Security camera install. Looking for a do it myself

[adamant118]

I see a bunch of cameras all over place for sale. The big box stores have kits, Harbor Freight has a system but I am looking for something that will give me longevity. I know it's hard out there to find something that gives you longevity because even in the past when I bought the best it lasted at least. What are your guys experience with installing your own security cameras? What route did you go? Did you go the route where you bought the 4 camera kit at Harbor Freight or camera kit that you got from the big box stores or did you do like the camera people do- by each individual piece? Thank you Anthony

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[Gittgo]

I run the Nest watherproof around the shop and a cheaper thing called Nexxt around the house since they are not hurricane proof and feed a recorder. The Nest services are overpriced but so are the tools they overlook.Good quality, mic zoom, good infrered. Amazon has the stuff and I'm sure some box stores do too.

 

[MikeYC]

I built my own system from www.securitycameraking.com 2tb dvr networked and 8 2mp came under 300.

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[pentavolvo]

eBay 8 cameras and 1tb recorder for 200 and very happy

 

[Kaizen]

two kinds of cameras. old style use 2 plug in wires like a stereo. You use a dvr with those. cheap but will work.
Newer kind use cat5 or 6 cable and you can run it like you would any electrical wire. adding jacks at the ends ***** imo but you use a NVR and have better cameras. I have a nvr for up to 16 cameras and a 4tb drive. I have 4 running now and it holds about a month of video. I have hikavision and dahau cameras....not sure on spelling.
You get way better video with these. Cover a wider angle and you have more options. As far as longevity since you have the cat6 there you could upgrade to any new tech that comes out. I think my cams were 100 or so each. Oh you'll need to use POV routers too. I actually have both kinds of systems running right now as I am converting. Here are 2 different angles of the same street. Both cameras were 130 dollar cameras when I bought them. The one with the bad picture is about 6 years old and probably a little dirty. The other is a hikavision and about 3 years old. I have these too high and need to be brought down to get a better angle.

 

[glider]

I run the hikavision also. Run 4 now and going to 6. Was a do it yourself with a lot a wires to run. wouldn't waist my time with the wireless. They just seem hit or miss.

 

[VintageOkieDriver]

They can be found at Custco as well. My son bought a very good system about a year ago

 

[duncman]

If you are not scared of computer you should look into https://zoneminder.com/

Its a free open source app that you can run on some old hardware. Mine is running in an old core2duo with 4GB of RAM. I only have 2 cameras running off of it, but it works really good. Zoneminder is basically an enterprise level software that is out there for free, but you have to install and configure it yourself. Its not all that hard and there is a lot of documentation on it.

I purchased 2 cheap POE cameras off of Amazon (http://a.co/cV4qVk0) and I had the computer laying around. I plan on upgrading the cameras in the future, but all in all I am at less then $100 for what most people pay $500+ for.

 

[Lazurus]

Arlo or Blink are easy to do.
No wires either.

 

[OH_Varmntr]

We purchased an Amcrest system with four 1080P HD cameras and a 2TB hard drive that records all 4 cameras 24/7 for 15 days before recording over anything. It's a hardwired system.

The software included is fairly simple for setting up the motion detection and it flat works. The infrared is superb and is claimed to go out to 65ft but I'd say it's more than that.

We looked at the 720 HD cameras and such but the comparisons between 720 and 1080 allows us to see license plates further out and since we live in country we wanted the extended clarity.

The system we bought can be networked so we can login remotely but we decided not to do so for security reasons. It also has an output that can run parallel to a hard drive that's remotely stored in a safe or somewhere else.

We had $370 in it on Amazon.

 

[tarmy]

Look into Sharx...great products...and excellent support.

They are a bit pricey...but I have had great luck with them in a harsh environment outdoors...

 

[junkyardwarrior]

Out here I use a pair of trail camera's. Takes good pics every time I walk out to the shop; and I got the neighbor guy on camera a while back too, I thought he was snooping around but he found my barn cat and returned & fed it. Good guy to do that. I know many who'd just shoot it and never say a word. They alert me when a picture is taken. I forget what brand/model they are, as they were here when I moved in; previous owner never used them and just left 'em here. All I did was put 'em up and hide them as best I could. One's in a tree next to the house, about 10' up, and the other's mounted on the front of the shop facing the doors and driveway.

 

[tuip]

I have a few of the chinese hikavision cameras in the garage that are hardwired. I used CAT6 and PoE to power them. The recordings are captured on a server in the house that runs BlueIris.

