Don't know where to place the cameras

[knotquiteawake 0]

New user here. I had a suspicious incident occur the other day (I think the neighbor's lawn cutting guy was messing with my mailbox) that finally pushed me over the edge to buying a CCTV system for my home. I've taken several walks around the neighborhood and as far as I can tell I would be the ONLY person (other than my neighbor who has one camera that looks like a flood light on his driveway) in the neighborhood with a visible camera system. So I am trying to get the best mix of deterrence, discreteness, and effectiveness.

I bought one of these. Mostly for the DVR (which I bought a 500GB HD for).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PTP7JY/ref=ox_ya_os_product

 

The cameras were also 3.6mm lenses which is what I wanted for a wider field of view.

 

Any suggestions of where I can mount the cameras? The mailboxes are just off to the right.

Its frustrating because the eves are SO close to the ground it seems to really limit my options for the cameras to be "out of reach". Or any cameara suggestions that would be more discrete and use the standard power/BNC cable? On the far end of the front porch there will be bushes eventually too.

 

[Kawboy12R 0]

At my home I don't worry too much about cams being out of reach, just mostly about them being accidentally adjusted. Domes fix that (but can introduce some problems of their own like IR reflections if they're IR domes). Most casual intruders won't case your place, map out camera locations, and sneak in out of the field of view to knock your cams out of the way. I'd much rather get a good face shot from head height than go out of my way to put a cam up high so it can be blocked by a hoodie or ball cap.

 

For you front yard, if it were my place, I think I'd have three cams. One for the driveway, one for the front door, and one for the mailbox. I've got three covering the front of my place- one wideangle around 3mm for the front door (good for closeup faces and an overview), one in the driveway at 6mm for plates and faces of driveway "visitors" at a bit of a distance, and another for cars farther in the side driveway. The 3.6mm cams that came with your kit are fine for a doorway cam and probably the driveway, but getting a good shot of someone out as far as the road, especially at night, isn't going to happen. 3.6mm isn't going to cut it. 10mm would probably be a minimum. If you've got a streetlight near the mailbox then something like a CNB VCM-24VF would be a good "cheap" colour low-light cam without IR. They can be had for $135 without too much effort and are very versatile because of their varifocal lens that goes to 10.5mm. You might even want two- one for the driveway set to a wider angle and one zoomed in on the mailbox. Put one of the bullets near the front door to get faces of visitors and that leaves three to cover the back door and yard decently. Without IR, the CNBs won't alarm your neighbours at night like three bullets with infrared glowing away at them when they're out for a walk. You'll probably find that domes blend in and look less aggressive than bullets in the daytime, too.

 

Also, I'd recommend running cat 5e ethernet wire to the cameras and use proper baluns to connect them to the dvr. That way you'll be able to easily upgrade to IP cameras in the future without having to run new wire, which is probably the most time-consuming part of installing a system. Once you do it right with one kind of cable you won't want to switch.

[shockwave199 0]

The front facade of your house is actually similar to mine, although distances to the road will probably differ. This vid I did is a little insight to see different fields of view. I also have a number of other vids too and you'll probably get an idea that our houses are similar in layout and you can get an idea of what you'd get with a similar install- an install that isn't perfect, but good for an idea. All of my wide shots- sides and back of house are 3.6mm lenses. Good for overview, but only maybe recognition- not ID.

 

MHOQjex_5vo

[knotquiteawake 0]

Wow, guys, this is REALLY helpful. More than I can process while I'm still at work!

 

Quick question from skimming through, RE: Cat5 for cameras. I can run power and video through the single cable to those regular "budget" bullet cameras?

I've done a some home networking so cutting and crimping cat5 is something i'm a little familiar with and I think I've got some cable laying around.

[shockwave199 0]

Yes. You'd use quality baluns for video and power. One twisted pair for video and typically, the rest of the pairs twisted together for Pos/Neg power. You can find little power adapter heads that you screw the twisted pairs for power into as well, if you need power barrels to work with your cameras that have them, I'm sure.

