knotquiteawake

Its an 8 channel DVR with 4 cheap cameras. The image quality isn't much better but there was some fuzz/lines cycling through the image before. With the Cat5 those lines went away. It could have also been the connections themselves, they felt cheap and loose. I do plan on buying at least 1 or two more cameras. Right now as you can see there is one on the drive, one on the shed, and one on the front door (I tried the camera facing away from the door but it just doesn't work for me, Once someone gets to the door you can't see anything but the top of their head, can't see how many people there are). I plan to put one on the far left corner of the front of the house with a better angle of the mailbox or maybe the porch, i'll have to test and see what I feel works best, and then a camera covering the back sliding door and back patio.

Running the video via Cat5 seems to have cleared up some fuzz I was getting with the stock el cheapo 60ft cables that came with it. Hurrah for twisted pair interference negation!

also, mounting cameras, running cables, putting in a patch panel/gang box seemed like a great "new homeowner" (its only my first year in a home) project. I am not a very handy person so I've been looking for projects that introduce me to new skills that I'm also interested enough in to take the time to finish. This one combined my security hobby, IT Experience, and built on my DIY skills.

http://www.amazon.com/Innovations-40218-Motion-Activated-Security-Spotlight/dp/B001U2D6OO/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364237283&sr=8-7&keywords=solar+powered+flood $44 Really not that expensive, helpful because I don't plan on running power to the shed for the next year or two (but it IS on the list eventually). Thanks! I at least have no buyer's remorse. What I was looking for is something that would solve the issue I had previously. When I saw some guy walking away from our mailboxes I just wasn't sure if he had actually opened them and looked inside or not. I thought to myself at that moment "I wish I had a camera system so I could just rewind a few minutes and see for sure". Now I do, even if the person was blurry it wouldn't matter because I can link the blurry figure with the actual person. Also with the camera near the front door I will be able to see if anyone takes a package from us. With a camera on the back shed I will be able to see when and get a general description if someone takes my lawn mower. The system seems like a good stepping off point. Should hold me over for at least a year I suspect.

Here is the night time shots. The shed has a small solar powered motion activated LED flood light, and then off to the right is the motion flood lights at the back door. The front drive has the floods like I mentioned before. Without the flood lights the cameras would be totally useless.

Still honestly I am shocked and surprised at how well these cameras work for only spending $129 on the system. Also, I am running Cat5 cables for the cameras. This way if I wanted to switch to IP Cameras I can do so easily (that was a great tip I got from here! I just so happened to have 160feet laying around, that got me just over 1/2 way done! I will have to buy another 100ft or so to get the rest wired). The Cat5 is cream colored like the trim. The main issue will be the black non-weather proof cat5 to BNC/power boxes. I will have to buy some kind of junction box and then paint it the color of the trim I think, because the cables that come with the camera just are not long enough to make it inside before the converter is needed.

nighttime footage won't be terribly useful in a forensic type way but if we hear something go bump in the night it will give us a clear view if somebody is poking around or at least give us a general height/weight clothing description. Daytime is a lot better. Attached is a picture of my sister in law getting out of the car. Not bad, this was on a cloudy day. I spent a lot of time tonight adjusting the flood lights on the driveway to make them help the camera as much as possible. I am surprised at how much clearer what i see on the monitor live is compared to the quality of the recorded video. Is this a limitation of the DVR or the Camera? Like, if I spent the money on a higher TVL camera (600-700 instead of the 450 this one is) would it even make a difference?

I suppose this is part of the curse of using the cheaper cameras.

I can see the mailboxes, and the pathway to the door, but somebody standing at the door I would only see the top of their head and its like you mentioned before with the sunlight washing out faces. Its not ideal but the way I have it pointed at the door I will at least be able to see who and how many people are there. I will probably put a camera on the far right side of the porch, it will either cover the mailboxes or I can point it at the rest of the front porch.

I think the videosecu dome is also 3.6mm and if so I will be left with pretty much the same field of view. This is what i get putting the camera to the left of the door.

Regarding the front door, it just seemed really "in your face" there because the ceiling is so low there, it doesn't show it very well there but the top of the door frame is pretty much the ceiling there. Thats why I wanted to try the other direction first, see how well you can see folks coming, side profile faces and that kind of thing. I'll give it a shot the other direction too.

I am a picture nut, love taking pictures because its so much easier than trying to explain things... so sorry if I'm over picture-ing! Here is pictures of the install so far. Front Door - This one I will run the cables along the edge of the eve there to a soffit vent I have leading to the attic. Driveway - The area right here has no direct access to the attic, I will need to run the cables over about 3-4feet to the right, drill a hole and route them through. Backyard/Shed - There is a soffit vent just to the left here, I think I will be able to get to it, not directly, but via a hook and wire. In the attic there is about 10 feet of blown in insulation between the attic access and that vent.

I am gonna do what I'm gonna do. Thanks. It IS better than having nothing because situational awareness is awesome in of itself anyways. The camera system came in. The setup was pretty easy. Leaning the DVR software took a little bit of doing but its pretty simple now. I mounted 3 cameras where I think I want them with very temporary setups and wire runs. Bonus to me the cameras that it came with were actually CCD and not CMOS like I had thought they were. So the color is not too bad. The recorded video footage is not aweful, just a step above grainy gas station market videos. Daytime is great. Night time the driveway was doing something odd, i'll post a picture sometime this weekend to get help diagnosing that. Here is a picture of how I have them now, minor tweaks and adjustments will be made when I do all the final wire runs. For now they're going to get bumped around anyways when I do the installations.

I was considering buying white and painting to match the trim color. It looks like for right now the best thing to do would be to install what the kit comes from. Placing the cameras with the thought in mind that I will want to put a higher quality camera where its at in the future. The nice cameras appear to cost almost as much as the entire security camera setup I bought. My wife said if I wanted to do this it "should" be under $200. So I bought the $125 DVR/4 CMOS camera kit, and then also a 500gb HD for $54. This only leaves me with about $20 to buy the extra cabling to run the wires. So I think as long as I get 90% of the attic work done now, putting the crappy cameras in place, it should be an easy swap to put a newer camera in (not having to spend much time in the attic in the Texas summer. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for sales and clearance for those nicer cameras. I might order the one dome camera I liked to above. Its cheap but it will at least give me a feel for the size and let me know if thats the direction I want to go. The main reason to use Amazon.com is that returns are really easy with them.

For the front door and possibly the driveway I was considering ditching the CMOS cameras that comes with the system and ordered a couple of these: http://www.amazon.com/VideoSecu-Vision-Outdoor-Security-Vandal-proof/dp/B000TGC03U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1363784439&sr=8-2&keywords=dome+camera I can't seem to find any information on the actual size of these cameras though. Do you think they would be a little less obtrusive? Also I have a motion light on the driveway so IR is maybe not totally necessary. Are there smaller cameras I could put up if they don't use IR? The only place I would really need IR would be the backyard and front porch.