 

[redsand187]

I have hikvision cameras to a NVR. Running POE 3-5mp cameras makes the most sense. Cheap cameras aren't going to give you enough detail to do anything. Just about any camera you buy is going to need at least power ran to it, so you are going to have to run wires no matter what. You might as well run ethernet cable and use POE cameras.

 

[tuip]

You might as well run ethernet cable and use POE cameras.

Hear hear

 

[A**holes Garage]

7) Hikvision cameras, POE, no Chinese knock offs, no Amazon or Ebay
2 years so far, excellent camera recording, night and day, good camera software

 

[Freakish Mind]

After test driving 3 camera systems out. The one that worked best for me was the Swann 500 gb 4 camera system. Everything is wired (which is one of the main reasons I bought it) Works with my smart phone. It was easy hooking up. the hardest part of everything was trying to hide all the wires. Time consuming, but I got them all hidden. As for the 500 gb, I can usually go back about a month to look at footage before it erases to clear more on the drive.

 

[thomfr]

Interesting stuff!
Another question;
I struggle to figure out how to most efficient place/point the camera's. Any tips or drawings?
Thom

 

[Kaizen]

Interesting stuff!
Another question;
I struggle to figure out how to most efficient place/point the camera's. Any tips or drawings?
Thom

really depends on your property layout and the camera's. When you first do it you run the cable to the general area and temp secure it. then see if its what you expect. if not move.

 

[CN Spots]

Aim them at points of entry and try to capture the other cameras in the shot if possible. I mounted most of mine in the corners shooting down the side of the house to capture all of the windows/doors. One is on the driveway and one dedicated to the front door. I walked around the house first and stood where I thought I wanted a camera and what I wanted it to capture. I ended up tweaking all of them a bit once installed & I had to make little pucks to lower the cameras a bit so that they wouldn't get the bottom of the eaves in the shot. That was screwing up the night vision.

My advice after buying mine:

Spend the money on better cameras AND quality cables.
Get an expandable system.
I'd look for a wide angle camera. Mine's FOV is a bit tight.
Plug up and test everything before install.

 

[A**holes Garage]

I too was unsure of the focal points of each of my cameras and how much area they would cover. I did not want "fish eye" wide angle look. I have 2) bullet cameras with 2.8mm lenses on a couple of mine that cover each side my driveway and a portion of the street.

For those areas that I wanted a wider and longer visual for my street and back yard view, so I purchased 3) bullet vari-focus cameras, these are manually adjustable and the lens adjusts from 2.8mm-12mm. You can adjust to the area you want to cover. These are a bit pricier.

I used fixed, 2.8mm mini-domes for inside my 3) car garage and a mini-dome 4mm wireless camera inside the home. Covers everything I need and also allows some flexibility to adjust on the var-focal cams.

 

[Tmart86]

Do you have a budget in mind? HIK vision and Blue iris is a decent way to go. Axis communications cameras and camera companion is another option. Swann would be my last choice due to my experience with their remote viewing software and the lack of features when it comes to reviewing video.

 

[logan_gibson]

What budget are you looking around? Are you wanting to install everything at once or scale up over time?

At our office, I installed AXIS Cameras and run BlueIris off a Dell Sever. Depending on how many cameras you want, this price can go pretty high. We have around 20-30k invested for 25 cameras. (This is including all wiring and termination, POE Switches, Cameras, any misc hardware).

At Home I am running some Yi Cameras (Basically china versions of the Nest camera).
I started out using SD Cards and their app, I have switched over to running these and using BlueIris as the NVR. Its nice to be able to mix and match cameras and scale as needed.


Also, the cameras are only as good as the location they are in, we had a break in two weeks ago. The vandal was able to disable the cameras because people left 4x4's laying around where he could move the camera angle, and we left some pallets piled up near one where he could climb up and disable it.

 

[Tmart86]

Ok just like the old saying goes pictures are worth a thousand words. These are screen shots from a $500 swann system 4 cameras and a dvr and then a axis system with about $1800 in diy equipment for 6 cameras, switches, storage and cable.


Swann

 

[Tmart86]

Axis. Sorry Still figuring out the photo side of things. All pictures are from toda at 1am, 5am and current. This axis system has 6 cameras on multiple buildings os the equipment list was a little bit more than a standard install requires and one camera has a remote zoom capable camera.

 

[Pipanski]

First ask yourself WHY do you want cameras? Do you want to be able to check in on things while you're away?
Or for security as in identifying the person that broke into your garage and stole your stuff. If you want security, skip the box store kits. They generally offer wide angle lenses that allow you to see only that something happened... Not who did that something.