[aibudo 0]

The DVR kit that you have, probably came with 60' cables and before you run any "permanent" cables, mount your cameras and hook them up with those cables temporarily. That will allow you to prove to yourself that where you think you want to mount the cameras are correct. I even did that on my own home. Then, drilled the hole outside for the cable, ran them through the attic and down the inside wall to where the DVR is placed in my home. Once I had the cameras installed for a week or so and was happy with them, connected the "permanent" cable that I wanted to them and pulled them in with my temporary ones. Took myself and a friend about 45 minutes to do that. If I hadn't have used the temporary install, I would have had one camera in the wrong place and would have had to move it and the cable again. By the way, the original install of 4 camera's took me (by myself) about 8 hours. The most difficult part was, besides running the cables through the attic, was drilling the top plate and wall outlet for the cables down the inside wall of my home to the DVR location. I hadn't have run the temporary cables first, I would have had another 2 hours and the disgust of making the mistake in the first place.

Dennis

[Kawboy12R 0]

The power video baluns I use have bnc and the power barrel connector on one side and a female rj45 in the box part. Just plug in an rj45 male from the cat 5 and you're up and running. No other frigging and you can use store-bought network cables if you want. You just need a weatherproof place to store them near the camera. Junction box or up in the soffitt.

[knotquiteawake 0]

For the front door and possibly the driveway I was considering ditching the CMOS cameras that comes with the system and ordered a couple of these:

http://www.amazon.com/VideoSecu-Vision-Outdoor-Security-Vandal-proof/dp/B000TGC03U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1363784439&sr=8-2&keywords=dome+camera

 

I can't seem to find any information on the actual size of these cameras though. Do you think they would be a little less obtrusive? Also I have a motion light on the driveway so IR is maybe not totally necessary. Are there smaller cameras I could put up if they don't use IR?

The only place I would really need IR would be the backyard and front porch.

[Kawboy12R 0]

Black cameras will stick out like a sore thumb with your colour scheme. A white or cream wold be much better. Also, most cheap IR cameras make it almost impossible to see a face at night. Once you walk up close enough to get enough detail to see the face the IR has completely whited out the face. For instance, one of mine had a sweet spot between 20-25 feet where any closer had facial detail like Caspar the ghost and farther away was too far for any useful detail and that one had a 6mm lens. Intelligent or adaptive IR is better, but best is a camera good enough to not need IR if there's any white light available. Look at the CNB I mentioned or some of the inexpensive IR Gadspots that shockwave uses. I went through a bunch of cheap (but not Videosecu) and not so cheap IR cams before learning some of these lessons. Buying only on price before a proper evaluation of video quality at night in a situation close to my own ended up costing more time and money than doing a bit of research and spending just a bit more the first time. I did end up adding some network cameras though, so that's why I recommended running cat 5 the first time.

[knotquiteawake 0]

I was considering buying white and painting to match the trim color.

 

It looks like for right now the best thing to do would be to install what the kit comes from. Placing the cameras with the thought in mind that I will want to put a higher quality camera where its at in the future.

 

The nice cameras appear to cost almost as much as the entire security camera setup I bought.

 

My wife said if I wanted to do this it "should" be under $200. So I bought the $125 DVR/4 CMOS camera kit, and then also a 500gb HD for $54. This only leaves me with about $20 to buy the extra cabling to run the wires.

 

So I think as long as I get 90% of the attic work done now, putting the crappy cameras in place, it should be an easy swap to put a newer camera in (not having to spend much time in the attic in the Texas summer.

 

I'm going to be keeping my eye out for sales and clearance for those nicer cameras.

 

I might order the one dome camera I liked to above. Its cheap but it will at least give me a feel for the size and let me know if thats the direction I want to go.

The main reason to use Amazon.com is that returns are really easy with them.

[Kawboy12R 0]

If you're only allowed $200 then it is what it is. Anything is better than nothing, but just don't expect to be able to ID people you don't know except at very close range without spending more on cameras and matching lenses carefully for the distance needed. ID is different from being able to recognize people you know or can find like people known to be working in your area though. On the good side (sort of), is that just about anything you buy is likely to be at least a bit better in some areas than the included ZModo cameras. Dennis gave some good advice though- whatever you install first, put them up temporarily (say with one or two screws and run the wires out the front door or a window) to give you a good idea of what you'll be able to see (the field of view) after they're mounted permanently. For a two cam setup, experiment with one to the left of the garage door looking slightly towards the front door and one to the garage side of your front door and also going to the picture window. That should cover the drive, visitors to the front door, and if I understand the location of your mailbox, a view of it if that tree isn't in the way (although it'll be too far away to see much). Better coverage of the mailboxes will require something with a much longer lens than 3.anything and should probably be mounted on the rightmost corner of the pic. You might even be lucky enough to be able to take one of those ZModo cams apart, unscrew the lens, and stick in another longer one. That's a bit of a long shot for super cheap cams (probably glued in and unchangeable even if the housing comes apart and has room for a longer lens) and the longer lens will most likely far outreach the IR for night work. You might get a $3 lens upgrade for daytime distance shots if you don't mind fiddling though.

