cctv recommendation.

Author
Discussion

dba7108

Original Poster:

470 posts

167 months

Tuesday 3rd March 2015
quotequote all
can anyone recommend a cctv solution. My mother now living alone in the house and would like to view house remotely on android phone incase alarm goes off or problems etc.

Have seen various stuff on ebay etc but most of it prob cack.

Saw this - anygood? Do i need HD or is 960H ok?
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2...

I take its best to mount the camera on the ground floor so I dont get the tops of peoples heads?
Do I need IP cameras?




Wheat

505 posts

129 months

Tuesday 3rd March 2015
quotequote all
Hi,

We were looking into this for the yard at work, we explored all the options but eventually bit the bullet and got a company to come a set a system up. It wasn't much more expensive, and the plus points are you know what your getting, and you get the back up of the company when the things (invariably) go wonky.

Altrezia

8,517 posts

210 months

Tuesday 3rd March 2015
quotequote all
Talk to the chaps at CCTV42 - they're PHers and really know their stuff. Tell them I sent you (though they may increase the price if you do!) smile

http://www.cctv42.co.uk

Brother D

3,698 posts

175 months

Tuesday 3rd March 2015
quotequote all
There was a long thread where the cctv24 got a bit of a bashing by someone who was recommending NVR+IP Cameras. You can see both sides.
Personally having set a few systems up I would now just go straight to NVR and IP.
You can pay the earth for NVR, but I've used dahua for the NVR and cameras and been pretty happy with them rougly 200 for one without POE or 300 with.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dahua-NVR4216-16-Channel-N...

Cameras run about 100 quid upwards and the picture quality is great in daylight.

CCTV24 (Henryf)? makes good points about location and focus using analogue thou. The higher res of IP cameras let you get away with bad location a bit.

Basically well set-up and well spec'd analogue cctv is as good as IP, but a well setup IP system would easily exceed an analogue system - saw this the other day - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iH4yggzsQU







cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Things have moved on (thankfully in the backward world of CCTV)

There is now AHD which gives pretty good results or IP cameras using Power over ethernet and an NVR

What is your budget ?


clockworks

5,293 posts

144 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Around £400 got me two ip cameras, an HP microserver running WHS2011, and BlueIris software. It has performed flawlessly for 2 years now. The only thing I have to do is wipe the cobwebs from the front of the cameras.

Crumpet

3,877 posts

179 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Sorry to hijack but I'm also looking for a system similar to the OP. I've been looking at CCTV42 but when I price stuff up it starts coming to over £600 for the bits I need (3-4 cameras). My budget is £400.

Is there anything worthwhile at this price range or should I just get the basic kit from Maplin and make do? I suspect the bds who keep visiting us will be hiding under a hoody/scarf anyway, so identifying them is probably not as important as seeing if (and when) people are around.

dba7108

Original Poster:

470 posts

167 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
about £400 with 2 cams

richarda0109

313 posts

164 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Hi

My choice would be IP cameras with POE.
I am assuming that your mother has decent broadband.

You would need the following:
1 x NAS storage device (eg QNAP 269 2 bay) has qnap app included seen on ebay at £200
2 x Hard disks (eg 2TB Western Digital reds in raid 1 config) 2 x£80
1 x network switch with poe £100
n x cameras - have a look at LILIN - they have very good picture quality
there are some from the company on ebay (new) just seach for user meritlilinuk
IPR712 is £95 each (outside day and night)
n x RJ45 cables (10Metres) - order on line
n x RJ45 patch cables - order on line
So we are looking at about £700 for a 2 camera system

Rgds
Richard

The sticking point is price.

cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
The above seems unnecessarily complicated

Buy an NVR with POE built in and 2 cameras

hotchy

4,454 posts

125 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Got a costco membership? You can pick up a decent system, remote access, android etc, 4 cameras (can buy more) but for the life of me cant remember how much... may be out of budget. Plus when it brakes in 4 years time, take it back for a full refund and buy a new model (happened twice now, never expected a refund either)

rich83

14,192 posts

137 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
Ive yet to see a truly impressive night vision CCTV camera, and thats what you really need it for.... most cheap cameras are decent in day light.

dba7108

Original Poster:

470 posts

167 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
hotchy said:
when it brakes in 4 years time, take it back for a full refund and buy a new model (happened twice now, never expected a refund either)
any idea on the make?


dba7108

Original Poster:

470 posts

167 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
lot of 1.3 megapix cams about. Worth going for 3megapix ones?

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/products/18496-tre...


Edited by dba7108 on Wednesday 4th March 18:42

cuneus

5,963 posts

241 months

Wednesday 4th March 2015
quotequote all
dba7108 said:
lot of 1.3 megapix cams about. Worth going for 3megapix ones?

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/products/18496-tre...


Edited by dba7108 on Wednesday 4th March 18:42
http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=2135

Henry-F

4,791 posts

244 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
Sorry for being a bit late to the party. I don’t come on this bit much but someone suggested I post a few words as we (CCTV42) were mentioned.

Where to start?

HD or standard D1 ? In theory HD is good, you have more pixels which means the potential for more detail. I say potential because most of the HD stuff being sold, and everything linked to on here uses a fixed lens wide angle lens. With wide angle lenses you get massive pixel spread as you move away from the camera meaning less detail is captured.

Using HD with wide angle lenses is a bit like trying to heat your home with all the doors and windows wide open. Fitting a massive boiler might make it a bit warmer but closing the doors and windows would be far more effective.

