Help w/IP camera selection & placement for difficult config

[dmeals 0]

I am trying to select the correct cameras for a new IP based surveillance system. In addition to being newbie, I feel my coverage requirements are probably a little more difficult than most given the area I wish to secure. I have tried below to share adequate detail of my requirements. A detailed drawing of our facility is also attached for your consideration.

 

First, I am in the marine repair business and run a garage shop repairing and restoring boats ranging from personal watercraft to small yachts up to 50’ in length. The majority of our work is in the 20’ to 36’ range.

 

The shop itself consists of 2 work bays surrounded by benches and specialized tools & equipment for the trade. The overall size of the shop building is 50’ x 60’ x 17’ H. I also have a small office with adjoining inventory room that measures 12’ x 25’ x 8’ H. There are 2 entry doors on opposing sides of the building with security lights above each door, activated at dusk each night. There are 2 work bays with 2 – 9’ x 17’ H doors each that open to move boats in & out of the building. A security light, activated at dusk, is placed in the center of the building, 20’ high, outside these doors. Partial florescent lighting, enough to unlock and see to walk around at night, is always present.

 

The facility also includes a work/storage yard on both sides of the building as well as in the front of the shop. On the left side of the shop we generally use the yard to store our trailers and repaired boats. The right side of the shop is used as a work yard. The area in front of the shop is used as a work area also and is the area we most often use when working on larger 32’ to 50’ boats. The height of these boats can be as high as 15’ when on a trailer.

 

We had a surveillance security company visit with us to provide a proposal and demonstration for a system. I had several concerns with the system proposed:

1- The system included analog cameras with an expensive server that I feel we do not need

2- The resolution of the cameras quoted, Color Day/Night Bullet IR, 2.8 to 12 mm, 700 line, looked ok as long as you were fairly close to them. Given the length of the shop inside at 50-60’, if you zoomed in, you lost horizontal field of view, so I do not feel the coverage would be adequate. Also, at 50’, I could see someone at the large bay door but had no facial recognition, could just tell someone was there. IMO, useless.

3- Only 3 cameras were quoted for both inside and out. Again, given the area we want to cover, I do not feel the field of view would be adequate with the resolution we seek.

4- I do not feel the one camera outside will cover the 120’ area needed. If so, the horizontal field of view would be extremely narrow and useless unless someone walked right into it!

 

Points that should be considered in selecting the type and number of cameras for our system:

- We do as much work as possible within the building. This environment is VERY dusty due to paint & restorative work. We also occasionally wash the walls so water is a consideration with regard to cameras.

- Cabling will be difficult so we would like to install Poe cameras

- We would like the resolution to be high enough to stand up in a court of law

- Some of the boats we work on are very tall and can obstruct line of sight, e.g., we have a 50’ houseboat outside and we potentially loose the ability to see one side or the other as the field of view becomes blocked. The same will occasionally be true inside with a 40-50’ boat in one bay that blocks view of the other bay. This is when it gets tricky!

- The length of the area to be covered on each outside yard is 50’ W x 120’ (60’ building + 60’ yard).

- Limited lighting will be available at night.

- Each camera should be motion detection capable

- Each camera should have input and output capability

- A dome camera w/audio for the office/inventory area is required

 

The areas we wish to secure follow:

- All doors

- The tools & equipment inside the shop, predominately the outside wall areas

- The office/inventory

- Customer boats in the shop

- Customer boats in the yard

- Trailers & air compressor in the side yard

 

What type of camera specs should we be considering and where should they be placed? There are probably many other consideration I should be making?? Pls keep in mind, as I said, I am a newbie doing the best I can to configure a system.

[MrBostn 0]

Hi,

 

I won't be able to help with all aspects but I can help with the networking/server end. You mentioned you thought the company that bid over spec'd the server. Which leads me to this.

 

1. How many days of video do you want to keep? This will determine the amount of disk space you need. Also the higher the resolution the more space video takes up. The cost of hard drives are up close to triple due to the floods in Thailand.

