Just noticed the 850 Pro SSD. Dont waste your money on that. An NVR doesn't need that much of a drive to just run an OS and some software.



Price difference of a few dollars. Not enough to matter. Definitely not enough to change up a bunch of stuff just to get DDR4.

Speed difference. Doesn't matter. Will have 0% impact on performance.

This isn't a powerhouse machine. It's just sitting there recording video streams.

It's only $117 though.  

Better spent on Intel for power efficiency. Hell, a 250gb hard drive could be had for $20-$30.

1.  The proc that I listed is an 8 core 4 GHz piece, so it should be up to the task, no?
2.  My switch that I have on order has two 1 Gbps SFP uplink ports.  Do you think that it would be worth it to grab an SFP NIC instead of a normal gigabit NIC?
3.  I already have two 4 TB WD NV Purples sitting here.  I was going to put them in a RAID 1, thinking maybe later getting two more and putting them all in a RAID 5.
4.  The PS is a 760W 80+ platinum certified unit.
5.  The case is just a standard full tower with good airflow.  I guess I might have to look into something else for this application, though.

Also, I was planning on using a GTX 470 Fermi card that I already have for the graphics, so that part should be covered already.

Your processor is fine.

Don't worry about SFP ports. Not going to make a difference.

Hey guys, I've followed these threads for several years now and I appreciate the work that has been put into them.  Thank you.

Its time to upgrade our existing camera system at one of our business locations and I was looking for some guidance.

Requirements:
8 cameras minimum
great IR performance
cold weather capable
recording and playback should be at camera native resolution
30 days+/- storage
HDMI output
DIY install

nice to haves:
variable zoom (not PTZ)
sound
RJ-45/Cat6 interface


Here is some examples of what I was looking at.  
DVR: http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10649_i8679.html

cameras: http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10513_i7658.html

google map view with ms paint: https://goo.gl/LDQ8PS

I'd like 360 degrees of coverage with special attention to the alley behind (south or bottom of the pic) the building.  This is where the thieves like to park when they steal from us.

I'm thinking $2500-$3500 for total budget.  Also looking for suggestions for an online vendor unless Amazon is the way to go.

This below is around $1500-2000
nothing special late model PC, with a fast intel i5 or i7 $500





4tb WD RED or PURPLE working drive and a 2nd one for raid parity $150ea





8-10 port POE 10/1000 switch, TP link or whatever $100





ispy software free, or blue iris $50





Roll of cat6, and connectors price depends
latest model Hikvision, 3mp or greater with H264 or h265. $100-$200ea


IR illuminators optional





zoom is going to cost you...
also a DIY poe system is not for beginners, you need to understand networking and static IP management



also be aware that the 6mp cameras you chose will eat a computers CPU if recording the full rez stream and a fast PC can only handle a few of them at once.
 

Looking at doing between 4-6 poe cameras.

Need to figure a few things out, would rather buy an assembled ready to run setup than piece one together.   Putting one together sounds like it would be a more sustainable or long term serviceable solution but I am not looking to build a system.

This is the setup that holds my interest at the moment.

http://m.homedepot.com/p/Security-Labs-8CH-High-Definition-1080P-IP-POE-NVR-Surveillance-System-with-3TB-Hard-Drive-8-Cameras-19-in-LED-HD-Monitor-and-Apps-SLM7026/206701340


I am curious if there are any known pitfalls to it or better comparable systems that I could go with.

Also, I have two runs of network cable going out to my detached garage, one CAT6 and one CAT5e.    I have my computer on wired network out there for internet and the other cable run was for future expansion going from the garage to the house attic.

Is it possible to put a bunch of cameras on a POE switch for the front of the house then have them all run through the CAT6 cable to the garage where it would be picked up and controlled by the DVR?  

Basically I would like to get the DVR/monitor in the garage where I can secure it better from a smash and grab but I dont have enough cables ran to get each camera on the house it's own dedicated run to the garage to connect to the DVR.

I do have a tech savy friend who could help build a system from scratch but I am trying to get up to speed a bit on understanding the capabilities of switches and POE.   And being able to bring such mods to an existing commercial setup.

you can run your cams to a poe 10/1000 switch





the cams can be cat5e, but the "backhaul" frome the switch to the PC should be cat6 or cat7 gigabit. The PC needs to have gigabit lan. Most DVR's do not  have gigabit lan and will not work.





On a single 10/100 cat5e cable, yoou have enought bandwidth for one or two 2mp cams. on a single 10/1000 gigabit cable, you can fit 10 of them. *estimated





so yea, get a Tplink 10/1000 gigabit poe switch and set that centrally located in your house. then run cat5e or cat6 to your cams and runa cat6 or 7 to the garage where you have a PC with gigabit ethernet running ispy connect or Blue iris.





