Spec me a CCTV System

Nutty_Death said:
There doesn't seem to be anything different in price with or without liveguard. Ranging from about £110 to 140.
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4MP COLORVU ACUSENSE - FIXED LENS (cop-eu.com) - is that what we're talking about? It should be about £95+VAT. The LiveGuards are about £140+VAT.

Nutty_Death said:
I imagine the light would be handy to replace my pir spots, which are meant as a deterrent or handy for me at night. Not so bothered about 2 way audio apart from maybe in the garden to only trigger during the night.
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You'll need to keep the spots. You'll get a dim pool of light around the house. Bright enough to see but not bright enough to read a newspaper.

Nutty_Death said:
I was thinking the 4mm lens is probably best my situation?
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Yes, it's not a small house but it's not massive either so 4mm should be fine.

Nutty_Death said:
Also do the bullets mount ok on a vertical wall whilst point horizontally say 70dedgree off center?
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Yes, just make sure you account for the cable tail so you either need a biggish hole to take the tail back into the building or a surface mount for the camera to hide the tail in.[/QUOTE]
 
batfink said:
My New Year project is also going to be installing CCTV. Below is a very crude drawing of the layout (not to scale) and I think with 4 cameras I can cover almost everywhere. The yellow bit is the only blindspot but it's also where a car gets parked. The house isn't really accessible from the back or the sides without going through neighbouring gardens first so blindspots there are less of an issue.

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9n5Gwx3
https://imgur.com/a/9n5Gwx3 [/IMG]



I'm planning to order one camera first just to check focal lengths in each position but I think I'll be looking at potentially 2 x 2.8mm and 2 x 4mm. Currently looking at turret cameras and either a Hikvision setup (eg DS-2CD2347G2-LU) or Dahua TiOCs such as DH-IPC-HDW3549H-AS-PV with the same brand NVRs unless there are any better recommendations? The rest of the home network is Ubiquiti.

Are there any better locations to cover the blindspot or is it likely I would need a 5th camera. The two cameras down the side of the house cover sheds and doors.

Thanks for your help.
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In that situation I would use a Boobie-Cam on a pendant mount on a corner mount. One cable, one housing, two cameras. One covering the blindspot, one facing back to cover the area your top-right camera is covering. Not cheap though. £230-ish +VAT for a 2 x 2MP although they have recently launched a 4MP version at the same price which will be available fairly soon.

2MP - 3.6MM FIXED LENS (cop-eu.com)
 
WJA96 said:
In that situation I would use a Boobie-Cam on a pendant mount on a corner mount. One cable, one housing, two cameras. One covering the blindspot, one facing back to cover the area your top-right camera is covering. Not cheap though. £230-ish +VAT for a 2 x 2MP although they have recently launched a 4MP version at the same price which will be available fairly soon.

2MP - 3.6MM FIXED LENS (cop-eu.com)
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I like that, a lot, just not sure it's wife friendly on the front of the house! We're at the end of the cul de sac so the only approach is directly in front of the drive which would be picked up by the front of house camera. No-one can get to the blind spot without being picked up by one of the other cameras first, it's just what they do when they're in the blind spot that could be the issue.
 
Duke said:
Was going to say the same thing, spend the money on securing and/or alarming the shed. All a camera will do is allow you to see your goods disappearing to some hoody.
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I didn't give of context but thank you for the advice. I am on a new housing estate and in the last 7 days there have been a wave of thefts from sheds, bikes, motorbikes, tools, etc. It must be the same people.

I am in a block of flats so the dront entrance is fairly secure in itself, but we have several sheds for everyone right next to each other. Mine is conveniently next to my back patio entrance, so a camera pointing at this area would both act as a deterrent and record anyone loitering near my shed/back patio.
 
For it to act as a deterrent, it needs to be obviously a camera and needs to be noticed. Otherwise as others said, otherwise you’ll just be capturing some blurry, black and white, hooded character taking your stuff. That’s all a cheap wireless camera can achieve at night on its own anyway.

A camera should be the last thing you do, physical security is so much more effective. You basically want your shed to be the last one they try to get into because it’s the most difficult (e.g. proper reinforced locks and latches, no exposed screws, bolts, inches etc. reinforced door frame etc).

The more secure it is, the more noise they’ll have to make trying to get in, the bigger the risk of them being caught. Also the better the chance the camera has of actually capturing a useable image.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
For it to act as a deterrent, it needs to be obviously a camera and needs to be noticed. Otherwise as others said, otherwise you’ll just be capturing some blurry, black and white, hooded character taking your stuff. That’s all a cheap wireless camera can achieve at night on its own anyway.

