Home Security Camera

[lakngulf]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion.

What should I know before I jump in?

 

[Citydude]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion. What should I know before I jump in?

We have motion sensors instead of the cameras that email me and contact the local sheriff. The cameras would be good for identifying an intruder though.

 

[kthompson]

I bought a Swan system with eight cameras and large hard drive to record and had it set only to record when it detected motion. Hard drive went out at about one year old. Just went out last week, no idea on possible repair.

 

[ch1ch2]

I have had 7 systems. Currently running 3 systems.
1 system would not restart after power failure. Others had hardware failures.
I connected the video out to the monitor to all TV's VGA input. Any of 5 TV's could quickly view the cameras. That stopped with my newest system. It had HDMI video output.

If the system records to it's own hard drive, remember that thieves may take the recorder when they break in. It happened to my son.

The larger the hard drive the better. 1 of my systems rewrites on itself every 4 days. I can get 2 weeks from an other.
Cloud recording can get expensive, but depending on what you get it may cost nothing.
You can monitor your system from anywhere with cloud recording but, so can everyone else. (nothing is 100% secure)
Just my 2 cents.

 

[roadhunter]

A game camera might be a simpler alternative for some applications like this.

 

[BigCountry1689]

The RING doorbell company has a cool system that I put on my aunt's house. Its a solar operated camera that accesses your WIfi and uploads to the Cloud. No wires, solar panel keeps it charged, motion sensor and night vision (effective at about 5-10 feet) just stick up access through your computer setup is very easy and sends alerts to your phone with 30 day storage on the cloud. CANARY and iSMART also has a unique system similar to the RING but I liked the avoidance of wires. The camera is $200 and Solar panel is $49.00. I put 1 over each door, took about 1 hour and done. Solar panel has about 6 foot cord so you can mount to the fascia board and then 1 screw for the camera above any area. My aunts big issue was she didn't want to have wires installed and wanted to keep it simple.

 

[Industrial Toys]

It's all about quality. Usually you get what you pay for. I have been selling cameras for 26 years and found the only way I could ever determine a difference from one to another was put them side to side and switch back and forth. The specs often didn't mean a thing, and usually price determined the winner.

I guess, this is near impossible to do with the packaged systems.

I don't like many of the packaged systems because they use goofy, specialized cables and connectors, rather then industry standard coax or BNC connectors, or CAT 5. They often use fragile (cheap) skinny wire, and if you are five feet short, you have to buy a fifty foot pre-made cable and roll it up.

 

[tjkubota93]

I have a amcrest 960h 8ch with 6 day dvr from amazon. With app i can see on my phone. It initially had 4 cameras and I added 4 more. It uses bnc cables. Had it 2 years. At 89 days there was a software update that bricked my hard drive, they sent a new one. I'm happy with it.

 

[kcflhrc]

I purchased a Q-See system from Home Depot on sale for $189, regularly $379. It came with 4 960TVL cameras and the DVR with a 1 TB hard drive. It has a phone app and also e-mails me when a camera is triggered. It works great and the price was fantastic.

 

[dickfoster]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion.

What should I know before I jump in?

Be sure to get a camera with enough resolution that would be good in court. Many of the cheaper ones put out the old TV standard resolution which isn't worth squat. You don't need color while B&W is better in the dark with supplemental near IR illumination. Color cameras have filters that exclude near IR for better color rendition but that really cuts down on night time performace when you typically need it the most.

 

[kcflhrc]

My cameras show color in the day and black and white at night. 100' night vision.

 

[speedbump]

My cameras show color in the day and black and white at night. 100' night vision.

Tell us more about this camera. I'm interested in something that can see 100' at night.

 

[dickfoster]

My cameras show color in the day and black and white at night. 100' night vision.

That's likely done with software. If it's a color camera then there is a better than 90% chance that it has an IR filter over the image sensor. Silicon image sensors are naturally sensitive down into the near IR end of the spectrum and that NIR causes color crosstalk and is why they put either a NIR absorption or NIR reflective filter between the lens and sensor to eliminate NIR before it can get into the image sensor. A pure B&W camera will not have this filter so will yield superior sensitivity in low light conditions over the very same sensor with one. Color is pretty but you don't really need it in a security application.