Set your cams with static IP's: such as 192.168.1.200 then the next is 201 then 202 and so on.



also, about your homedepot link. Never heard of that brand. And DVR's are easier, however less reliable and record at lower resolution than a PC can. So even if you buy nice 6mp cam's with 3072 × 2048 resolution, the DVR will only record it at 1080p/720p. A PC with gigabit ethernet can. It will use 15-20% of the processor for each cam at full rez on the newest Intel i5 at full 3072 × 2048.



and one caveat, if any of that lingo above doesn't make sense....don't bother with a DIY system. Have a pro install it.

Thanks for the heads up on bandwidth concerns.   I knew that was a potential issue.   Didnt know if 4 cameras was too much to run but it sounds like it is.

The conduit/run to the garage was hellacious to get what is out there, about 40 feet down an exterior wall, under ground through the conduit, and back up to the attic/rafters of the garage.    It sounds like I may just use the existing garage cable for a POE camera and run it to the house where the centrally located switch will be.   Then I can hide the NVR some place secure and maybe use the living room or bedroom TV as the monitor.

you can run several cams over cat6, depends on how may megapixels you are chooching. I added more to the last post.



 

Lmao.

Yeah.

I am about 80% confidence on all of that.

I do play with CMOS cameras and some of the gear thanks to being into FPV gear for RC flight.

Years ago a buddy and I built up my gaming PC but that was 2005.   I have no doubt that with his help we could build a stand alone CPU recorder.

What you just described with DVR limitations versus the CPU/built tower abilities is important to me.

I would rather have 4 high quality cameras than have 6 lower quality cameras.    I work in LE and have seen the limitations of pixelated digital cameras on play back.   I would like basically 2 cameras for the front of the house on overlapping fields of view, one at the doorway facing out, and one back at my garage that can catch anybody on the side of the house.

The front overlapping cameras I would love to be clear enough to grab plates of passing cars.   I am on a corner lot and people going past my house have to make a turn that would expose the plates.   Could be useful for tracking down vehicles that got used in thefts in neighborhood.    One neighbor picked up a guy breaking into vehicles just a week or two ago.   But given the guy walked up to the house, and it was dark, nothing other than a grainy image of a white guy was caught.

Yeah.

Been there seen the results.

The only saving grace is there is a street light they have to pass under so there is some full illumination.

But I dont know if there is a way to get wide dynamic range out a camera that steps into night mode.    Having seen the difference between daylight and low light on my CMOS style 600-720 stuff for FPV, the blown out grainy shit may just be the limitation I have to deal with.

But daylight plate grabs should be possible.

nevermind

Wow you are grossly overstating how much bandwidth IP cameras use.

Firstly, Cat5e is rated for gigabit.

Secondly, the streaming bit rate can normally be set in the camera. A 1080p camera with a bit rate of 4 Mbps is plenty. That's more than 20 streams on Fast Ethernet or more than 200 on gigabit.

Thirdly, there are no such things as 10/1000 switches. There are 10/100 and 10/100/1000.

alright then Mr Accuracy, how many 2mp cameras fit on a cat6 and how many 6mp cameras fit on a cat6? If you are so inclined to correct me. At 10fps, and 30fps. 5e might be rated for it but in my experience its not gigabit in real life because lan cables simply are mostly poorly made and over claim, so you buy better cat 6 or 7.





Cables are not all equal YMMV!! And you gotta understand, I am telling this guy how to set him self up for success and not have issues down the road. ALWAYS OVERBUILD.





 

Well, it's tough to plan for success with inaccurate information. Measure twice cut once type of thing.

The MP count and framerate cannot directly translate into how many "fit" on a Cat6 cable. It is the bit rate that is the important element and that can be variable with a set maximum or a constant bit rate. You can easily figure this out for yourself. Divide available network bandwidth by the bitrate used by the streams.

Rated is rated. For Ethernet cable to be certified as Cat 5e, it is certified for gigabit speeds up to 100 meters. Cat 6 is also certified to for gigabit speeds for up to 100 meters. Cat 6 is able (depending on environmental conidtions) to carry 10Gbe for up to ~50 meters. Cat 6A is certified for 10Gbe up to 100 meters.

There are plenty of reasons why a cable is not performing to its rating. Poor construction from shady companies, damaged wirings, poor installation, excessive outside interference, etc. Using CCA cable comes to mind.

Just because a cable is rated Cat6 or Cat7 does not automatically make it better than 5e in quality.

