daednoise

That's one hell of aa camera. Thanks again, I'll start looking into this one.

I was hoping varifocal meant some kind of zoom, but google has corrected me, should have looked up that first. Thanks for the correction. The activity is happening about 40 to 50 feet away from the location I'll be mounting it from. Varifocal is basically a manual zoom at the time of install..the do have cameras with motorized varifocal that allows you to adjust it via the web browser/mobile app...If you want to id the folks at that distance you will need a 12mm lens...If you just want to see that something is going on, the even a 4mm will suffice. You can get a 12mm lens fixed camera, but it will be easier to re purpose the camera later if you get some sort of varifocal or ptz...what is your budget? Yeah I'm definitely needing to be able ID along with activities, so options are preferable if possible. My budget is 500 including a PoE injector.

That camera is varifocal, but is fixed at the time of install, there are cheaper options..how far from the mounting location is this activity occurring? You dont need NVR software to operate any camera with an sd card slot. I was hoping varifocal meant some kind of zoom, but google has corrected me, should have looked up that first. Thanks for the correction. The activity is happening about 40 to 50 feet away from the location I'll be mounting it from.

After running this by my SO, and talking it over, she's convinced we need IR "just in-case". I spent a few hours on a website that had the recommended camera and I came across this one and was wondering if the quality was on-par or if I should find something else: Dahua ESIP-MP3-DMVF2 Also, do I need the NVR software to operate the camera? Or does the on-board software with a sdxc card suffice?

Thank you! I will look into this camera

Hello! After browsing a couple threads on here and not really finding a answer, I thought I would see if I could ask for some help. Usually I'm a research nut, I will spend days/weeks looking up topics to get exactly what I need for whatever the scenario is. Unfortunately I don't have that kind of time, and it's driving me kind of crazy that I can't find what I'm looking for fast enough, because I don't know to search for. The scenario is I live behind rail road tracks and there are kids, mostly, throwing rocks/shooting bb guns at our house/windows and our neighbors house. Yes law enforcement is involved, yes proper procedures have been taken. Their only advice is to catch them in the act, film them, or notify them of their presence ASAP. So! I need a single camera, wired or wireless ( my AC router is <10' away from the post I would put this camera if wireless is an option). My network is setup with gigabit switches and my ISP speed is 1Gb. IR is not a major concern as the acts mostly takes place in the middle of the day. The RR tracks are about 40-50' away from my back door so any kind of zoom feature would be great. The higher the image quality the better of course. I don't have a windows machine to run a NVR from, but I do have a mac mini that I run 24/7 as a music server that I could run NVR software on. I have a class 10 64GB sdxc card available for on-board storage. Motion dectection is optional because trains. I do have a outdoor power outlet available or I could grab a PoE box if needed. I've tried a few options already with horrible or unreliable results ( Samsung Smartcam, raspberry pi setup (my lack of programming skills mostly)). I'm trying out the Nest/Dropcam today to utilize their 30 day trial, until I get something worthwhile/higher-quality setup. Today being a holiday I don't expect immediate results, but any help would be insanely helpful and highly appreciated.