SyconsciousAu

FPS is frames per second. It only defines minimum shutter speed. Shutter speed is also known as exposure in some cameras ISO is Gain in CCTV. Increased gain is like increasing ISO.

For $15 I'd buy one and see, but I see no reason why it wouldn't.

That's a solid budget that gives you a lot of options. What do you want to achieve? Just overview? ID quality Coverage? If your intention is anything other than overview get any sort of 2mp fixed focus camera out of your head immediately. Your budget extends to some of the excellent PTZ offerings from Dahua and Hikvision. This 2mp Darkfighter PTZfor example which is available in the US for sub US$2K. Here it is at the Hikvision Website Something like that can be set up to track and zoom in on activity in the street. All the 4K offerings I have seen so far have very poor low light performance which might go against you if he is a pain mostly at night. If you want something fixed focus you can look at something from the Hikvision 6MP range. The 5mp Bosch Dinion 8000 Starlight is also in your budget. 5MP will give you ID resolution (352ppm) across an area 7.3m (24ft) wide and recognition across double that.

Get a 1500 VA UPS and hook your NVR up to that. It should power it through fairly lengthy power outages. It will also protect it from surges.

You need a dual battery system. You can run your cameras and NVR off the second battery but still charge it all from the vehicle's charging system. You can buy them on ebay. If you get a 40Ah Deep Cycle Battery you can run it for two hours and still only be at 20% depth of discharge. That is good for battery life.

Do you intend to use this as a reversing camera? If so why not buy a reversing camera? They are circa US$15 Wire the power into your reversing lights so the camera comes on when you select reverse.

That's because you cant send email if you have no network. The setting I think you are looking for is send email on video loss in the NVR which will send an email if the feed from a camera stops. Before you can use this option you will need to have set up the email server details in the email menu.

Port forwarding happens in the router. If you are using the router provided by the ISP it may be locked down to prevent access to certain features including port forwarding. A third party router may get around that issue. Unless of course your ISP is blocking all of your ports.

I had the same problem with my 1/2.5" sensors when I bought them. 1/2.5" lenses were around but cost a bomb at the time. I ended up going for 1/2" with no issues. Use 1/2" but make sure it will fit inside the case. If you use the 1/3" on a 1/2.7" sensor you will get shadowing at the corners of the image. Remember you will get more zoom with the bigger lens on the smaller sensor.

A good DIY system will save you thousands of dollars. A bad one will waste time and money. If you have the know how, or are at least willing to acquire it, you can build a very professional system. There is also the issue of budget. What sort of cash does your old man have available?

That 500ppm Identification standard seems to be something Axis has come up with and something generally accepted in the UK. Australian Standard 4806 puts identification at 352ppm though Australian and New Zealand Police guidelines recommend 421ppm (120%) You are looking at out laying some serious dollars for those cameras too. Have you considered two of Hikvision's less expensive 3mp offerings instead? Something like the 2032, 2132, 2332, or 2732? Advantages: You could mount them on opposite corners of the building facing each other so one camera covers the other. Unless he walks backwards an offender in the back yard will always have his face captured by one or the other. You can still cover the whole backyard without needing the really wide 2.8 lens which will probably cause spherical aberration and IR bleed in a dome. The IR on each camera will support the other. You have at least $200US you can spend on something else like an IR illuminator for night time shots. You could even put in 4 cameras with 2 x 6mm and 2 x 12mm lenses in for the price of one of the smart cameras and cover the entire back yard at more than 420ppm. Disadvantages Not all the "smart" features IR on the cheaper camera's is not quite as good as the more expensive ones No SD Card slot in some of those cheaper models. More recording storage for 4 cameras if you go that route.

Ah yes the old light fixture disguised as CCTV camera disguised as a light fixture trick.

Your story is unfortunately very common. Too many people install poor CCTV systems, or maintain them badly, and when they need them, they find out they are useless.

