New House Hikvision Cameras recommendations and setup?

[NightCli]

Hello guys,

First of all I must say that I find this forum quite helpful for a newbie like me and you guys made me consider for a new Hikvision CCTV setup.

So this are my thoughts and I would appreciate your expertise and recommendations

Exterior of the House:
I currently live in Plot 14 and the main objective is to capture all activities from the back of the house, towards the garden.

• Blue & Purple cameras - to cover the back.
• Lime camera - To cover anyone coming towards the garden and shed.

I understand that there will be an area in the shed without any coverage but I think that is an acceptable risk.

Question: Would you recommend another type of setup? Can the cameras cover these types of angles?

Unfortunately I only have one cat5 cable to the outside and one of the recommendations would be to install a POE switch outside, which is something that I do not like as electrics exposed to the elements is never a good idea.

Question : having a POE switch outside (with a proper box to protect it) is a recommended idea?

Regarding the hardware I have been looking into the following:

3x DS-2CD2387G2-LSU/SL
1x DS-7600NI-K1/4P Series NVR

My only concern about the ColourVU cameras is the fact that these areas do not have a lot of light and I do not know if they are suitable for such environment.

Question : Due to the lack of light during the night, should I discard the ColourVU option and focus on hybrid cameras? What are the benefits?

For the above I have been quoted 2.500£ (from Securico) which seems quite expensive taking into consideration the cost of the hardware but I do not have any other comparison from other CCTV installers.

Question : Is there a list of specialized installers in the Cambridgeshire area?

Than you in advance for all your support!
TC

 

[Dan]

Hi @NightCli

Below are answers to your questions:

Question: Would you recommend another type of setup? Can the cameras cover these types of angles?

Answer: Yes, these 3 camera positions seem fine to me but we would recommend 4mm models for the blue & purple positions to avoid wasting the camera's field of view on the area beyond the fence. The lime camera will probably be fine as a 2.8mm as the area is more open.


Question: having a POE switch outside (with a proper box to protect it) is a recommended idea?

Answer: Yes, you can place PoE Injectors/Switches outside inside a weather-proof electrical box but it would likely be quite a large box which might not look great on a residential property. Another option might be to use something like the Vigitron NetMux Vi00103 Ethernet and PoE Port Multiplexer which allows you to connect 2 PoE cameras to 2 ports on a PoE switch or NVR over a single cable run, you would still need to have one end of the Multiplexer outside but it's much smaller than a 4-port PoE switch so the electrical box could be much smaller.


Question: Due to the lack of light during the night, should I discard the ColourVU option and focus on hybrid cameras? What are the benefits?

Answer: If there is no ambient light (e.g. street lighting, security lights, etc...) covering the areas you want to record, then we would recommend the Hybrid Light cameras as these give you the option to set the camera up in ColorVu (white light) / AcuSense (IR Light) / Hybrid (IR that switches to white light on event trigger) modes which means you can trial different modes for different areas and see what works best.

In regards to camera/NVR choice, if you want to stick with 8MP cameras then we would recommend the DS-2CD2387G2H-LIU but do be aware that if you want to install 3 x 8MP cameras you will need to upgrade to the 8-ch NVR - DS-7608NI-M2/8P - because the bandwidth used by 3 x 8MP Hybrid Light cameras will exceed what the 4-ch NVR can support.

The space you want to cover is actually quite small, if you wanted to keep costs down you could switch to 3 x 4MP cameras and use the DS-2CD2347G2H-LIU which uses less bandwidth so you can run 3 of these on the DS-7604NXI-K1/4P 4-ch NVR.

We can't give specific prices for Hikvision products here on the forum, but I can say that the 8MP & 8-ch NVR will cost you around £1,000 and the 4MP & 4-ch NVR will cost you around £500-700 (this is without installation and any other extras - e.g. junction boxes, cable, PoE switch, outdoor electrical box, etc...).


Question: Is there a list of specialized installers in the Cambridgeshire area?

Answer: we don't really keep a record of installers for different parts of the country, we would just recommend Googling "IP CCTV Installers in *insert name of your town/area*" and see what you find. You probably will be able to take that £2,500 quote you've had to others and get cheaper, but our advice would not be to go for the cheapest quote but for the installer that is well-reviewed and in those reviews it states they offer good "post-installation support".

The cheapest quotes are often so cheap because they are installers that will just "cut & run", so when you run into technical problems with the system you won't be able to reach them for support.

 

[NightCli]

Hello @Dan

Thank you so much for the advise. This is very useful!

One last question regarding the Hybrid cameras. Is there any downside to selecting them vs the ColourVu or they are actually technological more advanced and provide the same capabilities than the ColourVu?

Cheers
TC

 

[Dan]

Hi @NightCli

There is no real downside to choosing the Hybrid Light cameras over the pure ColorVu models, if anything you are at more of a disadvantage going with just the ColorVu because if there is not enough ambient light in the scene for good colour images at night you will either have to enable the built-in white light or just have dark, not very clear colour images.

With the Hybrid Light models, if it is too dark for ColorVu you can switch the camera to IR mode and get better night images without additional visible light.