Do You Have a Tractor Shed/Barn?

[Jaybr]

Looks like that camera is going to be good enough to tell you there's an intruder, but maybe not good enough to make an identification?

That's about right, but it should also be good enough to capture a license plate # if anyone pulls up to the shop. If they continue past the shop to the house, I have more and better cameras there that would help identify.

Once I get internet extended to the shop I'll put up a video camera, and in a month or so we should be living there full time and won't worry about it as much.

 

[WinterDeere]

Please post back with what you come up with, since I'm facing the same sort of dilemma. I have a HD color video camera with lights (from Ring) over our driveway, and due to the mounting height and just limitation of H x V pixel count, picking out faces or license plates from the captured content is more luck than science. I'd like to put up more, to cover current blind spots, but distances would be even greater.

I do have a large on-site NAS, and in fact a few older NAS's kicking around due to the business I'm in, all of which support video and any of which I can set up to back up to a cloud service for off-site storage in case the place is ever burglarized and the NAS stolen. But I've honestly found the Ring system to be just too easy and convenient, to pursue these other options that might allow for better camera lensing, etc.

 

[Jaybr]

Please post back with what you come up with, since I'm facing the same sort of dilemma. I have a HD color video camera with lights (from Ring) over our driveway, and due to the mounting height and just limitation of H x V pixel count, picking out faces or license plates from the captured content is more luck than science. I'd like to put up more, to cover current blind spots, but distances would be even greater.

I do have a large on-site NAS, and in fact a few older NAS's kicking around due to the business I'm in, all of which support video and any of which I can set up to back up to a cloud service for off-site storage in case the place is ever burglarized and the NAS stolen. But I've honestly found the Ring system to be just too easy and convenient, to pursue these other options that might allow for better camera lensing, etc.

Will do!

I’ll be using Ubiquity point to point WiFi bridge to get the network to the shop. As far as cameras I currently use Nest at the house and will start there. If they don’t provide adequate image I’ll look elsewhere. My brother does security alarms, cameras, etc and can find me higher resolution if needed.

Like you with the Ring setup, I find the Nest extremely easy so haven’t bothered with anything else yet.

 

[WinterDeere]

Cool!

I live in a big old house, with several interior stone walls 2 feet thick, so our WiFi system consists of more than a half dozen wired hot spots. The prior owner left numberous un-terminated stubs of cat.5 dangling in both basement and attic, but we've never managed to find any end connected to another, so they've been useless so far. Our rather large home network is built as a hodge podge of MoCA, some localized sections of cat.5/6, WiFi, and even one old cat.3 line out to my carriage barn.

The cat.3 was actually originally pulled for telephone, probably ca.1995. But because I could never get reliable WiFi out there from the house, I disconnected it from the telephone system and re-purposed it for Ethernet. It actually works at a respectable 140 Mbps over the roughly 200 feet length from barn to utility room of the house, which is plenty fast for it's primary uses of downloading parts diagrams for tractors and ordering things off Amazon/ebay.

 

[Carl_NH]

Along similar lines, we put in a Simplisafe system two years ago for the house and a garage wifi camera plugged in to power. Then added two more remote cameras for the barn and around the house on the battery that comes with them.

The barn camera is 250' from the house, and have 3 Orbi Mesh wifi setup with 1G Comcast speed and the remote cameras last 2-3 months on battery - the only drawback is the camera's "active range" which is about 60-70' to detect and record motion. I have the remote cameras set up to record but not alarm.

I can see when my neighbor "borrows stuff" after asking of course, I can access the video and get notified when the camera records movement which can be set for humans or any movement. Had it set for everything to start, but got a lot of squirrels eating nuts on top of the fence posts.

 

[WinterDeere]

Had it set for everything to start, but got a lot of squirrels eating nuts on top of the fence posts.

This is where my Ring camera drives me absolutely nuts. It notifies us for deer, fox and squirrels several times everyday, which I honestly don't mind that much... they're fun to watch for the few seconds they're usually on screen.

But at least one damned spider builds her nest right in the roof peak where that camera is mounted, every damn summer. So from maybe late August up thru Halloween, I get two dozen late-night notifications that turn out to be nothing but a spider working her web in front of the camera. She's so close-in that the way the camera measures body size, she's the size of a person at medium range.

Thinking thru this problem for the first time now, I think the only way to really get a system to trigger on only people is to have stereoscopic cameras. AI pattern recognition can help with in-focus objects, but if you're going on body size, you really need dual cameras to distinguish size from distance.

 

[WinterDeere]

Does anyone use the SubLethal system? Seen it around for a couple of years on YT feed but never investigated. It sure does look intimidating and fun to use. I wonder what the liability would be for the user?

State laws vary, I'm sure. Castle doctrine probably applies in some, but not in others.

I actually started my engineering career in the mid-1990's working for a company who had developed what was then very advanced machine vision algorithms, applying them to autonomous weaponry, like this but without the need for a human interface. They ultimately backed out of that business and applied their technology to a much less fun circuit board assembly and inspection, when they realized the primary customers for automated weapons systems ca.1990 were drug cartels, terrorist organizations, and unfriendly foreign governments.

It was just one of many classic situations of some smart guys with a solution, hunting for a problem. Their IP was all based on the machine vision and pattern recognition, which was truly advanced for its time, but they didn't know where best to apply the technology.

 

[RayIN]

I no longer have a tractor, wagon shed. In Jan 2 dead trees fell on it. It's been to muddy to do much other than get estimates on rebuilding.
Meanwhile my tractor shares the garage with my40' MH, 1932 Chevy, and pickup. I still have room to work on everything though.

 

[EddieWalker]

Sorry to hear about your shed. Trees hate buildings!!!

 

[Jaybr]

I no longer have a tractor, wagon shed. In Jan 2 dead trees fell on it. It's been to muddy to do much other than get estimates on rebuilding.
Meanwhile my tractor shares the garage with my40' MH, 1932 Chevy, and pickup. I still have room to work on everything though.

I had 2 fall by mine a few weeks ago in a storm. Fortunately the larger on missed the shed and the other fell at the exact angle of the roof so landed flat and only did minor damage.