I have been reading up on systems and have decided that I do not want an out of the box setup. Currently doing an addition to the back half of my home so wiring is as easy as it's ever going to be. Unfortunately I am doing an owner builder and this step totally skipped my mind until now and I just finished lathing my addition. Oh well at least there's no stucco yet Funds are tight so my only concern is getting wire to possible cam locations for now.  So is one run of cat 5 to each location all I need? And do I terminate the ends into a junction box? I have a central location in mind for the DVD NVR.
My future wants are a 8 camera system that can record and be viewed from multiple sources in the home. Some ir capabilities will be a plus but I have a decent motion light system in the works also.
Thanks in advance and thanks for all the good info. Mayday

Use Cat 6 cable...better shield & throughput.   Newer cameras can be powered through the CAT cable called power over ethernet. Just run them to likely camera locations & back to a likely central location.  If wrong in the future you use a wireless camera to cover an area.   I use a multi-Foscam camera setup...which can record, email, take pixs and stream to an android app on my phone....not a primo system but OK. Lots of YT videos to setup it up....kinda confusing cause of router port forwarding?

Unless you are buying shielded, neither 5 nor 6 have a shield.  And if you are buying shielded, they are both shielded equally well.

Furthermore, unless you need 10gig, cat 5 is completely adequate- buying cat6 may make you feel good, but will in no way affect data transmission.  If you have such a horrible condition that cat5 won't work, neither will cat6.  I don't see any reason to use anything other than cat 5e for cameras.

I should have stated that I already procured 1000' cat5e from mono price.com after reading some of the threads in this forum. I have just become confused about terminating my wire runs and what if any other cables I would need to power and transmit from the cameras to a recording setup.
I have a central location in my home where I will start all my runs so I can later purchase the components to build the system.
Do you suggest single gang boxes at each cam location? Or just leave a few feet of wire coiled up outside the stucco? And are there desirable cameras that can be connected and recorded with each single run of cat5e? Sorry for the confusion I'm trying to educate myself but find this a little overwhelming. I'm not tech savvy in the least. Thanks again. Mayday.

CAT5 is pleeeeenty for IP cameras.  It's good enough for gigabit ethernet.

If you power the camera over ethernet (PoE) you're limited to 100 mbit but even that is pleeeeenty for an IP camera.

If you use PoE (and it makes life much easier!) get a good PoE switch.  I use a HP Procurve 2520-8-PoE ... it has two gigabit ports and eight powered 100 megabit ports for cameras.  One gigabit goes straight to the DVR server, the other to the rest of my home network.  Plenty of bandwidth for the cameras and they don't congest the rest of my network.


One run to each location should be fine.  But wire is cheap and retrofits are a pain so you may as well drag two together.

Make an effort to avoid running it close and parallel to a power line over a long distance.  It probably won't matter but the power lines could theoretically induce noise in the data lines.  I think building codes require at least 2" between them but I could be confabulating that detail.  Regardless, good practice to keep them apart.

As far as terminating the runs it's easier than you think.

You need a RJ45 crimp tool.  Don't pay less than $50.  Any money you safe buying a $20 piece of junk isn't worth the aggravation.  It just isn't.

Get some RJ45 blanks.  Get a bag of 50 or 100 off ebay or online someplace.  Don't get ripped off at Lowe's.

Sit down and practice terminating a few until you get the hang of it.  It won't take long.  Basically you strip the last few inches of OUTER insulation, untwist a bit of the exposed 4 twisted pairs, arrange the colors in the right order

Brown - Brown/White - Green - Blue/White - Blue - Green/White - Orange - Orange/White

lay them out parallel, smooth them out, DON'T strip the insulation, trim the end so they're even, slide into the RJ45 blank, crimp, done.

Here's a decent tutorial with pictures: http://www.wikihow.com/Crimp-Rj45

A $15 RJ45 cable tester is a reasonable investment too.

And just FYI, the cameras usually have a 4-6 inch pigtail that runs inside their mount. So if they are going to be mounted on the fascia board, they will need a 1" or so hole and the connection will ultimately be behind the fascia in the air space or your attic. You can terminate your cat 5/6 to boxes, but they are unnecessary.  Perhaps make the hole and leave the cable tucked in ther and find a temp plug until you get the cams.

If you're not using POE (Power Over Ethernet) then you should run an 18/2 wire to each camera from wherever you want to put your power supply.
If you are using POE built into the NVR, then all you have to do is run the CAT5/6 from the NVR to each camera.
If you are using a POE switch, then run all of your CAT5/6 to wherever you are putting the switch, then run a CAT5 from the switch to the NVR.

My suggestion is Hikvision with POE built into the NVR - as long as you use their cameras all you have to do it plug them in & it will recognize them automatically (or you can use different cameras & set them up manually).

Thanks for all the help! I have run the cat5e to my proposed cam locations and left a few feet coiled in the boxes. At this point I'm leaning towards the hikvision setup with the Poe nvr. Really simplifies things a bit. I have one more question though...
If I want to have instant view on multiple screens in the home what's the best way to accomplish this? For instance let's say I want my input 2 to be dedicated to cams how do I split the signal coming from the nvr? I'm assuming hdmi splitter and separate hdmi runs but am interested to hear what you all have to say.

Local viewing options are dependent on the model of NVR.  I looked at the Hikvision NVR's, and the one I looked had has two outputs - a VGA and an HDMI output.  Another option is viewing over the network via a browser.  If your TV has a built-in browser, browse to the NVR's IP address.

Sounds like this is a little late, but I'd consider running two cat5e runs to each location.  The second can either be used for power if you decide to stick a non-POE camera in the mix somewhere, or just as a backup for the first cable if you have problems with it in the future.  Cable's cheap enough that the minimal added expense is pretty cheap insurance... running a replacement later will be a PITA.  You may even decide at some point that you want two cameras in the same location to double the field of view.

If you are going to buy a crimp tool, I suggest this one.  My company does installations and all of our guys use these.  It uses connectors made specifically for this crimper, but that's no biggie - you just need to order the right ones.





The neat thing about this crimper is that the individual wires pass through the end of the connectors, and are trimmed off when you crimp.  Most crimp tools require you to butt the wire ends up against the back of the connector - which is a PITA.





http://www.amazon.com/Platinum-Tools-100054C-Clamshell-EZ-RJPRO/dp/B00939KFOU/ref=sr_1_1/181-0158011-7142754?ie=UTF8&qid=1409390790&sr=8-1&keywords=ez-rj45+crimper









 

Thanks for the suggestions. Off to do some hdmi utp research!
As far as the tools go I have a friend who is going to use his tools to and help me as long as I run the wire. Thanks again everyone! Have a great day.

+1.  I use that crimper, and it's great.  It's nice to be able to fan the wires back out after they're inserted into the plug to verify that everything is still in the correct order.

Normal Cat5e would be more than enough. You could spend more on shielded Cat5e but not really worth it for a home install. Cat6 would just be a waste of money. You could spend thousands more than you should if you really wanted to go all out but seeing as it's a home install I don't really see the point.

As far as terminating goes a simple crimp tool and some RJ45 connectors is all you need. I'd recommend using either the 568A or 568B standard. If you wanted to get fancy you could use a patch panel before going into the switch. It will make things a little bit tidier.