[shockwave199 0]

You're in the position of being severely limited by budget. The plain simple truth is that at a certain point something actually isn't better than nothing. If you're having actual trouble at home and you really need to ID someone, what you're installing is like having nothing. It's not worth the trouble. The nice way of putting it is that the best you can hope for is situational awareness. You'll be aware of a situation unfolding but your surveillance recordings will do nothing to help you. You've made the mistake countless droves of people do, including me at first, and installing it anyway. Useable surveillance does NOT come cheap and is certainly not limited to 200 dollars. But like most, you'll do it anyway. One thing you can never say is...you haven't been told.

 

Go do what you're gonna do.

[knotquiteawake 0]

I am gonna do what I'm gonna do. Thanks. It IS better than having nothing because situational awareness is awesome in of itself anyways.

 

The camera system came in. The setup was pretty easy. Leaning the DVR software took a little bit of doing but its pretty simple now. I mounted 3 cameras where I think I want them with very temporary setups and wire runs. Bonus to me the cameras that it came with were actually CCD and not CMOS like I had thought they were. So the color is not too bad. The recorded video footage is not aweful, just a step above grainy gas station market videos. Daytime is great. Night time the driveway was doing something odd, i'll post a picture sometime this weekend to get help diagnosing that.

 

Here is a picture of how I have them now, minor tweaks and adjustments will be made when I do all the final wire runs. For now they're going to get bumped around anyways when I do the installations.

 

[knotquiteawake 0]

I am a picture nut, love taking pictures because its so much easier than trying to explain things... so sorry if I'm over picture-ing!

 

Here is pictures of the install so far.

Front Door - This one I will run the cables along the edge of the eve there to a soffit vent I have leading to the attic.

 

Driveway - The area right here has no direct access to the attic, I will need to run the cables over about 3-4feet to the right, drill a hole and route them through.

 

Backyard/Shed - There is a soffit vent just to the left here, I think I will be able to get to it, not directly, but via a hook and wire. In the attic there is about 10 feet of blown in insulation between the attic access and that vent.

[Kawboy12R 0]

Hey, it works, right? Gives you a starting point if something goes wrong even if you don't have hi-def closeup face shots. I was a bit surprised to see the front door camera point AT the front door instead of away from it. More useful footage of the yard and mailbox and probably a better face shot of those standing at the front door if it was in the corner pointing outwards, but backlighting from the sun might darken faces too much at certain times of the day. Looks like you catch the mailbox at a distance in the corner of the driveway cam anyway. Just make sure you've got motion detection set sensitive enough that it records small people walking slowly from either direction towards your box if you don't dedicate a cam zoomed in and looking directly at the box.

 

You'll be able to recognize people you know or can find later fairly easily now. The next step is looking at sample faces (and plates) at different times of the day from recorded footage and see if you could recognize them in a lineup afterwards. Enjoy your new toy. You'll love being able to take a quick look at the monitor when you hear a bang at night and see what's going on.

[knotquiteawake 0]

Hey, it works, right? Gives you a starting point if something goes wrong even if you don't have hi-def closeup face shots. I was a bit surprised to see the front door camera point AT the front door instead of away from it. More useful footage of the yard and mailbox and probably a better face shot of those standing at the front door if it was in the corner pointing outwards, but backlighting from the sun might darken faces too much at certain times of the day. Looks like you catch the mailbox at a distance in the corner of the driveway cam anyway. Just make sure you've got motion detection set sensitive enough that it records small people walking slowly from either direction towards your box if you don't dedicate a cam zoomed in and looking directly at the box.

