IP Camera at Home

peanutnoggin

Hi TE,

Is anyone using IP cameras at their home? I'm planning on installing cameras in various areas around the house and I was looking for some ideas. Can anyone list some pros and cons of cameras to look for? I know this is a broad question, but any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Peanut

gateway

Dunno, but I have been looking into doing this too so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Paul Boz

What is the purpose of the system? Do you want general 24-7 surveillance as a detective control (IE DVR setup with recording) or something that you can just check in on the house with? There are two classifications of surveillance equipment: amateur and pro-grade. If you want to spend less money you should look into offerings by Logitech and similar other vendors. The issue here is quality of camera footage and a wider array of features. If you want to start looking into pro-grade equipment I would advise you check out cctvwholesalers.com. They’re relatively cheap and can get you all you need. When my wife and I sell our condo and build a house I’m building in a centralized closed-circuit DVR model with pre-defined camera termination points. This will allow me to use whatever cameras I want. For example, I can get night vision or super low-light cameras for outside and have wide focus lenses in the garage and well-lit outside areas. You basically get what you pay for. I’ve audited too many banks with janky security surveillance systems to want to go cheap.

If you go with a DVR solution (either home-brew open source with webcams or buy something commercial) you should make sure your system supports only recording motion. There is no point in recording 15 hours of nothing happening.

You should also configure the camera system to be non-invasive to the others that live in the house. People shouldn't feel uncomfortable in their own home. Generally monitoring the perimeter is adequate with the exception of monitoring high-security areas of the home such as an office that contains sensitive or confidential data.

RTmarc

This is something I'm quite interested in as well. We've had a rash of thefts in our neighborhood and I'd like to see if I can catch them on camera. Someone stole our lawnmower last week but I get the last laugh on it. It was a piece of junk parked outside for me to take to the ****. They went through all of the trouble of stealing it for something that won't even run and leaks gas.

peanutnoggin

Paul Boz wrote: »

What is the purpose of the system? Do you want general 24-7 surveillance as a detective control (IE DVR setup with recording) or something that you can just check in on the house with?

Paul, you're spot on... I'm looking for detective control surveillance!

Paul Boz wrote: »

If you go with a DVR solution (either home-brew open source with webcams or buy something commercial) you should make sure your system supports only recording motion. There is no point in recording 15 hours of nothing happening.

This is exactly the type of setup I'm looking for... a motion detecting system that will begin recording when something happens.

Paul Boz wrote: »

You should also configure the camera system to be non-invasive to the others that live in the house. People shouldn't feel uncomfortable in their own home. Generally monitoring the perimeter is adequate with the exception of monitoring high-security areas of the home such as an office that contains sensitive or confidential data.

Agreed...

I know video eats up a lot of HDD space, I'm curious to know what the recommendations are for the DVR. I'll probably delete video over time, but I'd like to be able to store a few weeks of video to ensure I have adequate time to review it. Your thoughts?

-Peanut

Forsaken_GA

ZoneMinder: Linux Home CCTV and Video Camera Security with Motion Detection

Check that out if you're much into do it yourself.

Paul Boz

250-500gb is sufficient because you do not have a mandate to record footage for any set period of time. As long as you can record for any time that the home is unoccupied (while you're at work, on vacation, whatever) you're fine.

peanutnoggin

Cool... thanks to all for your input and advice.

-Peanut

msteinhilber

Paul pretty much nailed it. A good friend of mine works for a place specializing in security and one facet of their business is surveillance. I haven't spent nearly as much time with IP based systems versus your traditional coaxial based systems with DVR cards in a server to capture the video, but the quality of the cameras out there both then and now on the IP based devices range from dirt cheap cameras which in my opinion are no better than a fake look-a-like camera to feature filled top quality at a huge price.

I've worked with a few both in my own store as well as for other customers when I would occasionally get a call to assist with such systems despite it not being a focus of the business I worked for. When a system is implemented with poor quality cameras, it's pretty pointless in my mind. Unless the system with the crap cameras utilizes motion sensing and has the capability to send a trigger to a monitored alarm system, they are pretty pointless. A lot of the poor quality camera's really serve no other purpose than being able to say "yep, that's a human there who broke in" if you ever did have to rely on the footage in any scenario.

I don't really have any form of security in place since I switched to apartment living. I do have a Linksys IP camera I had laying around (WVC200 I think) that I'm going to rig to point at my washer/dryer I've got downstairs as well as the room to enter where the hot water heaters are located. The room isn't locked (should be) and someone has been shutting off my hot water (secured building, either another tenant or maintenance) and I suspect someone has been using my washer/dryer as well. Not the best quality, but maybe enough to figure out who is doing it. For good professional cameras, I like Mobotix though I've heard good things about Axis cameras too. Both are going to be quite expensive though.

gateway

Great stuff. As always, thanks for the advice.