toy4x4 0 Posted January 12, 2016 Hi All! After a break in to the truck last night, I'm kicking myself for never really putting in the video cameras and other infrastructure I knew I should. So I'm sure I'm going down the route of many here, but after several issues at a old house and now one at our current house, it's time to get serious, but my head spins when I start reading all the options. So here is what I would like to do: 1. Night time recording is the main goal. Most stuff will happen at night. 2. Camera will be mounted in a window that is overlooking the driveway that is about 12 feet off the ground. 3. Have up to 4 cameras to watch the property. Would prefer to keep these at $200 or less, but could be talked into a really good one to watch the driveway. 4. Record to a local server. 5. Would prefer CAT5/5E/6 cable instead of BNC 6. Not sure on a DVR or DVR card for the PC, but lean toward the PC as I have a server with plenty of disk space. 7. Any recommendation for software? I've been looking at iSPy and Blue Iris. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Boogieman 1 Posted January 12, 2016 Hi All! After a break in to the truck last night, I'm kicking myself for never really putting in the video cameras and other infrastructure I knew I should. So I'm sure I'm going down the route of many here, but after several issues at a old house and now one at our current house, it's time to get serious, but my head spins when I start reading all the options. So here is what I would like to do: 1. Night time recording is the main goal. Most stuff will happen at night. 2. Camera will be mounted in a window that is overlooking the driveway that is about 12 feet off the ground. 3. Have up to 4 cameras to watch the property. Would prefer to keep these at $200 or less, but could be talked into a really good one to watch the driveway. 4. Record to a local server. 5. Would prefer CAT5/5E/6 cable instead of BNC 6. Not sure on a DVR or DVR card for the PC, but lean toward the PC as I have a server with plenty of disk space. 7. Any recommendation for software? I've been looking at iSPy and Blue Iris. You cannot point a camera out a windows if you want to use the IR..you will need lots of ambient light.. Dont use a dvr card, those of for old school analog crap low res cameras. If nightime is important stick with a 2mp camera, the higher res cams tend to be noisy. Look at dahua or hikvision 2mp ip cameras. Blue iris is fantastic, and has just been updated with hardware acceleration for intel HD with quicksync. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
toy4x4 0 Posted January 13, 2016 Thanks for the excellent information! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zr1 0 Posted January 14, 2016 1) Most cams do night vision with IR - the 4MP Hikvisions that came out in 2015 are head/shoulders above previous stuff in the price bracket 2) +1 to Boogie above...can't be doing IR night vision through a window, the cam will blind itself. Best to buy a $6 two-foot drill bit from the attic to under the eve of the roof (or whatever ya got) and mount the thing outside. 3) This will depend on the on-sight estimate and lines of sight you want. Walk around the property, do a lot of "oooh's" and "ah's" and "ah-HA!" to work that out. The above-mentioned 4MP Hik's can be $250-ish each. The 3MP Hik's are $200-ish these days. 2MP that Boogie mentioned are even less and still give Blu-Ray resolutions. 4) Some cams record to their own SD-cards, but yeah, recording to a central device (such as a PC or NVR) is the more robust practice today 5) Network cable is the way to go! Cat5e will do ya fine. If you go with the solid copper and not the CCA (copper-coated-aluminum), it is better quality. 6) If you're a certified PC geek like me, sure, go with a PC. An NVR will do all the same tricks, but the NVR is by far the set-up-and-forget device. No hassling with the operating system or drivers or having Windows 10 doing forced reboots in the middle of the night, etc. Get an NVR and toss in a little 'ol 2TB drive and you'll have weeks of recording (if you go with motion-recording). 4TB for even more. Many NVRs will do multiple drives if you want. 95% of my business customers don't want to worry about the camera system and they demand that it's up much more than 99.9% (99.9% is like 1 crash a week)...so the NVR is the overwhelming choice that I deal with. And I just do my PC geeking out at home (getting yet another Raspberry Pi!) 7) Both of those software titles do well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
