best bang for the buck? stables and pasture

[justaddsun 0]

So I'm going to be installing a system on my small 5 acre hobby farm. I have very valuable livestock in my four stall stable (each stall is 12'X16' and all are open to the front of the property) and then 400' of pasture out to the main road. Property is 600' wide at the road. Obviously with an area this big and me being budget minded, I will have to focus the bulk of my effort on choke points. My question is since my livestock is my main concern, should I spend the bulk of my camera budget covering the stalls individually and just put a few cams on the front of the stables facing the road for perspective? This would be the simple since the stables have power and a dry secure tack room for housing the nvr. I wouldn't necessarily need poe cams, and all wiring runs would be short and secure in conduit.

 

The other option would be to cover the three gates to the back of the propert with a few cams mounted to the house for perspective. Since the gates are spread out across the length of the property, this would require 2 300' runs and one 60' run. Would need to be poe since there is no power anywhere near the gates and quality would have to be very good to capture faces at 15' and license plates at 30'. The way I have it figured is to aim these cams at the latches in order to pick up faces, then I would only be able to get the plates when a vehicle exited. Up side is I would have better coverage for other types of theft.

 

Third option is to fence the most of the front allowing access at only the two driveways which are about 300' apart and 100' from the house. Put up high quality cams to monitor those points, and a tall pole with 4-6 medium quality cams to get a 360 persceptive of the entire property. Once again really long runs and very complicated. and huge potentail for lightning strikes on the pole!

 

My dad always told me to keep it simple, but nothing in th CCTV world is simple to me. I have looked at tons of different cam sample footage online, and have come to the conclusion that even with high end cams, for long range out door applications the best I can hope for is a perspective view. So leaving behind my fairy tale notion of being able to see every inch of my property in crystal clear detail on my smartphone from anywhere, Where should I direct my focus?

 

Option 1 is cheap and easy and gives me the best chance of getting good facial recognition on any potential interlopers at the stables, but leaves the rest of my property basically wide open and won't catch any license plates. Is there a more balanced solution I haven't considered?

 

TIA