Hi,

First of all I want to say I am a completely newbie in terms of CCTV. I hope I can get some proper advises, I don't have a time to go deeper into CCTV and I don't have money to use some CCTV company service.

My mother has a new car, it's not a luxury car but she really cares about it, she is washing and waxing it regularly. It happend third time already, she has some nasty scratches on its side (the other two happend to the older car). Now she has to pay ~400$ for the repair. My neighborhood is situated in rather peaceful area but it has no CCTV at all. I figured out that I can buy some camera, mount it on my windowledge (outside) and record my mothers car all the time. It would us and police to identify this scumbag.

I've made a picture from where camera will be installed with 3 areas where my mother park her cars most often. I can't really tell the distance, but it's about 30-40 meters. Camera that will fit my needs has to be able to record those areas at night with enough quality to identify person's face.

sounds like a job for Garfield the cat.

^^Cool! HAHA! I'd be concerned about two things. Suction cups usually fail or at least can fail at any given time. Also the power draw during a full night every night- what does that do to the car battery.

For typical cameras you'd need three of them- one for each spot you indicate. You'd need a four channel dvr and three varifocal cameras that can really zoom in appropriately to those spots for actual ID purposes. Otherwise for all the expense and effort, all you'd see is someone from a far distance- unusable for ID. Good luck.

tomcctv haha thanks, you've really made me laugh!

shockwave199 - I will buy only one camera, because of budget limit, but it will be an adjustable camera, so if my mother parks her car in a different place, she is going to move the camera to fit those area. My question is rather about which parameters for zoom, lenses, IR distance are the minimum?

hi. as well as a camera you are going to need a way to record. what is your budget. ?

My budget is about 180$ for the camera and 120$ for a DVR but I don't think DVR is the case here.

I've found some cameras such as this, I think it may be some chineese crap who knows, I couldn't find anything better for this price.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fdobre-systemy.pl%2Fprodukt%2Ftelewizja-przemyslowa%2Fkamery-zewnetrzne%2Fkamery-kompaktowe-i-tubowe%2Fkamera-zewnetrzna-hr650hir-3134.html

And now I'm going to ask some 100% noob question. Does IR camera beams in red? Will it be noticeable for a pedestrian?

yes it will do. i would also surgest not using ir for your setup (your camera is too high)






if you need to identify person's face. a good camera with a cheap dvr is not a good match.


you need to be looking at a 50mm lens low light camera. or record direct to your pc and use 3mp ip camera.

It doesn't matter what camera or DVR you use or how much you spend, from the vantage point in your picture, 90% of what you see will be the tops of people's heads. Unless you can get people to look up in the direction of the camera, you'll never record their faces from that angle.

Also, with the varying locations, simply re-aiming the camera won't help; you need to adjust the zoom to the area the car is it, and subsequently adjust the focus. That will mean a lot of tweaking on a nightly basis unless you go to a PTZ camera, and that's going to kill your budget right there.

And... you'll still only see the tops of people's heads.

And once the leaves are on those tress, that location will be mostly blocked. All things considered, the odds are against you. Which location did she get the car vandalized, do you know?