The other problem with HD CCTV is pretty much everything out there is using the wrong technology. We saw HD-SDI several years ago in Taiwan and it promised to allow HD over coax. The problem is you needed pretty specific coax and distances were short. So you couldn’t just use the existing cable runs. For new installations it makes more sense to use CAT5. More future - proof, but HD-SDI doesn’t work over CAT5.

IP is an option but once you move away from wide angle cameras (because of the pixel spread) good longer range outside cameras are very expensive. You also need quite a lot of kit to make it all work. More than a couple of cameras and you start thinking about a dedicated network so as not to overload your existing one.

HD-AHD doesn’t quite give the image quality of other HD options. They also tell a few lies in their promotional material which is getting copied and pasted across the internet. Not much by way of 1080P around.

HD-CVI is made by 1 Chinese manufacturer. Not compatible with anything else, in fact hasn't been compatible with it's self between 720P and 1080P. This may change but we gave up on it pretty early on.

You need to take a moment to understand how HD and pixels work. D1 resolution, standard CCTV is 0.4 megapixel. 1080P is 2.0 megapixel. That increase of 5 times the number of pixels only equates to an increase of around 1.8 times when you look at how far away from the camera you can identify someone. So a 2.8mm 90 degree angle of view in D1 will allow you to identify someone about 1.5 metres from the camera. This only increases to about 3 metres with 1080P, not 7.5 metres. You do of course have 5 times the amount of data to store on your hard drive.

CCTV is great for long thin tunnels of vision, less good for wide arcs of vision. Try to remember this when planning your system.

Here are a couple of images I took today. The wide angle shot is 1080P HD, the more zoomed in image is standard D1. Both cameras were mounted in the same place and covered the same pathway. The wide angle image basically takes the extra pixels and wastes them on the wall of the house and the car (we only want to cover people walking along the pathway).

What we consider to be the right HD solution doesn’t exist just yet, but it is coming. Before you all jump on the HD bandwagon make sure you sort out first principles in terms of camera choice etc. That is the most important thing and very few people do it. Ignore everything wide angle and fixed lens. Bar some very specific applications they won’t be what you want.

Finally 3.0 megapixel. The benefit over 2.0 MP is marginal (remember that 5 times the number of pixels only gives you 1.8 times increase in effective distance) but you have to deal with 50% more data which gets dumped into the hard drives.


1080P wide angle camera





Standard D1 image using a more appropriate camera. Good looking man is in the same position as the image above.






Zooming in on the 1080P image so that it is about the same size as the D1 image



As you can see the pixel spread of the wide angle lens means detail capture is very poor as you move away from the camera. The gorgeous hunk of a man was just over 5 metres form the camera.

Finally HD cameras do not perform as well in low light conditions as standard definition cameras.

I hope that all makes sense.

Henry smile


Edited by Henry-F on Thursday 5th March 16:09

rich83

14,192 posts

137 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
Henry whats the best Night Vision camera?

Brother D

3,698 posts

175 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
Henry it's clear you have a preference for D1 over HD - but in the example you gave you are comparing a wide angle HD vs a narrow angled D1. You are very clear, (and there is no debate) about the most important thing being a properly set-up/located system. Surely a HD camera with the same lense type will give you superior detail over a D1? And regarding standards - I thought ONVIF addresses compatibility issues (maybe not PTZ)?



Henry-F

4,791 posts

244 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
rich83 said:
Henry whats the best Night Vision camera?
Like for like standard definition cameras will give better results than HD cameras.

There is no "best" in terms of specific cameras, it depends on the application.

Henry smile

Henry-F

4,791 posts

244 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
Brother D said:
Henry it's clear you have a preference for D1 over HD - but in the example you gave you are comparing a wide angle HD vs a narrow angled D1. You are very clear, (and there is no debate) about the most important thing being a properly set-up/located system. Surely a HD camera with the same lense type will give you superior detail over a D1? And regarding standards - I thought ONVIF addresses compatibility issues (maybe not PTZ)?
To say we have a preference for D1 over HD is not true. We have have a preference for best practices being followed when it comes to camera selection and system design. At the moment 99% of people don't follow them. You only have to see the deluge of fixed lens wide angle cameras on the market to realise that.

If people use the right cameras for the job then it is amazing what you can do with standard D1 equipment. People jump on the HD bandwagon seeing it as a magic cure in the same way they jumped on TVL. We have been testing HD CCTV for a long time now so have fairly good experience. As things stand today there isn't a product we are happy to sell, but we are working on it.

Yes, like for like HD gives a better image than D1 but everything on the market is wide angle HD, so using the wide angle HD camera was fair, because that's what people will be buying. Also how much better do you think the zoomed in D1 image needs to be ? Where 1080P does win is in the ability to capture detail over a slightly wider area, but you then have to think about whether it's better to have 1 all singing and dancing camera or a number of D1 cameras covering an area. The more hooks in the water the more fish you are likely to catch. In the case of OP's driveway more than 1 camera would be desirable anyway to cover shadows behind cars etc.

ONVIF theoretically addresses a lot of the IP camera set up headaches - until it doesn't work. We come across situations where different equipment from different manufacturers don't play ball. It's the same with control protocols like Pelco. ONVIF doesn't absolve you from the network requirements.

There isn't a right and wrong with CCTV.

Henry smile