hilario23

Long time creeper, first time poster. I tried searching but must not have used the proper key words. I know someone has had this problem before. As the picture shows, I have an odd corner awning or soffit in the corner of my house and is the place I have decided to put my camera. There simply isn't a better option. If you look closely at the corner, when fishing the cable through the attic, I drilled through to the exterior but its just not possible to not have exposed wire. (Note that the wall of the side of the house literally is framed within the edge of the garage wall. Even up in the attic, the soffit does not even show light coming through, so I know its not connected, its just part of the overhang and seems fruitless to me, except maybe for the gutters?) I popped out to the exterior and had to redrill right back into this faux soffit. There may be a better way to do this. Guess what? I don't care. The hole is there now, so please refrain from trolling. I am however looking for some helpful advice as to how I can cover this in a manner to hide it a bit or patch it up? I assume some Volcom caulking (weatherproofing) if I trim it close to the wall and touch it up with a bit of paint? Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated. I know I can't be the only one who has done this.

I'm interested in some advice for completing my new home security plans. I close on my newly built home in a month and have budgeted roughly $1500 for a surveillance system. I'm set on hard wiring my home. Aside from the security benefit, I want to have the piece of mind that I can set this up on my own (of course with help from experienced people like you). I've also decided that for the software compatibility and for what the value/quality is presented, I'd like to stick to an Acti Camera setup, and for ease I'd like to stick to a separate, yet accessible NVR. I'm going to set up the ACTi ENR-1100 and I'm looking to power 4-5 camera's to start with. This will include 2 different 2MP+ outdoor, and 2-3 indoor 1MP types. I suppose my first concerns are ensuring all I buy will come compatible for my purposes. I'm a little confused on two beginning things. First, the cabling. I'm looking at cat 5e or cat 6. For my purposes, am I gaining a whole lot going with one or the other? Secondly, I want to ensure I am looking at the right type of switch. Right now I'm looking at the Netgear ProSafe GS510TP 8-port 10/100/1000 POE Smart Switch. There seem to be many different recommendations or ways to go with setting up the switch/network. Lets just assume for ease of this thread that I want to stick with at least 5 ports accessible to POE hook-ups, and I would like to have room to expand (a little, but I don't think I'll expand much so 8 should be fine). Does anyone see any issues with this setup? I have done lots of research online, and I've even spoken to ACTi and a local surveillance store, but no one really has actual set up examples to really give me that "see how this really sets up" feel. My home is a single story ranch and from one corner of the house to the spot where I'm running the NVR (middle closet) I'm looking at 4 of the cameras running about 100 ft TOPS and the 5th camera will run about 150-170 ft. I realize I'm looking at a whole bunch of stuff here. Feel free to chime in with whatever advice you have. I would love to have a practical advisor locally I could just pay to help me along the way, but like most have probably discovered, digital setups are newer in residential homes today.