Hi

I've read a couple of very good articles here about installing CCTV in cars but with the pace that technology moves nowadays I would like some up to date advice.

I have a problem in that I have to park on the street and my car is being damaged at night.

I am not too bothered about recording while I am driving.

I would like to install a flush fitting cameras into the Front and Rear bumpers and cameras to record what happens outside my Driver's & Passenger's door (Lipstick or Bullet cams?)

I would like all these 4 areas illuminated with IR but realise these could drain my battery.

And of course all this recorded on a DVR, preferably a fully solid state device with a removable memory card that I can dump to a computer.

Obviously I would like good quality images from my system.

Can anyone offer me any advice and/or recommend any particular bits of equipment.

Thanks in advance.








So what I would like to fit CCTV into my car that will record what happens

I can press a button on my dash to make the DVR/cameras in my car stay on while the car is off. I'll do this if I'm parking for a short trip into a store, etc. A couple days ago I accidentally left the system running in my car from 5pm overnight. By noon the next day the battery was so flat that the door chime didn't even work!

Power is going to be a challenge.

Challenges are there to be met.

There are two routes - A bigger/better battery supply or less power consuming equipment.

A normal car battery is designed to give lots of current on a few demands. Mobile homes have Leisure batteries and they are designed to give lower currents over longer periods.

But fitting an extra battery is expensive and more importantly bulky.

So what of low power consumption equipment?

What is the lowest power consuming good quality CCTV camera?

IR lighting - is there a way to have low level IR lighting until movement is detected?

You can fit IR emitters - they don't need much range. Low power consumption cameras would mean manual iris / bullet stuff. Ebay is full of them, but the image quality is sketchy.

You'd need a separate deep-cycle battery installed in the car with a automatic cutoff switch that would connect / charge the extra battery while you are driving but disconnect / not allow you to drain the primary battery if you leave the cameras running too long.

There's a solid state single-channel DVR all over ebay that uses an SD car to record video/audio - that would give you longest life. I still wouldn't expect more than 2-3 days on that extra battery, but at least the cutoff will mean you don't drain your main battery.

Multiple channel DVRs tend to need HDs and be power-hogs. My system uses about 3 to 4 amps steady state. That's 4 cameras, a GPS antenna, power timer, video overlay device and a 4channel DVR with a 250GB laptop hard drive in it.

BTW, that "cutoff switch" is probably better known as a "battery isolator" and they're readily available from most RV stores and suppliers, or truck-parts stores, as they're very commonly used for RVs, campers and travel-trailers to prevent their systems from draining the truck's main battery.

Right... Battery isolates (of different designs) are also very common in boating/marine world. So if you have a west marine or Boater's world near you, they also carry them. Both also have web sites and the former has pretty educational documents on the subject.

I wonder how well an IP camera with embedded SD slot would work as far as power consumption. I suspect it will work better than an external DVR. Panasonic makes some low cost units but power consumption is not so low (6-7 watts): http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-elec ... tabsection

Yeah, I'd expect a lot lower power consumption for flash-based storage vs. HDD-based storage...