Mega pix IP cameras for exterior home coverage

[skane 0]

Hi, would appreciate any feedback and recommendations on these requirements and situation...

 

Camera Requirements

• High resolution day/night cameras to cover 3 exterior sides of a 2-story, residential home. Need video quality good enough to recognize faces within 20 feet of camera.

• Exterior of house is lighted with motion floodlights and some street light peripheral.

• View of cameras must be wide enough to at least cover a tract home driveway. I’ll be mounting the cameras ~ 10 feet from ground level.

 

 

I already have:

• Home is already wired with Gigabit Lan. I can expand wiring to any place in the house. I also have wireless AP, 802.11 a/b/g.

• AC outlets are available where I would likely mount the cameras. I could also procure a switch with PoE.

• Multiple high end workstations (Core 2 Duo and Quads, 2GB RAM) with Terabyte capacity. I can dedicate one or two workstations for 24x7 coverage for this application.

 

 

Would appreciate any advice on:

• Cameras – I am seriously considering Arecont cameras. Suggestions on any other competing brands/models appreciated.

• Software – Luxriot, any others?

• Any other hardware that may be needed

• Budget is flexible, but I would like to keep total cost of camera’s, software, and any other HW (e.g. camera housings) below $4,000 if possible.

 

Thanks for any help

[VST_Man 1]

I have not ried it yet but it should work. Put Axis 207MW's into CCTV housings...........great Mega for the money.works in low light, but, not at all in no light, and it is not IR sensitive..........and, it's wireless.

 

I am planning on installing them into outdoor housings...........be nic if I could find a smaller housing.

[chad_cooper 0]

Mega pixel would be great, but do you really need it at 20ft?

 

Try ACTi

 

They have software for free to 16 channels and the CAM-5220 has great day abilities, but no megapixel. Still the resolution should be enough with the right lens. The price could have installing more cameras to cover the area better and keep this under your budget with the software costs.

[skane 0]

Thanks, I'll check out ACTi as well. I have a lot of research to do!

[metafizx 0]

I have not ried it yet but it should work. Put Axis 207MW's into CCTV housings...........great Mega for the money.works in low light, but, not at all in no light, and it is not IR sensitive..........and, it's wireless.

 

I am planning on installing them into outdoor housings...........be nic if I could find a smaller housing.

 

if the lens is the same as the 207w, I found the Lukwerks IR lens kit fits perfectly...I used teflon tape to keep the lens snug. fixed the IR visibility issue, as the default lens blocks IR.

[photys 0]

if the lens is the same as the 207w, I found the Lukwerks IR lens kit fits perfectly...I used teflon tape to keep the lens snug. fixed the IR visibility issue, as the default lens blocks IR.

 

Cheers metafizx. Just spent half an hour testing IR lenses.

 

Tested with several IR lens removed from cheap bullet/board cams.

IR lighting supplied by an standard IR Bullet cam (20m IR, 850nm)

3.8mm to 12mm lenses tested.

 

Pros:

Great IR results.

Especially bouncing IR off ceiling or at 45 degrees.

Same results I would expect from any IR bullet/board cam.

 

Cons:

Heavy purple colour cast in IR and normal lighting conditions. Turning down the colour provided good black and white images.

Problems seeing red objects. Red writing on my wall chart dissapeared.

Could not screw in my 12mm lenses, they were too short

[photys 0]

Question for you guys.

The Axis 207 series looks too tall to fit in a standard CCTV camera housing.

The 207w front face is 8.5cm x 7.5cm (3.3inches x 3inches).

 

Can someone check a housing to see if oun would fit?

[survtech 0]

Check out the Arecont Vision AV3130.

http://www.arecontvision.com/products_3130.html

[dtonsberg 0]

Your challenge is to cover the perimeter sides of the home for activity and get everything recorded including a facial shot at 20' from either of the four cameras at any time of the day/night. That will be tough for you to accomplish if you don't use MegaPixel, if you don't have enough lighting and if you don't mount the cameras in the right places.

 

Forget about everything else and concern yourself with making sure your end user understands that there are no magic cameras. MegaPixel is about as close as it gets however there are still limitations such as lighting, camera placement and control of the system after the fact recording. Not to mention your budget of $4000.

 

I would advise you to set-up up a single camera system and put the time in to understand exactly what you are getting from a specific vendor. Going by the published specs of any manufacturer will always get you into trouble. There is nothing like experience, historically, to prevent future mistakes! Get a camera, set it up and use it first.

 

Good Luck!

[Maui Custom Surveillance 0]

IKWB15A

 

 

Hi, would appreciate any feedback and recommendations on these requirements and situation...

 

Camera Requirements

• High resolution day/night cameras to cover 3 exterior sides of a 2-story, residential home. Need video quality good enough to recognize faces within 20 feet of camera.

• Exterior of house is lighted with motion floodlights and some street light peripheral.

• View of cameras must be wide enough to at least cover a tract home driveway. I’ll be mounting the cameras ~ 10 feet from ground level.

 

 

I already have:

• Home is already wired with Gigabit Lan. I can expand wiring to any place in the house. I also have wireless AP, 802.11 a/b/g.

• AC outlets are available where I would likely mount the cameras. I could also procure a switch with PoE.

• Multiple high end workstations (Core 2 Duo and Quads, 2GB RAM) with Terabyte capacity. I can dedicate one or two workstations for 24x7 coverage for this application.

