Installing a CCTV system at Home - Advice required please

[jaspal]

Hi,

I am after a good reliable CCTV System, which will last me around 5years minimum before I consider upgrading anything.

I am looking for the following things:

Reliability and Quality Images.

That's it.

I don't have a budget as such, however I don't want a £300 maplin jobby (no disrespect to them). I have been saving up and I want to have quality eyes on my house when I'm not around.

Some questions I have.

Front Garden:

How high should I put the cameras and also what type of lens would be best for covering the front garden, which is 15 feet wide and from the front of the house it is around 13 feet in length. My car is on the road, so it should cover the whole garden and my car too, at least.

I was thinking of placing the camera inside the storm porch up against a corner, its around 12 feet tall. If I place it outside, I guess I could go up to 16ft to 18ft.

Back Garden:
Back garden is 15 feet wide and 45 feet in length with a shed at the back. I am guessing I would need two cameras there and a third one for the passage which leads from the rear reception door to the garden. These cameras will be placed higher as I have an extension in place.


Could somebody please advise me on what type, brand, model etc of camera I should be looking for and maybe explain some of the jargon??

What type of Recorder would I require, I am guessing at least 8 Cameras as minimum.

Can I get a card to put into a PC (I have some Core2Duos and Dual Core Pentium Dell PCs at home)???

Cabling, I don't like drilling into the walls of my house, especially external walls. Can somebody recommend the best type of cabling and what type of connectors, etc I would require.

What would be a good website to order the equipment from???

I want to start with 1 Camera first, that's the front one. Then the rest (we are having some work done, once that's finished, I will install the rest).

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

Budget, would £1000 be enough as minimum.

Put it this way, if I say move homes in the future, I want to be able to take the system with me, so I am willing to spend money on them.

After Sales Support is a must, so buying from a reputable dealer and buying into a good brand is important to me.

Thanks and Merry Christmas

ps.I would like input from the pro installers too.

 

[beaufontboy]

I have recently bought a 1TB 4 channel DV recorder for 3 cameras, a lot of the quality has to do with the lens and chip in the camera, there is some right crap out there, I went for vari focal ones to give me more options for placement, You can adjust the frame record rate to give you longer recording times, the recorder should be record in D1 on all channels, not CIF to give you good quality, generally PCs are not recommended for recording as they do not contain hard drives which are designed to run for 24 hours. Night vision is something also to consider, I prob spent around £800 and am happy with the quality, Cheers

 

[ibruceuk]

....generally PCs are not recommended for recording as they do not contain hard drives which are designed to run for 24 hours.

Generally speaking a hard drive is a hard drive. Yes, server biased SCSI drives are manufactured to a higher standard but in CCTV DVR's are standard SATA hard drives. All a CCTV DVR is inside is a PC running a custom operating system/software usually a flavour of Linux as the base OS.

Hard drives age prematurely by constantly spinning up and down. Being in continuous use extends their life in most circumstances.

 

[jaspal]

I have recently bought a 1TB 4 channel DV recorder for 3 cameras, a lot of the quality has to do with the lens and chip in the camera, there is some right crap out there, I went for vari focal ones to give me more options for placement, You can adjust the frame record rate to give you longer recording times, the recorder should be record in D1 on all channels, not CIF to give you good quality, generally PCs are not recommended for recording as they do not contain hard drives which are designed to run for 24 hours. Night vision is something also to consider, I prob spent around £800 and am happy with the quality, Cheers

How did you do the cabling? Did you use the normal cable or a cat5? (I think that's right isn't it???)

Have you got some image shots of day and night shots? (If you don't want to share them publically, PM me and maybe you can email them)

How high are your cameras and what types of lens do you have on them, i.e. what focal length? 3mm 5mm, etc??

 

[E999]

SRD-470 for 4CH
SRD-870 for 8CH

Camera - SCO-2080R - samsung's best selling bullet OR the dome equivalent is the SCV-2081

 

[The Baker]

For ease of installation pick a PoE Camera, these receive their power via the Cat5e cable via an injector.

The Cat5e cable goes to the camera from your router via an injector, which I have mounted near the router.

I am using the Panasonic WV-SW175e IOP camera with the manufacturers recommended injector.

What I like about these is that Operating System is contained within the camera which takes a SD card (up to 32Gb)

You will need Microsoft Explorer to gain access to the camera for setting up.

I dont know much about this subject as I am new to Security cameras.

Tim

http://www.networkwebcams.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=1378

Networkwebcams have a useful forum which I have found helpful.

 

[The Baker]

I found this link usful

Tim

http://www.networkwebcams.com/ip-camera-learning-center/2010/02/16/howto-ip-camera-remote-access/