I've never heard of Cat 5 or 6 cable failing due to age. I think the "durability" of coax is a fairly hollow argument. http://www.onvif.org/About/MemberList.aspx That's a little more than a lobby group. I don't know where you get this idea. Sure the free software will only run the manufacturers cameras but most stand alone NVR will run third party cameras as will paid PC based software.

High definition analogue is great where upgrades are being made to older systems with coax already in place. The big things that I think goes against such systems in a new install is the cost of good coax cable, the lack of a common standard like ONVIF and no ability to do POE. People point out the lack of delay in these systems as a plus, but even a delay of a full second in an IP system makes no real difference to the practical application of the system in most cases.

Now there's your problem.

They aren't exactly discreet are they? Also Max where do you source your longer screws for mounting the 25mm lens?

Australian and NZ Police CCTV Design Advice. Read that thread. By "range" I think you might be talking about being able to identify someone at that distance. http://cctvdesign.com.au/tutorials/cameras-choosing-resolution/surveillance-camera-comparison-parameters Have a read of that for a quick primer on pixel densities required for various applications. http://www.theiatech.com/calculator.php You can then use a lens calculator like that to give you a rough idea of the coverage and pixels per meter you will get for any given lens/camera combination. On the left hand side of the page you will find a link to a CCTV design tool. There is a free trial period. Additional cameras is as easy as buying a poe router or nvr with enough ports. Why do you want internal cameras though? With the possible exception of a very narrow field of view camera covering an external door because it is a natural choke point, I recommend against them in homes. IP cameras are potentially viewable by people on the internet. Do you want the risk a stranger will be watching you and your family? From a security /evidence point of view there is nothing to be gained from having camera's inside your house. They are more likely to compromise your security. Assuming you have enough pixels per meter for identification, most external cameras with IR will do this on a static face. Night time video has challenges though. A camera will compensate for low light by using a longer exposure, or increasing gain (known as ISO in still photography). A longer exposure means moving objects, like the face of a person walking/running through the scene, become blurred. Higher shutter speeds reduce or eliminate motion blur but they make the scene dark so you need external lighting, be that white light or IR. Higher gain increases the graininess of the image. I'm assuming you mean to an on board SD card. There are plenty of camera's with this feature but it does prevent you using some excellent cameras like the Hikvision DS-2CD2332F turret cams which have excellent IR. Do you need this feature because you are not going to run an NVR and will be relying on the camera's on board storage for recording, or do you just want it as a backup? Again a fairly common feature of most cameras / NVR systems. This requirement restricts you to domes and rules out a number of excellent cameras. Domes also have issues with IR bleed at night. You can see which way my cameras point, but it is impossible to know their field of view, and even if you did it wouldn't matter anyway because I have them set up to overlap. I recommend not attempting to compensate for lack of genuine coverage with a perception that the camera could be pointing anywhere. Again pretty standard. Aye, there's the rub. We pay Australia Tax down under. You can get cameras locally but expect to pay a 150%(or more) premium on them. I get mine out of China through Aliexpress and have never had an issue. Delivery in less than a week. You roll the dice though because whilst there is warranty, to send it back almost costs more than the camera. Physically, the biggest pain in the arse with installing IP cameras is pulling the cable. Apart from that it is almost plug and play. What I do recommend is sitting down and working out exactly what you want to achieve, and design the set up with the end goal firmly in mind, otherwise you just end up re-doing things over and over, and wasting money in the process. Anything is achievable with enough money but if you have a hard budget limit you will probably need to change your requirements to fit in with that. As you can see some of the forum members are fairly snarky and unforgiving, and on a forum where so many cheapskates want free advice that is worth thousands of dollars, I understand that to a degree. We Aussies have to stick together though.