 

 

Would appreciate any advice on:

• Cameras – I am seriously considering Arecont cameras. Suggestions on any other competing brands/models appreciated.

• Software – Luxriot, any others?

• Any other hardware that may be needed

• Budget is flexible, but I would like to keep total cost of camera’s, software, and any other HW (e.g. camera housings) below $4,000 if possible.

 

Thanks for any help

[Maui Custom Surveillance 0]

I have not ried it yet but it should work. Put Axis 207MW's into CCTV housings...........great Mega for the money.works in low light, but, not at all in no light, and it is not IR sensitive..........and, it's wireless.

 

I am planning on installing them into outdoor housings...........be nic if I

could find a smaller housing.

 

Can not use 207 outside because of cmos

[metafizx 0]

I have not ried it yet but it should work. Put Axis 207MW's into CCTV housings...........great Mega for the money.works in low light, but, not at all in no light, and it is not IR sensitive..........and, it's wireless.

 

I am planning on installing them into outdoor housings...........be nic if I

could find a smaller housing.

 

Can not use 207 outside because of cmos

 

why does CMOS prevent outdoor usage ???

[CollinR 0]

CMOS is actually better suited usually, thats why they have no need for auto iris lenses.

 

 

My systems like this would have $4000 in the DVR, power, networking and storage alone... Keep in mind many megapixel cameras can suck GBs of storage, so be prepared for a 1 TB setup to cover a day or two with motion detection.

[Kiwi 0]

I've purchased an Arecont 3130 with 4mm lenses for a home application. I'm still reviewing suitable software - convenient viewing of archives seems to be a weak area.

 

For 3 sides you will likely need three cameras which will use up most of your budget. A weatherproof housing will also be a problem even thought the Arecont is quite small. The 4mm lenses give almost 90 degrees of view and the 3130 is quite sensitive in low light.

 

I think 10 ft off the ground is a bit high to get usable views. Perhaps house them in steel electrical enclosures with windows on the walls at a lower level?

[ultrahighres 0]

The good news is there is a new range of multimegapixel industrial CCD cameras available up to 16MP Colour/mono and Mono and IR sensitive (mono only) to 1050nm i.e. military spec black light

 

Look up avigilon on a search engine or pm me

 

I'm afraid I have to disagree with CollinR Autoiris is an absolutely essential addition to changing light conditions i.e outside. This controls the amount of light to the chip to provide the best image, focus and depth of field under all light conditions. Arecont would have you believe that CMOS does not need Autoiris because it keeps costs down. They also say that CMOS do not need back focus!!!!!!!!!! Again a cost cutting measure as is the use of a CMOS chip.

 

CMOS scans across the chip unlike a progressive scan CCD. This can (and does) cause motion blur issues especially if you are relying totally on an electronic shutter to control your light and more so if you are at close range (the object is proportionally faster the closer you are to the chip). CMOS also have a vastly lower Quantum efficiency (10%) to off the shelf CCDs (20%). Basically this is the amount of photons (light particles) which are converted to electrons at the chip. This makes them much less sensitive to light.

 

All the best

 

Robin Hughes

[ultrahighres 0]

Sorry mate I can not pm as I am a newbie (actually I am not but I have moved job and forgotten passwords and I don't want my password to be sent to my old work email address, sorry, I digress)

 

You should find a contact under sales on the avigilon website

[skane 0]

Set up (4) Arecont AV3130s with 4.5mm – 10mm lenses, a Linksys SRW2008MP managed Gbit PoE switch, and upgraded one of my workstations (water cooled E6600 on an Intel Bad Axe 2 (I975)) to 4 Terabytes storage, and LuxRiot Pro SW.

 

I’m temporarily mounting the cameras indoors, aimed out windows onto my property. I did some testing, and facial recognition is satisfactory at the expected engagement distances, day and night. I also installed a bunch of outdoor motion sensors for another layer of perimeter coverage to hopefully get neighborhood security patrol involved before the vandals do any damage (again).

 

System is up and running 24x7 and I’m happy with the results so far, but…

 

Follow-ups:

-- Supplement existing outdoor lighting for improved night footage.

-- Mount at least two of the cameras in outdoor housings for improved area-coverage.

-- Run cable in wall / ceiling once camera positions are finalized.

-- Add a 4-drive removable rack and HD controller to the workstation for additional storage capacity, and buy a lot more HDs.

-- Get additional lenses to fine tune coverage. I’m finding that the lens selection for the AV3130s is quite limited compared to the other Arecont models.

-- Establish end to end workflows for post-processing footage to different mediums.

 

Original $4K budget was exceeded, but it’s been an interesting learning experience so far

[KB 0]

For ref on the Axis 207w:

 

Axis do a vandal resistant indoor housing for the 206 and 207. I'm not sure if the 207w would fit, but you might be able to make this watertight with a bit of sealant if you're really strapped... It's pretty cheap I think.

 

CMOS is generally better outdoors and will handle direct light, while CCDs will burn out with direct sunlight.

[metafizx 0]

For ref on the Axis 207w:

 

Axis do a vandal resistant indoor housing for the 206 and 207. I'm not sure if the 207w would fit, but you might be able to make this watertight with a bit of sealant if you're really strapped... It's pretty cheap I think.

 

 

They say that the 207W is not compatible with the Axis housing for 206/207