Kawboy12R

What's the budget per camera? Do you want IR in the home for use in darkness? The Axis 1214 family would be good in a home because they're easy to hide but don't work well in low light and can't see IR. They're under $500 each and would work fine during a break-in with lighting (motion or by hoping the burglar would turn something on) in each room. I might buy a sample and test it with your actual lighting before buying a bunch and finding out that the nightlights you hoped would work actually aren't bright enough. ACTi is coming out with some inexpensive indoor domes with IR. I wouldn't consider mounting a bunch of them inside my home though. Maybe one per floor with a decent shot of the front door and hall/family room. I'd NEVER mount a camera with 24/7/365 recording in my bedroom and none at all in a bathroom. Think about it. Then think some more. Then think about you visiting someone else's bathroom and seeing a camera in there and what you'd do. If you aren't a bachelor with no friends now you certainly will be shortly after mounting a camera in your bathroom.

For cam 1 (yellow dot), it is in a good spot for overview but in a bad spot for ID. I'd sacrifice some of the bird's eye view and place it directly over the door to the right of it (next to the tree) at a height of 7-8' (not on the second floor soffit). Most folks will naturally want to come through the door so that's probably the best spot to catch a face up fairly close. You won't get great coverage of the garage doors from there but the spot on your diagram isn't a great spot either. Not sure on the vertical layout of the garage, but I'm guessing the view from the yellow dot to well in front of the garage doors is mostly to completely blocked. Another cheaper indoor cam inside the garage looking out might be better than one on top of the garage doors looking out. That way you'll have coverage of folks touching your cars and coming in the house from the inside man-door. Cam 2 (blue dot) is pretty good but I might move it to the corner to the right of it. It'll get a good view of anybody approaching it and give a better facial view of anybody going in the door closest to the top (north side) although not as good a view of someone coming in the door closest to the blue dot. Compromise there. Two doors should probably have two cameras. Red dot (cam 3) is pretty good if the approach to the door it covers is from the top of the diagram but not so good if people are likely to approach from the east (assuming N is the top). Hoodies are common and not illegal to wear when walking the streets. My entrance cam is 5 feet to one side of my front door in a corner looking out at 45 degrees and most of the time I couldn't easily identify my paperboy because he's always wearing a hoodie and ballcap. Over a door, mounted low, and looking straight out gives the best chance of a good face shot but still lets you use a wide angle cam for the big picture. I wouldn't mount any of them on second storey soffit. Too high gives a bad angle for faces even without hoodies and ballcaps and is an extra 10 feet away for pixel count (especially important on wide angle cameras) anyways. The down angle you'd require for coverage close to the house would negate the height advantage for distance overview. Down low and straight out and you can see what people are doing a long way off even if you can't recognize them.

For a covert cam I'd say the quality is very good. I also like the idea of having an overhead cam looking directly down at the cash. I might end up doing something similar at work.

what size sensor are you calculating for, aps-c?? on a 1/3" sensor (which i believe that axis uses), 6mm will give you 43 degrees horizontal; 12mm gives you 22 degrees. I didn't calculate the field of view, I read it from the Axis spec sheet and quoted both cameras at their widest. I figured that when being used to cover a wide area like an entire backyard then he wouldn't be interested in max "zoom" (and therefore narrowest field of view) of either of them, so the main difference between the two for his use would be their max usable field of view. They'd be essentially the same in their overlapping range, but the 12mm model would be the one to have if he ever wanted to change it in the future from back yard duty to, say, trying to catch a face at a distant gate or something. The field of view of even the 6mm model is pretty narrow at max zoom though so, depending on mounting position, he's most likely to be using a single backyard cam for a very broad coverage. Even mounted in a corner, the 82 deg min FOV of the 12 won't cover the whole area.

The 6mm will do a 105 degree FOV. The 12mm will do 82 degrees at its widest. I'd go out back with a 90 degree right angled object (carpentry square, or book, or whatever you've got) and sight down the 90 degree angle and pretend whatever is inside it is my FOV for the camera. If you think you need a bit more than 90 then go with the 6mm. If you've got everything more than covered with the 90 degrees then consider the 12 if you want really narrow field of view but more detail at the back of the yard but give up most of the house coverage. I suspect that with one camera covering your whole backyard then you'll want the 6 though. For more detail at a distance with the wide field of view then you'd need more megapixels than any of the 3364s will give you rather than the higher "zoom" of the 12.

I know the mini bullets don't do external triggers. Haven't really looked into the other ones yet. Deer would trigger mine a hundred times more often than people. At home at least. Not as many deer at work. My Axis cams do, but you'd probably be lucky to find one for $700.

Victim of success? Dahfooey fills a niche. Just up the price ladder from absolute crap and edging into the territory of very good performance. Warts and all, for mainstreaming it's a good mix, IMHO. Beats the heck out of true bargain basement no-name Chinese crap. Of course if WE were running Dahfooey we'd fix all of the flaws we see in their support and quality control, right? Beat the line workers a bit harder for mistakes, make 'em polish the lenses a bit more, and hire smarter coders for the firmware. Just hire the Avigilon guys away and get 'em to work for Dahfooey for a while because Avigilon stuff has no flaws. Haven't got a clue about another truly professional site because they wouldn't let me in if they were smart. I'm just an amateur CCTVer. Jack of many trades, master of few (one?).

Well, some of the most interesting stories come from 1-posters. They say no good deed goes unpunished but I've either had pretty good luck or something's saving up the punishment.

