Found a body, need help selecting security camera

[blue 0]

I am a complete newbie to security cameras and could really use some advice.

 

We have a small family business in a rural area which has a large rear parking lot which is not really visible from the street. A couple of days ago I pulled into the rear lot to find a body hanging from a tree. Suicide, but things found in his car indicate that he was involved in some kind of illicit activities. We've suspected for a while that our lot has become a known spot for drug dealing, etc. and I want something that I can put in a window to record what is going on back there at night. Ideally it would send images over the network and I could save them to a computer on site or from my home, even more ideally I could tap into a live feed to alert the police if I see something going on at night.

 

The lot has a flood light on a pole near the entrance but the far corners are still fairly dark, not completely but I would consider them "low light". The area of concern is about 150' to 175' away from the window where the camera will be sitting (in an attic window on the third story). Can anybody suggest a camera which would be capable of recording at this distance in relatively low light conditions? I have read that IR for full night vision will glare off of the window but I don't know if IR will work at that range anyways... if absolutely necessary I could mount it outside but would strongly prefer indoor. My budget is super tight, I would say about $100 to $200. At a minimum I just need to be able to tell that there are cars back there and see generally what they are doing. In summary:

 

- Long range low light image (150-175')

- Single large flood light outside of camera view

- Network capable (wired or wireless... I can run power and ethernet to the camera location as needed)

- Ability to save to remote computer instead of a dedicated DVR (I'm a techie so if there is scripting or something involved to get that working I can probably manage)

- Notification of activity would be a huge plus

- Budget: ~$100-$200

- Not concerned about frame rate, only mildly concerned about image quality (clear would be nice, just being able to tell what's happening is all I really need)

- Viewing angle is not that important, it could be fairly narrow at the distance that I'm interested in (I would guess about 30-45 degrees)

 

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Boogieman 1]

Forget about the window...with your budget look at the hikvision DS-2CD2T32-I8 (the i8 has the longest ir range) and the 16mm lens option.

[buellwinkle 0]

Is your budget for shipping or the cameras in total. I'll assume shipping. Check out the Dahua SD59230, 1080P has 30X zoom, IR that can reach 200-300', you can pan around to check on different areas, automatically on a patrol or manually as needed. It's priced well for under a grand including shipping. This would require mounting it outside. They make a less expensive (about $500) 12X Zoom PTZ without IR, but not sure if you will have enough light outside for it. It would work on my suburban street because of street lights, but will be grainy.

 

If you want to mount it inside with great low light capability. the only camera I can recommend that has the low light capability you need is the Bosch Dinion Starlight 8000mp, with lens about $1,400 for indoors. It's 5MP, can see in almost total darkness.

 

If you really want to go cheap with a fixed lens camera, first get a Google Map overview shot of the property, print it out and draw a line from where you want to mount the camera to each side to it covers the area you want. Then measure the angle between the two line using a cheap protactor. Then find a lens that matches that angle, called the FOV, Field of View. Most camera manufacturers publish this number and associate it with a certain millimeter lens size. Once you have that, you have to determine your goal, for example, do you want to see the activity going on or be able to recognize or ID faces, license plates, car make or model? If you get that far, let us know what you determined. If the angle is only 10 degrees, the 16mm may work. If you need maybe 45 degrees, you may need a 6mm lens camera. Maybe you need 90 degrees, and a 2.8mm will be best. But the wider the angle, the lower the pixel density and the less ability you will have to ID someone or something.