Recommendation for vacation home monitoring system

[ksprul 0]

Hi,

I’m looking for some guidance on a security system. Having read a bunch of posts and after making some initial decisions I wanted to validate my thinking before I purchase. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to brain dump everything so I could get the best advice.

 

Problem:

The system is for a single family vacation home on about 2 acres. I want to start small with two cameras initially and then build to a total of 8. Primary need is as a tool to check the state of the house remotely should the alarm go off. The house has a residential cable modem which gets aprox 6mb down and about 500kb up, port 80 appears to be blocked inbound, and the IP address is assigned from a DHCP pool.

 

About me:

I have about 20 years development and engineering experience in embedded products and finance applications and as a strange hobby I’m a Creston certified programmer…..basically I’m comfortable with a technical installations.

 

Proposed Approach:

After looking at complete systems from retail outlets nothing really grabbed my attention. Each system appeared flawed in some way and all appeared to be built to a minimum price/specification with limited expansion options. I also looked at some windows host based solutions but the thought of running a windows machine in a remote location without significant supporting infrastructure also worried me. Based on this I decided on the following approach.

 

1) Hybrid 8 channel DVR – AverMedia EH5108H?

2) Two ip camera’s - Acti ACM-3511 megapixel IP cameras?

3) Net Gear FS726TP POE switch ?

 

Questions

1) What are your thoughts on my choice of equipment? Good, bad, indifferent? I’m looking for solid, well engineered, reliable, professional equipment. Not the Cadillac, not the Hyundai, something in the middle.

2) Does anyone have experience managing a EH5108H remotely over the type of bandwidth I have? i dont need hidef but i do want to be able to see what's going on

3) I would like to separate this network from the existing home network. Does the EH5108H provide DHCP, DNS services to the cameras? I would like to limit the complexity of the system as much as possible?

4) Does anyone have real world experience with the ACM-3511 cameras? What’s the night vision and general picture quality like?

5) If i've made good choices, where should I buy this equipment from if I want a good price and quick delivery?

 

Thanks very much in advance for your advise

Karl

[bpzle 0]

I've installed both the products you've mentioned. The 3511 is OK.... You do realize this is an indoor only camera, correct?

[Soundy 1]

I doubt you'll find a DVR/NVR that has a DHCP server, short of using a PC-based system and adding one yourself.

 

You're running this behind a broadband router, no? So you could just let the router's DHCP server provide addressing... or just hard-code IP addresses for the cameras and DVR.

 

Many routers provide support for DDNS services; if yours doesn't, most DVRs do as well (although some are limited to their own hosted DDNS), so that takes care of your dynamic-IP problem (unless your ISP forces regular short-term IP changes, which I have seen before).

 

If you're not already running a broadband router, BTW, I'd strongly suggest getting even a cheap one - it adds a lot of physical network security, even if you're just running a single system behind it.

 

Not sure what all the "significant supporting infrastructure" is you'd need for a PC-based DVR vs. a standalone... power cord, network cable... good to go. Either one will need a monitor connected to set it up locally; the only additional stuff the PC would need is a keyboard and mouse. Look at it the other way: with a PC (particularly a Windows system), you could add any number of remote-access apps (VNC, TeamViewer, Go2MyPC, RDP, etc. etc. etc.) to be able to access, setup and control the whole system remotely. You could also add something like SpeedFan to monitor various hardware (like temperature, drive SMART status, etc.) and email you if anything starts to act up.

 

Depending on how "rural" this is, you'll probably want to put everything on a fairly hefty UPS... both for power conditioning/protection, and to keep things going for a little while if the power goes out.

 

Switch looks good, if a bit of overkill... we use this one extensively for 3MP and 5MP cameras and find it to be a rock-solid performer: http://www.shopbot.ca/m/?m=sfe1000p. Granted, the Netgear is a 24+2 for about the same price as an 8+2 Cisco, just saying, we've used a lot of these and found they work really well, so that's a known quantity