Advantages of IP CCTV cameras v standard non IP

[ey143]

What about the downside the the home network bandwidth could get clogged up with 8 IP cameras?

Again it will depend upon the resolution and therefore the bandwidth of the cameras. A typical high-res camera would run up to about 4 Mb/s, so 8 of them might need 30+ Mb/s. That is a fair chunk of a 100Mb/s home network, but many networks are now 1Gb/s so that wouldn't be a problem. However you'd need a seriously fast NVR to save all that data, and a very large hard disk array to store it. That's quite an investment.

Given that I am using Cat 6, I think I should achieve 1gb/s but even if not complete, hopefully a good speed which should be able to handle this. It's possible I will only set 2 or 3 cameras to record all the time and the others only when a beam is broken or some other trigger event occurs. I have to think about that more carefully.

So in summary, if I have now decided on IP cameras rather than non IP, what is the resolution or key technological requirement I should focus on. Just HD 1080P?

Thanks.

 

[secureiam]

The question original was advantages of one over the other.

That really does depend on the resolution of the camera being considered and what other technologies are being used to pass power to the camera.

IP using POE/POE+ is better than say going over your normal home network without any POE and start using injectors and the like to put power in.
As you already have your house cabled up, then there's nothing stopping you having a POE switch/ or NVR to connect it to at the other end.

On board storage is relatively small storage, and probably best suited to events or recording to in the event theres a failure to connect to the main NVR.

With IP there's nothing stopping you from recording direct to a PC, but and its a big one, continuous recording of video requires a dedicated HDD rated for such activity but these are not expensive these days and are continuously coming down in price.

Network handling, if its connected to the NVR then the home network is only effected by what is passed from the NVR to the home network so not a major issue, if using the home network directly bandwidth is a serious consideration, that being said cheap gigabit connections make it irrelevant.

The stream you use for viewing remotely can be dumbed down. but the hard data stored on the NVR is what is important.

Generally IP using POE is simpler and better resolution cameras are available than analogue technologies, often the ip cameras will have extra functions built in. So if my NVR fails the ip camera may have local recording available (limited space) can email snap shots if connected to the home network but failed to get to the NVR if configured.

A lot of this does depend on what equipment you are buying, not all manufacturers have the same features available or in the same price band.

 

[secureiam]

Sit down work out what you want it to do.

ip cameras for identity purposes need a pixel density of 250 pixels a meter in an uncluttered environment and 500 in the most challenging environment.

The pixel density that is important is the density at the distance away from the camera you want to detect.
The angle of the camera, anything more than 20 degrees is likely to get top head shots rather than facial images. So the height you place them will determine the angle you use, the higher up the steeper the angle. lower down you need to be aware of vandal protection.

Walking to the butty shop this morning I noticed someone's camera at the front door was full of water and the casing cracked, so that camera is unlikely to be working, its low down so you can see who answers the door and identify them, didn't see any branding on them so could well be cheap rubbish well sited.

You can have a low res camera in the right place and you stlll might get what you need from it, you can have a high spec camera in the wrong place and not get what you need from it, so work out what you need it do first and where its to be sited.

 

[ey143]

So my exact situation is basically we are rebuilding a house, construction is finish, all walls and ceilings are open. We have a blank canvas. I have run ethernet and other A/v related cables from the loft floor down to a ground floor A/V room. We have yet to start any cabling (that includes mains electric) on the first floor or the ground floor.

I am just a hobbyist but my plan was to have Cat 6 cables run from the A/V room to each of the CCTV points. I guess the ends of these cables would plug into the NVR directly and the NVR into my network. From what you have described, my network bandwidth should not then be impacted as I was originally fearing?

In terms of makes of equipment: Hikvision, Serage are ok?

 

[secureiam]

I wouldn't be worried if everything is gigabit the cameras would have little impact on the network, however putting it into the NVR would remove the cameras from the home network so a non issue in that regard.

Camera specification, is where the fun starts.

