Kawboy12R

Impressive adaptation. What's with the jacket and palm trees though?

You need two cameras and more light. It doesn't cover much of your house, although it does a mediocre job of covering the driveway as well as being a "what's going on" cam. Probably does a good job IDing folks that come to the front door. I'd have probably a 6mm (maybe as high as 9mm) camera in front of your vehicle pointing straight out the driveway plus motion activated lights or some kind of dusk-to-dawn at the head of the driveway to help the driveway cam. 6 to 9mm is too narrow a FOV for an overview camera, but it'd give a much closer picture to ID any person or vehicle entering your driveway. Combine that with your current wide angle cam and you've got MUCH better information to work with. If you're stuck with one cam then I'd put more light in the driveway somehow. Standalone IR illuminator or plain old white light, preferably LED.

Tricky for good shots at a distance when you don't know where he'll be parking. It's more expensive, but maybe two or three cameras pointed at the spots he usually parks? Try one of the Samsungs and play with it a bit and learn what it can do. If the max zoom is enough (probably won't be) for all possible parking positions then get more. If not, then you might need to look at cams with a 16mm fixed lens or a box camera in a housing with, say, a 5-50mm lens. You're talking significantly more money when you get into housings, extra lenses, labour, time, etc etc. You might be better off to recommend a PTZ if he wants to spend an extra few minutes every night going into the shop (or possibly remotely from home) and pointing it at his truck wherever it is parked. They're easy to find with lots of zoom and some have good low light and extra powerful IR for distance shots. I've had no use for a PTZ so I won't recommend an analog one, but I know Dahua makes a good 1080P network PTZ (runs from a computer or NVR instead of that analog DVR your friend has) with tons of zoom and IR for under $2000. Might find one for under $1500. You can find some demo videos on here. Someone else on here might be able to recommend a decent analog PTZ in the $500-$700 range??? Seems to me I remember someone talking about a good one on here the other day in that price range.

I'm assuming that your friend has an analog cctv system? If he's got a narrow driveway, position a camera so that it takes a nice closeup of everybody coming in. Zoomed in closer than you think is useful for wide surveillance. The other wideangle cheapo yard cams are good enough to tell what he did, you just want one clear photo of his face to show who did it. That's the money cam. If it's too hard to place one there or it's too far from easy mounting on a building, always park the truck in the same place near the building and mount, say, one of these with a close shot of the truck in it. Try and place it so that a dusk-to-dawn or other security lighting is shining in the same direction the camera is so that it helps the most. You probably won't get plates at night (especially using IR and without special tweaking to capture JUST the plates), but you've got a much better chance of catching a good night-time face shot at distances greater than 10' with the Samsung than any cheap wideangle camera.

I agree with Mindtwist and would mount the cameras lower as well. Most people will walk with their heads pointed down, especially if they're creeping around unfamiliar yards at night in poor lighting. A high mount plus downturned faces gives poor identification. Add a ballcap and/or a hoodie and you've got almost nothing except clothing. They're more susceptible to adjustment/vandalism when down low, but if their job is to give you an identifiable face pic of strangers then they won't be doing their job 90% of the time. Lower mounting will also simultaneously allow better coverage of your property AND across the street if that's what you want.

Never say never, but you shouldn't expect interference from the fan motor unless both it AND something in your system is defective. Most computer equipment is fairly robust when it comes to noise rejection and error handling, plus most electrical equipment and wiring doesn't generate much interference unless it is very close to the computer equipment. Just try and keep your data cables away from AC wiring (particularly if you run them touching and parallel for a while) and the motor itself. Even then it's common for data cables to run by AC wiring all the time without problems. Just look at the back of most computers- network cabling touching the computer's power wire isn't the kiss of death for data integrity.

I'm always interested in wire hiding ideas. Share away!

http://game-camera-review.toptenreviews.com/plotwatcher-pro-review.html

I hear you on the moving plates. My conditions were ideal as far as speed and angle went. I've never had a California plate in my driveway so I can't compare, but ours are white and highly reflective as well.

Don't run your data cables near the AC wires and you shouldn't expect a problem.

The P3384VE he tested isn't the same as the P3364VEs I've got but I'd expect that better results on plates at night are possible with the 84 using different settings.

I wouldn't blame the cat 5 for your problems. You just ended up with cameras with lousy night vision that happen to use cat 5. There are lots of lousy cameras that use other cables.

I can't remember the exact distance and can't find the pics at the moment, but when I had my P3364VE 6mm mounted in the driveway it could easily read a plate against headlights and backlit a bit by a streetlight with two dim porchlights providing the only favourable illumination. It would've been at least 30 feet, possibly 35. Under the same lighting it would read a plate at 43 feet without the car's headlights on. I paced it off for someone else who wanted a reference at 43 feet. I'd provide another shot but my two P3364s are now on door duty. I really should swap them out and put them on my driveways again. They are much better than the little Hik bullets if there's even a little bit of light (there's also an LVE version with IR if needed). I've also seen them for sale new on Amazon for as little as $500 each and commonly for $650.

http://www.axis.com/products/p12_series/ Axis has covert mounts available, too. Low mounted cameras are easily defeated by having an accomplice stand in front of them, but if you don't tell anybody they're there and use/review the footage only when the other cams are foiled? Even most of your security team might remain unaware so they can't spoil the surprise with rumours.

