thefarmshow

I had my cheap costco system in my shop cradder and now I am looking for something a little better. Are high definition cameras worth the extra money? Here is what I need -High definition? good idea? -8 IR cameras, be able to expand it to more in the future -remote viewing via smart phone (android too) -Month worth of storage Its going on a large shop on the farm, the lights inside the shop get turned off at night, and I want 4 cameras inside and 4 outside for now, may want more later. I do currently have internet running to the shop via nanostation from the house 100ft away, works good. I would like to be able to recognize faces if possible. I am going to mount the cameras above the 2 walk in doors, out of reach but low enough, and a few more on the roof in the middle. I am not sure what kinda of system to even go with or cameras to use that will last, we get +40C days in the summer, and -40C days in the winter are very common, so the ones on the outside will have to be good in those extremes. Thanks, Mike

Well I have spent a week cleaning grain up here in this elevator, and I am sick of going up and down to check certain things, especially the cleaner! The elevator is 85 ft to the peak, so a fair amount of cable would be needed for the upper part. A Video to watch if you want to help design a system for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWQrh7_LAlg I will break this down simply for everyone. The main floor consists of: The office - main switch board is to control things, but manual controlling of bin gates is still required. The driveway, where trucks unload/load The back/front pit, this is where grain is dumped The annex, comp, and elevator and the main houses where the grain bins are. Annex being the furthest, comp being the second furthest, and elevator being the closest/tallest structure. So I am wanting to run, a 8 or 16 channel system, with that many camera's, must be night vision, as the bins are generally dark. I need to be able to use solid pieces of wire, IE no splices of 50ft chunks, so I need to be able to add my own connectors to the wire for each camera , and buy a big roll of wire. My main plan is to wire the cleaning floor, which is three stories up, with 4 cameras to monitor the drum, the feed level, the dirty grain bin level, and the monitor the flops incase they plug. Then mount another camera right up beside the cleaner to watch the loading spout for semi's. Other cameras up top would be to monitor the two drag units, make sure they are infact turning as we have no indicators below. Another set of cameras to perhaps go inside the distributors, to see if they are infact set to the proper bins, but that would be tricky, as they would have to be inside, and it gets dusty inside, so cleaning of the lenses would be needed. Bin monitoring isnt necessary, though it would be nice, but there is over 50 bins so that is impossible to do. I know this is complicated but if anyone is interested in helping me pick a good 16 channel system that I could install, the video is well worth the watch, though boring to some maybe, I thought itd be helpful. One concern I have though is, everything in the elevator is "explosion proof" because dust can be explosive under severe conditions, though we usually never let it get like that, So I am unsure how we would go about that, usually it just requires an explosion proof plug in, but if I could eliminate any connectors, and solid wire in these cameras I wouldnt have to worry. Thanks for everyone who read this!

Well my father and I bought a farm this year, and upon taking over ownership of the yard, people have been coming/going and grabbing items, which was fine, we told the previous owners that was alright ( still have 5 more years of dealing with them ) But the neighbors have been coming/going in the yard, and things have gone missing, $600 of wire, and recently we had 500 gallons of diesel fuel delivered to locked tanks, and within 2 days someone stole it all, so we put some money towards a cheapy camera system, and a set of deer cameras to catch people. We are planning on moving the diesel tanks indoor of the big shed, to keep them locked in the building, and out of sight, with a dummy tank outside full of varsale, diesel and whatever else will wreck an engine. This farm is 40 miles from where my parents live, I currently do not live on the farm, and we try to go over to it, every other day or so in the winter. There is power, and many buildings on this yard, and its spread out over an 1/8 of a mile. However there is no internet on the farm yard yet, which would be nice to be able to monitor it from here, instead of checking it there. It is on our list though. I am wondering what cameras/ set up should I be purchasing for permanent security? There is 14 buildings on this yard site, and 90,000 bu of grain storage between a half ring of bins, a line of bins, and a grain elevator. There is 3 tv antennas that sit pretty high, and all the important buildings have new locks on them. The small/main shop even has a 4KW generator in it. but power outages aren't common there. I recently bought some Ubiquiti Nanostation 2's for my parents farm, and I am impressed with them! Someday when we get internet there, I would like to have internet to most of the buildings via nanostations anyways, is there a way to do this through them? Like IP cameras? It would be a massive job to install enough cameras to catch people doing anything, but I am sick of getting ripped off. have installed two systems already, one on my parents, and one on my farm for temporary security. Here is an image how the yard is set up. I've been telling my parents, for the money we have lost in fuel stolen/items missing, Camera system would of paid for its self already, but we are still on a budget of around 2-5K, installation our selves too. Im glad i found this forum, great information on here, and hope some of you guys got some ideas of what I should set up. Thank you! P.S I live in Canada if that makes a difference, not ready to jump on the band wagon to buy yet, just shopping around and looking at options.