Check out this forum for a lot of really good info on cameras. Its a great forum with a lot of really smart and helpful members, much like this forum. https://ipcamtalk.com

I have 3 of these on the 2 doors of my house and the door to my barn and then i have a few cheaper cameras on less important areas like my chicken coop. The door cameras are for security (they have a varifocal lens that allows you to zoom in to get the best field of view for your particular situation)

Definitely get IP cameras as well. Running cat5e cable isn't too difficult and POE is amazing.

 

[Pipanski]

Also, for anyone who has or is planning on installing cameras, give this thread a read to secure your system. Setting up a VPN will allow you to easily and securely view your cameras while away from your home/business and a lot of other cool things.

https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/vpn-primer-for-noobs.14601/

 

[Tmart86]

Also, for anyone who has or is planning on installing cameras, give this thread a read to secure your system. Setting up a VPN will allow you to easily and securely view your cameras while away from your home/business and a lot of other cool things.

https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/vpn-primer-for-noobs.14601/

This is good advice for sure. Most big name VMS providers simplify the process for the end user to achieve a secure remote session.

 

[Kaizen]

Axis. Sorry Still figuring out the photo side of things. All pictures are from toda at 1am, 5am and current. This axis system has 6 cameras on multiple buildings os the equipment list was a little bit more than a standard install requires and one camera has a remote zoom capable camera.

Using this as an important point. Night vision works well for ten feet. Lights are needed beyond that. After I installed mine I had to go add some lights and spots to effectively use the manufacturers night vision distance

 

[Tmart86]

Using this as an important point. Night vision works well for ten feet. Lights are needed beyond that. After I installed mine I had to go add some lights and spots to effectively use the manufacturers night vision distance

The sad part is my swan system is assisted by a flood light with led bulbs and its not much better when the lights go on. The image sensor is just that much better on professional quality equipment.

 

[NewShockerGuy]

I'll ask the silly questions but what do you do when your house is already built/finished? If I want to run cameras I'm going to have to be cutting drywall everywhere to run the cables down to the basement where I have my router/network... If I stuck the recorder in the garage then I could easily run a camera on the front of the house and front door into the garage without destroying anything since I could go through the soffits, but the rest of the house/back yard I have no clue how I would even make it work let alone tie into the main system...

I'm not shy with computers or setting any of this up... I do IT, so that's the easy part. The hard part to me is getting everything run. Makes me wish the builder years ago would have just wired everything via cat5 or had runs of cat5 to different locations of the house even if it wasn't terminated at the time or had a use.

Wireless cameras do not seem like a good option as I don't want to be changing batteries or anything like that.

-Nigel

 

[Pipanski]

This is good advice for sure. Most big name VMS providers simplify the process for the end user to achieve a secure remote session.

What do you mean? Are you talking about the apps that come with box systems that allow you to view from your phone?

 

[Pipanski]

NewShockerGuy if the house is already built (like mine was, in 1893) you will have to drill some holes and cut some drywall/plaster. No getting around it but get some fiberglass rods https://m.harborfreight.com/3-16-in...t-65326.html?utm_referrer=direct/not provided and watch some YouTube to learn some tricks. It's not impossible.

 

[Pipanski]

The sad part is my swan system is assisted by a flood light with led bulbs and its not much better when the lights go on. The image sensor is just that much better on professional quality equipment.

Check out the videos and pictures of this camera on the first page of this thread. Going with pro cameras is definitely worth it. There is a fixed lens version of this that's $50 cheaper, but I'd suggest getting one of these varifocals first https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dahua-starlight-varifocal-turret-ipc-hdw5231r-z.14683/

 

[Kaizen]

The sad part is my swan system is assisted by a flood light with led bulbs and its not much better when the lights go on. The image sensor is just that much better on professional quality equipment.

sorry I wasn't insulting the porch one. The pro one is actually an excellent example of what you can see at day and at night. People think its going to be like a night vision helmet and important point is these things need light to work. To add to that I found sensor lights that turn off and on make them change from nighttime to daytime mode every time the light goes on so lose a few valuable seconds of quality video.

 

[Tmart86]

What do you mean? Are you talking about the apps that come with box systems that allow you to view from your phone?

