THX1138

Very, very close to Princess Road. There have been two murders (one drug-related) within about 200 m of this house in the past few years. It's never been a nice area but it'd definitely gotten worse. Mum had someone banging on the door asking for "their stuff" a few months ago, tires let down a few times in the past couple of years and now the wing mirrors broken off both sides. Mum hardly uses the car so I doubt they know it belongs to this house. If mum didn't work so close by, I'd probably suggest moving, after living here, like, 30 years.

I'm based in the a-hole of the UK, colourful Ellesmere Port, near Liverpool and my neighbours don't have overt security cameras; I've studied Google Street-View. There are contraband exchanges happening right outside our house and we live among addicts; we definitely don't want their attention. We don't care that much unless anyone damages our (or a neighbour's) property. I'm going to install Ubuntu on my old laptop and use software called Zoneminder. I will probably use an external HDD. I'll use a network switch to let me connect two or three of these IP cameras to my laptop. I already have everything I need except the cameras and I'm pretty confident of my ability to set them up myself. The budget was £100 but I'm probably going to exceed that a bit to get slightly better camera sensors for low light.

I would like to install a couple of cameras to watch my mother's car on the street since it's been vandalised a couple of times. I need to install the cameras covertly or they will probably be targeted so I will try to hide enclosures underneath our old satelite dish. I also need to minimise the cost. Could anyone advise me whether these cameras and lenses will be any good? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/8-0MP-4K-2K-H-265-IPC-1-1-8-OmniVision-OS08A10-CMOS-sensor-Hi3516A-V200/32887690429.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.72.7e0b7f30jTxQdC&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5_10065_10068_10130_10547_319_317_10548_10696_10192_10190_453_10084_454_10083_10618_10307_10820_10301_10821_10303_537_536_10902_10059_10884_10887_321_322_10103,searchweb201603_16,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=04c0a9dc-d6d5-4279-8878-293066e7e86e-11&algo_pvid=04c0a9dc-d6d5-4279-8878-293066e7e86e The largest sensor size I've found so far is 1/1.8" though I suppose larger ones exist if I keep looking. The area outside my mum's house is not well lit. I could install some 12 W IR illuminators which would hopefully just look like broken floodlights. Is that lens okay? Note it says 12MP as part of the lens specification; does MP mean something other than megapixel here? The sensor module is 83H80NV and is available on AliExpress with a few different lenses attached. If anyone thinks a different camera module would be better, I'd appreciate suggestions. I don't want to install anything that moves or anything that makes it obvious there is a camera. I live among some "colourful" characters and we don't want the house to be targeted. Thanks!