Spec me a CCTV System

WJA96 · 26 Jun 2021 at 09:21

Any Dahua installer can install a Dahua camera for you. I have no idea how they would integrate with Nest Hub, which is why I asked about would you use another App? Can you describe the amount of light at the front of your home at night? You might find, if you have good street lighting, you could get away with a low-light colour camera.

A 2MP 1080P camera is more than good enough to read numberplates. Indeed, as far as I’m aware, 99.9% of ANPR cameras sold are 2MP or less. The issue isn’t the sensor size, it’s the quality of the processing behind the sensor. If you read this, and other surveillance camera threads I’ve posted in, it’s not about the number of megapixels! Indeed, more megapixels is generally worse in cheap cameras, because they spent all the money on the sensor and nothing on anything else.

Anything reflective is a bit of surveillance camera disaster. The IR light on most black and white night vision cameras causes car number plates to be white blobs on the screen. The soft white light on the TiOCs and ColorVu’s are better, but ideally you want very diffuse light.

NAS and surveillance advice

The camera used to take the picture of the Audi A1 by the garage is a 2MP full colour night vision camera. But it needs really good street lighting. If you have a street light near your home then that’s the camera for you. They’re £100-ish.

Homer-Simpson · 26 Jun 2021 at 19:25

Might be a long shot but can anyone recommend a company to install CCTV at a residential property in Warwickshire? I've approached a couple of companies but they just don't seem interested (cancelled visits multiple times to see the property, not calling back when they say they will etc), the one that has actually turned up provided a quote that was very reasonable but I had been specific around some requirements and they aren't responding to my questions as to whether the quote includes them or not.

rG-tom · 26 Jun 2021 at 20:27

WJA96 said:
Any Dahua installer can install a Dahua camera for you. I have no idea how they would integrate with Nest Hub, which is why I asked about would you use another App? Can you describe the amount of light at the front of your home at night? You might find, if you have good street lighting, you could get away with a low-light colour camera.

A 2MP 1080P camera is more than good enough to read numberplates. Indeed, as far as I’m aware, 99.9% of ANPR cameras sold are 2MP or less. The issue isn’t the sensor size, it’s the quality of the processing behind the sensor. If you read this, and other surveillance camera threads I’ve posted in, it’s not about the number of megapixels! Indeed, more megapixels is generally worse in cheap cameras, because they spent all the money on the sensor and nothing on anything else.

Anything reflective is a bit of surveillance camera disaster. The IR light on most black and white night vision cameras causes car number plates to be white blobs on the screen. The soft white light on the TiOCs and ColorVu’s are better, but ideally you want very diffuse light.

NAS and surveillance advice

The camera used to take the picture of the Audi A1 by the garage is a 2MP full colour night vision camera. But it needs really good street lighting. If you have a street light near your home then that’s the camera for you. They’re £100-ish.

I have zero streetlights, I am 60m away from the road down a private driveway so it's only the floodlight on my garage once you get through the main gate.

Certainly with the Nest outdoor cam (140 degree FoV) I can't read numberplates at the gate at about 10-15m from the house, even in daylight, it's too pixelated, which is what made me think if I want a wide FoV I'm going to need a higher resolution.

I want to buy the cameras rather than have them installed.

WJA96 · 26 Jun 2021 at 21:23

rG-tom said:
I have zero streetlights, I am 60m away from the road down a private driveway so it's only the floodlight on my garage once you get through the main gate.

Certainly with the Nest outdoor cam (140 degree FoV) I can't read numberplates at the gate at about 10-15m from the house, even in daylight, it's too pixelated, which is what made me think if I want a wide FoV I'm going to need a higher resolution.

I want to buy the cameras rather than have them installed.

I can lend you a 5MP and 8MP TiOC to see if that would do what you want. To be honest, it’s REALLY hard to recommend anything without knowing what you want to see. But if you have no street lighting then you’ll need to be very careful about positioning if you want to read number plates in the dark.

rG-tom · 26 Jun 2021 at 23:19

Thanks, appreciate the offer!

The numberplate was purely an example of the low IQ, I don't have a specific need for it.

I have the nest outdoor non-IQ currently inside an upstairs window (wanted to see if it was worth keeping before installing properly), with a good vantage point over the garage and driveway, and this is what it captures.

If I zoom in on the app on this, this is the level of detail I get:

For me I feel for £130+ per camera this should be a LOT clearer, especially during the day. People's faces are just blurs rather than being able to identify them properly etc.

