Camera Selection Help

[MarvinWright]

Hi,

I'm looking to install some IP cameras at my property, I have 5 locations but for the moment I want to concentrate on the front and the rear of the property (so 4 locations).
I've attached a couple of pictures showing where the wires are exposed from my property.
At the front of the house there are 2 locations either side of a protruding porch, I want to be able to cover as much as the drive as possible, drive is about 5 meters between house and pavement.
At the rear I just want to cover the patio area which is around 4m x 4m. The location at the top is to cover the flat roof area which is approx 4m in depth and 6m wide.
Also looking for a 8 channel NVR and I think want to go with Hikvision as it seems to be highly recommended.
I'm not really sure what focal lengths I should be going for so looking for some advice, probably would like black turrets to blend in with the soffit/facias.

Any advice would be great, let me know if I can provide any more information to help.

Many thanks,

Marvin

 

[Dan]

Hi @MarvinWright

For a smaller residential system like yours, we would recommend a Hikvision system.

For the NVR, we would recommend the DS-7608NI-M2/8P 8-channel NVR.

For the front and rear cameras, we would recommend Hikvision DS-2CD2346G2-IU/B 4MP AcuSense Turrets (2.8mm)(Black).

At the front of the house, you have made things a little tricky by positioning the cameras back-to-back on either side of the porch. These positions will make it difficult to get full 180-degree coverage of the front of the property because even with the widest FoV there will still be a small area directly in front of the front door that won't be covered by either camera.

This shouldn't be a major issue though because the FoV of these cameras will cover the rest of the driveway so there wouldn't be any way to reach that small blindspot without crossing through the FoV of either camera.

In regards to the rear of the property, the 2.8mm model will give you full coverage of the small courtyard/patio including the area directly below the camera. With the camera above the flat roof, we would usually recommend a narrower FoV to cut the flat roof out of the FoV, but as you actually want to see the flat roof we would also recommend the wide 2.8mm lens here as well.

 

[MarvinWright]

Hi Dan, thank you very much for your advice, much appreciated. Yeah in hindsight the 2 front camera placement was not a genius idea, I'd in mind that the doorbell would cover the front but trying Eufy and Ring, they don't quite live up to having a proper IP camera. I do have network behind the front door bell so potentially I could change my current door bell to maybe a Hikvision doorbell connected to the NVR but I'll worry about that later.
I had one more question, the turret camera's, can they be mounted to a vertical wall, I think I've read they can but just thought I'd check to be sure.

Best regards,

Marvin

 

[Dan]

Hi @MarvinWright

Yes, a Hikvision Doorbell would be a good idea to cover the blindspot in front of the door, if you were to connect a Hikvision Doorbell to a separate PoE Switch/Injector you would be able to use the doorbell/intercom function whilst also recording the doorbell camera's feed to the NVR like a 5th camera.

In regards to mounting the turrets, they can be mounted vertically or horizontally as their ball & socket design means they have "3-axis of adjustment" (pan/tilt/rotate) that will allow them to be angled into almost any position.

 

[MarvinWright]

Hey Dan,

I'm been further going down the rabbit hole of camera, getting a bit lost. Just out of interest, is there any advantage of using the ColorVu model or moving from 4MP to 8MP?

Best regards,

Marvin

 

[Dan]

Hi @MarvinWright

The ColorVu cameras can achieve a colour image at night using either their built-in white light LEDs or ambient lighting in the scene (e.g. street lights, security lights, etc...), You could potentially be used at the front of your property if you do have street lights/security light that illuminate the driveway but at the back of the property we would probably stick with the AcuSense/IR LED turrets because back gardens are often much darker at night.

8MP will give you slightly more fine detail and more detail over long distances, but as all the spaces you want to cover are smaller than 10m x 10m you won't actually be able to see a huge difference in image quality between the 4MP & 8MP models.