could be seen as an issue but the app is great and the support for new model cameras is almost unbelievably good. As an example, just after Christmas I got a camera on Monday, found it wasn't supported. I e-mailed Synology on Tuesday afternoon and they'd written a new configuration file for that camera by midnight on Tuesday when they e-mailed me to ask me to update the NVR and check it worked OK. And there are loads of reports like that on IPVM so I think that will continue in future as surveillance becomes a bigger thing for them.
Oh wow, that is a bit sneaky! If you are able to check there are not any little 'gotcha's' without too much bother that would be handy but don't worry if you CBA.
I was using the gDMSS plus app for some reason. I've just installed the DMSS one to try, so far looks good.
Re the Synology NVR-416, I can't seem to find this available at all. Did you happen to mean the NVR-216? I've not done much research but I think this might have been replaced by the NVR1218 - the specs on this look a bit dated too. Note - I know nothing about NAS and have probably just fallen down the rabbit hole of 'I need a quad core, 8 GB RAM minimum', which probably surpasses my actual needs. I really hate spending money on things that I end up wishing I spent just a little more (especially for future proofing).
Hmm I am in two minds again now. It seems Synology do give some good supporting for the surveillance features which sounds good. It would be nice to have an all in one but will result in me spending A LOT of money I think.
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On another note. I've finally found the cahoonas to drill the pilot hole for the next stage of the install. To be fair I hadn't quite decided where I would drill through. A load of measurements were involved before I decided on the below, it worked out perfectly where I wanted it to appear.
The original plan was to get it behind-ish the gutter down pipe, I would have needed to chase out a stud on the inside to run the cables across from under the power socket and I didn't think that would be a good thing to do (probably against electrical code too).
Now I am just waiting for my larger diameter drills to arrive (tomorrow hopefully).
I was using the gDMSS plus app for some reason. I've just installed the DMSS one to try, so far looks good.
Re the Synology NVR-416, I can't seem to find this available at all. Did you happen to mean the NVR-216? I've not done much research but I think this might have been replaced by the NVR1218 - the specs on this look a bit dated too. Note - I know nothing about NAS and have probably just fallen down the rabbit hole of 'I need a quad core, 8 GB RAM minimum', which probably surpasses my actual needs. I really hate spending money on things that I end up wishing I spent just a little more (especially for future proofing).
Hmm I am in two minds again now. It seems Synology do give some good supporting for the surveillance features which sounds good. It would be nice to have an all in one but will result in me spending A LOT of money I think.
--
On another note. I've finally found the cahoonas to drill the pilot hole for the next stage of the install. To be fair I hadn't quite decided where I would drill through. A load of measurements were involved before I decided on the below, it worked out perfectly where I wanted it to appear.
The original plan was to get it behind-ish the gutter down pipe, I would have needed to chase out a stud on the inside to run the cables across from under the power socket and I didn't think that would be a good thing to do (probably against electrical code too).
Now I am just waiting for my larger diameter drills to arrive (tomorrow hopefully).
My install is coming along, trying to work in-between the rain showers yesterday was a right pain. I've now run the 3 external cables. Where the cables come up behind the AC unit, I've run them in flexible conduit and then in to a terminal box, covering the hole entry point. Looks really neat and the flex conduit is hidden behind the guttering down pipe.
I've just finished installing a data point on both ends of one of the cables entering the garage. I've tested it via plugging in the 2MP dome camera in to it. Seems to be working
*edit*
Second cable to garage now connected up both ends.
Cable entry point (3 cables - 1 spare for potential home/office in the future):
Garage loft (2x data points - 1 as a backup)
Office cable entry. I've run out of data points to finish today. There is 50m on the other end of the cable which isn't connected.
I've just finished installing a data point on both ends of one of the cables entering the garage. I've tested it via plugging in the 2MP dome camera in to it. Seems to be working
*edit*
Second cable to garage now connected up both ends.
