looking for a home surveillance system

[lincoln81 0]

ive been lurking around the forum and doing some reading, I see most people recommend dahua cameras... what model is the best bang for buck? I would like 8 camera's around my house and all recorded... best place to buy this stuff in canada? if anybody knows... any help is appreciated!

things I should avoid? look for?

[lincoln81 0]

66 people took time to click on this but nobody can respond?

[Kawboy12R 0]

Two of the 66 were probably from Canada, and Costco Canada doesn't sell the Swann/Lorex IP systems that're currently popular on here for budget installs. I bought one of the Lorex ECO analog systems from Costco last year and don't recommend it. The last I checked Costco.ca sold the QSee (rebranded Dahua system) system that was the hot ticket 6 months ago. Read the looong thread on here about Costco QSee to get a feel for it. Not high end gear but the picture (daytime especially) blows away a lot of analog gear, especially budget analog gear. Get the 8 channel system and add a few different types of Dahua cams (if you can find them now that Dahua has slowed the grey market sale of their gear in North America down to a trickle) so you're not stuck with 6mm mini-bullets everywhere and you're in the hi-def cctv world with 8 cams for about $1500. You might prefer to find a Swann or Lorex IP system with the Hikvision cams from a US Costco and smuggle it across the border though.

 

I've looked for Dahua stuff in Canada (search my old posts on Dahua Canada) and, IMHO, they're overpriced for what you get. Best deals on Dahua stuff are found at Costco, EBay, or Alibaba/Aliexpress. Costco is the place you'll find it with the best warranty.

 

If you really want to buy locally on a budget and don't mind analog, maybe look for a higher-end QSee system at Costco and test it out a bit before spending hours and hours burying the cables in your walls and making a return a real pain. Run some wires out your windows and mount the cams where you want them and check the image quality (especially at night and in mixed sun/shade situations) to see if you can identify faces and possibly license plates (that's difficult and a whole other topic). Also spend some time reviewing the RECORDED video quality to see if you're still happy with the system. That's where most analog systems fall flat on their faces. Folks see the live quality and think it's good enough, but start to cry when the recorded face of the guy who broke into their car at night was a washed out blank mess. Also have someone at night walk around where you're trying to record and see if you could ID their faces from recordings if you didn't know them.

 

Also, future-proofing your system by running cat5e to the analog cameras and using real baluns will make swapping to hi-def network cams in the future much easier.

[lincoln81 0]

http://www.costco.com/Lorex-8-Channel-Full-HD-PoE-NVR-Security-System-with-2TB-Hard-Drive-and-4-HD-1080p-Cameras.product.100035609.html

 

how about this one?

[Kawboy12R 0]

That's the one. There are domes available for it as well. The debate between getting it and the Swann is mostly that the Swann supports external alarms and PTZ cameras but is, I think, currently out of stock at Costco. Shame that there aren't currently available optional varifocal cams or longer lens options for the little bullets but the video quality is pretty impressive for the money.

[lincoln81 0]

http://www.costco.ca/Swann%C2%AE-16-channel-DVR-with-1TB-HDD-and-11-High-Resolution-Camera-Kits.product.100017941.html

 

there is this kit with everything.... thoughts?

[SectorSecurity 0]

I have always found those 60FT cables to be to short for anything, I usually end up giving them away once I have amassed a bunch of them from customers who buy these systems then realize 60FT doesn't go as far as they thought it would.

[lincoln81 0]

http://www.costco.com/Lorex-8-Channel-Full-HD-PoE-NVR-Security-System-with-2TB-Hard-Drive-and-4-HD-1080p-Cameras.product.100035609.html

 

how about this one?

 

looks like im going to need to make a drive to the states to pick this up!

[Kawboy12R 0]

Lots of cameras if you need 11. Nice of them to throw a couple of domes in with the bullets. For me, PTZ for home surveillance doesn't have much utility. I can't see people for a long distance with the trees on either side of my property and there's a house across the street so I won't be sitting inside zooming in on folks. If I want to see them closer I'll go outside. The fixed cams will pick up everything I need to record. You situation may be different.

 

As far as camera quality, I haven't seen any video from them so take what I say with a grain of salt. They might be better than what I say or they may be worse. I expect that they'll be decent for live viewing under easy lighting conditions (not mounted in shade looking out into sunlight). Night will be so-so, and with poor dynamic range (cameras that cheap won't be great that way) and unintelligent IR will make for poor night-time facial ID except under ideal and lucky circumstances if they're anything close to what came with my Lorex bundle and other cheap cams I've seen. Good for situational awareness and recognizing people you know and provide a general description of folks that come reasonably close. White male, thin, short hair, jeans and a hoodie, that kind of stuff. Recorded quality won't be as good as what you see live.

 

In a nutshell, it'll give you good coverage (hard to ID someone if you don't have a camera pointed where they are) and situational awareness but will most likely frustrate you at night unless they walk right up to a camera and look up. Personally, I'd skip the extra cams with that analog package, put the 4 cams with the network package in the most important spots (doors first), and fill in the blind spots when I could later if my budget was frozen under $900. I've spent a bunch of time and money "playing" with analog stuff and, even after reading reviews and getting into some better cameras, with the cost of network stuff coming down and the astounding quality difference over analog in many situations, especially when viewing recorded video (most halfway affordable analog DVRs mangle the saved video), I regret not being able to jump into hi-def at short notice when I felt I had to get a home system ASAP last year. I put in an analog system at work a while ago and had some surplus goodies from that to mix and match as well.

 

I'll second SectorSecurity on cables as well- 60 feet is good for about half a small house worth of reach unless the DVR is central, you can go straight up with the cables, and go out in a star pattern through your attic, which isn't realistic for most people. And don't stick your DVR in a hot attic just because it's easy to run cables. Heat is likely to lead to heat-related crashes in the summer and premature failure. Not a big deal to add a few hundred footers to get around the far side to allow you to mount the DVR where you really want it, but it is still an added cost and delay (most corner stores don't carry them if you know what I mean) for finalizing installation that most folks won't think of up front.