I have been kicking around the idea of getting security cameras for a while but haven't. We have a lot of new home construction happening in my neighborhood now. With that has come some not so desirable individuals working on the houses. We had an incident last night where a few guys came back to a few of the houses on our street after hours drunk and claiming to be looking for a lost phone. I am pretty sure they were trying to case a few houses that they figured would be unoccupied at that time of the day. Anyway, I want to get some video surveillance setup pretty soon.

Here is what I want from the system:
I want network cameras with IR capability. I prefer to go with a POE setup for simplicity.  I want 5 total cameras- 1 facing down each side of the house mounted under the eaves, 1 under the back porch facing at an angle to cover as much of my yard as I can, 1 on the front porch to cover the porch, windows on the front of the house, and front door, and one more in the garage to cover my safe and car.
I want to be able to record based off of motion and have the option for continuous recording if I desire to do so.
I want to be able to remotely access the cameras when I am not at home to view them.
I want an output from my recorder to my TV so I can view the cameras on my TV in real time.

I have come up with a few different ways I can do this. First I could piece together a system. I was looking at sticking with all the same brand components for an easier interface. I was looking at these NVRs;
Hikvision NVR DS-7608NI-E2/8P
or
Hikvision NVR DS-7108N-SN/P

The 2nd one only has 4 POE ports, but I wouldn't be against running a power supply to a camera that has power available close to it. I wouldn't be against doing all network cameras with an external power supply since none will have really long runs from an available power source. In either NVR I would add at least a 2TB drive.

Camera wise I was looking at putting 3 bullet cameras, 1 down each side of the house and one facing the back yard. I was looking at putting a dome to cover the porch and inside the garage.
Dome
Bullet

The other option would be to go with a system that is already put together and add a 5th camera. I was looking at this setup.
Swann NVR8-7300

And for an idea of what I wanting to cover here are my mad MS paint skills.



So, do any of you have suggestions, comments, concerns with what I am looking at doing? Would I be better off buying a kit versus piecing my own system together? Would you change any of the components I have picked to something better or easier to interface with?

Very similar to my needs as well, tagged for responses.

Blind spots on B/C corner and C/D corner. Huge thread here in a sub forum covering these cameras, NVR/POE hubs,etc. Detailed reviews and installs.

IIRC, Grey man is one of the guru's. I can't link on phone but it is here.

I read the majority of that thread. That is actually where I got the idea for the cameras and NVR I posted. I guess I wanted to make sure they were the best for my situation or if I should go a different route.

Seems like a solid plan. I would do the looking from door out to get faces coming to door. Think of a guy running up,to door to kick it in, want the back of head of front view? Run extra wires for spares and additional cams.
Front door looking out, back door looking out, sides for long shots, but get the FoV right. A APC or Tripplite UPS running off a 100 Ah or two battery will run cams a long time.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into redoing the ones at the doors. I have a recessed light above my front door. I have thought about removing it and putting a dome in it's place. It should catch someone coming onto the porch facing the door.

Nice house.

I would highly recommend routing two cameras out to your street and shoot one up and down the roadway. Setting the camera to pick up license plates is far more valuable than even a good mug shot. It may or may not work at night, but it will almost certainly work during the day. It would be worth digging a shallow trench along the side of your driveway and dropping in some conduit.

I'm in the process of doing this myself at my new house since I sold my old place with the old analog system installed.

I went ahead and got the NVR and cameras and got it all set up. I ended up getting 6 cameras. I set 5 up and am trying to decide on what to do with the 6th one. I did change the placement up some. I will make another awesome MS paint illustration,

Here is what I ended up doing. So far I am overall happy with the system but I may relocate the one on the corner of the garage. It is facing the same direction as the one in the front yard. The pictures overlap a good bit. I feel that I could get better coverage by moving it to the opposite corner. The one in the back yard covers the majority of the yard and my back gate. The only other entrance to the back yard is on the left side. The camera on that side of the house covers that entrance. I put the one on the porch directly over the door. It starts to get a picture just before the front steps and covers all the way to the door.

I am in process of doing the same.
My thought is to setup so that each cam is in view of another camera.. that way there is no way to disable a cam without being caught on another cam.

My house is a basic 1200sq ft rambler with an outbuilding about 60' to the rear. Should be pretty simple to hang one on each corner looking down side of house with the next cam in chain in view.. I am using wireless IP cams, power wires go directly into the soffit.
I am also placing a couple to look at the front door, at the driveway, out building to back of house etc...

all cams eventually windup at a DVR located inside my safe with offsite backup.

Sound like a reasonable plan?