Does your analogue camera have Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and is it switched on? Sometimes the camera will select aperture and shutter settings based on an area of high light in the frame which makes most of your image dark. WDR should get around this if your camera has it. What lens are you using? Claimed lux values on some cameras are often based on insanely large aperture lenses with really slow shutter speed. Remember each F stop you go up halves the amount of light getting through. If you camera minimum illumination is based on an F1.0 lens and you have an F2 Lens, you already 2 F stops down the way and only getting 1/4 of the light through. What illuminator are you using? Testing on a bench is fine but in real world applications illumination drops off according to the inverse square law. A good rule of thumb is that every time distance doubles your illumination drops of to 1/4 of what it was. So at 2m from your camera your illumination will be 1/4 of what it was at 1m, at 4m it will be 1/16, at 8m it will be 1/64 etc etc. Not all camera's are sensitive to 940nm IR. You also wont see as far with 940nm as you will with 850nm. Also for cheaper illuminators a good rule of thumb is to convert the claimed illumination distance in metres to feet and you will be in the ballpark of the actual real world performance.

Meow.

And I can almost guarantee that your camera's are useless for evidence. The evidentiary value of CCTV comes back to there being enough pixels per metre in the shot to identify the offender, and the quality of the video (excess compression reduces the evidentiary value). If you have two cameras covering your whole house you will, at best, have observation quality CCTV. Entirely useless as evidence.

http://www.stardot.com/bandwidth-and-storage-calculator Give that one a go.

http://www.amazon.com/Hikvision-Megapixel-2-8-12mm-bullet-DS-2CD2632F-I/dp/B00GFFPFEU

There are several calculators on the web but how much space 30 days of video depends on frame rate, bit rate, continuous or motion, if motion amount of motion, number of cams etc. Hard drives are relatively cheap. Err on the side of caution and get more space rather than less. If by chance you are from the UK and have to deal with their odd data protection act just use the NVR settings to delete after 30 days.

That's a nice house you have there. The design creates excellent choke points you can put ID quality cameras on. The two side gates, front door and carport all look like good places for an ID resolution cam. The garages look like a place where you have a significant investment in tools and cars so I would be considering a camera with the appropriate lens on it pointing towards the side gate where you have the existing wiring and a second camera on the side of the front single garage that gives you id quality of any offender coming over the fence or from the back yard. An overview camera could be mounted in the corner. If you did want an inside camera a single dome covering the foyer and that window off the foyer may not be a bad idea. It will catch anyone coming through that window and that door, and give you a lower angle shot on people coming through the front door. That window looks fairly vulnerable and probably couldn't be covered by a camera up the AC side of the house. Maybe some overview cameras on the front and rear yard? If you have a front fence with a choke point in it maybe another camera there? If you are really keen a numberplate capture camera covering the road? Don't take that diagram as definitive, it is just to get you thinking. Everything will depend on your specific needs, budget, skill set, and of course the assent of the wife. You can use lens calculators to put you in the ballpark with your pixels per meter http://www.theiatech.com/calculator.php If you are building your own have you considered a rackmount solution? Having everything bolted into a rackmount cupboard which is locked and bolted to the wall makes it harder to steal, especially if it is in a discreet location. On top of that dumb crooks will probably steal the switch thinking it is the NVR. In regards to not wanting to run wires you still need to run power to a wifi cam. If you have to run power run data as well. If you were going to power them locally then consider a Ethernet over Power Adaptor to link them back to the NVR, or get something like the Hikvision 2CD-2132F-IWS which has a built in SD card it records to so you are not completely reliant on the wireless link back to the NVR. From all the cars in the driveway you look fairly handy on the tools so I don't think there is anything standing in your way of a very professional and comprehensive DIY setup, except the wife of course, but with that many cars and tools she is clearly an understanding woman, and definitely a keeper. Have a good read of the forums. Google the questions you might have. Its a learning experience. http://cctvdesign.com.au/tutorials/cameras-choosing-resolution/surveillance-camera-comparison-parameters/ http://www.networkwebcams.co.uk/blog/2013/10/22/useful-examples-of-pixel-density-network-cameras/ Plenty of web tutorials out there.