Help with Ext. Camera Placement

[grawil]

Hi all,
 
I'm looking to add some security cameras to my house and I am looking for some advice on placement. I've sketched out some rough ideas below and I am looking for feedback. The inexpensive Hikvision cameras (3mp, poe) I'm considering have approximately 70, 45 and 22 deg FOVs (as drawn).
 
 

 

[drvnbysound]

Understand that with the narrower FOV's (e.g. 70-degrees), while you are narrowing the FOV as to not get so wide, you really are just zooming in with a longer focal length lens... thus you could also lose quite a bit of coverage right in front of the camera. Not sure if this matters in your specific case or not. Worth mentioning, as you may end up with larger than expected dead spots under and in front of the camera for some distance.
 
I've gone so far as to get multiple cameras and temporarily wired them to a POE injector [and laptop] and climbed up on a ladder and held the camera at the intended mounting location to get a representative screen shot of the view with the different cameras before determining what camera goes where. This not only helps with angles, distances, and dead spots, but can also help determine the exact placement you want to mount the camera.  

 

[drvnbysound]

It took me a minute to figure out the orientation of the drawing. Overall I think you'll be happy with the placement locations. The only other place I would consider adding one, is to the inside of the covered porch, near the other camera, but looking at the front door.
 
As your sketch shows... Let's say your video shows that 3 different people came to your door on a particular day (UPS, mailman, and a unknown). When you return home, you find tamper marks on your front door. Who was it? Well, probably the unknown person right? But you have no evidence showing that, you just have video of 3 people waking up your steps... Obviously a bogus scenario, but you get the idea. I liked having a view of my front door. Not only could I see what happened there, who was at the front door, etc. but also keep an eye on packages that were left and such.

 

[newalarm]

Do you already have a server? I am finding out that you need a pretty powerful computer to deal with the data processing of high res cameras. I have been battling my server that kept stopping. I am running 4Mp cameras at 1/3 their resolution. So if you already have equipment, or are planning to buy, make sure you calculate what you will need.

 

[drvnbysound]

I have built multiple computers that are processing HikVision cameras (granted, running at 1080p, not 3MP or above). For systems with 4 or less cameras I would recommend a quad core processor (preferably an i5). For systems with 4-10 cameras an i7 should suffice.
 
I hvae a co-worker who has 5 of them on an older Core2Quad processor and the CPU runs at about 60%. The largest residential install I've done so far had 6 cameras on an i7 and it was at about 35% CPU load.
 
I just packed all my stuff up as we just bought a new [to us] home, but my system had (4) running on a i7 processor (quad-core with Hyper Threading) and it ran at about 25% or so.
 
This was utilizing BlueIris NVR software running on Window7/10. All cameras running motion detection and recording 24/7.

 

[ano]

I have built multiple computers that are processing HikVision cameras (granted, running at 1080p, not 3MP or above). For systems with 4 or less cameras I would recommend a quad core processor (preferably an i5). For systems with 4-10 cameras an i7 should suffice.
 
I hvae a co-worker who has 5 of them on an older Core2Quad processor and the CPU runs at about 60%. The largest residential install I've done so far had 6 cameras on an i7 and it was at about 35% CPU load.
 
I just packed all my stuff up as we just bought a new [to us] home, but my system had (4) running on a i7 processor (quad-core with Hyper Threading) and it ran at about 25% or so.
 
This was utilizing BlueIris NVR software running on Window7/10. All cameras running motion detection and recording 24/7.

Why did you choose to use a PC rather than a network video recorder? Just wondering?  I went with Amcreast cameras and I am trying to decide how I want to store the videos.  The cameras can hold a microSD card, or i can use a PC, or a network video recorder or cloud-based.  I wonder how long I need to keep the videos? 

 

[drvnbysound]

Flexibility.
 
With a i7 running at 25% there are a lot of other things that I can do with that PC as well vs a dedicated NVR appliance. Granted, I wouldn't do general web surfing and such on it, but say I wanted to put my media server software on it, or run a PFSense firewall, etc. There is overhead available for me to use.
 
Also, I found that the NVR software (BlueIris) to be much more flexible than most NVRs are capable of. I setup one home with a small amplifier (Elk) and an external speaker and have the NVR trigger pre-recorded message to be played when there is motion detected at particular hours on a specific camera. I could go on and on... but it's a lot more than just a simple video recorder.

I've typically installed a separate 4TB drive for video archive only. I never max it out, but on my personal setup I was getting about 2 weeks of video from all 4 of my cameras, recording at 30fps, 1080p, 24/7.

 

[grawil]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I have a dedicated linux server (currently quad-core i5) and a dedicated poe switch for the cameras. I'm not entirely sure what route I will go with software as I'd like to keep the cpu load down (the machine serves many purposes).

 

[ano]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I have a dedicated linux server (currently quad-core i5) and a dedicated poe switch for the cameras. I'm not entirely sure what route I will go with software as I'd like to keep the cpu load down (the machine serves many purposes).

Yeah I know how you feel. I'm using a Mac which is Unix based and it also runs my home server for files.  On Mac there is a program called SecuritySpy which is supposed to be pretty good but I might buy a dedicated NVR also, since they are cheap and then I don't have to worry about it. 
 
I had cameras and a time-lapse VCR many years ago and what I learned is you should be very cautious when placing your cameras and determining your lens.  A wide-angle lens gives good coverage but everything looks further away so resolution can suffer.  Zoom it in and you see more, but i can't tell you how many things happened just outside camera view, which was very frustrating.  When something is out-of-view, it doesn't help you very much.
 
True story several years ago, at a different house, I was working late  and outside my window I saw some giant flames. What had happened is that someone was apparently using a giant RV as a meth lab, and they decided, for whatever reason, to torch the place and they just happened to park it in front of my house before doing so.  I lived next to a park so it was halfway between my house and the park.  I had cameras but recorded nothing because it was just outside of camera view.

 

[WCG]

As far as your camera coverage is concerned I agree with drvnbysound, you should have an additional camera on the front porch. In this case I would mount it very low (50") thereby catching the face under the hoody.

Your facade is brick, so it will not be very difficult to camouflage a camera to WAF standards. The turret camera below may be obvious to us all here on the forum, I can assure you it is not to my guests. The intention was not to make it covert, just less conspicuous. I would bet your artistic talents are better than mine, give it a try.