New CCTV install recommendations

Hi,

I'm looking to put CCTV system in and have been looking at a Swann all in one box solution, but their reputation seems poor. Essentially I am looking at something similar, so a recording box and 3 cameras initially but may go up to 8.

Looking to place on at the front of the house, two to cover the back and one the side access. Perhaps with the option of adding a couple of wireless with a 50m range later on. POE would be preferred I think, due to ease of cabling.

Any suggestions?

Not looking to spend thousands on the initial system, could I get the recorder and 2-3 cameras for £500? I am looking to put a realistic budget together.

Also want something that will text a picture of anyone coming to the front of the house when I am out.

I can't say anything about the Swann ... but I can advise you to steer clear of a Securix. I installed one with a H.264 digital video recorder with 4 channels (bought from Maplin for about £400) three years ago. Picture quality is adequate, but not great, and it's a very, very complicated system to use, with a tiny, fiddly little remote... very frustrating experience all round. That said, I was able to copy a couple of clips off it over the past three years without a problem, but this week, when some kids had been on my driveway vandalising my car, I went to check out my CCTV - only to find the hard drive was "damaged", and everything had been wiped clean. I'm now looking for a new system, too - so hopefully you get a few more answers here about what the best system might be.

I installed a HomeGuard HD-out kit from Storage Options.
Not too different from Swann in terms of how the DVR looks and the cameras look, but the quality of them do seem decent.
Although not specifically advertised, the Dome cameras they supply are now 700 TVL, and they have introduced 700 TVL bullet cameras too (When I ordered a kit with split dome/bullet cameras, I got 600 TVL bullets, but one was damaged. When they sent me a replacement they sent me a 700 TVL bullet).
Their 700 TVL cameras are pretty good. I have two bullets facing the front of the house (one 700tvl and one 600tvl), and you can see the difference in picture quality between them.

Storage Options offer D1 resolution at 25fps for 4 channels. If you get a 8 channel DVR they can still do D1 resolution on all channels, but only 4 channels at 25fps with the other 4 channels at 6fps. Not ideal, but you at least get all channels at the top resolution.

The DVR is easy to set up (you dont just have to use the remote, you can attach a mouse too).
Remote viewing is possible, but on a PC it will only work via Internet Explorer.
They also recommend a third party app for viewing the CCTV on a smartphone. The connectivity works well, though the latest version of the app doesn't work, so i currently dont have remote viewing from my phone.

If you do set up the CCTV with networking capability, the other thing you can do is set up email alerts - so if a scenario like gaviano mentions for Hard Drive error you can have the CCTV send out email alerts stating there is a problem with the drive. It might seem a bit reactive, but an alert that something has gone wrong is still better than finding out months later when you need some footage.

It also allows connectivity with a home alarm (not sure if Swann has the same, as I never really looked into them in detail) - though I have not looked into this in any way. Integrated alarm and cctv systems seems a bit overkill for me at the minute

Look at hikvision turbo range 1080 res over standard coax,TVI cameras or standard cameras on same machine ,vast improvement over standard cameras and price not much more...

gaviano said:

... I went to check out my CCTV - only to find the hard drive was "damaged", and everything had been wiped clean.

Click to expand...

Moral:- Check your playback regularly, especially if you're using cheap kit with PC-grade hard disks.

IC Realtime do (relatively) inexpensive IP cameras... If you do go down the IP/PoE route, I would strongly recommend that you buy a PoE switch that is dedicated to the IP cameras and the NVR. If you're using your home PC, get two network cards (and a separate big, video-rated hard disk).

Remember to decide exactly why you're buying the CCTV system and get cameras and lenses that will meet your needs. A wide view will show you everything but you may struggle to work out if a person is male/female/black/white. A narrow view will show all the details but some of the action may be "out of shot". Patrolling PTZ domes may look away just as the action starts!! (been there, seen that )

EightyTwo said:

... with PC-grade hard disks.

Click to expand...

That's an interesting comment. I've never really thought about PC / CCTV quality hard disks ... are there really two different standards?

I suppose there are different standards of most things !

Was suggested to me recntly that I should get a DVR without a hard drive, because you can get cheaper hard drives online. Got me thinking now ...

Oh yes... Disk drives are designed for all kind of different applications including desk top (cheap, 8 hrs a day), servers (rapid access, 24/7), laptops (small, low power) and CCTV (continuous write, 24/7). It's well worth looking at the manufacturers' web sites to see what they recommend before searching for the best deals. CCTV disks are dearer than some so budget kit often uses the cheaper PC disks which won't last as long.