yes we have a grain elevator in the yard, and also another one in a town, that we would put cameras in someday, but the elevator down the road took the satellite deal with them before we could. The elevator isnt tall enough, for the local farms to use it for signal, plus there is a cell tower just up the road , so i will have to pay for internet sadly, unless i run two dishes from my farm 40 miles away, but i dont think there is a clear line of site for that.

alright, yeah I have been looking into the M5's too for this. It sounds like it would be a good start, I have been looking into dome cameras, but I am confused, do dome cameras move, and pan? or are they stationary inside? It would be nice to have a panning camera, but my main focus is image quality. We have installed motion sensor flood lights on the buildings, so I really dont need IR. I find that IR doesnt work very good anyways. really would like to get 720p video cameras. But once I hook all these IP cameras up, what do I use to record, what is the best suggestion or highest recommended on the forum? Don't really want to build a computer to run it all, as im tired of doing that, and its a bit of hassle. Whatever I get, I want mobile remote viewing/control, and something i can easily play back alarms, or events marked by the cameras. Biggest trouble I find with these home security systems is playback.

okay ill give you guys the run through. I live on a farm, get our internet through a dish. In the house after the modem, i have a linksys router, off that router i have a Ubiquti Nanostation 2 loco that beams internet over to my shop, where another nanostation 2 catches it, and off that it goes into a dlink 615 router. From that it goes into my SMT-190DN samsung secruity system. I have been trying to figure out how to get it so i can watch the cameras anywhere i want. Im not very smart when it comes to networking, i was suprised i got the nanostations figured out. I basically need to know what to type in, to get my system to work, I am completely lost on this. I tried setting up the port forwarding on the Dlink router, but i still cant get anything, and I think the linksys one in the house might be screwing this all up, and maybe even the nanostations too? they act like a router sort of. this is a big mess, but it works good, as i got internet everywhere i need on the farm now. Thank you!

Well for 10 nanostations im looking at around $500, which isn't too bad, probably can get a better deal yet. I like your idea about built in storage, that is definitely a good idea, and start to it! But what kind of image quality can i expect? I don't want crappy 640x480 resolution anymore i want more 720p quality. Just the trouble is, I will also need IR for the dark. Second problem is, if i have a nanostation on one building, and 3 cameras inside the building, how do I connect 3 IP cameras to one nanostation? Router? or some sort of switch, or splitter box thats cheap? More than likely would want 2-4 cameras per building. I dont really want to do thernet over powerline, as there is always large loads, or heavy electrical machinery on the power ( many water pumps, big lights, compressors, etc )

Thats kind of what I thought was giving me trouble, the nice part is though, having wireless around the shop too. This 4o4 8 port switch would be like a router? split the signal from the ubiquiti? I have the secrurity system, plus a computer out there that i am running off the ubiquiti. I am just using the ubiquiti's in bridge mode. Sorry if I am frustrating you guys , I would love to have it work with the hardware I have right now if thats possible?

oh and i use Firefox, as im on a Mac for most of this. donno if thats gonna screw things up, i know some things you need to use internet explorer

how do i disable DHCP on my dlink? im still confused, i almost need a flow chart for directions/steps. so on my linksys, i'd go : applications and gaming>port range forward> then i need to fill in application,start/end, protocol, IP adress, but i can only change the last number on it?, and then enable it. On my Dlink i need to disable DHCP, plug in the secruity system, and then how do i access the system on my computer? I dont know how/where to disable the DHCP in my dlink, like which menu it would be under. On the security system do i want Network access set to DHCP, Static, PPPoE? than what numbers should i plug into it? I changed the HTTP Port to 8080 like you. thanks for the help so far!