I can't comment on night quality as being inside the IR just doesn't work!

I don't have any specific requirements, just want something a lot better than this for ideally less money! I don't mind what app it uses as long as I can ask my nest Hub to show me the live feed at any given point, and that the alerts work even if I'm outside of my local network.

Thanks,

Tom.

ristac · 26 Jun 2021 at 23:40

rG-tom said:
Thanks, appreciate the offer!

The numberplate was purely an example of the low IQ, I don't have a specific need for it.

I have the nest outdoor non-IQ currently inside an upstairs window (wanted to see if it was worth keeping before installing properly), with a good vantage point over the garage and driveway, and this is what it captures.

If I zoom in on the app on this, this is the level of detail I get:

For me I feel for £130+ per camera this should be a LOT clearer, especially during the day. People's faces are just blurs rather than being able to identify them properly etc.

I can't comment on night quality as being inside the IR just doesn't work!

I don't have any specific requirements, just want something a lot better than this for ideally less money! I don't mind what app it uses as long as I can ask my nest Hub to show me the live feed at any given point, and that the alerts work even if I'm outside of my local network.

Thanks,

Tom.

I’m pretty sure the app shows you a far lower quality image compared to logging into your nest account and viewing the footage online

rG-tom · 27 Jun 2021 at 17:54

ristac said:
I’m pretty sure the app shows you a far lower quality image compared to logging into your nest account and viewing the footage online

I've double-checked and it's the same on my PC too

UberTiger · 27 Jun 2021 at 18:35

rG-tom said:
Thanks, appreciate the offer!

The numberplate was purely an example of the low IQ, I don't have a specific need for it.

I have the nest outdoor non-IQ currently inside an upstairs window (wanted to see if it was worth keeping before installing properly), with a good vantage point over the garage and driveway, and this is what it captures.

For me I feel for £130+ per camera this should be a LOT clearer, especially during the day. People's faces are just blurs rather than being able to identify them properly etc.

I can't comment on night quality as being inside the IR just doesn't work!

I don't have any specific requirements, just want something a lot better than this for ideally less money! I don't mind what app it uses as long as I can ask my nest Hub to show me the live feed at any given point, and that the alerts work even if I'm outside of my local network.

Thanks,

Tom.

If you really want something up close and personal I'd run a POE cable to the pillar of the gate and mount one there by the entrance. You have the advantage of a gravel driveway, so easy to dig up a small channel and lay some cable if you need to. Have that plus a wide angle driveway overview.

Homer-Simpson · 27 Jun 2021 at 18:38

rG-tom said:
I've double-checked and it's the same on my PC too

Could the poor quality picture be caused by the camera being behind the glass windows? Have you tried it outside without the windows in front of it? Just looking at the pictures again and you can see reflections/marks on the window. I'd guess it's having trouble to focus.

rG-tom · 27 Jun 2021 at 22:38

UberTiger said:
If you really want something up close and personal I'd run a POE cable to the pillar of the gate and mount one there by the entrance. You have the advantage of a gravel driveway, so easy to dig up a small channel and lay some cable if you need to. Have that plus a wide angle driveway overview.

I'm going to be fitting a doorbell/access camera to the gate too, again these are just examples of where I expect to be able to resolve detail that I can't with the current cameras which is why I'm looking for better!

WJA96 · 27 Jun 2021 at 23:03

UberTiger said:
If you really want something up close and personal I'd run a POE cable to the pillar of the gate and mount one there by the entrance. You have the advantage of a gravel driveway, so easy to dig up a small channel and lay some cable if you need to. Have that plus a wide angle driveway overview.

Or just buy a camera with the correct lens to frame the image (or a zoom lens camera). A 2.8mm lens will cover about 104 degrees while a 6mm lens will cover about 60 degrees but significantly zoomed in.

bm_999 · 28 Jun 2021 at 14:10

hikvision all the wayyyyyy

nam · 28 Jun 2021 at 14:40

Hi All, I am thinking of replacing all my current Hikvisions (Which will be on sale here very shortly) with Eufy Cam's i am looking for continuous live Streaming only via Android box to a small Monitor . The Camera's i have chosen from Eufy are

1 x eufy Security Solo IndoorCam P24, 2K Pan & Tilt
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Security-A...hild=1&keywords=Eufy+2K&qid=1624887394&sr=8-4

2 x eufy Security Solo OutdoorCam C24
https://www.amazon.co.uk/eufy-Outdo...ild=1&keywords=Eufy+2K&qid=1624887457&sr=8-16

Anyone have experience for Live streaming with Eufy on a Android Box

Sparx · 28 Jun 2021 at 15:29

Moved house a few months ago and need to re-wire the house with some Cat6... part of the job will be getting 2 CCTV cameras fitted to cover the front/drive and garden. I nearly went with Eufy battery ones but thought nah I'd rather do it properly with decent IP POE cams with cat6 like I've done before at old house.