Cat7 is stupid expensive for what you get.

It may be easier just to light the area up like the sun and run the cameras in daytime mode.

The arguments going on are actually helpful.

Interference is something on my mind.   Namely thr conduit that carries my CAT6 and CAT5E run are also ran next to a cable coax within their 2 inch conduit.   Unfortuntately, running down the wall and through the ground, burried under concrete, is a 3 inch conduit running my 240 power to the garage.    I am not getting any interference on my TV coming through on the coax.    But the things are not seperated by that much.   It may be enough seperation though for what it is.


As for bandwidth, if I had known about CAT7 and CAT6 improvements at the time I would have done an additional run.

As it stands I use one line for wired LAN to the house for gaming or internet.   That could be my net connection for logging into a system to remotely view cameras.    The other line could be the link from switch with 3 cameras for the house to DVR/monitors/control in the garage.

I get how the IP nature of the cameras makes this all possible and easy.

I dont know if I would get the clarity I want on the 3 cameras that combine their runs to one network cable.    I have other cable runs I could make inside the house and place a DVR then use my spare cable in the detached garage for a stand alone camera and shoot it's feed to the house.

Option 1, dvr in detached garage with the 3 house cameras feeding to a centralized switch before the feed from 3 cameras coming to it along one CAT5E or CAT6 out to the DVR.    Total run from the switch would be between 50-80 feet depending on switch location and which line got used.

Option 2, dvr in house with individual runs to the POE switch or even direct to the DVR itself.   Existing CAT5E or CAT6 out in the garage is a lone POE run for single camera.

I am sure there are other combinations I can come up with if need be but those two are the most obvious.



As for issue of catching plates, I am a corner lot and for a car to get by my house it has to make a series of turns that almost guarantees they have to reveal their rear plates.    The way I could overlap the cameras on the front of my garage would get the vehicles coming/going regardless of travel.

I have seen lots of security camera footage during trials and find the worst thing about certain store bought ready made systems is that they seem to use proprietary codecs(or maybe just renamed shit for sake of being a pain in the ass.).    Attorneys are always needing to rip files from the system for a player to play back because the standard codecs for MediaPlayer rarely work.   VLC player has been the most flexible out there.

Have also seen a wide variety of low light problems with cameras becoming pixilated.     My main concern is for daylight capture because that is when I tend to be gone.    Night time images do not need to be the priority but wouod orefer better than typical.   Close range and IR capable being preferred.


The open source Ispy stuff sounds awesome.   Not sure if I want to get into that just yet though.   Already talked to my buddy who is a software engineer/programmer.   He has his own set of plans for a raspberry-pi enabled device to send images so he has been brushing up on tech to build his own camera/circuits.

My POE and network plans are simple compared to his plans.

I know that I have mentioned building my own PC to take care the DVR side of things, but the more I think about it, I would really like to know more about NAS setups that do this.  Specifically Synology's "Surveillance Station" on one of there 8 bay NAS boxes.  For a little more money, I would not have to piece together a PC just for this task.  On top of that, the NAS can serve other roles at the same time.  The model that I am speaking of (DS1815+) has four Gigabit LAN ports that can all be used together or for different devices and can offload to additional external storage via two E-SATA or four USB 3.0 ports.

Has anyone had any experience with either using a Synology NAS for security purposes and/or their "Surveillance Station" software?

PS:  We are still working on getting our cameras mounted.  It is turning out to be more a pain in the neck than I had originally though it would be, with running the CAT6 through the attic and all.  
By the time I get the last one up, it will be time to upgrade.  

Hmm.  I wonder if the model I listed would be any different under load.  It has an Intel Atom C2538 Quad Core 2.4 GHz CPU and up to 6 GB of DDR3 RAM.  

If you're not getting gigabit on cat5e cable to 100m, it's not really cat5e or it's damaged. Cat6 has some shielding advantages, but unless you're doing short run of copper 10g, don't bother. If you really want electrical noise immunity in a place where you'd actually need it on a run I'd much prefer to just use om3. You can also lag together your runs from the recording server to the switch for more bandwidth, but I'd doubt you'd need it for anything other than redundancy.

Figure out your stream bandwidth, this is going to vary by camera. Resolution and framerate matter, but every camera is going to be different, you'll have to test it yourself or check if it's listed in specs. Adding 20-40% overhead may make sense. Pulling numbers out of your ass doesn't.

I will will be using 9 3MP cameras.  I am going to play with frame rate and resolution per camera.  I really think that Synology might just have the solution that I need without me having to build a PC to do this...maybe.

