IP Cameras for Home

[Phil]

A Typical query:
Looking for some assistance with designing and selecting hardware for an IP camera surveillance system for a domestic property. Never installed one before. Approx 3 cameras, outdoor covering front, back and front door, field of vision 50 to 90 deg night vision up to 20/30 meter, budget approx £500 to £800, want to connect with PoE however not sure how to connect to router in downstairs rear room from loft. Thinking about broadband extender to prevent having to run cable, but do not want to use a wireless system. Any advice and suggested hardware would be of assistance.

A suggested solution:
You can use a Homeplug solution to utilise the mains wiring in your home to extend the network from your router into the loft.
Connect an 8-port POE switch to the Homeplug in the loft.
Run a single cat5e network cable from the switch POE ports to each camera.

We don't offer the Home plug gadgets - a typical one here

I would recommend HikVision mini domes or bullets (ideally 3MP):
3MP HikVision mini bullets
3MP HikVision mini domes

The next grade up of cameras if budgets permit:
3MP vari-focal bullet
3MP vari-focal dome

The Synology NAS boxes make for a very good recording solution.
(see justification here)


You can of course use HikVision's free PC (or Mac) software, if you have and are happy to leave a PC running 24/7.



Hope that helps

 

[helpwithip]

Very helpful information, thank you. Only a couple of further questions. Assume the camera and NAS are compatible with MAC? Is there a solution for connecting the camera without having to make a hole large enough for the RJ socket ? Assume one could connect externally to a Cat 5 cable, but not ideal as it would have to be sealed from water ingress potential.

 

[Phil]

Hello Again,
Yes, the HikVision IP cameras and Synology NAS units are compatible with Macs.
You can either make a hole in the soffit/fascia large enough to allow the connection to pass through and make the connection inside, or buy a bracket/mount for the selected camera(s) and make the connection within that.

 

[Phil]

Responses to your further questions by email:
Can you confirm the data storage size for a NAS with three 3 MP cameras recording over a period of 14 days,before it overwrites. Looking at the synology website it would appear I need up to 6 TB, so two 4 TB disks. Seems excessive?
It would also appear that I need to purchase two more licences, or a licence for 4 cameras? Is this correct?


Three x 3MP cameras recording continuously using their h.264 CODEC at 5fps (each camera) for 14 days would need approx. 1TB of storage.

Yes, every Synology NAS box ships with a single IP camera licence built-in. You would need to purchase additional camera licences as & when required. These are available as either a Synology single-camera licence or as a four-camera licence pack.

 

[helpwithip]

The above cameras and system are installed, however I am having difficulty with downloading iVMS-4200 software onto my Mac. The file is .rar which will not open even with utility call unarchiver. Any tips? I have confirmed my camera works, as I also have an old windows pc and downloaded SADP to configure ip address, however I want the software to work on my Mac.

 

[Phil]

Have you tried a Mac .rar extractor such as:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rar-extractor-free/id646295438?mt=12

 

[helpwithip]

No, but this program worked! Now I need to configure cameras and work out how to use this software. For the camera ip address, do I will need to change to my computers ip address, so they will all be the same?

 

[Phil]

Hi,
There's a Quick Start Guide, Manual and other documentation available from our product page for HikVision's iVMS-4200 software.
You'll need to set the camera's IP address so that it is in the same domain range as your router and computer, just the number(s) after the last dot needs to be different, for example:
Router 192.168.1.1
Computer 192.168.1.2
IP camera 192.168.1.3

 

[PKBristol]

Apart from having night vision i bet you've got all of the equipment needed for a cctv system lying around your house and you don't even know it. You can build an excellent cctv system for free. If you want to know how just ask me.

Paul.

 

[helpwithip]

I bought the equipment and it is installed! Intrigued how this can be done for free?

 

[helpwithip]

Is there any software out there that can search movie files quickly? The Synology software "Surveillance Station" is very slow, times out and with persistance does work, but it very time consuming to go through video recordings using time line. Having spent a significant amount of money on the hardware and camera licenses I am not satisfied with the recording search function. Another issue is using Safari and Firefox functionality is increased using Safari!
I have the cameras set up to record on motion detection which seems to be nearly 90% of the day/night. I do have 6T of storage so can record continuously if required. This would reduce the number of movie files to something manageable! Any tips would assist as it would appear I am not gaining the full usability of the hardware and software I installed.

 

[PKBristol]

Bought what equipment ? The best cameras you've probably got lying around are android devices.
You can search files quickly with iSPY, all videos recorded are shown as thumbnails at the bottom of the interface, when played through the standard player instead of a webpage, (selectable in the settings) the along the bottom of the player window there's peaks of where the movement is, so you can see where the movement is on the timeline.
And yes all the software is free on pc and androids.

Paul.

 

[Bob]

Hi, helpwithip. I have made a quick tutorial on how to get the best results using Synology with motion detection which you can view here.

I hope that it will clear up any problems you're having with efficiently viewing footage with motion detection.

 

[helpwithip]

Back again with more issues. Thanks for the tutorial, did try setting motion detection up, but as you state it is fiddly and main issue is the areas I record are busy ie wind moving plants etc so in effect I am running continuously which works ok for me. Now to the other issues. My cameras have disconnected, my NAS does not connect to the internet...when it works its good, but I am frustrated with how much attention is needed occasionaly to keep things running properly. Tried using EZ Internet to re-connect, but got a message that default gateway is not set. I guess I will have to start from scratch and re-install the NAS. Although this program is supposed to help those of us without detailed knowledge of networks...any guidance would be much appreciated.

 

[helpwithip]

Had my cameras up a running for a year now and in all very frustrated with how fiddly the system is and number of issues with getting the system to work properly. Having spent a significant amount of money on this system and hours on the pc to get the NAS to connect to the internet or to review recording which timeout regularly I am far from satisfied. For the newby beware and choose carefully. Once you buy you are alone!



suggested solution:
You can use a Homeplug solution to utilise the mains wiring in your home to extend the network from your router into the loft.
Connect an 8-port POE switch to the Homeplug in the loft.
Run a single cat5e network cable from the switch POE ports to each camera.

We don't offer the Home plug gadgets - a typical one here

I would recommend HikVision mini domes or bullets (ideally 3MP):
3MP HikVision mini bullets
3MP HikVision mini domes

The next grade up of cameras if budgets permit:
3MP vari-focal bullet
3MP vari-focal dome

The Synology NAS boxes make for a very good recording solution.
(see justification here)