Spec me a CCTV System

Haggisman · 9 Sep 2023 at 15:40

Well, so far so good, got the Eufy floodlight cam pro 2 covering the patio area, with a Hikvision DS-2CD2386G2-LSU to provide 24/7 coverage. Was going to send the floodlight back, but they offered me a discount to keep it, and looking at smart floodlights with similar functionality (basically the Hue) ended up being the same price.

Having 2 cameras covering the same area from different angles has the added bonus of basically eliminating false alerts, since I've configured HA to only notify when both cameras detect someone.

I've also set it up to trigger the siren on the Hikvision (which the LSU has built in) when a detection occurs between midnight and 6am and when we're away from home

Now just need to replace the front camera - have a Colorvu waiting to be installed, but it's too hot to go climbing around the attic right now!! Went for the Colorvu so number plates are hopefully visible - it should work fine as we have bright white LED street lights outside, so plenty of ambient light

Craigius · 9 Sep 2023 at 18:46

Has anyone installed the colorvu cameras by Hikvision looking to upgrade mine that’s all

Haggisman · 25 Sep 2023 at 10:13

Craigius said:
Has anyone installed the colorvu cameras by Hikvision looking to upgrade mine that’s all

Was meaning to reply to this earlier, but only just managed to get mine installed over the weekend.

Here are a couple of shots from a DS-2CD2347G2-LU - that's the 4MP one, with a 2.8mm lens - to be honest, the 4mm lens might have been the better option, as you can see it covers a lot of the neighbours' drives too.

There are quite bright white LED streetlights along our road, so there is plenty of ambient light, we also have a couple of porch lights which run at 20% from sunset to midnight, and come up to 100% at any time if any motion is detected on the drive.

Street & porch lights only:

Street & porch lights + camera spotlight:

Street lights only:

For comparison, here are a couple of photos from my Pixel 7 from the window just above the camera:

Normal mode:

Night mode:

Megahackerd · 25 Sep 2023 at 11:27

anyone know what i wouldd be looking for a 4 camera setup with installation? just rough guide

DXP55 · 25 Sep 2023 at 15:10

Craigius said:
Has anyone installed the colorvu cameras by Hikvision looking to upgrade mine that’s all

Look at my post 4087

Haggisman · 25 Sep 2023 at 15:24

DXP55 said:
Look at my post 4087

It seems they are very dependent on the level of ambient light - mine above is exactly the same model as yours, and I'm very happy with the night-time quality, but I do have a lot of ambient light, and I can see how in pitch darkness they would be pretty useless outside of the small area illuminated by the spotlight.

DXP55 · 25 Sep 2023 at 16:11

Well at least they didn't flog me junk - They never asked if we have street lights - Which we don't -it is pitch black at night.

Haggisman · 25 Sep 2023 at 16:20

DXP55 said:
Well at least they didn't flog me junk - They never asked if we have street lights - Which we don't -it is pitch black at night.

Definitely better off with the IR DarkFighters then - that's what I ended up installing in the back garden as there is no ambient light to speak of.

Craigius · 25 Sep 2023 at 21:46

Haggisman said:
Was meaning to reply to this earlier, but only just managed to get mine installed over the weekend.

Here are a couple of shots from a DS-2CD2347G2-LU - that's the 4MP one, with a 2.8mm lens - to be honest, the 4mm lens might have been the better option, as you can see it covers a lot of the neighbours' drives too.

There are quite bright white LED streetlights along our road, so there is plenty of ambient light, we also have a couple of porch lights which run at 20% from sunset to midnight, and come up to 100% at any time if any motion is detected on the drive.

Street & porch lights only:

Street & porch lights + camera spotlight:

Street lights only:

For comparison, here are a couple of photos from my Pixel 7 from the window just above the camera:

Normal mode:

Night mode:

Thanks for this buddy think that’s made my mind up the street lights go off her after midnight you see but I have lighting on the house so I think these would be ideal

DXP55 · 26 Sep 2023 at 14:38

Haggisman said:
Definitely better off with the IR DarkFighters then - that's what I ended up installing in the back garden as there is no ambient light to speak of.

Do you have a Hikvision NVR ? - if so it it a upto date modern one - My 7608 is over 10 yrs old and guy who fitted cameras said he had to reduce the "rate/pixal/or whatevere it was" - The pic on new cameras are no where as clear as the old cameras - I have 3 old and 2 new working. I still have the 2 old cameras but can't access them "yet" as I would like them working as well - At this point I am willing to upgrade my NVR for one that can handle all these cameras.
Second job will be finding someone to swop them over. It's all over my head these days.

Haggisman · 26 Sep 2023 at 14:48

DXP55 said:
Do you have a Hikvision NVR ? - if so it it a upto date modern one - My 7608 is over 10 yrs old and guy who fitted cameras said he had to reduce the "rate/pixal/or whatevere it was" - The pic on new cameras are no where as clear as the old cameras - I have 3 old and 2 new working. I still have the 2 old cameras but can't access them "yet" as I would like them working as well - At this point I am willing to upgrade my NVR for one that can handle all these cameras.
Second job will be finding someone to swop them over. It's all over my head these days.

No, I feed the RTSP streams directly into Frigate for recording and object detection, and then use the Home Assistant integration for the automations and notification. It's all running on a Lenovo Tiny M910q with 16GB RAM, i5-7500T and a 1TB NVME drive, with a Coral TPU for the object detection. To be honest it is complete overkill - looking at the utilisation stats on the server, I could run maybe 20 cameras before it would start dropping frames

DXP55 · 26 Sep 2023 at 16:08

Thanks - You lost me on first line

Haggisman · 26 Sep 2023 at 16:31

Doh, sorry!