Cable entry point (3 cables - 1 spare for potential home/office in the future):
Garage loft (2x data points - 1 as a backup)
Office cable entry. I've run out of data points to finish today. There is 50m on the other end of the cable which isn't connected.
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I've finally fitted the camera on the garage. It gives a pretty good view of the front of my house and drive. I've not setup any privacy screens yet (top left windows/doors etc).
@WJA96 - I am really happy with the camera, has worked out very well. I have a question for you with regards to the water tight connector for the network cable. Am I right to assume this is not needed if its sitting above where the camera is in my pic below? It was bone dry up there when I placed a piece of timber down to screw the camera in to. I just wasn't sure about humidity etc.
Network point fascia arrived in the post today:
Garage cam installed tonight:
Camera view:
@WJA96 - I am really happy with the camera, has worked out very well. I have a question for you with regards to the water tight connector for the network cable. Am I right to assume this is not needed if its sitting above where the camera is in my pic below? It was bone dry up there when I placed a piece of timber down to screw the camera in to. I just wasn't sure about humidity etc.
Network point fascia arrived in the post today:
Garage cam installed tonight:
Camera view:
Correct - you only need the watertight sleeve if you think the connection will get wet at any point.
I'm very glad it's worked out for you. As I said in the MM ad - if you have adequate street lighting these cameras are fabulous but when the lighting is marginal they're very dark indeed
I'm very glad it's worked out for you. As I said in the MM ad - if you have adequate street lighting these cameras are fabulous but when the lighting is marginal they're very dark indeed
Brilliant, thanks
Managed to bring the cable reel in the house and upstairs to the office so I could crimp a RJ45 on the end and test the cable. I've only got one of those cheap £10 testers but at least I know the cable is not broken.
Expanding foam now in entry holes.
I left it for a few hours to cure. The network point fascia is now installed and first fill in the entry holes. I had previous made good the wall around the network point and painted around it (+ plug socket) this morning before work. I will paint the whole wall when I am finished filling.
2x APC surge protectors also arrived this morning so I will figure out a way to connect them to earth, possibly through the earth pin of a 3 pin plug.
Managed to bring the cable reel in the house and upstairs to the office so I could crimp a RJ45 on the end and test the cable. I've only got one of those cheap £10 testers but at least I know the cable is not broken.
Expanding foam now in entry holes.
I left it for a few hours to cure. The network point fascia is now installed and first fill in the entry holes. I had previous made good the wall around the network point and painted around it (+ plug socket) this morning before work. I will paint the whole wall when I am finished filling.
2x APC surge protectors also arrived this morning so I will figure out a way to connect them to earth, possibly through the earth pin of a 3 pin plug.
Hello again. I am still thinking lots about what I want to do with regards to NAS or dedicated NVR. Leaning towards a decent NAS atm.
If I went with a Synology DS1520+, can I just start out with 2x hard drives in them for now using SHR?
*edit* Ah ignore, I've just realised someone already said this is possible on the first page of my thread!
If I went with a Synology DS1520+, can I just start out with 2x hard drives in them for now using SHR?
*edit* Ah ignore, I've just realised someone already said this is possible on the first page of my thread!
@WJA96 Hello again and sorry to bother you
I am thinking about putting an IP camera in my single garage (ceiling mounted) which is in total darkness most of the time so I am thinking I will need an IR camera. The two cheapest ones I can find are these two and I was leaning towards the dome as I think that might be better for my garage as often I create a lot of dust in there.
Would these be good options or do you have any other recommendations for this purpose?
Dahua IPC-HDBW2531EP-S-S2-360 £89.21 inc delivery (dome camera)
Dahua DH-IPC-HDW2531TM-AS-S2 £90.18 inc delivery (turret camera)
I am thinking about putting an IP camera in my single garage (ceiling mounted) which is in total darkness most of the time so I am thinking I will need an IR camera. The two cheapest ones I can find are these two and I was leaning towards the dome as I think that might be better for my garage as often I create a lot of dust in there.
Would these be good options or do you have any other recommendations for this purpose?