I've been tossing it up between the Dahua DH-IPC-HDW3849H-AS-PV or the Hikvision DS-2CD2347G2-LU as heard equally good things about both TiOC and ColorVu.

I'd like clarity on faces, cars, etc so the night vision is probably most important. There is some street lighting staggered opposite our house, it doesn't provide tons of light by the time it reaches our drive, but does help provide a low light. So I'm leaning towards the Hikvision atm...

I used to have some Reolink 5MP/1440p cameras at my old house, as mentioned by WJA they are fantastic quality in the day. Night quality is 'good' but if you wanted to identify a person or a car/reg, then it wasn't that good at all - which is when CCTV matters most imo.

Thoughts or alternative models if anyone could recommend? @WJA96 seems to be well versed, so wouldn't mind your opinion either bud

WJA96 · 28 Jun 2021 at 19:15

To be really frank, this is the sort of scenario where you need an installer that will put a demo camera in for you and you’ll be able to see what it will look like.

If you want to read number plates at night, then you need a super-low-light camera. That means F1.0 Aperture cameras and for Hikvision that would be something like the DS2CD2047G2-LU or Dahua IPC-HFW-5442T-ASE-NI. Both are excellent cameras but the Dahua probably has the edge on optical clarity while the Hikvision has soft white lights if it gets too dark.

rG-tom · 28 Jun 2021 at 20:37

If night quality is important could you not just install an IR floodlight somewhere that's much stronger than the camera's inbuilt one? Sorry if a stupid question.

WJA96 · 28 Jun 2021 at 22:38

rG-tom said:
If night quality is important could you not just install an IR floodlight somewhere that's much stronger than the camera's inbuilt one? Sorry if a stupid question.

There’s no such thing as a stupid question. It’s actually a perfectly reasonable idea. It was the way things were done before low light colour sensors became dirt cheap. Do you want black and white images (IR) or colour images?

And if you just an f-off gigantic IR spot lamp then faces, registration plates and anything white just turns into a blob. A 3W white light by the gate post will give you full colour vision though. That’s why we have demo equipment. So customers can decide if they want to spend an extra £30-£50 per camera and actually be able to see stuff at night, or just have some cameras that provide a visual deterrent. It can be quite an art setting up the lighting for cameras to catch useful images

Kohaashi · 15 Jul 2021 at 09:22

Can anyone recommend a two camera 4K system that records 24/7 for around £300? (and ideally PoE).

I bought the Eufy 2C Pro two camera bundle for £260 but the camera doesn’t pick up motion of cars very well at 30 meters, and this system only records triggered events. I need it to monitor my car which was recently damaged.

nam · 15 Jul 2021 at 11:21

I recently got the 2K Eufy Indoor cam which can also be mounted outdoors (Post's on reddit for how to shield) This camera is very good allows continuous recording either to SD or to NAS and has very good Motion detection tracking. Very impressed with the quality of recording and the Pan and Tilt and will probably replace my current Hikvision Turret's DS-2CD2355FWD-I

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Security-A...hild=1&keywords=Eufy+2K&qid=1624887394&sr=8-4

Kohaashi said:
Can anyone recommend a two camera 4K system that records 24/7 for around £300? (and ideally PoE).

I bought the Eufy 2C Pro two camera bundle for £260 but the camera doesn’t pick up motion of cars very well at 30 meters, and this system only records triggered events. I need it to monitor my car which was recently damaged.

DampCat · 15 Jul 2021 at 18:15

rG-tom said:
I've double-checked and it's the same on my PC too

We had a regular indoor Nest Cam in our kitchen window pointing onto the drive in our old house and it was smashing, no blurriness. It was pushed as close to the glass as possible and I tried to lean out to clean the glass in front of it.

Absolutely useless at night if the kitchen light was on. It wasn't -brilliant- at night but was enough to answer questions, rather than ID someone. See here:

https://video.nest.com/clip/7eaacc779abb4af1abf0013089d388d4.mp4

He was caught by the way, this was visit number 5. The neighbourhood organised a little vigilantism.