Hey folks,

Someone clearly tried to break in last night (garden furniture moved and dumped in middle of back patio to access a window); we were out for a while but I think they tried whilst we were in bed a few feet away…. no damage done. It’s very rural and very dark where I live.

I’ve put locks on the side gates so access should be hard, but I also want camera coverage, both as a deterrent and to record suspicious activity. Burglar alarm is installed but rarely used.

What cameras do you recommend?
I’ve Hue lighting so nest might work well with the lights, but I only want to record motion not the whole 24/7 period…. is that a problem?

Appreciate any thoughts….

Not going to mention what set up i have on a forum but take a look at the link below

Lots of good systems at reasonable prices plus black Friday deals make it the perfect time to buy

https://www.spycameracctv.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvpnavoqH5gIVCLTtCh0MmQXGEAAYASAAEgJZ3vD_BwE

TVM

I’d get a Google nest outdoor iq 4k thing personally. I’ve got some very basic Amazon dericam ones which do the job from a deterrent POV. I doubt I’ll ever be able to identify anyone from the feed in a lineup.

I looked at ‘smart’ WiFi cameras for a while and they all seemed very compromised (either picture quality, IR range, delay before motion-detecting recording kicked in, cloud subscription service required for a lot of functionality etc. etc.).

In the end I went with 2 x 6MP Hikvison cameras and an NVR, works well (apart from the 20fps recording is pants to get really good detail on someone unless they stop). I’m happy with it but it needed a proper installation and cables run through the loft so probably not what you’re looking for.

I have a Blink XT (Amazon) which sounds like it should do the job for you – it just records clips when triggered and comes with a certain amount of free cloud storage. The cameras are wifi and battery powered so you don’t have to worry about about cabling etc.

Currys currently have them with free 6 months Spotify Premium or Echo Dot.

We have an arlo system, it’s pretty good functionality wise, we have it set for geolocation for both of us. If we’re at home, just the front door and garage are active, after 2200 or if we’re out the whole system is live.

I think you have to buy a “pro” version if you want recordings to be stored in the house as well as the cloud.

You can have up to 4 or 5 cameras on one account for free. Recordings are kept for a week. Might be a bit rubbish if your rural broadband is no good.

I’ve got a couple of Neos. Seem to work well. Obviously not the best quality, but they’ll do.

They’ve just introduced more/better storage for £3 a month i think

At the moment, two for £30. You can get waterproof covers online (mine are outside), and have been all year.

Mentioned on here https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/nov/21/home-alarm-systems-security last week

Another Hikvison and NVR user here. Not the cheapest but they work really well.

I only want to record motion not the whole 24/7 period

Why? Hard drives are cheap and I’ve read that stop/start recording might miss the bit you want. We leave ours running and recording 24/7. It’s very easy to whizz through the recording to find the bit you want to look at.

We’ve only needed it once when we lost our cat for 12 hours. We spotted which way he wandered off using the cctv recording and then found him trapped in a neighbours barn in that same direction.

I’ve got a Ring WiFi camera in the back, small fee for online storage but it was easy to set up and I’ve been fairly impressed with the quality. So far it’s mostly been used to check the cats movements when we’re away.

Ring here.

3 cameras & a doorbell installed after some scrotes tried to get into my garage 12 months ago – to date it’s been bombproof.

Expensive set up & a small fee for storage, otherwise the app is really good & nobody has been back..

All good stuff, folks. Might look at 3-4 ethernet-powered cameras with a hard drive setup. The physical security has already been addressed, so just looking for that extra deterrent now.

Cheers!

Edit: regarding not wanting 24/7 coverage, I eas concerned I’d use up mega amounts of data, but I’d I can wirelessly access my NVR to scan for motion alerts, that’s a good solution….

We have 6 Neos cameras now, covering workshop, garden and house. Pretty impressive for the money, although if a burglar is wearing a hoody no camera is going to be good enough to identify him.

They work very well, eg when we were on holiday in the Lakes my phone beeped whenever the cat feeder turned up and we could watch her feeding the cats and Hedgehogs live from a pub in Ambleside.

Edit: regarding not wanting 24/7 coverage, I eas concerned I’d use up mega amounts of data, but I’d I can wirelessly access my NVR to scan for motion alerts, that’s a good solution

I went with a 4TB drive in my NVR, I’m still testing resolutions but one camera is recording (24×7) at the full 6MP and stores about 80GB a day, the other is at a lower resolution (but you can’t tell unless you view on a high res screen) and is about 40GB a day. I think it was estimating about 25 days footage recording before it would start overwriting.

I haven’t managed to get the motion detecting tagging working yet (at least via the app, might work direct on the NVR), this is supposed to put markers in the playback timeline when motion events are detected. It’s a bit of pain otherwise trying to find a specific event to save off a recording from.

