Security camera solutions - what do you guys use?

[OutHouse]

Outdoor without a housing will cost you big bucks. With a housing, medium bucks. You do get what you pay for as stated by Raincity.
The low end axis indoor cams are less than 200.
http://www.axis.com/files/datasheet/ds_m10_40705_en_1009_lo.pdf
Don't let the VGA resolution put you off. The image quality is very good.
It has sophisticated motion detection, and I have not tried the PIR sensors on these new cams yet. I am ordering a cam or two for a client today so I get to try that out
http://store.bluecherry.net/products/Axis-M1011%252dW--Wireless-Network-Camera-%28Axis-Part-number-0301%252d004%29.html

Here is a fixed cam that would be suitable for a housing outdoors, with POE:
http://www.axis.com/products/cam_m1103/

Those are around for $320~$350

http://store.bluecherry.net/product...,-SVGA-resolution,-Fixed-2.8mm-Lens,-PoE.html

i would love to do wireless it sounds great in theory just mount and go but i would still need to run power and i don ont have power outlets under the eve of my house where i would want to mount the cameras. thats why i am interested in POE, one wire for feed and power.

 

[skyking]

More of "you get what you pay for"
I tried a few of these and would use them again, but they do have drawbacks.
http://store.bluecherry.net/products/Combo%3A-15-inch-Outdoor-Aluminum-Fullsize-Enclosure-with-Heater-%7B47%7D-Blower-%252b-mount.html
Plus:
The heater and fan do work as advertised. I had one in the chest freezer for testing, it held up OK at 0 F.
minus:
Only mounts on a wall.
not as rigid as I like. a strong wind can move the housing, triggering multiple motion events.

If you pick the right location they are OK for the dollar you spent.

 

[theevilsharpie]

What level of function do these cameras have without that PC, though? Can the $200 axis cams run autonomously and upon events record to a hard drive and FTP without a PC helping them along? No, because it is not a decentralized camera like the Mobotix line. There are no inexpensive decentralized IP cameras and thus all require a PC to do anything meaningful with the information.

I design and install large-scale IP surveillance systems (among other things) for a living, and I've never seen an IP camera that couldn't at least detect motion and send out an e-mail. Granted, I don't work with the cheap consumer-level cameras, but I have worked with Axis' low-end lineup that you explicitly mentioned, and I can confirm that even their sub-$200 cameras have motion detection and alerting capabilities.

And no, they don't require a PC for anything more than their initial configuration. However, the low-end models don't have any on-board recording capability, and are limited to sending images for alerts if there's no central recording server.

Ah, the appeal to authority, for certainly a professional if he were here would see things your way, not mine, even though you haven't even tried to explain how I'm wrong (because you're already in over your head, as usual).

:whiste:

 

[lozina]

Good thread, wish I had better understanding/knowledge on this sibject as I am dying to install a setup at my home. Looking to have 3-4 outdoor cameras to monitor my premises day & night.

Ideally I want to use my own server (I have plenty of spare computers to use).

I would also like to hard wire my cameras

I was looking at this system: http://www.cctvcamerapros.com/Home-Surveillance-System-p/syspro-4bi047.htm

Seems really good! But I dont want that DVR box, its costly and I feel unnecessary. I have so much spare computer hardware I feel I should be able to use my own box. I just dont know how I would easily feed multiple cameras into my PC... do I need a special capture card? Any suggestion?

And of course would need some software. Any suggestion?

Also I guess I would ned an external power supply box, I see they sell one for $50.

 

[skyking]

Those are analog cameras. They will not detect motion so all that load goes on the CPU. 4 analogs do not require much of a computer but as you scale it up, the processing power requirements go up.
You can get a cheap PCI card on ebay and it might work. I just get my hardware from bleucherry.net and they work with me. I'm sure there are other and probably better stores but I have no complaints.
There are many windows based PVR programs out there that will work OK if you don't want to mess with linux.
EDIT: If you want an old school recording system then there is not appreciable cpu load. That defeats the purpose though. It is so nice to go looking for something and only have to go through the motion events.

 

[Doppel]

Check out Drop Cam.

https://www.dropcam.com/

They are coming out with a new camera in a few months with IR capability as well, so you might want to wait for that.

Yep, late spring/early summer this year they released the Dropcam HD. It's $150/month. I got one and it works well, it's really head over heels above anything else I've seen at this price range. Not necessarily for quality--I have a $180 2 megapixel IP camera I bought that has a far cleaner image--but for simplicity and storage and event monitoring it really is a nice product. I have recommended to some people as something drop-dead easy to setup if they want video in their home. Prior to this the average joe isn't going to get an IP camera going because they need to manage storage, FTP site, port-forwarding, etc. I know a few companies like Logitech have consumer-easy solutions, but the Dropcam's quality and price is better than Logitech by a long shot.