I really like the built-in redundancy that a NAS provides through it's OS.  It means that I don't have to manually set up a RAID if I were to build a PC for this.  We will see, I guess.

Manually setting up a RAID is like 10 keystrokes. It is not a big deal.

IIRC, most Synology NAS devices only come with 2 or 4 camera licenses. Meaning you will need to by up to 7 licenses at $60 a pop.

I need to add one wireless camera to an area I can't run cable to.  I can run power to it from a nearby light.

I don't necessarily want to set up an nvr for this one camera.  So the question is, what is the best method to monitor and record a single camera?

The camera will be mounted on a sofit facing the approach to my front door.  The door faces away from the approach, so a doorbell camera wouldn't work.

Front door is on the left of the large window. There are steps leading up to the door from the driveway, but the door faces away from the approach. The plan is to run power from the light to a power supply you mentioned in another thread, to provide power to the wireless camera.

Not sure what the best method is to monitor and record one wireless camera.

TGM, thanks for the advice. I hadn't thought of adding a PIR sensor. You've given me more to think about.

Any recommendations on the sensor?

What brands are best?

Assuming 2 IP cameras have the same nominal specs and cost is not an issue, what are the best and worst brands?

Sam's Club carries the Florex and Samsung wireless systems. Both are under $500

Are these decent?

Recently moved to a new neighborhood and after a rash of property crimes on my block I'm thinking of putting in a camera system, but I am completely new to this.

Trying to spend under $1K for the complete system with 8 cameras, minus install (will try to get help from more tech savvy friends). Not sure if this is a realistic price point for a decent quality system.

Live in the city, houses are very close together. Main entrance on the south side of the house, about 15 yds to the street (one way). West side has a narrow gangway with a side entrance. East side has gangway with no doors, but a couple basement windows that would be a logical point of entry for burglars. North side has rear patio door, and basement windows.

See diagram and what I'm thinking of.



Legend:

Blue is the fence line, red are doors, green are basement windows. Circles are my ideas for camera placement.

Cam 1 front door.
Cam 2 front street, for license plates/vehicles.
Cam 3 east gangway, facing north for windows
Cam 4 west gangway, entry
Cam 5 rear entry, rear yard
Cam 6 garage entry
Cam 7 garage door, alley for plates/vehicles
Cam 8? Maybe on back of garage facing rear of residence

Couple issues. House is old construction with brick exterior and plaster interior, so the less wiring and holes drilled the better! Can I daisy chain the cameras and have the wiring going into the house at one point? Second, with the detached garage, am I looking at two separate systems? If I can do it with one, do I have to have it wired to the house, or are there other options?

So with that in mind, any recommendations for systems as well as feedback on my cam placement and ideas for cam 8?

No daisy chains, just pull multiple runs together, cat5 pulls easy. I'm never a fan of WiFi for things that need continuous connectivity, dedicated point to point on enterprise gear is one thing, consumer WiFi to a router inside the house on typically congested bands is another... conduit or burial grade cat5e isn't that hard to work with at all. You can certainly do a second poe injector/switch in the garage and even run it to the house wirelessly, but you don't need to and I wouldn't.

Sure if you want to add to the budget and buy the right hardware, you certainly could do it... I'd do 5ghz on the modern AC gear (there certainly isn't anything considered uncongested in the 2.4ghz bands around here, you're location might be different...) and replace whatever youre currently using for WiFi in the house, and it would work well enough, but then you're buying multiple APs and if you don't configure this stuff all day that can be a little daunting (though doable for anyone slightly tech savvy).

But you're probably looking at a little over 300ish in hardware vs <$50 for the amount of direct burial cat5e it would take for that run. I'd personally pull at least an extra run OR do it in conduit (leave a pull string) so to future proof it for future projects and do them directly to the cameras so I didn't require power in the garage so that they can all be powered off the central switch and UPS(s) next to your video server/DVR.

Well, I ended up going with a Synology NAS instead of a PC.  I bought 3 more 4TB WD NV Purples for a total of 20TB, although after setting up two drive redundancy, I am left with an available volume of around 10TB.  I'm still getting the rest of the cameras in place and CAT6 ran, but so far the NAS is handling five 3MP cameras pretty well.  All of them are running at a 2048 x 1536 resolution and 15 FPS with variable bitrate and 1 keyframe per second.  I offloaded the motion detection to the cameras, instead of having the software in the NAS doing it to save on system resources.  The CPU hovers around 4-8% and the RAM around 10% while in liveview.  I also have the four network connections on the NAS set up as a link aggregation group for 4 x 1Gb connections.

Anyway, here's few a pics.  I'm still working on getting everything where I want it in the closet, though.