Dahua IPC-HDBW2531EP-S-S2-360 £89.21 inc delivery (dome camera)
Dahua DH-IPC-HDW2531TM-AS-S2 £90.18 inc delivery (turret camera)
I decided to give the dome camera I mention above a punt. I also ordered a Dahua IPC-HFW2531SP-S-S2-360 bullet camera for about the same price. The dome seems to fit the bill nicely. I thought about swapping it with the 2MP one on the outside of the garage but realized the new camera is smaller and I didn't want to make more holes.
I can't fit the bullet camera in the garden yet as I don't have the right size junction box (PFA134). I have ordered a couple from the rain forest (half the price?) with free delivery thinking the camera's wouldn't turn up until late next week.
Anyway, here be today's install:
I can't fit the bullet camera in the garden yet as I don't have the right size junction box (PFA134). I have ordered a couple from the rain forest (half the price?) with free delivery thinking the camera's wouldn't turn up until late next week.
Anyway, here be today's install:
Finally got my last camera (Dahua IPC-HFW2531SP-S-S2-360) installed late yesterday evening.
The night time visibility is not too good, perhaps I need to aim the camera up a bit more (I was avoiding more windows on the block of flats). I do have a street light (currently out) behind the brick wall though which lights up the garden with a dim light so I will wait for that to be repaired before I make any changes.
@WJA96 I kinda wish I paid the extra and bought another TIOC camera! Although probably unnecessary for this area.
The night time visibility is not too good, perhaps I need to aim the camera up a bit more (I was avoiding more windows on the block of flats). I do have a street light (currently out) behind the brick wall though which lights up the garden with a dim light so I will wait for that to be repaired before I make any changes.
@WJA96 I kinda wish I paid the extra and bought another TIOC camera! Although probably unnecessary for this area.
It's funny you should post this but last night I posted in another thread that what was state of the art 3 or 4 years ago is ordinary now and what was ordinary back then is 'poor' these days. And you're kind of spoiled because the TiOCs are the basically state of the art in terms of realistically priced night vision. Have a play with the backlight settings - the different settings can have a radical effect. One other thing is to turn the camera upside down as at the moment the branches on that tree/bush are too close and are reflecting the IR and the iris is shutting down to balance the picture. Or move the camera up - or cut the tree down.
One final thing you can do is change the exposure from automatic to manual and set it to something like 1/30 sec. I think they go down to 1/12 sec.
The Lite range is the old technology repackaged as cheaply as possible to give a branded camera at a low price point. If you hold the TiOC in one hand the Lite in the other you can literally feel the difference just in terms of heft. They are really good indoors though.
One final thing you can do is change the exposure from automatic to manual and set it to something like 1/30 sec. I think they go down to 1/12 sec.
The Lite range is the old technology repackaged as cheaply as possible to give a branded camera at a low price point. If you hold the TiOC in one hand the Lite in the other you can literally feel the difference just in terms of heft. They are really good indoors though.
I thought it might be IR reflection from the tree. It's a small apple tree that my wife is super keen to keep (she planted it a few years ago). I will no doubt move the camera a fence post along when the tree gets too big for the camera's location.
Hah, I had not even considered putting the camera upside down. My only concern would be the micro SD slot would be vulnerable to the elements (granted it 'should' be waterproof). I had found the shutter settings yesterday and that did help, I just set it to default again as I wanted to get to playing Mad Max. I will have another look when I get home from work!
I could potentially move the camera up but I don't think I will, I had a 2.4m piece of timber that I cut down to 2.1m so it wasn't sticking up over the hedge (it's bolted to the posts about 300mm off the ground). It looks quite discrete and blends in with the background.
I was not able to fully install it how I wanted. I am not sure if you can see it easily but I had to use the bottom entry on the junction box (came with a gland that fit the cat6 cable perfectly) and then the cable goes through the timber and in to a black junction box/round conduit on the other side for protection. I wanted to have the cable fully hidden and going through the back of the dahua junction box but the PFA134 box is tiny and there was no way I would fit the waterproof connector in with the cat6 cable entering through the back. In hindsight I should have used cat5.... but this cable will potentially go to a home office in the future so I could run cat5 out to this camera in future.
