Please comment on my camera choices

[Greybeard]

I am buying a CCTV system for my house. There's nothing particularly valuable, it's for reassurance and to deter Halloween egg throwers, etc. I've read a lot here (thank you!) and think I've worked out what I need but would appreciate any comments on misunderstandings or things I've omitted. Below is a plan of the property.

Red lines are the house, garage and outbuilding, green blocks are doors. The blue line is the boundary, thick lines where it's 2m high and thinner where it's 1m, and dashed at gates. Where necessary cameras will be angled down to cut off at the top of the boundary fence.

I'm planning all Hikvision. Two DS-2CD2345FWD-I 4mm Turret cameras mounted vertically on the wall near the corners of the house, 3m up to keep them out of reach. Then one DS-2CD2545FWD-IWS (or -IS) 4mm Dome about 2.4m up mounted horizontally on the soffit under the eaves of the garage, so that it covers the front of the house.

I intend a DS-7604NI-K1-4P(B) NVR with a 4TB drive, connected to the Turrets using POE. It will either be in the loft space of the house with cables down the walls or on the first floor with cables run internally and through the wall. I wasn't planning to put microSD cards in the cameras.

The dome camera on the garage will either use WiFi and a 12V supply or Powerline ethernet and a POE injector. Since the camera has audio I'm assuming I would be able to add an amplifier and speaker later, if I wanted to speak to anyone in the area around the front door. Or I might add a DS-KB8112-IM at the front door.

I have some knowledge of ethernet configuration and intend to set things up so that I can view the live feeds and recordings from PC, tablet or mobile. I will use Cat5e. Is it usual to put CCTV on a separate subnet or just in the normal home network?

What effect do PIR operated external lights have? Do I need to shield them so that they don't shine at the camera?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Dan]

Hi @Greybeard

The NVR choice and number of cameras are all good the only changes we would recommend are camera position and focal lengths.

The outbuilding turret (green) is fine, that is a good position and focal length, you may want to adjust the angle slightly when you install it to reduce the amount of the house that is in the FoV of the camera because flat brick walls/white walls close to cameras can reflect the IR light of the camera back into the lens and this can cause overexposure which makes the rest of the scene darker. (but this may be trial and error when you install to get the best image that you want)

You mentioned PIR in your post and whether that will be an issue, in fact, PIR will not be an issue because it is passive IR and so isn't visible to the cameras. The real issue will be the cameras IR LEDs which with the way you currently have the house & garage cameras positioned may be visible to both cameras, this will cause glare and overexposure to the image produced by both cameras.

Our recommendation would be to mount the Mini Dome at the top corner of the garage near the boundary of the property and then angle the FoV back towards the front door of the house, we would then use a 6mm 2365G1 turret to cover the area in front of the garage but with the narrower focal length, you won't be overlapping the other cameras FoV.

Below are a few other small comments/things to be aware of:

1) Both the -IWS and -IS have built-in mics so you can record audio without any extra kit, but both cameras do also have Audio I/O so you can add a speaker if you want 2-way audio.

2) You mentioned mounting the Mini Dome horizontally, people do mount the mini domes this way but some customers have reported that because the IR LEDs are fixed to point in the direction the body of the camera is facing this can meant that a lot of the IR light gets shot into the ground rather than in the direction the lens is facing, because of this we usually recommend vertically mounting the Mini Domes if they are going to be at a low/head height level (2m) so that the lens and IR are pointing in the same direction.

3) In regards to the subnet question, usually, people only use a subnet on an NVR when you have cameras directly connected. The subnet is the NVRs internal IP address range and any cameras using it cannot be accessed individually from other devices on your local network. (e.g. PCs, laptops, mobile apps) If you are directly connecting Hikvision cameras to a Hikvision NVR then you can use their Virtual Host feature to log in to individual cameras that are directly connected and adjust the camera specific settings.

Other than the things mentioned above everything else about the system is good, you can find links below to all the products you have mentioned on our website:

Hikvision DS-2CD2545FWD-IS 4MP IR Fixed Mini Dome Network Camera
Hikvision DS-2CD2545FWD-IWS 4MP IR Fixed Mini Dome Network Camera
Hikvision DS-2CD2345FWD-I 4MP Turret Network Camera
Hikvision DS-7604NI-K1-4P(B) | 4 Channel Network Video Recorder
Hikvision DS-KB8112-IM Vandal Resistant IP Video Intercom Door Station

 

[Greybeard]

Thanks, Dan. I understand what you mean about the IR being visible to the other camera, that had not occurred to me. Is the IR beam wider than than camera FOV, or just not so well defined? The reason the mini dome is where I drew it was to cover the gate at the side of the house, but I can live without that if necessary.

It also occurs to me now that I might have issues with low sun. North is at top left of my sketch, so the blue turret is facing sunrise and the green is facing sunset. There are, however, a lot of trees and neighbouring buildings that will partially block the sunlight.

My question about PIR lights was not about the IR, but the lights, sorry it wasn't clear. If they are triggered while the camera is using IR, will the visible illumination cause the camera to adjust exposure and I'll lose the unlit areas?

Thanks for your comments on the subnet. I think that pushes me towards networking the garage camera direct to the NVR using powerline adaptors, although I have any number of redundant ADSL routers I could set up as dedicated access point.

I'll be placing an order once I've decided all the fine detail of things like cable lengths.

 

[Dan]

Thanks, Dan. I understand what you mean about the IR being visible to the other camera, that had not occurred to me. Is the IR beam wider than than camera FOV, or just not so well defined? The reason the mini dome is where I drew it was to cover the gate at the side of the house, but I can live without that if necessary.

It also occurs to me now that I might have issues with low sun. North is at top left of my sketch, so the blue turret is facing sunrise and the green is facing sunset. There are, however, a lot of trees and neighbouring buildings that will partially block the sunlight.

My question about PIR lights was not about the IR, but the lights, sorry it wasn't clear. If they are triggered while the camera is using IR, will the visible illumination cause the camera to adjust exposure and I'll lose the unlit areas?

Thanks for your comments on the subnet. I think that pushes me towards networking the garage camera direct to the NVR using powerline adaptors, although I have any number of redundant ADSL routers I could set up as dedicated access point.

I'll be placing an order once I've decided all the fine detail of things like cable lengths.

IR spread is pretty much the same for all models so whether you are using a 2.8mm or a 6mm you should always get full coverage. So with a 4mm or 6mm model, the IR will extend a little bit beyond the FoV of those focal lengths. I can understand what you are trying to do, if you need to cover that gate as well then we would recommend using the 2.8mm Mini Dome as that is what we usually recommend for covering spaces 10m by 10m or smaller as that focal length is the widest over the shortest distance. You will lose detail over distances greater than 10m but for your scenario, the majority of the activity will be happening within a 10m range.

The sun shouldn't be much of an issue as both turret cameras should be pointed down and sunlight will only be an issue if the sun itself is in the FoV of the camera. This is the same situation with the PIR floodlights, if floodlights are pointed directly at the lens of any of the cameras you will get the same glare as I described for the IR LEDs. At night the floodlights may be bright enough to make the cameras switch to daytime colour mode, but if you don't want them to do this you can change the IR settings to a scheduled switch so the IR stays switched on between say 17:30pm and 7am no matter how often the floodlights come on.