You know how it goes - "you pays yer money, ..."

gaviano said:

I can't say anything about the Swann ... but I can advise you to steer clear of a Securix. I installed one with a H.264 digital video recorder with 4 channels (bought from Maplin for about £400) three years ago. Picture quality is adequate, but not great, and it's a very, very complicated system to use, with a tiny, fiddly little remote... very frustrating experience all round. That said, I was able to copy a couple of clips off it over the past three years without a problem, but this week, when some kids had been on my driveway vandalising my car, I went to check out my CCTV - only to find the hard drive was "damaged", and everything had been wiped clean. I'm now looking for a new system, too - so hopefully you get a few more answers here about what the best system might be.

Click to expand...

Very good advice!! Securix and Swann come from the same company called entatech.....Both brands are a disaster in terms of reliability...

If you on that budget the Yale kit ( made by dahua is the best VFM by a long shot...

sparkymarka said:

Look at hikvision turbo range 1080 res over standard coax,TVI cameras or standard cameras on same machine ,vast improvement over standard cameras and price not much more...

Click to expand...

But where would I buy them, quite frankly a search of google brings up several dodgy looking web sites and lots of others who I can call for a quote, do you recommend anyone who can provide proper advice and not want £500 to install it?

Update: After a lot of looking around, I finally settled on a system: I bought a Zmodo® 4CH 720P PoE NVR HD Security Camera System with 4 Indoor/ Outdoor Night Vision 720P Security Cameras and 1TB HDD (from amazon, for £300). So far I'm very happy with it. Only drawback I can see is you need to drill a very big hole to get the cable from the camera through your wall - or do what I did, which was to screw a IP55 enclosure box to the wall alongside each camera, and hide the connections inside that.
I also had to buy a monitor, but I got a cheap secondhand one on ebay for only £23, and it does the job perfectly well.
So far, so good - and I already caught a lovely clear clip of a local schoolkid banging on my door and running off; took the clip to the school and they were able to identify the little swine right away.
So, all round, I'd recommend this system.

There is more choice on CCTV and its picking out the good from the bad and what is good value.

Is not much point having a great camera, if you don't have enough space to store a decent image from them.

You can look at a system and say thats okay, but if you have it at the side of another image you will see how inferior or superior it is.

Think the best option is to get some quotes from local installers and see what your offered.

It is interesting to note that Swann is offered by some as a cheap CCTV system, given what people say about it professionally I would be tempted to leave it well alone.

I know people that recently have been offered some CCTV quotes fitted Swann, £450, 960H system 600+ (dont know manufacturer) and HD-SDI (dont know manufacturer) at 1,000+ but you are not comparing like for like products.

However when they were show apps which were supposed to be utilising these systems they thought that all of them looked okay, so they could easily have gone with the cheapest option, thinking theres not much in it. But a phone shows such a tiny image (also depends on your phone these days) to start with and none were compared side by side and they couldn't be certain what there were shown as the system they were getting either as they didn't pay much attention other than the displayed image and play back images.

Pulp

I don't know if you have resolved this one, but I just spotted it.

I self-installed a Swann 4 Camera system from Maplin last year:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/swann-dvr8-2450-8-channel-cctv-kit-with-4-cameras-a92qz

...although my cameras are less TVL (650) than the ones in the link and has a smaller Hard Drive. A 500Gb Drive with motion sensing is good for about 3 weeks history. I bought a dome camera from ebay for the entrance from China for less than a tenner and it has worked fine. I have used the video export to assist the Police is catching someone who tried to get into my car one night!

If you have 4 or less cameras then you don't need a license and you can point them anywhere you like - even if they overlap neighbours property.

A Camera of 650TVL should be OK.
Get night and day cameras.
BNC connectors are big and need at least a 15mm hole to pass them through.
Steer clear of HD cameras with Swann - even the Maplin guy drew breath through his teeth when I asked if it was a good system.
Get a system with a large Disk drive. Mine is 500Gb
Get a system with Motion sense - not continuous recording to maximise recording space.
In order to get the Phone App to work you need a bit of networking knowledge as you need to do some port-forwarding on your router. Mine is a Netgear and I understand that the BT router is a pain to set up.

I've just installed a system I purchased off the web, cost £90 which included a DVR ( 4 camera i/p)and one camera, System is called CENOS.
I'm more than pleased with the quality, and have now installed 2 more cameras,all my cameras are at least 1000TVL, anything less than 700 picture quality is poor.
After installing this system I did read a little bit more about CCTV and now would install a NVR system, picture quality is a lot better and yes may cost a little more but no more difficult to install.