 

You'll be able to recognize people you know or can find later fairly easily now. The next step is looking at sample faces (and plates) at different times of the day from recorded footage and see if you could recognize them in a lineup afterwards. Enjoy your new toy. You'll love being able to take a quick look at the monitor when you hear a bang at night and see what's going on.

 

Regarding the front door, it just seemed really "in your face" there because the ceiling is so low there, it doesn't show it very well there but the top of the door frame is pretty much the ceiling there. Thats why I wanted to try the other direction first, see how well you can see folks coming, side profile faces and that kind of thing. I'll give it a shot the other direction too.

[Kawboy12R 0]

That videosecu dome you were looking at would be less visually aggressive than the bullet both because it is a dome and the white would blend in better. Bubble domes are even better because the cam isn't staring you in the face.

[knotquiteawake 0]

I think the videosecu dome is also 3.6mm and if so I will be left with pretty much the same field of view. This is what i get putting the camera to the left of the door.

 

[Kawboy12R 0]

Pointed up higher?

[knotquiteawake 0]

Pointed up higher?

 

I can see the mailboxes, and the pathway to the door, but somebody standing at the door I would only see the top of their head and its like you mentioned before with the sunlight washing out faces. Its not ideal but the way I have it pointed at the door I will at least be able to see who and how many people are there. I will probably put a camera on the far right side of the porch, it will either cover the mailboxes or I can point it at the rest of the front porch.

[knotquiteawake 0]

I suppose this is part of the curse of using the cheaper cameras.

[blakem 0]

"FontDoor", I like it!

 

I think it looks like what you got would give you something for a minimum investment. To optimise it, you may want to go walk around the car, mailbox and front door to see how a person looks in the scene as you adjust the cameras. The driveway view is nice that it gets the mailbox as a bonus but if it means cropping out someone on the driver side of your car it may not be worth it for example. You just got to test it and keep adjusting its location and angle until you are happy with it. Even with all that though i have found the real test comes as visitors approach your property since they won't be posing for the camera.

[blakem 0]

Pointed up higher?

 

I can see the mailboxes, and the pathway to the door, but somebody standing at the door I would only see the top of their head and its like you mentioned before with the sunlight washing out faces. Its not ideal but the way I have it pointed at the door I will at least be able to see who and how many people are there. I will probably put a camera on the far right side of the porch, it will either cover the mailboxes or I can point it at the rest of the front porch.

 

I am facing a similar problem with the camera at my front door. If it were me I would search for a dome that has a wide dynamic range(WDR) that you can replace it with someday in the future. Being analog it should not be too expensive. It will give you the in your face view without being quite in your face like the bullet.

[Kawboy12R 0]

Like blakem said, WDR is important to get unlit detail when harsh light is present in part of the shot, as is BLC (backlight compensation) with the sun in the background or even the ability to set different exposure zones if you want the cam to prioritize, say, your porch (works for faces at the door in extra shadow in the day and because the porchlight lights it better at night than the yard).

[Firefighter 0]

Yeah, Your bidget is a huge hit.

I'll be honest, I was surprised by the screen shots you provided.

 

With your budget it will be important to spend a lot of time on the placement/settings.

 

Just like you have them now, Record driving down the street both ways, walk near the mailbox,

Walk around the house, Pretend to "Stake Out" your own home. Actually pretend to try and break into your own home.

 

Look at that recorded footage and fine tune the camera placements.

 

My wife only told me the Hobby CCTV has turned into shouldn't cut into our priority budget and I spend what I want.

So, I've sold the Analog system and now going IP MP.

 

If you're ever able or interested in upgrading, You can grab a Dahua 8Ch NVR for $200....

and pretty nice 2MP 1080P cameras for about $200 too.

Yes, their more than your system but the difference is Huge... You'd be able to ID people...

 

By the way! Please feel free to post pictures. You can never have too many pictures In my opinion!

 

I look forward to seeing more pics and videos from your system!!

 

Maybe show the wife a bunch of cctv videos and the difference, Maybe it'll push for a higher budget.

 

btw, Here's a resolution chart/

 

 

 

Granite, Having the system you have is no doubt better than not having anything at all.

I'm surprised by it's Price Vs Performance. Granite, It's just for situational awareness but at least you'll have an idea of whats going on!