Frigate is basically an open source NVR software which (ideally) uses a dedicated chip for AI detection. It can run on a normal CPU as well, but it's much quicker on the dedicated (and cheap) Coral TPU.

It does require a bit of configuration, but there are plenty of guides online, so if you have a basic grasp of virtualisation and Linux then it's not too difficult to set up (after all, I managed it

)

It's definitely a bit more involved than a dedicated NVR, but gives a lot more flexibility, particularly when integrated with Home Assistant.

Frigate NVR

NVR with realtime local object detection for IP cameras

frigate.video

Building Candy · 28 Sep 2023 at 17:43

Can someone tell me what to use for viewing playback on the Hikvision NVR with Windows 10, I have the app setup for my parents but everytimne I get it setup with IE or Edge within about 2 weeks windows has updated something and it doesn't work anymore! Any help much appreciated.

Megahackerd · 28 Sep 2023 at 22:21

Haggisman said:
No, I feed the RTSP streams directly into Frigate for recording and object detection, and then use the Home Assistant integration for the automations and notification. It's all running on a Lenovo Tiny M910q with 16GB RAM, i5-7500T and a 1TB NVME drive, with a Coral TPU for the object detection. To be honest it is complete overkill - looking at the utilisation stats on the server, I could run maybe 20 cameras before it would start dropping frames

how is the reliability of running in frigate over a dedicated nvr. i assume the pc must keep up with regular updates and have downtime etc

Haggisman · 29 Sep 2023 at 00:05

Megahackerd said:
how is the reliability of running in frigate over a dedicated nvr. i assume the pc must keep up with regular updates and have downtime etc

It's a dedicated Linux VM running in Proxmox (an open source hypervisor similar to HyperV/VMware), so no pesky windows updates to contend with.

Yes it still needs updates occasionally, but I can run them manually at suitable times - e.g. in the middle of the day when there's someone at home and awake

alphaomega16 · 29 Sep 2023 at 03:24

Been thinking about getting a camera to view the driveway at front of home, this is quite the lengthy thread give a few thoughts.

Not sure about mounting as we have recently had cladding installed and don't really want to start drilling holes in it but that can be an issue for another time, for now I would prefer something that is not internet/cloud based but not sure how to view them on PC or how recording would work, LAN or Wireless is fine, doesn't have to be on the outside of the property but that would probably be preferable.

Don't have a POE switch yet due to not having anything that really needs it but can pick one of those up if that would be sufficient.

Dup · 29 Sep 2023 at 10:13

I'm desperate for a video doorbell after moving. I work in the "garage" all day and have zero idea if someone is at the door. We'd like some camera coverage and I would prefer to not have any cloud storage nonsense. While I'm aware of Eufy/Ankers issues with phoning home, I don't care enough to go hard wiring anything. Battery & Wifi is the preference.

So I noticed Eufy have a new doorbell that works stand-alone which I was going to go for, but if you bundle the homebase 3 you get it half price... at which point the new outdoor solar cam seems like a decent addition to cover my back yard.

What do we think? Could I do better for a wire-free solution?

Haggisman · 29 Sep 2023 at 10:36

Dup said:
I'm desperate for a video doorbell after moving. I work in the "garage" all day and have zero idea if someone is at the door. We'd like some camera coverage and I would prefer to not have any cloud storage nonsense. While I'm aware of Eufy/Ankers issues with phoning home, I don't care enough to go hard wiring anything. Battery & Wifi is the preference.

So I noticed Eufy have a new doorbell that works stand-alone which I was going to go for, but if you bundle the homebase 3 you get it half price... at which point the new outdoor solar cam seems like a decent addition to cover my back yard.

What do we think? Could I do better for a wire-free solution?

Neither of those cameras will do 24/7 recording - just to make sure you're aware.

I wasn't impressed with the HB3 and ended up sending it back. When using it, the clips from our doorbell were missing the first 5 seconds, and given the delay in activating and recording, that meant in quite a few clips we were missing the person and just getting an empty video, or someone's back as they walked away from the door. Also do you need the dual cameras on the doorbell? We have the single camera version of that one (https://uk.eufy.com/products/t8200) it comes with a plug in chime and a MicroSD card, so no need for the Homebase at all.

The problem with that camera (and it seems most of the current Eufy ones), they have quite limited built in storage, which isn't expandable (I assume pushing you to buy the HB3 as well)

Dup · 29 Sep 2023 at 16:31

Haggisman said:
Neither of those cameras will do 24/7 recording - just to make sure you're aware.

I wasn't impressed with the HB3 and ended up sending it back. When using it, the clips from our doorbell were missing the first 5 seconds, and given the delay in activating and recording, that meant in quite a few clips we were missing the person and just getting an empty video, or someone's back as they walked away from the door. Also do you need the dual cameras on the doorbell? We have the single camera version of that one (https://uk.eufy.com/products/t8200) it comes with a plug in chime and a MicroSD card, so no need for the Homebase at all.

The problem with that camera (and it seems most of the current Eufy ones), they have quite limited built in storage, which isn't expandable (I assume pushing you to buy the HB3 as well)

Hmmm, thanks for that, glad I asked. The lack of 24/7 is frustrating. I guess that's an issue with any wireless battery solution and it's asking a lot of a doorbell cam. I mainly just need a video doorbell, I like the E340 as it has a small motion light & colour night vision, the second camera is just a nice to have as we live in a nice remote area where we shouldn't need it but

I might just grab the doorbell and investigate a powered camera + NVR solution, or the wired Eufy option (https://uk.eufy.com/products/e8601321) if I fancy drilling holes and routing cables in the future.