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Outdoor CCTV recommendations?
Hi all. I need to set up an outdoor CCTV camera and since there seem to be a hundred different brands and as many pitfalls I'm wondering if anyone here can help me navigate that minefield. I have zero experience.
I have the following basic requirements:
- Waterproof: It's outdoors, it will be rained on, plus there will often be high humidity, pollen and dust. It should not get fogged up. (IP66 or higher I think?) This also means there shouldn't be exposed plugs, otherwise it's not really waterproof.
- NOT battery powered. If there's a battery power option, battery degradation shouldn't prevent the camera from working, since otherwise that will massively impact longevity. I'm looking for something that can be wired directly to AC power.
- Wifi support: Comms cannot be wired in this installation. Norm will probably be n (2.4ghz) but ac+ should ideally be supported for future proofing.
- I probably can't buy it if it's not available in Europe (this often excludes some american startups).
With regard to what happens to the footage:
- I think IP streaming would be ideal?
- Abso-fucking-lutely no "cloud" based services. I have no interest in having to bounce footage through the US or china, or paying a monthly fee for unnecessary nonsense. I'm afraid of brands not being clear about this being a requirement before I spend my money.
- Some brands seem to have their own "server"/hub hardware? Why? No! I already own computers, so I don't need to waste money on a proprietary unitasker for talking to my camera.
- I think there are some open standards for camera streaming and open source software for handling the cameras. Support for these would be great. I'm accepting software recommendations too.
- I'm not in theory opposed to SD card support, but I'd rather not have to use local storage at all, and don't mind if it's not an option. If a setup requires storing in an SD card and then reading from it that's not the worst, I suppose (it's not that expensive to replace dead SD cards once every few years).
Optional bells and whistles:
- There is some illumination in the location at night, but some form of night vision would be highly desirable. Optional built in lights are probably also a good idea.
- Microphone is a nice plus.
- Motion detection and human tracking are a nice plus. The camera doesn't have to rotate 360 degrees; probably a ~60 degree angle of vision would be plenty. At the extreme, I'd say more than ~120 degrees is literally useless due to obstacles. (Obviously if an ideal solution has full rotation, I'll just take it.)
- Resolution+framerate (bitrate) can be as high as wireless-n can comfortably handle, but I don't really think I need more than 1080p.
Thanks in advance if anyone knows enough to be able to help.
I understand that the post says no WiFi, but I'd recommend to get wired especially that you don't want to use local storage. My 5 CCTVs use 20Mbps constantly, and WiFi is a shared resource so they'll be constantly haggling the airwave.
My preferred camera brand is a Hikvision. They have usable web interface (latest model use web assembly, the older ones use ActiveX). They only have very few wifi models, which I own one due to the wiring limitation and I think I owned the best model they have that I could source. The feature set is very limited compared to the wired ones, the web interface is half broken (I think they was going to ship the wasm but can't due to size limitation, so they just cut the wasm without replacement), the UDP streaming often get glitchy and slow.
(Aside: Learning to config the Hikvisions make me realise the reason phone cameras are so ubiquitous and produce sharp images, yet the CCTV sensors are so bad is because they have different goals - CCTV are not trying to be artistic or realistic. They need to completely capture the scene, whether day or night. Even when people are pointing bright light directly at them the image doesn't go entirely white or black. Many modern ones also have large sensor that capture full color at night without infrared. Most people buy the cheapest one though and I don't think they've evolved much except in price)
There are no neighbors in range, and I expect I can get an access point as close as 3m away. With a theoretical bandwidth of 300mbps, and without having 5 cameras, it should be fine! The only interference I want to prevent is with the king of all bandwidth hogs, the VR headset, which is why I reserve the 5ghz network for it (uses 1.2gbps when active).
Thank you very much for the information about hikvision cameras, I'll definitely look into them.
I'm not too sure on brands for wifi cameras because I've only dealt with wired cameras and eufy cameras, but for your specific requirements it sounds like a decent outdoor wifi ip camera with ONVIF support would do. There is a lot of ONVIF software you can run on a local computer or NAS to save continuous recordings from your ONVIF cameras if you wish
On the software front:
I've used SecuritySpy on the Mac and it worked very well. I've since switch to UniFi Protect for all of my cameras. Thier DVR and associated software are the best I've used (they now support 3rd party ONVIF cameras). I moved this direction because I already had the router with the built-in hardware for Protect and at the time they had good quality, but inexpensive wi-fi cameras.
It seems that most use Blue Iris for a DVR on Windows based systems. Frigate seems to be the most popular open-source solution.
Cameras:
I purchased my non-UniFi cameras from Empire Tech. I added the SD card in the camera as well as having the video stream to my DVR. As a precaution, I blocked the camera from having internet access with the router's firewall.
I’m considering UniFi for PoE cameras + doorbell on my house and am inclined to go all-in (Ubiquiti for WiFi, etc), but doing the ethernet wiring for it is gonna be a bear with my house being newer construction and not designed to make adding wiring easy. A local wiring contractor gave me an estimate of $2400 for ethernet runs for the doorbell, cameras, and wall sockets for various rooms (including parts, labor, etc). I can see why WiFi-based solutions are popular.
Houses here are "all" made of aerated bricks and concrete. I could do the wiring (with my brother's help, who owns a crimping tool), but adding new wiring outlets requires digging groves into the walls with jackhammers to add PVC pipes, a destructive and noisy process that requires moving furniture out and takes several days including patching the wall back up, repainting the whole wall and drying. It can mess up the aesthetic and insulation as well, and cause infiltrations if you're not careful.
Plopping an access point in an indoor ethernet port that's already installed and splicing a camera into an outdoor light fixture circuit, on the other hand, is something I can do in an hour with just a ladder, a pair of pliers and a power drill!
I’m in the US so in my case putting holes in walls is cake (it’s just drywall), the part that isn’t fun is snaking the cables around since there are no conduits and all current wiring runs through the walls bare (as far as I can tell anyway, at the very least I know for a fact the coax is done that way). It’ll probably require several wall and ceiling holes per run which will then need to be patched to look seamless.
I’ve considered MoCA boxes since that’s cheaper and easier but having to buy a new box for each endpoint sucks, plus the coax doesn’t run everywhere ethernet is needed.