 

2. You mention POE-Think about the length of the cable. POE will struggle with lengths over 300Ft. Positioning the POE switch is important.

 

3. The original quote had analog cameras. What card did they suggest?

[dmeals 0]

1. How many days of video do you want to keep? This will determine the amount of disk space you need. Also the higher the resolution the more space video takes up. The cost of hard drives are up close to triple due to the floods in Thailand.

- THE QUOTE WAS FOR A 16 PORT, 1 TB, 500GB FOR OS, DVD 7, GEOVISION MULTIPLEXER. I DON'T THINK WE NEED AN ENCODER W/ALL DIGITAL CAMERAS AND ALTHOUGH THE COST OF HDD IS UP, A 1 TB DRIVE IS STILL FAIRLY CHEAP, AS IS A 8 PORT SWITCH.

 

2. You mention POE-Think about the length of the cable. POE will struggle with lengths over 300Ft. Positioning the POE switch is important. LONGEST LENGTH CABLE IS 120-150'.

 

3. The original quote had analog cameras. What card did they suggest? GEOVISION.

[tomcctv 190]

can we ask your budget.

[dmeals 0]

That, my friend, could be a problem! Don't know!! The quote I got was for 3 cameras (not even sure they were water proof), 1 server as above, run a line to an external TV monitor, $107/mo. for a 48 month lease, including support & 24 month parts & labor warranty.

 

I figure for the $5k outlay, I can probably struggle through it on the front end, install myself and end up not spending any more and get better equipment. I hope I am right! I suspect it will just depends on the cameras needed.

[NotoriousBRK 0]

A few responses/thoughts.

 

POE - Just FYI, POE has the same basic limitations as Ethernet (100 meters). If PoE won't work on your cable run, you're probably exceeding the Ethernet distance limitations as well.

 

Resolution for court of law - There is no standard for this. Video evidence is usually part of a court case, but in reality the goal should be to prevent stuff from going to court in the first place (eg: deter theft, not just record it).

 

Resolution to recognize faces - This will be somewhere around 80 pixels per foot during the day, and 100 pixels per foot at night (you will typically need more resolution at night because the lighting is reduced, and so then the contrast/details are also). So, you can take a camera image sensor and divide the horizontal pixel count by 100, and that is how many feet wide that image sensor can cover and give you really good detail. I think you will also find that it's going to be cost prohibitive to get that much detail everywhere, so you'll end up with cameras at choke points (entrances/doorways) that capture strong details, and the other cameras will basically be overview cameras.

 

Cameras with motion detection - This generally won't work the way you want, it will generate too many false alarms. You can accuse me of bias here since I work for a company that specializes in video analytics, but our analytics are generally well regarded...

 

Limited lighting at night - Cameras see light, there is no way around this. No light = no image. If you don't want to put up visible lights you can consider using IR illuminators. Beware of cameras that offer too-good-to-be-true low-light specs. This is typically achieved by binning (reducing the resolution to ~1/4 of the daytime resolution) and/or digital slow shutter (taking a longer exposure, which results in objects moving (like a person walking) being blurred to the point of being unrecognizable). D1 cameras (IP or Analog) will generally have better low light performance than megapixel cameras, but of course much lower resolution as well.

 

You might want to consider doing this project in phases. There are a lot of variables here, but to really deliver what you want, a $5,000 budget probably won't cut it.

 

If you have a high level of threat, you might want to consider using a video central station that can receive alerts after hours and act on them. If it's low threat, you might be able to self-monitor with email alerts (though this can be an admitted pain in the ass...).

 

You *could* consider having some additional network drops installed that would allow you to relocate cameras based on your current inventory in the yard so that way if a large vessel is blocking a shot you could move that camera. It's easy to get an IP66 rated camera (can handle outdoor environments, rain, splashes, etc.), but somewhat more difficult to get a good IP67 camera that can survive a direct spray from a wash-down hose, but there are lots of factors here. I would just count on making sure your cameras don't get hosed down directly.