Watts with all your coverage facing front, add more rear facing. Huge area to your rear with only one cam.

I see several blind spots in that plan....

I kept a spare camera. I may end uo turning the one on my porch to cover half the yard and add my spare to cover the rest.

This is roughly the coverage of the cameras. Also, there is a house being built to the left of mine.



The access to the back yard is by 2 gates. One gate is close to the right side of the view of the back yard camera. The other gate is just under the camera on the left hand side of the house.

Who says criminals have to use gates???

...and what if you get a shitty neighbor and he's throwing eggs at your house, except its in the no coverage zone and you can't prove it. Just saying don't ignore the back, you never know what circumstances may arise.

Without knowing where windows are on your house, it is clear you have the front covered, and the last camera should either be internal, or placed on the corner near where the black or green cameras are but covering the back of the house.  I might be temped to move the yellow to the right some and place camera 6 on the green corner, and have those two face toward each other, if that makes sense.  Depends what is out of frame in your backyard too.  If it is acres of wilderness, you probably are more worried about an approach from the sides than directly back.

Tagged for TGM response.

You mean other than the fact that you have posted your plan on the internet for the entire planet to see?

The likelihood of someone knowing him personally and where he lives AND being willing to break into his home is almost zero.

Combined with the fact that proper coverage isn't something you can "defeat" easily even with detailed knowledge, and his risk is basically non-existent.

Also, the same information can be gleaned from a cursory inspection of his property, since cameras are visible to the naked eye.

You could run a line to your back fence and point it toward your house.

Dang, I go work on the lawnmower and the thread takes off.

To address a few comments:

I don't mind folks on here knowing my camera coverage. They aren't meant to be a deterrent or the first line of defense. They are meant to be used for identification after the fact.

As far as focusing on the fence. I may reposition the one camera in the back yard to cover half of the yard, and add one to cover the other half. I also like the idea of putting one on the fence facing back. There is a reason I have focused on the gates and the back fence. On the right side I share a fence with my neighbor, who shares a fence with her neighbor. Pretty much anyone coming across the fence to the right has already come through at least one neighbors fenced in yard. After construction on the house on the left (which isn't visible in the picture) we will also have a common fence, and they will have a common fence with their other neighbor creating the same scenario. I will be in the middle of a row of fenced in yards so the odds of someone coming over either side are lower than someone coming through a gate.

I did intentionally use the green camera to focus on a pinch point. The only way to that gate is between the 2 houses. That gap is 12-15ft wide and covered entirely by that camera.

The side of the house behind the black camera has no windows. The only thing there is my electrical service and HVAC unit. All external windows are on the front, back. and the side covered by the green camera.

The one thing that keeps coming back to me is the orange camera. I may move it to the opposite corner of the garage. It covers both vehicles that will be parked there as is. The only thing is it is hard to see anyone on the drivers side of the vehicle. If someone decides to plunder through one of the vehicles I would think they would go for the drivers side first. The black camera catches the passenger side of each vehicle, but at a distance. I am kind of torn on that one.

Thanks for the comments and criticism. It has made me think about holes this system may have and how to address them.

Can we make this the "official" critique my camera location thread?

Plan on buying the Swann system mentioned in the OP.  I have no attic access in the house, so all cameras need to be run from the garage.

Camera A will cover a door and window on garage, plus rear of house.
Camera B will cover a door on the garage, plus part of driveway.
Camera C will cover driveway.    Would this camera be better if located in the center of garage facing directly towards driveway?
Camera D will cover the path to the front door and front of house.  
I need to run conduit from garage to mount D on house. Front door faces 45 degrees away in the direction of letter D, so there is no way to get an approach to the door without a lot of conduit.

I guess I should have mentioned what cameras and NVR I went with. I decided to build my own system. I got the Hikvision 7108-SN/P from Nellys Security. I added a 2TB hard drive to it. I also got the Hikvision 2CD2120-I dome cameras from Nellys Security.

You can see my front door to the left of the big window.  There is a red arrow that is an ideal place for a wireless camera.

But how do I power the camera?  Can I tap into the porch light on the right side of the main door?

Thanks, forgot about the psu you used in the remote WiFi box. Need to go find that post.

One of my planned camera locations is close to a very bright led light that's stays on all night. The camera will almost be on top of the light.

Should I consider moving the camera away from the light? Not sure if the light will affect the image.  I have the entire sofit of a 2 car garage to place the camera.

The light will attract bugs and spiders, which will trigger your motion sensor, and sometimes spiders build their web right on the camera if it has IR LEDs of its own, which is annoying and obstructs the view.  So depends how close together they are.  It'll probably be fine.