The TIOC bullet camera is a beast compared to this tiny little thing. I was shocked when this one came through the post. If the street light does not help I will probably replace it with the TIOC camera. Would the turret TIOC version be ok mounted on to a piece timber like the below or would it not be suited (thinking of rain/spiders etc)?
Hah, I had not even considered putting the camera upside down. My only concern would be the micro SD slot would be vulnerable to the elements (granted it 'should' be waterproof). I had found the shutter settings yesterday and that did help, I just set it to default again as I wanted to get to playing Mad Max. I will have another look when I get home from work!
I could potentially move the camera up but I don't think I will, I had a 2.4m piece of timber that I cut down to 2.1m so it wasn't sticking up over the hedge (it's bolted to the posts about 300mm off the ground). It looks quite discrete and blends in with the background.
I was not able to fully install it how I wanted. I am not sure if you can see it easily but I had to use the bottom entry on the junction box (came with a gland that fit the cat6 cable perfectly) and then the cable goes through the timber and in to a black junction box/round conduit on the other side for protection. I wanted to have the cable fully hidden and going through the back of the dahua junction box but the PFA134 box is tiny and there was no way I would fit the waterproof connector in with the cat6 cable entering through the back. In hindsight I should have used cat5.... but this cable will potentially go to a home office in the future so I could run cat5 out to this camera in future.
The TIOC bullet camera is a beast compared to this tiny little thing. I was shocked when this one came through the post. If the street light does not help I will probably replace it with the TIOC camera. Would the turret TIOC version be ok mounted on to a piece timber like the below or would it not be suited (thinking of rain/spiders etc)?
Ok thanks, will see how it goes. The estate management company have been useless for getting the street light sorted. I have just enabled SSA on the TIOC camera. It doesn't make any difference that I can see. I will leave it on though.
Tell a lie, I can noticed a difference all of a sudden. It looks a lot easy to see the darker areas of the garden which were pitch black before.
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@Armageus How are you getting on with your 1520+? I have been watching the prices fluctuate the last few weeks. I am waiting on Black Friday before I either buy the 920+ or 1520+. Did you put any M2 NVME drives in yours for the read/write cache, and if so which ones?
I am thinking about using 2x WD Blue SN550 250GB as they seem quite well priced.
I am thinking about using 2x WD Blue SN550 250GB as they seem quite well priced.
The DS1520+ is working fine. Currently has 3x3TB WD Reds in SHR (for 6TB usable), and an old 128GB Micron 2.5" SSD fitted which is currently hosting my Emby (Plex alternative) metadata.
I'm planning on adding a single NVME for a Read cache, which would likely speed up Emby metadata so I can move everything back onto a single volume, and will likely add another couple of drives and migrate to SHR2 (5x3TB = 9TB usable).
I've heard bad things about using 2 drives for Read/Write cache, in that it has caused corruption to the main array. I'd only consider running it with either a UPS, or possibly drives that feature Power Loss Protection (PLP), although the majority of those I've seen are in the longer 22110 form factor that won't fit.
My only dislike with the DS1520+ hardware is that it doesn't offer 10Gb (or even 2.5Gb or 5Gb Ethernet) which the rest of the hardware could easily support.
With regards to Synology in general, I do have a couple of frustrations:
- NVME slots can only be used for Cache, not as a storage volume (This can be done via the command line, but not supported so any update could break)
- Docker on a Synology is useless for my use case - I have 2 containers I would run (pihole and lancache), but both need to run on port 80, which can't be used on a Synology
- No way of assigning a separate ethernet port to a Docker which would mitigate the above and (can be done via the command line, but again not supported)
- No hardware passthrough (e.g. USB devices) to Virtual machines
In reality a DS420+ would probably have been sufficient for my needs, had I known about the limitations above