I know with Axis all the remote viewing is handled Through a secure connection via a intermediate server and the use of AES256 encryption. you can find the white paper on their web site. The other big players like milestone arent going to offer remote viewing thats not secure because its bad business for them.
If you use more DIY option a VPN or other measures for security are definitely required. I had to manually set up my swann because it uses UPNP out of the box and it doesn't take much research to see why UPNP is a bad deal.

Check out the videos and pictures of this camera on the first page of this thread. Going with pro cameras is definitely worth it. There is a fixed lens version of this that's $50 cheaper, but I'd suggest getting one of these varifocals first https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/dahua-starlight-varifocal-turret-ipc-hdw5231r-z.14683/

I know lots of people use the Dahua and Hikvision cameras with good results its just not for me. My swann system will be removed this year and Axis cameras will replace it.

sorry I wasn't insulting the porch one. The pro one is actually an excellent example of what you can see at day and at night. People think its going to be like a night vision helmet and important point is these things need light to work. To add to that I found sensor lights that turn off and on make them change from nighttime to daytime mode every time the light goes on so lose a few valuable seconds of quality video.

No insult taken I was just trying to show the down falls of the swann. when we installed the Axis products on those buildings we spent alot of time trying to make good use of the available lighting on the property we only have two cameras that dont stay color at night. The camera shown thats in night vision had to be adjust so it would make the change to B/W. It wanted to stay color but the image noise when it was in color just wasnt worth it so black and white with IR was the way to go.

The images from axis cameras are the axis M2025-LE. This camera offers a couple neat features from axis including their wide dynamic range Forensic capture and the zipstream technology for increased storage. yea its a $299 camera but it also has a 3 year warranty and amazing tech support even for DIY. You can also get the axis companion bullet for about $90 less and its supposed to be the same camera with some of the software features locked out.

 

[openwheelracing88]

I use a mixture of Arlo Pro and Arlo Q cameras. Works great!

 

[Tmart86]

I'll ask the silly questions but what do you do when your house is already built/finished? If I want to run cameras I'm going to have to be cutting drywall everywhere to run the cables down to the basement where I have my router/network... If I stuck the recorder in the garage then I could easily run a camera on the front of the house and front door into the garage without destroying anything since I could go through the soffits, but the rest of the house/back yard I have no clue how I would even make it work let alone tie into the main system...

I'm not shy with computers or setting any of this up... I do IT, so that's the easy part. The hard part to me is getting everything run. Makes me wish the builder years ago would have just wired everything via cat5 or had runs of cat5 to different locations of the house even if it wasn't terminated at the time or had a use.

Wireless cameras do not seem like a good option as I don't want to be changing batteries or anything like that.

-Nigel

Alot of houses will have some kind of Chase wall that your plumbing stack, gas furance/water heater will go up to the roof in that you can fish wires into the attic from the basement and then out to the eves. drop a run of flexible low voltage conduit or pvc conduit into this space and then run your wires. Also it ***** but spend the time in the attic to keep your wires neat and use j hooks or something to attach them to the rafters

 

[Pipanski]

I know lots of people use the Dahua and Hikvision cameras with good results its just not for me. My swann system will be removed this year and Axis cameras will replace it.

yea its a $299 camera but it also has a 3 year warranty and amazing tech support even for DIY. You can also get the axis companion bullet for about $90 less and its supposed to be the same camera with some of the software features locked out.

Dahua and Hick are both good yes, but this particular camera is in a series of Dahua cams that use the 1/2.8” 2MP progressive scan Sony Starvis Exmor-R (IMX291) CMOS that has vastly superior low light capabilities. At $170 for the varifocal or $120 for the fixed lens (which includes 3 day shipping) you'd be hard pressed to find a better value.

For a little more than $300 (i think $360 maybe) you can get a PTZ Dahua with the same sensor.

 

[Tmart86]

Dahua and Hick are both good yes, but this particular camera is in a series of Dahua cams that use the 1/2.8” 2MP progressive scan Sony Starvis Exmor-R (IMX291) CMOS that has vastly superior low light capabilities. At $170 for the varifocal or $120 for the fixed lens (which includes 3 day shipping) you'd be hard pressed to find a better value.

For a little more than $300 (i think $360 maybe) you can get a PTZ Dahua with the same sensor.

Yep not doubting the performance at least in the beginning its the reliability and hassle . I've read quite a bit about them but for as many good stories you read about them you can find just as many bad. people seem to be constantly updating firmware etc. tech support is minimal at best other than forums from what I can tell. But it comes down to you get what you pay for. Id spend the money for 2 professional cameras anyday vs 4 cheap cameras for the same money.