miamicanes
Active Member
I'm looking for some cameras to wire in, since (for the time being, at least) I still have easy access to the area behind and above the walls/ceiling of most of my second floor. They're not for security... they're to reassure me that my cats are OK whenever I have to go away for a couple of days.
I've found one ceiling mounting location for a PTZ camera that's nearly ideal... from that specific point, I can see both upstairs bedroom windows (where my cats like to lounge), part of my bed (were they like to sleep), their litterbox in the bathroom (as long as the hall door is open), the entire upstairs hallway, landing, and stairs (where they like to lounge), and the lower half of the front door (a few feet beyond the foot of the stairs). The problem is, that particular mounting location is extraordinarily visible to anyone upstairs, so I'd like to make it as visually non-obnoxious as possible. Put another way, I can deal with a camera head poking a couple of inches below the ceiling, especially if the camera itself is mostly off-white. I can't deal with a gigantic monstrosity of a PTZ IP camera hanging 5 inches from a rod screwed into a half-inch thick mounting plate (think: most of D-Link's IP PTZ cameras, like the D-Link DCS-5300) like a futuristic disco ball on crack) ;-)
The most ideal one I stumbled across was the Mobotix Q24M-SEC-D11, which apparently combines a megapixel sensor with an extreme fisheye lens and realtime dewarping software to create a camera that achieves more or less 150-degree fields of view along both axes in a form factor that could almost be mistaken for a flushmounted can light. Unfortunately, at about $1,000, it's WAY out of my budget.
A more affordable potential solution looks like the Panasonic BL-C111 with BL-CA51 wallmount cover.
At least, it might be a potential solution IF I can use it to mount the camera flush with the ceiling instead of a wall. I know the BL-C111's field of view is a bit less than I'd like, but it's cheap enough that I could live with it if I could get away with ceiling-mounting it.
I've seen some pics of the BL-CA51 that seem to suggest that you basically mount the camera into the BL-CA51's bracket, then screw the bracket into a plastic bracket that itself mounts to the wall. If that's the case, I shouldn't have any problems... but I can't find a pdf installation guide anywhere, so I'm unable to confirm that important detail. Does anyone know whether using it to ceiling-mount a BL-C111 would work?
Another possibility I'm considering would be three BL-C1/C20/C101 cameras (more or less the same price as a single C111+CA51). I'm kind of intrigued by their "digital pan/tilt" function, which sounds kind of like a cheaper version of what the ideal camera I found seems to do. However, I've read almost nothing about the real-world usefulness of their "digital tilt" and "digital pan" feature, and Panasonic's own marketing literature doesn't seem to even admit that it exists anymore (though most online stores still digital tilt/pan as a feature).
Did/does the C1/C20/C101 have useful digital tilt/pan, or is that really just marketing speak for "we used a 640x480 sensor with a mild fisheye lens... if you don't zoom, and view the entire 640x480 sensor, you'll see a mildly distorted wide-angle image from a fisheye lens. If you reduce the resolution to 320x240, zoom in by 50%, and move the resulting window around the 640x480 pixels that are still being captured, you'll see something that's kind of like ghetto pan-tilt, but you won't see anything you wouldn't have seen anyway had you just left it in 640x480 mode"?
I've found one ceiling mounting location for a PTZ camera that's nearly ideal... from that specific point, I can see both upstairs bedroom windows (where my cats like to lounge), part of my bed (were they like to sleep), their litterbox in the bathroom (as long as the hall door is open), the entire upstairs hallway, landing, and stairs (where they like to lounge), and the lower half of the front door (a few feet beyond the foot of the stairs). The problem is, that particular mounting location is extraordinarily visible to anyone upstairs, so I'd like to make it as visually non-obnoxious as possible. Put another way, I can deal with a camera head poking a couple of inches below the ceiling, especially if the camera itself is mostly off-white. I can't deal with a gigantic monstrosity of a PTZ IP camera hanging 5 inches from a rod screwed into a half-inch thick mounting plate (think: most of D-Link's IP PTZ cameras, like the D-Link DCS-5300) like a futuristic disco ball on crack) ;-)
The most ideal one I stumbled across was the Mobotix Q24M-SEC-D11, which apparently combines a megapixel sensor with an extreme fisheye lens and realtime dewarping software to create a camera that achieves more or less 150-degree fields of view along both axes in a form factor that could almost be mistaken for a flushmounted can light. Unfortunately, at about $1,000, it's WAY out of my budget.
A more affordable potential solution looks like the Panasonic BL-C111 with BL-CA51 wallmount cover.
At least, it might be a potential solution IF I can use it to mount the camera flush with the ceiling instead of a wall. I know the BL-C111's field of view is a bit less than I'd like, but it's cheap enough that I could live with it if I could get away with ceiling-mounting it.
I've seen some pics of the BL-CA51 that seem to suggest that you basically mount the camera into the BL-CA51's bracket, then screw the bracket into a plastic bracket that itself mounts to the wall. If that's the case, I shouldn't have any problems... but I can't find a pdf installation guide anywhere, so I'm unable to confirm that important detail. Does anyone know whether using it to ceiling-mount a BL-C111 would work?
Another possibility I'm considering would be three BL-C1/C20/C101 cameras (more or less the same price as a single C111+CA51). I'm kind of intrigued by their "digital pan/tilt" function, which sounds kind of like a cheaper version of what the ideal camera I found seems to do. However, I've read almost nothing about the real-world usefulness of their "digital tilt" and "digital pan" feature, and Panasonic's own marketing literature doesn't seem to even admit that it exists anymore (though most online stores still digital tilt/pan as a feature).
Did/does the C1/C20/C101 have useful digital tilt/pan, or is that really just marketing speak for "we used a 640x480 sensor with a mild fisheye lens... if you don't zoom, and view the entire 640x480 sensor, you'll see a mildly distorted wide-angle image from a fisheye lens. If you reduce the resolution to 320x240, zoom in by 50%, and move the resulting window around the 640x480 pixels that are still being captured, you'll see something that's kind of like ghetto pan-tilt, but you won't see anything you wouldn't have seen anyway had you just left it in 640x480 mode"?