With the Hikvision stuff you can download an app and remote-view that cameras (live footage and playback) for iOS and Android (you can even turn down the resolution that the app pulls down so my phone has it on basic to save data and my iPad has it on the full res mode)

Access via a PC on the local network was a bit more of a PITA to get set-up. Although you can connect to the NVR via a browser it doesn’t allow you to see the camera footage anymore (the plug-ins no longer work with modern browsers), you can just configure the NVR settings. I found a free Hikvision PC app that connects though, even that’s annoying in that if you save a recording from it although it saves as an MP4 it seems a Hikvision proprietary version!? so you can only view the recorded file via another Hikvision player app, unless you also download the Hikvision format converter app to turn it into a normal MP4 or AVI (that said a 2 minute clip goes from about 25MB to 200MB when converted to either format). This is only a hassle if you need to save off footage for evidential purposes which I’m doing.

I found  https://www.use-ip.co.uk/forum/  to be a good source of info as well

Ring for me. 2 cameras and a doorbell. Pay £80 for the year for which you can add as many cameras as you want, and you get warranty. Very easy to set up and access. I use the battery ones which seem to last 3-4 months between charges so not too onerous – certainly easier than chasing power lines through the walls…

Lorex system with 4 wired HD cameras. The NVR is on the home network and can be accessed on my phone from anywhere. Quality is very good. Downside, you need to wire it up – wasn’t an issue where my NVR is situated.

Loads of options really.

Also had a stand alone Flir/Lorex IP camera which we used for monitoring that MIL was OK. Worked very well – fit/forget with 2 days free storage. Not used at present (MIL in care), but found out Lorex stopped supporting the cloud based tech on the camera recently. Fortunately, they are offering brand new cameras – not bad for a 3 year old IP camera.

has anybody got a microphone built into their CCTV cameras to ehlp potentially idenifty people should the hoody be up etc but they’re still talking to their mates?
is that even a thing?

The Neos one record audio and you can speak through them as well….

has anybody got a microphone built into their CCTV cameras to ehlp potentially idenifty people should the hoody be up etc but they’re still talking to their mates?
is that even a thing?

I looked into that (for the very specific situation I’m in, which the police are already involved with) but there seemed to be a load more privacy issues and GDPR requirements when recording voice so it was a non-starter for me. There are certainly cameras out there with sound recording functionality though

Edit: this relates to continuous recording in an area members of the public could be picked up, not something specific like a Ring doorbell recording the audio during an interaction

apart from the 20fps recording is pants to get really good detail on someone unless they stop

I’m in the market for a camera set up for the man cave and understand high FPS is more important than HD or 4K and would give a more detailed picture?

It depends what you’re trying to record, among other things I was trying to record a car number plate on mine but if I’m lucky I can get a blurry just-about-readable image in one  or two frames as it passes. If the car was stationary the lettering would be crystal clear. Similar with faces, to get a very good image the person needs to be stationary for a moment. The moving image blurriness is amplified during IR/night mode as well.

You don’t need to go beyond a 2MP (full HD) camera for a very good picture but if you need to clarity on a moving object my experience is you need more than 20fps. In hindsight I wish I’d got a third camera with a much higher fps (40-60) capability but only 1-2MP, between it and the 6MP cameras I’d have the best of both worlds. The two cameras I have are https://www.use-ip.co.uk/hikvision-ds-2cd2365g1-i.html (I think I can reduce the resolution and up the fps but it didn’t seem much of an increase was possible but will experiment and see)

I’m in the market for a camera set up for the man cave and understand high FPS is more important than HD or 4K and would give a more detailed picture?

I use the Neos…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2gH6iVR]Neos[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

Some example videos. They do get triggered by fast changes in daylight.

Only other comment would be why would you not use your burglar alarm? Does it set off false alarms? We had a new one a couple of years ago which texts if there’s an alert. It’s only gone off once when the FiL got the code wrong, so pretty reliable. We use it constantly even if only going out for 5 mins. I know you won’t stop them if somebody is really serious about getting in, but I figure the more you can do to discourage opportunists the better…

Ring here. Very easy to set up and access, not the cheapest, but Black Friday is coming.

I’m in the market for a camera set up for the man cave and understand high FPS is more important than HD or 4K and would give a more detailed picture?

It depends on the camera.

A decent camera with a decent sensor will shutter, i.e. it may record only 15fps (to save on data) but each image might be taken at 1/nth of a second, where n is >>15. 1/15th shutter speed would be blury, but 15 images taken at 1/250 will be pin sharp. The shuttering will look rubbish as a video, but that’s not the point of CCTV.

This knowledge is useless in a home CCTV context though because a Toshiba HD-1 CCTV cameras cable costs £1500 alone!

But basically you want a camera with a high shutter speed. Not necessarily the same thing as a high frame rate, although a high frame rate forces a higher shutter speed.

I coincidently just saw this:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/?utm_source=desktop-snippet&utm_medium=snippet&utm_campaign=privacy_not_included_guide&utm_term=21808&utm_content=rel

I guess you need to find the balance between protecting your property and protecting your privacy.

I have a Blink XT2 combined with an alarm, it’s been very good tbh. Very controllable, reconnects after power loss, all that good stuff. And being able to look up the app and get a live feed isn’t exactly revolutionary but it’s very nice.

It’s also pretty cheap, especially just now- get a single camera system for £75, plus an amazon echo, plus 6 months of spotify premium, and no subscription for the cloud service.

I’ve just got a second camera though I suspect it’s going to struggle with outside use over winter. Guess we’ll see.