Advice installing a simple IP SmartCam

[MisterBoy]

I've got one of these (a fairly typical WiFi IP camera by ieGeek): https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09GPKKNJM

I want to mount it looking down my drive and while getting it working is easy enough, there's a few factors I'd love your advice on.

1. Firstly, I want it high enough someone can't easily damage/nick it - either maliciously or just kids seeing it within reach and vandalising for fun. It doesn't come with a particularly long 12V cable, are these all standard so I can just buy a longer one?
2. The cable route would be partially accessible from the drive. I know it's impossible - and pointless to fully protect it but a 12V lead can be cut with scissors or just given a tug. What extent is reasonable as a compromise... maybe just running it through a conduit screwed to the wall?
3. It has a mains plug and I have an external socket on the inside of the wall up the drive. It's not obvious from the drive but if you hopped a 5' wall you could just unplug it. To what extent would you make an effort to protect this? You would have to hop the wall to find this out in the first place, it's not really obvious. I can't think of an easy way to hardwire a 12V supply to the back of the socket off the top of my head, which would be ideal but a simple plug seems a bit too easy.

If someone did come to mess with it we would get a camera notification so maybe no precautions beyond casual vandalism make sense at all - just interested what others have done in similar situations. We don't get passing traffic up the drive, as far as we know just the odd dog-walker looking for a shortcut or nosy kids,but it's quite dark and secluded so a deterrent and the additional peace of mind is nice.

Thanks

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have one mounted in my front bedroom window, at the top of the window, basically upside down, looking down my drive. Ispy can invert the image. It's an X,Y, Z remotely steerable one, around 10 years old so could do with upgrading to a more modern HD one. If the are mounted behind glass, the IR LED's do need to be turned off, or all you see in the dark is the reflection from the LED's - so the camera needs to be suitable for low light levels.

You could snip the middle of the 12v power cable and add a piece in of suitable length, soldering the joints and using heatshrink to protect insulate. Some cameras can have their power fed via the CAT6 LAN cable, mine feeds into to PC software called Ispy, which is quite clever - you can set up particular zones of the frame for it to watch and record any movement it sees in the selected zones and it is free for private use.

I don't use mine for security, rather I use it when I am expecting a delivery, or to quickly see what is happening outside, if the dog barks - rather than getting up to peer out. Some round here complain of itinerants wondering into their properties, to see what they can pick up - not something I have experienced, probably the warning notices of dogs being loose and closed gates is effective