Need help upgrading Panasonic PoE 3-cam system

[voip-ninja 0]

Hi all, hopefully this is being posted in the most appropriate forum.

 

I have a 3300 sq foot house and I have self installed 3 Panasonic 511 PTZ PoE cameras at the front entrance of the house, the front corner of the home and the rear door entry (which opens to a large patio). All of the cameras are recorded with Blue Iris on a small HP Windows Home Server and I am able to access the camera feeds over the internet or from a mobile device. I also use the "iCam" application (also running on WHS) to access the camera feeds from my and my wife's smart phones.

 

Having run this setup for a few years I have observed a couple of things;

 

1. I almost never use the PTZ feature.

2. Night performance of the Panasonic 511 cameras is terrible and more or less worthless.

3. I could use slightly wider angle lenses.

4. These cameras look terrible in an external application and are totally non vandal resistant (we don't have many vandals in my area but, you never know what might happen when you are out of town).

 

So, now I'm trying to figure out what to go with in the way of an upgrade of the existing system with a minimal added outlay of cash. I think that I would be best served budget wise by some day/night cameras with built in IR illuminators. For the front corner and rear patio locations it would be preferable to get coverage out to about 10 meters at the minimum. For the front door location it only really has to cover the entry itself which is a very small area.

 

I've been looking at the Vivotek 8134V cameras, as they offer day/night, PoE and have a day/night IR cut filter. However, I guess that they are manual focus? I'm not sure if that will be a problem or not... they only cost about $320 a pop.

 

Can anyone offer other camera suggestions? I have a Synology DiskStation NAS in my basement and it comes with a built in camera surveillance recording software that looks pretty decent, and it covers up to 10 cameras so I might give it a shot as a replacement for the Blue Iris software. I would prefer to just do motion recording, but recording on a 2-3 day loop might be okay too as long as I can set it up to do motion alerts during certain times of day.

 

Thanks again, looks like there are some pretty knowledgeable people in here.

[Soundy 1]

Scratch the IR; put CNB VCM-24VF domes up, and run them all into a four-channel analog-to-IP encoder.

 

VCM-24VF with only street lights:

 

[voip-ninja 0]

I don't have street lights providing illumination. I have a front entry that is walled on three sides, so at night it's more or less pitch dark. I could put motion activated lights up, which, if I did, would mean I could just keep using the Panasonic cams that I already have.

 

I was also hoping to get something with a bit more resolution than an analog CCTV, but I will keep the analog converter in mind as a potential option.

[voip-ninja 0]

Looks like Acti 3511 might also be a good option, although a bit on the pricey side.

[MaxIcon 0]

I'm changing over from analog to IP cams, and have mostly switched to outdoor cams with built-in IR. I've had good luck with the Vivotek 1MP IP8332 (outdoor) and FD8334 (indoor). They have their flaws, but are a great upgrade from analog, the built in IR works well, and mine have been easy to use, reliable, and stable. The non-intelligent IR is likely to wash out faces up close, if you don't have a lot of room in your doorway.

 

I'm not sure you'll do any better for the money, but if you don't mind spending more, there are better cameras, or if $300/cam is too much, analog IR domes are a good alternative.

 

The higher resolution of MP IP is a great thing, and it's hard to go back to D1 resolution. I have a couple of D1 IP cams, and they work great up close (like in a doorway), but if you need to cover more territory, MP is a big improvement.

[voip-ninja 0]

I think the camera lens would be about 4-5' away from someone's face as they approached the entry, not sure if that would cause washout with the lower end models like the 8134 or not.

 

I would prefer to keep the budget for my front and rear patio cams to about $300 or so a pop if possible. I would be willing to spend a bit more on the camera at the house corner as it would be doing the most recording (records people walking by on the sidewalk, cars driving up and down the street, etc).

 

The ACTi line of cams has been recommended to me in another thread so I'm going to look into those too.

 

It's kind of painful doing this at all, because during daylight hours, the Panasonic cameras have been outstanding. The PTZ is a nice feature to have (even if I rarely use it) and the VGA 30fps quality is quite good. Unfortunately it is killing me that we literally get nothing but a black screen from any of the cameras at night, so I'm going to have to figure something else out.

[Soundy 1]

I don't have street lights providing illumination. I have a front entry that is walled on three sides, so at night it's more or less pitch dark. I could put motion activated lights up, which, if I did, would mean I could just keep using the Panasonic cams that I already have.

 

I was also hoping to get something with a bit more resolution than an analog CCTV, but I will keep the analog converter in mind as a potential option.

A 40W bulb would be more than enough to get a clear color picture out of the CNBs. Some minimal lighting around stairs is good for safety/liability coverage as well.