 

[Drako]

Yep, late spring/early summer this year they released the Dropcam HD. It's $150/month. I got one and it works well, it's really head over heels above anything else I've seen at this price range. Not necessarily for quality--I have a $180 2 megapixel IP camera I bought that has a far cleaner image--but for simplicity and storage and event monitoring it really is a nice product. I have recommended to some people as something drop-dead easy to setup if they want video in their home. Prior to this the average joe isn't going to get an IP camera going because they need to manage storage, FTP site, port-forwarding, etc. I know a few companies like Logitech have consumer-easy solutions, but the Dropcam's quality and price is better than Logitech by a long shot.

The release of the HD camera slipped a bit, as it was originally supposed to be out last Winter.

It's $150 for the camera, not monthly.

$0/month no storage
$10/month for 7 days storage
$30/month for 30 days storage

 

[Doppel]

The release of the HD camera slipped a bit, as it was originally supposed to be out last Winter.

It's $150 for the camera, not monthly.

$0/month no storage
$10/month for 7 days storage
$30/month for 30 days storage

Yeah $150 purchase price $5/month for additional cameras!

 

[alkemyst]

$150/month? I never really researched these much but it's like $150 for the camera and $10/month or $100/year I thought. Price is per cam and when I looked there was no discounts so my three cameras would be $30/month or $300/year. I am already looking to upgrade them and I am not sure how Dropcam handles that mid year on a yearly sub.

Also I don't believe Dropcam makes an outdoor unit.

In reality, if you want true facial recognition and license plate capture you are looking at $1500-3000 for a modest system.

I like my cheap setup because I am not in a high vandalism area, have a major security system and can listen/talk back through my cameras.

I get an alarm call, I can pull out my iphone or laptop and see my cams in live time and listen to what's going on around them.

 

[Doppel]

$150/month? I never really researched these much but it's like $150 for the camera and $10/month or $100/year I thought. Price is per cam and when I looked there was no discounts so my three cameras would be $30/month or $300/year. I am already looking to upgrade them and I am not sure how Dropcam handles that mid year on a yearly sub.

Also I don't believe Dropcam makes an outdoor unit.

In reality, if you want true facial recognition and license plate capture you are looking at $1500-3000 for a modest system.

I like my cheap setup because I am not in a high vandalism area, have a major security system and can listen/talk back through my cameras.

I get an alarm call, I can pull out my iphone or laptop and see my cams in live time and listen to what's going on around them.

I misspoke--corrected above. It's $150 for the camera and $10/month, but your three cameras will run you only $20 total due to extra-camera discount.

Each dropcam uses .2 mbps standard, but it can spike up to .5 mbps.

You're right, no outdoor unit. I bet your $1500-3000 estimate is also correct. I am grabbing 2 MP images of cars in front of my house but license plates are a no go (even if the vehicle wasn't moving the quality isn't good enough), and license plates grabbed at night on a moving vehicle you would need at least two grand I think.

Check out the demo cams at dropcam.com for the example quality. For indoors it's quite good.

 

[KK]

I just setup a foscam 8905 POE outdoor camera this weekend. I also got 2 8910 inside along with a cisco wvc210. I got the ports forwarded thru on my router for them and also had bought the IPCamViewer app for the phone. I can view all 4 cameras at once which is nice. I also got a Synology NAS which has the Surviellance Station on it. I haven't got but one camera on that as anything past 1 camera you got to have additional licenses at around 55 a pop. Between the Cisco camera and the foscams, I prefer the foscams. The cisco doesn't have night vision and that is my main beef with it. Also the two 8910s have where you can talk and listen which is nice. Couple weeks ago, while I was on midnights I had fun playing with the cats. I really like the Synology camera program, but can't really see putting out over 100 dollars to have the two inside 8910s monitored. The software can set a portion of the camera view that you can set up to be monitored for motion. In my case the outdoor camera is pointing down the driveway down to the road. Every car going past is getting a 15 second clip stored on the NAS, if I wanted to I could block out any motion on the road and only be concerned about the driveway motion only. One downfall to the 8905 outdoor camera so far is the flickering, it seems to flicker, kinda like its trying to make up for a dim light situation, but there appears not to be any outdoor change in lighting. This is causing alot of unnecessary recordings.