cctv thoughts / suggestions

[blmxm]

I am at the point now where I am looking to add video to my setup, and am wondering about others experiences. I have an elk, and also have RMS. I am planning on using my ix325 itronix for around the house stuff. It's a military grade tablet, I figured good for around the pool etc. I also have an HTC touch pro 2 for mobile access. With the limited number of supported devices for RMS, I am seeking thoughts on advantages disadvantages of using RMS compatible cameras / DVR. Going with a lower number of better quality IP cameras, or grabbing one of the multi camera ching chow systems off ebay.
My main thing is we would like to ID who is at the front door, see the house perimeter and parking area, and be able to confirm unauthorized entry in the case of an alarm when we are away.
Frankly I am leaning towards the more is better idea, but have spun all the options to death in my head, so I am open to the insight and experience of others. I actually bid on one of the panasonic cl cameras but lost, and when I start looking at the cost of 4 to 6 of those, I can get one of the systems with 6 to 8 cams and an IP DVR. Having looked at some CL feeds, it's not like their that great a pic themselves. Going to a dedicated micros unit shoves the cost way up there.
I should add that I am leaning to a dedicated system for various reasons, but if someone can convince me it is worth it to add a PC solely for camera support I'm willing to listen. I've seen the posts on here about the NV5000 etc, and I just lean towards a DVR at this point. One of the big questions in my mind is just how much it matters as to whether it will play nice with RMS or not.
The only other thing that has come to my mind is it might be nice to force my TV to the camera displays on a motion detection at certain times. However having a hamony remote I suppose I can force myself to press a couple of buttons....
I look forward to everyone's thoughts.

 

[sic0048]

With cameras it is definitely one of those times where you get what you pay for. Keep in mind that in a perfectly lighted situation, almost any camera will work. The real difference shows in non-perfectly lighted situations. How will the camera perform when backlit, or at night, or near dark?

Having more cameras will not help if you cannot get a usable image. Usable image means being able to 100% identify the person. Not just - white male, 160-200lbs wearing a dark coat, but rather white male, 160-200 lbs with an earing in the left ear and a birthmark on the right cheek. Hopefully you get what I am saying. It's not good enough to see that there were three people walking around your property scoping it out. You have to have good clear pictures of people's faces so that anyone that looks at it can clearly see who it is and be able to use it to identify the person in the future (from a line up, sitting in court, etc) for it to be worth while.

If you are looking for a cheap solution, I suggest buying some of those dummy cameras. They might deter people from trying anything because they think they are being recorded. Otherwise, if you cheap out on the cameras, you will have spend a lot more money than the dummy cameras and get about the same result because the cheap cameras will not provide clear enough pictures in all lighting situations to make a difference. If you only care about recording during perfect lighting conditions, then the cheaper cameras will probably work OK. If you want to know who vandalized you car last night around midnight, then an expensive camera is the only way to go.

I'd recommend spending $$$ money for some very nice cameras that will provide good results in all lighting conditions. If that means only being able to afford 1 or 2 cameras to start out with, then only get those and put them in the highest priority locations. You can always add more cameras later, but you cannot make a cheap camera work better. You'll eventually have to replace it and you will have simply wasted your money.

If you are talking about door access, the problem is that most of the time, the person standing at the door is going to be backlit. Most cheaper cameras will really struggle with this.

I think if you took a poll of all the people that started out with a cheaper system, they would almost all say that they wish they had spend more money to get better quality cameras.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[twilo123]

on the camera side this is the quandry that i think is holding back major acceptance of ip cameras in the market. they are here and people are getting them but if there is 1 thing that holds them back against analog it is cost. that being said many people run into the same situation you are dealing with and when they start adding up all of the ip cameras they figure it is cheaper to get analog and a dvr. currently this in many cases turns out to be more cost effective.

DM tend to be higher cost dvr. you could look at Nuvico or Everfocus. Under that you could look at something like Lorex, Digimerge, etc. many of these companies have online versions you can check the video quality ahead of time.

if you go analog cameras try to get ones with varifocal lenses so you can adjust them accordingly. for ip cameras try to get optical zoom as opposed to digital.

i don't know what RMS is so i can't comment on that part of integration.

 

[signal15]

Also, with IP Cameras, I've noticed that the only ones that really give decent video quality are the ones that do either MPEG-4 or h.264 video. The ones that only do MJPEG take up a ton of bandwidth and the framerate is usually low.

I'm not particularly thrilled with any of the IP cams on the market right now. Although, those Sharx cams put out some great video quality.