You can run a LOT of VGA cameras (especially h.264 ones) over one cat 5e cable. You should have no practical limitation unless you go to town "Truman Show"-style. The cams would use bandwidth whenever they're transmitting data, so basically whenever they're being viewed or recorded. Even if you managed to saturate a 100mbps switch, going with a gigabit connection over the cat 5e would solve that.

Why not put a zoom doubler on the 35X lens? I haven't done this with a cctv camera but someone on here may have tried it. If not, a good reseller or the manufacturer might have some experience and recommendations. A friend of mine put one on the telephoto lens of his DSLR and he gets absolutely fantastic closeups.

I wouldn't get a cheap NVR and then expect it to work properly with cameras other than those supplied. NVR and camera matching is very important if you want motion detection and probably other features to work. The cams on that Zmodo are pretty low end and getting any other brand to work properly with that NVR will be a crapshoot at best. If you're handy with computers and networking then you might want to consider using a computer with NVR software to handle the cameras. I did a lot of reading up on IP cameras and, combined with what I've learned from using a bunch of different analog cams at home and at work, I've decided that the best flexibility for mixing and matching different camera brands seems to be with a computer as NVR. Staying with one camera brand is probably best (especially if you go the standalone NVR route) but I like to fiddle and mix and match. I'm phasing out my analog system and started with a pair of Axis P3364-VE cameras. Those weren't cheap but I saw a good deal on them so I jumped on it. I'm planning on adding some Dahuas when their new models become available. They're coming out with 2MP mini-bullets in the same form factor as these 1.3MP mini-bullets that'll hopefully clear up the white balance issues that the 1.3s have, as well as some interesting (to me) 2MP day/night domes without IR. I've got bug and fog issues at night and it's sometimes impossible to set motion detection to a useful level without having cams record all night. Depends on the cam and the software/DVR/NVR, but mounting external IR illuminators with IR-free cams that can still see IR eliminates the problem. The 1.3MP and 2MP minibullets should be in your price range if you order from EBay or China. The new 2MP minibullets should be close to the same price as the current 1.3s and they're $135ish USD from China or $170ish on EBay. Throw in a $70ish PoE switch, an old but not ancient desktop computer with a honkin big HD, and some software ($0 for the Linux ZoneMinder, $50 for BlueIris, and up) and you're pretty much set.

You asked questions and scared him off. The nerve of you...

Push the notification and a link to the live stream rather than waiting for the event to end and emailing 5-10 minutes (or whatever) at a time?

Continuing on with the Python theme, are there some who call you... Tim?

A man with lots to eat has many problems. A man with nothing to eat has only one problem.

You might possibly consider applying a Holy Hand Grenade to an appropriate target for stress relief?

I know you want to catch the jerk but if putting up one or two visible cameras makes him go away forever, isn't that the best option? If it doesn't, then having outdoor cams gives you the best shot at getting good coverage at that angle. If it were me, I'd mix things up a bit with a few vandal domes outside. Bullet cams are easy to bang and point away from their target. 3.6mm or wider angle lenses on a cam on each side of the corner to catch all of the action, plus at the very least an 8mm or 12mm lens focused on your car. More if it isn't right next to your building. You won't get a clear ID shot with a 3.6mm lens at 50 feet with analog, and especially not at an angle. You'll be frustrated because YOU can tell that it's him, but it'll be vague enough that a jury won't know for sure. Hopefully you have a designated spot so you don't have to keep moving and refocusing the camera. For the extra money, I like the hybrid DVR and the 1080P IP camera. I've shot through windows with a 5-50mm lens on one of my cameras before. Very flexible zoom options. Anyway, if you've got a few wide angle cameras recording what is going on, all you need is ONE good face shot from another camera to identify him because it's tied by timestamp to the other cameras. If you have a friendly landlord or downstairs neighbour, maybe they'd let you mount a camera shooting out a first floor window to get a good angle for a face shot? I know that it'll be hard to get a good clear shot at an acute angle through the glass, especially if he doesn't look up at the camera when he's closest. I'm not sure what to recommend for improving the angle shot through the glass except clean the glass and try to reduce the light and glare from inside the apartment. Shroud over the camera and extending to the glass possibly? Maybe moving the cams away from the window a bit would help? It's also help keep him from noticing them right away. It is still reasonably easy to see a cam in a window from 40' away though. Good luck.

and good night?

I don't remember Oregon Trail but I did text adventures on Vic 20 cartridges.

My 3364-VEs took about a month. Price was nice but shipping was slow.

Is one wending itself your way via airborne junk as we speak?

The odds are better that he gets a good camera when going with something more well-known, but the price of experience may be $169.80 plus shipping. How bad can it be? Plus, I'm sure we'd love to see screenshots.

Whoops, my bad. Saw the "floppy disk ****** connector" part but my brain skipped "power" for some reason. I was thinking that you might've got shipped something that used the old IDE HDs and were trying to hook up a serial ATA HD. Pic???

I'd split the difference between Groucho and Max. The 2100 bullet is much better in the dark than the CNB VCM-24VF though. No lighting on the CNB but the 2100 bullet has IR. If you want external lighting (always a good thing if you have the room and budget), the CNB works nicely with IR illuminators but the Dahua minidome needs white light, which means if you want motion recording you need lots of always-on white light. Dahua still doesn't have a cheap product that works nicely at night without always-on built-in IR. That's not my favourite solution for outdoor motion detection. They're getting closer with this one that was just released but I haven't seen any sample video yet- http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/ipc-hdb32003202-219.html

Looks like something on this search? https://www.google.ca/search?q=ide+hdd+cable&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=u&rlz=1C1GGGE_enCA502CA502&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=AvnyUP7NDsWw2gWKj4CYDQ&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1600&bih=775