Need advice on a new system for home

[denisl 0]

Hello - I just moved into a new house and need to get some camera's installed. I have a driveway that's about 100ft from the house which I want to have a camera recording where the driveway meets the street. I don't mind spending a little extra money for a high quality outdoor night vision capable camera to get good night picture quality of this area. I may want to put in another 3 cameras or so but not necessary to have the same long range capabilities.

 

Is continuous recording practical? I would prefer not to have a motion activated camera - I want to record 24/7 with about a week of history. Use of external storage would be helpful to keep more history / camera's if needed.

 

Any guidance as to where to begin?

 

Thanks a lot.

[dahomes555 0]

Your recording time isn't of greatest concern. Increasing storage time is as easy as increasing size of hard drive(s).

 

The main question is how are you going to run your wiring to the camera and what are you planning to mount it to?

[SunnyKim 2]

denis1,

Any DVR system would do good for your application.

Main hurdle would be placing camera and wiring camera to your DVR and

your monitor.

[denisl 0]

I have a brick house with vinyl eaves. I was thinking under the corner eave closest to the driveway. If need be put some reinforcement above the camera for mounting from the attic. I can run wires where ever they need to go but if wireless is just as good but maybe a little more expensive I'm willing to pay for the ease of install. Otherwise I would prefer POE single cable style wiring but will not let connectivity become a factor vs a quality image.

 

Thanks for the reply.

[dahomes555 0]

Oh, see I was understanding that you wanted the camera 100 feet away from the house (i.e. At the end of the driveway).

 

Finding a good quality IP camera to cover that area isn't going to be a problem. There are literally hundreds of cameras that will suit your needs fine. The main issue you're going to run into, though, is the night vision. My advice is to typically take what the manufacturer states the IR range is on the camera and cut off 1/3 and that's what your effective range ends up being. Your problem is that you don't really care to see the 0-100 foot area, as much as the 100+ foot area. Right? Getting truly effective night vision will be tough, unless you already have good lighting in that area.

 

Good lighting >>> good cameraq

[denisl 0]

After reading my initial post I can see how it was confusing - yes my camera will be mounted on the house about 100ft away from the driveway area I want to monitor. I have brick "winged walls" at the entrance to my driveway with post lights on the walls. They were victim of some vandals and destroyed. I would like to get that under video surveillance. Normally the lights will be on so the camera will be recording at night facing the winged walls with lights on. At around 2am the lights go off by timer and video will be recording in a much darker environment. So I would need a camera that can adjust to the changing light conditions (day/night with lights on/ night).

 

I also want to put a dome camera above the front door facing down (about 20ft above the front door).

[dahomes555 0]

No worries.

 

IP cameras are going to be the way to go. I install mostly 2-3 megapixel cameras and they all seem to work very well. I sell a lot of HikVision and Dahua cameras, which you'll read a lot about on here. Most will have built in IR illuminators, which do a decent job in dark areas, so long as your expectations are reasonable.

 

Make sure to get an NVR that matches the resolution of the cameras you want to use. You could buy a 3 megapixel camera but only buying an NVR that supports 1080P (~2MP) means you won't take full advantage of your camera's capabilities.

 

Make sure your cameras support PoE (most do). That makes it easy to wire them, as only a single Cat5 cable is needed for each camera.

 

Let me know if you have other questions.

[denisl 0]

Thanks I appreciate the help.

So I guess my next question would be if it's better off to buy a bundled system or build my own? I can get started with just 2 camera's for now. Any quality starter sets with great night vision at 100ft ?

[MarcPierre 0]

There are several thing take care in mind when buy a new home or built them first you think that all facilities are available or not, which you want.