 

[blmxm]

I thanks everyone for their thoughts so far. I'm still curious to hear from people using RMS for their cameras. I can get a motion capture from a web page with a set update interval, but really have no way to test functionality of the cameras that are supported. I am trying to keep everything consistent across PDA, portable home touch screen etc. Makes for much better WAF if she doesn't have to learn multiple systems / scenarios.
Also anyone who has managed to get a non listed camera working, model and how to info would be appreciated. I recall seeing that someone got an axis working in RMS, but I saw no info on how. It appears MJPEG is what RMS needs. I get an email on alarm trip, and want to be able to open RMS to see the tripped zone, and access cameras.
From what I can see the only other option requires me to be certain that the IP camera / dvr, has the ability to be viewed on a PDA, and I went with a PDA based on ELK requirements. Currently I am leaning towards 2 PTZ's looking back at the house. I really like the image on the Panasonic WV-NS202A. (http://wv-ns202.gotdns.com:82/live/index.html) demo link. But it doesn't seem to have any provision for remote viewing on a winmo device, nor could I get any type of image via RMS. Hopefully someone will chime in on a axis cam that has similar abilities.
I have also tried getting images from a BL-C10A to work from the panasonic veiwing site to see how they look but came up zeros. I guess you need direct access to the camera server.
Thanks to all for your experiences.

 

[pete_c]

If you still deciding you can prewire a couple/or one CAT5 cables to a location where you think you want to have cameras to your DVR location and just wire up some cheap cameras to see how it works for you. Personally I am utilizing a range from the $80 to the $400 devices and experiment...

Personally I still like the dedicated to video versus the IP cams the best. I utilize both types today.

When doing a commercial project last year same concerns came up in deciding best cameras for a new warehouse facility (outside and inside). It was decided that the analogue camera (some PTZ) would do the best. The six cameras were connected to a DVR (running a MS Windows application).

A few years ago post 911 I was doing some video security "stuff" and installed all IP cams mostly to take advantage of existing infrastructure, low cost and ease of maintenance. If I had a larger budget might have considered an analogue camera to an IP mini-server setup. I did some IP traffic analysis of streaming video (frame rate / size adjustments) and recommended against using many of these unless they were on separate VLANs with the ability to tweak down utilization both on the source and network end. At home it really wouldn't matter though...

 

[signal15]

Check out the DVR setups on Costco.com. They are analog to the DVR, but the DVR saves the video in h.264 and makes it available on the network. They were running a deal the other day that had a 12 camera setup for like $600.

 

[pete_c]

and if you a do it yourselfer check out Zoneminder....

 

[russban]

Techvision and IC Realtime make great DVR's and cameras that are reasonably priced. Their DVR's have a ton of features and have some of the best remote access abilities of any CCTV equipment I have installed.

While IP cameras are obviously the future I find it hard to use them in most installations because of their high cost. I do recommend installing cat5e cable and baluns instead of RG59 on all analog installations so that you are ready to move over to IP cameras in the future.

 

[Neurorad]

I got on the mailing list of SDM magazine - monthly, free publication, covers commercial security, paid for with ads, etc.

The vast majority of the stuff is still CCTV/analog, with a little bit of IP thrown in.

Got one yesterday that came with a Pegasus brochure/insert, detailing crazy low wholesale prices.

One of the contributing authors, Dave Engebretson, wrote a couple books on IP cameras (I read one of them), a technicians guide. Search the SDM website for his stuff (his wife or sister Joan is the senior editor).

sdmmag.com

 

[electron]

ElkRMS does not support streaming a video feed from the NV5000 setup (I have both). I think the best you can do is point it at a JPG which gets updated based on certain conditions.

 

[twilo123]

we support cameras on winmo devices directly. see link in my signature.

 

[pete_c]

In my testing I have seen no difference using CAT5/with baluns versus coax/power cables.

In a recent 6 camera commercial installation getting bids and proceeding with the 75k installation the vendor chose coax/power cables. Not really sure why after I suggested use of cat5 other than simplicity maybe. A windows application was used. I was not impressed comparing it to the Zoneminder application I use and other Linux type boxes.

So reading thru the thread I see just a few pieces to the endeavor spending either a little or a lot.

1 - cameras - good quality versus so so quality - IP versus analogue - high resolution versus standard - its your choice as to how much you want to spend.
2 - cabling - personally and easiest is to utilize cat5/baluns - as stated it works well and you can in the future go to say an IP camera with PTZ and even POE.
3 - dedicated DVR - personally the best way to go spending little or a lot....

Personally also experimented with wireless (900Mhz, 2.4g and 802.XX) and wasn't that impressed and decided in my new home to hard wire all of the cameras. I live close to a golf course and have a couple of different views of it so was thinking of a new camera/PTZ maybe IP mounted above the second floor in my home near the antenna/weather mast to check out how busy they are.