A camera should be the last thing you do, physical security is so much more effective. You basically want your shed to be the last one they try to get into because it’s the most difficult (e.g. proper reinforced locks and latches, no exposed screws, bolts, inches etc. reinforced door frame etc).

The more secure it is, the more noise they’ll have to make trying to get in, the bigger the risk of them being caught. Also the better the chance the camera has of actually capturing a useable image.
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Unfortunately nothing we can do about the sheds themselves as they belong to the freeholder. They are brick built but the doors/lock/hinges would be easy to break. I don't keep anything of value in my shed but doesn't mean i want it targeted. Point taken though.
 
Thinking about getting an IPC-T5442T-ZE as a test cam to check focal length in various positions.

It's only 4MP, but seems highly rated on IPCamTalk for a decent sensor size.

Good starter cam? If so, any suggestions as to best place to get one?

Also thinking that I might end up going the BlueIris route and having to build a mini CCTV PC. Seems this will give more flexibility in the long run?
 
UberTiger said:
Thinking about getting an IPC-T5442T-ZE as a test cam to check focal length in various positions.

It's only 4MP, but seems highly rated on IPCamTalk for a decent sensor size.

Good starter cam? If so, any suggestions as to best place to get one?

Also thinking that I might end up going the BlueIris route and having to build a mini CCTV PC. Seems this will give more flexibility in the long run?
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Not a starter cam unless you think a Hasselblad is a starter camera. Top quality optics, top quality mechanicals and a top quality sensor. You’re paying a lot for a very high optical specification. If you’re on IPCamTalk then EmpireTec Andy can get you one, just be aware if it doesn’t have a Dahua logo then it’s a QA failure, usually just for some cosmetic defect.
 
Just looking at the spec and seen that the camera itself has 1GB of RAM! It's amazing what they pack into these things, each one is like a mini computer with the detection tech built into each individual camera.

Been reading through the Blue Iris reviews too, pretty certain I'll skip the NVR and go straight for that now. I'll use the demo on my main PC for a couple of week to try it out and slowly pick up some more bits to make a dedicated CCTV box.

Will mean I can do all my testing on my primary PC and get familiar with the software. Although it also means I'll have to leave it on 24/7 until I get the new box built if I want the camera to work continuously from when it arrives.
 
Any recommendations on a NVR for up to 4 cameras up to 8mp starting with hikvision DS-2CD2347G2 with Poe. DS-7604NI seems like an option just not sure if it'll provide enough power.

Alternatively I might get a small Poe switch to power the cameras and then use my Nas for storage but maybe a NVR is the better option.
 
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Spent the last couple of weeks reading tons of threads about IP camera systems.

Decided I think I'm going to go for nearly all the new 4k Hikvision ColorVu Turret cams with the big 1/1.2" sensor.

https://www.hikvision.com/en/produc...Cameras/Pro-Series-EasyIP-/ds-2cd2387g2-l-u-/

Some of the night footage I've seen from them is incredible.

The model with 2 way chat doesn't come out for a few more weeks, so going to hold off and get them all with mic and speaker, and active deterrent I think.

https://www.hikvision.com/uk/produc...meras/Pro-Series-EasyIP-/ds-2cd2387g2-lsu-sl/

Picked up an 8MP Darkfighter to tied me over and started building a Blue Iris PC.

Been testing it on my main desktop and so far so good. It's pretty powerful, and seems incredibly feature rich. The UI sucks though. Same with the mobile app. Feels like it's out of the 90's, functionality is there though and so far so good. So I think I can learn to live with the dated UI.

Looking forward to getting Deepstack AI setup too, to get better object analysis and even number plate analysis.

I can see this turning into a time sink of a hobby as well as for home security.
 
UberTiger said:
Spent the last couple of weeks reading tons of threads about IP camera systems.

Decided I think I'm going to go for nearly all the new 4k Hikvision ColorVu Turret cams with the big 1/1.2" sensor.

https://www.hikvision.com/en/produc...Cameras/Pro-Series-EasyIP-/ds-2cd2387g2-l-u-/

Some of the night footage I've seen from them is incredible.

The model with 2 way chat doesn't come out for a few more weeks, so going to hold off and get them all with mic and speaker, and active deterrent I think.

https://www.hikvision.com/uk/produc...meras/Pro-Series-EasyIP-/ds-2cd2387g2-lsu-sl/

Picked up an 8MP Darkfighter to tied me over and started building a Blue Iris PC.

Been testing it on my main desktop and so far so good. It's pretty powerful, and seems incredibly feature rich. The UI sucks though. Same with the mobile app. Feels like it's out of the 90's, functionality is there though and so far so good. So I think I can learn to live with the dated UI.

Looking forward to getting Deepstack AI setup too, to get better object analysis and even number plate analysis.