What do you want the camera to do?
a) identify, recognise, detect? (there is a big difference in camera spec between identify and detect).
b) at what distance from the camera do you want that to occur? (resolution, lens and field of view considerations)
c) what lighting have you got ? (extra light, led EXIR, smart IR cut out etc)

You need to know what you want the system to do, then spec each camera for each location properly otherwise it can be wasted when it comes to using it as evidence.

detecting someone on camera, is different to identifying someone on camera, police want identification spec or recognition as this stands a chance of a prosecution, if you want to flag someone up as being on the premises then detection is adequate.

cheap rubbish installed well may look okay but wont do the job required, good equipment installed badly may be useless. Good equipment installed well but wrongly specified looks okay but may not do the job required.

Needs to be good equipment, correctly specified and installed properly for the system to have any value.

 

[SimonH2]

What Secureiam said ! You need to work out what your requirements are, and then choose something to do that.
(Not very good) analogy. You want a car, have a look around and find something not too expensive that looks quite nice. When you get home, your other half points out that you have a small car that can't legally tow a trailer, but your requirement is to tow a horsebox (which the small car couldn't safely tow even if it could have a towbar fitted).

I'm not familiar with modern digital recorders, but I suspect many of them don't have separate inputs for cameras any more - they probably just have one or two network connections for all the cameras and remove access. I wouldn't plan on putting plugs on the ends of the cables and plugging them straight into equipment. Normally, you'd terminate all the cables into a patch panel, and then use short leads to connect between the sockets on the panel and whatever the services is to be connected to. That means the fixed cabling is put in and doesn't get moved around - and it's flexible enough to cope with either going direct to the recorder, into a network switch, or via a power injector - you can also route the phone line through it with the right adapters and provided you have put enough cables in (it's hard to have too many cables !)
You can use a small switch dedicated to the cameras (and perhaps IP phones if you are doing PoE) so the cameras traffic won't hit the rest of the network, or in fact you can use just one larger switch as the switch will take care of isolating the traffic.

If you are putting Cat6 cable in, and provided it is competently terminated (many people really are clueless about this - especially sparkies with no data experience) then it will handle gigabit networking with no problem at all. There's no "or run at a bit lower speed" option - it'll either work at gigabit speed, or it won't. Certain cabling faults may make the two ends agree to run at 100Mbps, but more likely it'll just "not work properly" if the cabling is bad.

To expand a bit about what switches do. Simplifying things a bit, a switch is a bit like a post office - packets come in, get sorted, and sent out to the destination. If you have just one switch for the whole network, all the cameras, your PCs, the recorder, and your internet connection ... the camera streams will go through the switch and will get sent only to the recorder. The PCs will not see the traffic at all, and similarly the traffic between (say) PCs and the internet router will not be seen by the cameras or affect the camera streams.
The only time the traffic would share a connection would be if you had (say) a switch upstairs with cameras and PCs connected, and single link from that switch to the one downstairs with other PCs, the router, and the recorder connected. Any traffic between devices upstairs and devices downstairs would then share the one link - but even then, with gigabit you'd probably struggle to saturate it in most homes.
But in general, if traffic isn't forced to share a link like that, then multiple streams can go through a switch and will not influence each other in any way - ie you could shift a full gigabit between ports 1 & 2, while also shifting a full gigabit between ports 3 & 4, and so on. But obviously, if you were (say) trying to pull a big file off a storage device, then the traffic for that would have to share the one network connection between the storage and the switch, so 2 PCs would (while having a full 1G between themselves and the switch) have to share the 1G link between the storage and switch.
This is the case for even the cheapest and most basic network switch - in practical terms. There may be some left with internal limitations, but even those limitations are going to be way beyond what most home users could put through it.

 

[secureiam]

Most modern NVR's will have dedicated BNC for analogue(DVR) and POE for IP, but always check the NVR.
The thing with IP is you don't need a physical connection at the NVR, for the NVR to get the data, aslong as the NVR can see the network the IP camera is on.

When you get above a certain size 16 channels usually start looking at other solutions for your camera connections, as a rough guide.

Think its time for a diagram to explain the above Simon.

The analogy isn't that bad, but try this one.

You need to go the toilet for a number 2 but the only facilities available are for number 1, you can go but it isn't going to be pretty, think you can see where this ends up.

Right equipment designed for the task required.

Maybe round peg square hole would be better?