Suggestions for House

[rayt 0]

Looking to setup some POE cameras at home

 

i currently have the logitech alert system, for the price paid, it is not bad, but it is lacking some resolution that i want. its 960x720 resolution, and does maybe 15fps at max. 6 cameras in this system. only 4 are used outside, 1 pointed in backyard for backyard coverage, it does ok, but night performance is lacking, and resolution is poor, 3 are pointed in the front, one over my 2 car driveway, one towards the street, and one covering my front entrance, facial recognition is very poor on the cameras.

 

i am looking to cover my house, string of burglaries in the area lately.

 

looking for 2 PTZ cameras, considering the axis q-6035e this will be mounted at the front corners of my house, and will cover the sides of the house and the front area, front of house is well lit, sides of house have very little lighting, might need ir illuminators, but not sure how ptzs work, and whether i can shift from color to b/w while panning the area.

 

acti KCM-5211e for my front door / entrance area, want good facial recognition, not sure if the q-6035s mounted high up are sufficient? front door/porch area is generally well lit by 2x 26w ccfl lights.

 

i also need some sort of coverage for the backyard of my house which has 2 patio doors, i am considering the kcm-5211e as well, but it is dark back there, no light at all nearly.

 

from the looks of it, my current budget is ~9k or so for the cameras, i am hoping that the ptzs would be able to capture some license plates if necessary, any suggestions would be great, i have no worked out on software yet, i prefer to keep the number of cameras down, but still get 360 degree coverage on the house. is there anything i am missing, if there are cheaper cameras that serve my purposes, please do point them out.

 

i am considering the vivotek sd8362e, much cheaper then the axis, but no idea how well those will work.

[buellwinkle 0]

You can check my reviews on my blog, I reviewed the KCM-5211E as well as the Axis P5534-E (the cheaper version of the Q6034-E) and the Panny WV-SC385 PTZ.

 

I would recomend the TCM-1231 from ACTi over the KCM-5211E. While the KCM-5211E has better resolution, I find the lens is not wide enough for home use, you'll need an external illuminator and it's low light capabilities are not as good as the 1231. I did my review in the city because in suburbia there just wasn't enough light to be effective. With that said, I'll be reviewing their TCM-7811 soon which is their flagship model for low light because it uses a CCD instead of the MOS sensor in their other cameras.

 

Also, for what it's worth, if you like ACTi, consider sticking with all camera from the same brand because you can then use the ACTi free NVR software which is good and there's a new version coming out soon that is really good and did I say it was free.

 

They also have a unique concept that I really liked. You use their hemispheric camera, their KCM-3911 to get a really wide view of an area but you lose the ability ID anyone at any distance because of the really, really wide lens to view 180 degrees. When motion is detected in a zone, it then can send the coordinates to an ACTi PTZ TCM-6630 camera to pan/tilt/zoom right to the person you want to capture. Solves the problem of PTZ cameras just going on random patrol looking for motion but dividing the time it can view by the number of presets you define. This is all done without any PC or external software. They had a demo at ISC last week, very cool feature.