I can see this turning into a time sink of a hobby as well as for home security.
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That all sounds interesting and potentially a route I'd go down.

Haven't been overly impressed with the hikvision software either. Had a battle with it using my Nas NFS share and the smb share works for s bit then stops... Weird.

Anyway I'll either try blue iris like you or something open source that I can use on my server, as otherwise I'd need to find a way of running Windows somewhere.
 
Yeah, the firmware on them is a little lacking. Some of it's very good, and quite flexible such as the human detection options, but some things are annoyingly restricting and basic, especially compared to ring and nest. Stuff like the privacy masking.

I can only add 4 boxes max to mask anything out instead of being able to add points to a polygon, or brush out the areas I want to mask. So that feels very rudimentary. I think much of it is overridable within Blue Iris.

Blue Iris is Windows only unfortunately, so no linux support yet. It's free to try for a couple of weeks and I think nearly every feature is available in the demo, it just has a watermark. So worth having a play with. A licence is $70 which allows you to to use the current version in perpetuity, and get current version updates for a year. You can currently get it for $55 here. It seems a fair few places resell it for a bit under RRP.

What I also like about doing Blue Iris is it means I can mix and match brands with decent compatibility. Originally I was going to get a Dahua 5442, but then I realised I wanted to test out the Hikvision features and test their two way audio, and order locally from the UK for full 3 year warranty, so pulled the trigger on that for testing purposes. And even though I'll likely stick to them for now, I should have no problems ordering any Dahua or other cam that tickles my fancy. I should even be able to plug in the feed from an upcoming intercom and video doorbell install into the software using ONVIF.

The other thing is if I go overboard and grow my system I'm not really limited by the NVR. It seems many are marketed as x-Channel recorders, but that's based on each channel being a certain resolution and bit rate. If you start getting a load of 4k cameras, you may reach the limit of your unit quicker.

The only thing I think I'm really missing not getting a high end native brand NVR, is you miss out on the built in on board AI and image analysis with tight integration to the brands cameras. I've not used these though, so I'm not sure how they compare to Blue Iris analysis which uses DeepStack integration, or even just the cameras own on board analysis. So far the built in Human recognition to the camera unit itself has been pretty accurate for me.

Maybe there's other benefits from a native NVR that I'm not aware of?

The DeepStack project is open source and does have native integration to BI, but I've not tested it yet. I believe it should allow finer tuning to eliminate the chance of shadows triggering human detection (which I'm currently occasionally getting alerts for as people walk by the driveway)
 
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UberTiger said:
A licence is $70 which allows you to to use the current version in perpetuity
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It's important to factor in the annual renewal for updates after year one, however the annual fee is very reasonable and CCTV software isn't the type where you can really stick on one version long term.

The desktop and mobile app UI of Blue Iris shows its a one man development project but the functionality of the product is excellent and I say that working in software development. I tend to use the web interface which was donated to the product by another developer for all devices from desktop to mobile (I stream two feeds 24x7 to a couple of Echo 8s without issue). The web UI is not quite as efficient in bandwidth as the mobile apps but with modern browser video support its close enough that I've rarely find any need for the apps when away from home connecting in via VPN.

I evaluated a lot of software before settling on Blue Iris and alternatives were either very expensive (often per camera fees) or lacked features. The ability to mix the use of lower res sub streams with the primary ones can also help keep CPU use down, although I've not had an issue using primary for everything with a dozen cameras. DeepStack integration is really a game changer for driving notifications more reliably so worth trying out. It does however still trigger in heavy rain, snow etc but otherwise pretty much eliminates false triggers for me and correctly identifies animals versus cars, people etc.
 
Simon42 said:
It's important to factor in the annual renewal for updates after year one, however the annual fee is very reasonable and CCTV software isn't the type where you can really stick on one version long term.
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Right, you're not forced to renew exactly at one year though to keep on using it though, which I like. It seems a fair few people took their time before migrating form V4 to V5.

And you're right, the renewal cost is very reasonable at $30 for another year of updates, especially seeing as it supports a solo developer.

Simon42 said:
(I stream two feeds 24x7 to a couple of Echo 8s without issue)
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Oh, that's a neat idea. I quite like having the stream open on one of my main desktop monitors natively, but I'm trying to figure out how to continue doing that or have a decent alternative once it's running on another box. I haven't got room for another monitor, but a cheap tablet could be cool.
 
Hi guys.

Ive spent a few weeks researching which cameras to get for my setup. As it stands I'm compelled to go with the 5mp Dahua TIOC's as recommended by @WJA96 .
Excuse the noob question, but I just wondered, with the equivalent hikvision 4mp colorvu specs having a bigger sensor, and a better lux rating - do the hikvision's work better in low light? Or is there some wizardry that I'm not understanding?

Thanks guys
 
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