Camera to cover small driveway?

[Batfin]

Hi, looking a bit of help in relation to what camera to choose to cover my driveway. The House is L Shaped with the bottom ride soft of the L being where our driveway is. I'm trying to get a camera that will cover the driveway, but leave no blind spots whole it watches the 2 cars, which we have to park quite close to the wall so they don't stick out into the footpath. I did think I could mount a camera high up on the wall, but think this sort of defeats the purpose if anything happens and all we have is pictures of the top of peoples heads! The back part of the house is at a higher elevation, essentially it's a bungalow with a lower garage at the driveway which is under the main house, at the same elevation as the road. I can't put anything over the left side of the house to look over as the driveway is about 10ft lower than the rest of the house, so the garden gets in the way :-(

any ideas?

 

[Dan]

Hi @Batfin

Do you already have a network CCTV system in place? If you do, what brand do you have and what camera/NVR models do you have?

Do you have any lighting covering the driveway? (e.g. street lights, security motion lights, etc...)

 

[Batfin]

Hi Dan,

I have nothing in place at all, I have an old Acti D72 and E82 that came from my last house that I may re-use around the back garden, and NVR is still to be decided! I will likely add a couple of other cameras in various places, they're easy to figure out though, it's the driveway that's stumping me! There's a motion activated light on the right side of the house (where the driveway overhangs) and there's a LED street light at the end of the driveway on the left side of the picture above

 

[Dan]

Thanks @Batfin

In that case, a Hikvision DS-2CD2347G2H-LIU 4MP Hybrid Light Turret camera will probably be the best option because it will allow you to trial the camera in IR mode, ColorVu mode, or Hybrid mode where the camera switches from B&W IR mode to Colour when a smart event is triggered.

Most likely with the ambient light you have in the scene, the ColorVu mode will give you the best results as you can turn off the built-in white light and capture a colour image at night just using the visible light in the scene.

This mode and mounting the camera at just above head height avoids the problem you would get with using the built-in white light or IR light which would reflect off the cars which are very close to the camera.

 

[Batfin]

Thanks Dan, for covering the whole driveway would a 2.4 or 4mm lens be best, and mount the camera at head height in the middle of the driveway? I assume with it at head height I’ll still have a 1 or 2 m blind spot under the camera?I see the dof on that is either 2.5 or 3.1m to infinity, Is there a motorised varifocal version so it can focus on anyone near the camera (as they could come in via the sides from next door)?

 

[Dan]

Hi @Batfin

We would recommend the 2.8mm because for such a small area it will give you the widest FoV over the shortest distance, there will be an area directly below the camera that is not covered but as the drive is quite small there is not going to be any way to approach that blind spot without crossing through the cameras FoV.

A varifocal camera won't work well for such a small area and if you adjusted the focus for objects closer to the camera, it could leave things that are further away from the camera out of focus.