 

[dickfoster]

Tell us more about this camera. I'm interested in something that can see 100' at night.

No doubt it has NIR LEDs supplying suplimental lighting at night. You can't see it because it's below the human spectral response curve but silicon image sensors can.

 

[speedbump]

A pure B&W camera will not have this filter so will yield superior sensitivity in low light conditions over the very same sensor with one. Color is pretty but you don't really need it in a security application.

Are you saying that B&W camera's would be likely to get that kind of night range simply because they are not color with this filter?

 

[kcflhrc]

Tell us more about this camera. I'm interested in something that can see 100' at night.

This is the system I bought. I got it on sale for under $200

Q-SEE 8-Channel 96H 1TB Surveillance System with (4) 9TVL Camera, 1 Night Vision-QT598-4V6-1 - The Home Depot

 

[dickfoster]

Are you saying that B&W camera's would be likely to get that kind of night range simply because they are not color with this filter?

It depends on illumination. Silicon sensors are not true infrared cameras, just near IR. What I am saying given equal illumination and the same sensor the unfiltered camera with have superior sensitivity therefore range.
Trust me you can take my word for it, I worked for several years in the tech end for one of the largest if not the largest CMOS image sensor/camera chip makers in the world, OmniVision Technologies. I was in on the startup in fact. One of my duties was to aid electrical design engineers in designing cameras for all sorts of things, security being among them. You could even say that I'm an expert in the field although I'm retired and a full time goof off now.

 

[speedbump]

This is the system I bought. I got it on sale for under $200

I don't suppose we will be seeing that deal again any time soon.

It depends on illumination. Silicon sensors are not true infrared cameras, just near IR. What I am saying given equal illumination and the same sensor the unfiltered camera with have superior sensitivity therefore range.
Trust me you can take my word for it, I worked for several years in the tech end for one of the largest if not the largest CMOS image sensor/camera chip makers in the world, OmniVision Technologies. I was in on the startup in fact. One of my duties was to aid electrical design engineers in designing cameras for all sorts of things, security being among them. You could even say that I'm an expert in the field although I'm retired and a full time goof off now.

Can you even buy black and white cameras anymore?

 

[kcflhrc]

I don't suppose we will be seeing that deal again any time soon.

It was back in late October when Home Depot had it on sale. I'm happy with it and for the money it was a steal.

 

[dickfoster]

I don't suppose we will be seeing that deal again any time soon.

Can you even buy black and white cameras anymore?

Of course you can. All they have to do is leave the IR filter out and turn the color processing off. Most image sensors today, at least the CMOS stuff, has full on board image processing but it can be controlled in a lot of ways including having a B&W mode either through a serial control bus or pin programming for the common stuff and usually color or B&W mode is one of them. Here's one. It's an IP or ethernet camera with IR illumination LEDs and it's 3 megapixel High Definition camera so has useable definition. You could add more illumination to extend the range even further. You could probably find someone who will take the filter out and permanently set it to B&W mode.

Here's one that has high dynamic range too. About 115 db I think although it's not in the specs.
Indoor/Outdoor SUPER HD 4MP Network IP Infrared Bullet Camera with Smart Detection (See Up to 100 Foot in COMPLETE DARKNESS),Infrared Bullet Security Cameras, - CCTVSecurityPros.com

High dynamic range simply means it can cover scenes with dark areas and areas in bright sunlight at the same time. It has more dynamic range than your eyes do so you lose nothing. With 4 mega pixels, it's high def too. It uses an Omnivision CMOS image sensor.

Sometimes dynamic range is more important than sensitivity because you can always add illumination for the dark but you can do nothing about scenes that have a higher dynamic range than the sensor can accommodate. I got the company to develop high dynamic range sensors in order to deal with the automotive market and they found it to be a big hit in security market too.