Covert eye level cameras (possibly BELOW eye level looking up a bit) at choke points or cameras with a long lens (lots of "zoom") up a bit higher but aimed far away, possibly at your entrance door, to achieve a shallow angle to help defeat caps and hoodies.

Normally Closed or Normally Open. Depends on the sensor which one you select. If an NC sensor is tripped, open is the alarm condition. If an NO sensor is tripped, a closed circuit is the alarm condition.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833315120 Try a powerline network adapter. Plug one in by your computer and the other one by the dvr. Instant network without new wires. There are exceptions, but they generally always connect to each other as long as the two plugs share the same electrical panel. I don't recommend that brand specifically, it just happens to be on sale at the moment.

I've never drilled a big hole through brick, just wood and steel. I'd start looking for a non-brick area if possible. If not, then 4 smaller holes with a masonry bit (in a hammer drill, natch) spaced out a bit to prevent cracking between the holes would be my next choice. Preferably sized for the cable, not the ends, and crimp new ends on after the cable is through. You might want to spend some effort fishing cable in the house and drill each hole near where the camera will be mounted. Also, make sure to drill your holes slanting upwards into the house and install drip loops if needed to keep water out of the home and camera. Google drip loops and look at the pics to see what I mean and to see good and bad examples, plus areas where they aren't needed. For instance, no need for a drip loop on wire running straight up, but never run a wire slanted down into a camera or a home without one.

How far and through what? All of them going through the same hole? A big spade bit with extension works nicely going through two layers of wood with a big gap in between. Just make sure that you drill a big enough hole the first time. Enlarging them is a LOT harder than drilling them the first time. No place for the pilot point on the fat bit. Depending on how fat your pre-made cables are, I'd say a 1.5" hole wouldn't be too terribly big. Might get by with 1.25". Anything smaller will make fishing the last two cable heads through the hole that's partly filled with cable a nightmare. Seems to me that I drilled a 1 1/8" hole once for 4 cables through 3 layers and it was a major PITA because the last one wouldn't fit.

"Motion detection" examines the video from the camera for changes in the picture. Things like shadows, spiderwebs, moths, blowing trees and leaves, clouds passing over the sun, headlights passing over your property, etc all count as "motion", especially if you set your DVR up to detect motion more than a few feet from the camera (set with a high sensitivity). Lots of false positives. If you use a PIR sensor to detect "real" motion, then false positives are almost completely eliminated, especially if you use a proper outdoor PIR with IR and microwave technology.

What's your budget? What do you expect to see and at what distance? How many cameras do you think you need? What's the layout of the property? My rule of thumb for a residence is one camera per entrance, one per driveway (preferably good enough to catch plates at night), and fill in the outdoor coverage after you see what you get with the cams you've already installed. You might be happy with, say, 4 outdoor cams (although coverage will most likely be spotty) while other people with different layouts and expectations will want more cams outdoors and possibly some indoors as well.

Are you sure about the 20 foot distance part? I can read plates at night against headlights in my driveway with a straight shot at the plates with an axis p3364ve in day mode. 6mm on the varifocal, dim porchlights to help illuminate the plates, and 30 feet is easy. Add lots of angle and 30mph? I seriously doubt it. If you are correct about the 20 feet, I'm guessing that would give a 90 deg shot at the plates? So 50-70ft with the cam angled onto the street at a favourable angle?

I suspect that even if the camera had a proper removable antenna and that you had the proper booster antenna that it still wouldn't work. You aren't time or money ahead by using the antenna you've got and destroying the camera. Wired is always better than wireless. Also, depending on the circumstances, you might be able to use a wired camera of some kind or in some way anyway. For instance, I have two PoE network cameras on my back building feeding into the house over a pair of the network extenders that work over home AC wiring. One in the house, one in the building, add a PoE switch, some cameras, and voila- awesome hidef video in a tricky location with no additional trenching.

Oh, and just about any DVR allows easy remote viewing, as will the Axis cameras I mentioned. They'll even have a function in the web setup utility to click that'll automagically set up port forwarding for easy remote viewing with any computer, tablet, or smartphone. Axis Camera Companion software on a computer will allow you to log into the camera at any time and view the footage saved on the SD card, or you can set up a network share to save it to a hard drive. You can watch the footage live through ACC or a web browser.

http://www.axis.com/products/p12_series/ They can function as their own recorder so you don't need a computer running to view the footage later. Just throw in an SD card, connect it to something that provides PoE, log in with a computer to set up the cam's IP, motion detection, etc, and wait. They're just over $400 each. A single PoE injector to enable you to plug it into, say, an existing router or switch at the office will cost under $30. showing example setups. If you watch the video you'll see some actual footage from the cameras in a number of places. I've had some good (not noname cheap ones) analog pinhole bullets running on high-power analog wireless transmitters and I guarantee that these Axis cams greatly outperform them. If you're set on cheap Chinese analog wireless cameras, they can hook up easily to any analog dvr. You will most likely be getting a signal with lots of static (making motion detection useless) and very poor video quality, but if you're lucky enough to get decent video out of them you will probably be able to identify someone you know who is doing the stealing.