Security Cameras

[Drezha]

Can anyone point me in the direction of some good reading for security cameras?

We’ve put an offer down on a house, and the bike parking would be within the shed at the rear of the property and I would like to set some form of CCTV up. I can’t recall if it’s @Ed or @ricedg that has the expertise in the area, but looking to do some reading.

Can use my Synology DS116 for storage and maintaining but I can look into upgrading this if I need to, which from a quick look, may require me to for storage purposes.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

Synology Surveillance Station will do the camera management and recording for you and use a PC or phone to view.

You just need to pick a supported camera, there are 1000s https://www.synology.com/en-uk/compatibility/camera

PoE will make the cabling easier, but is the shed attached to the property or not? If not it will need power. I’ll assume it is attached and you only need to run 1 Cat 5.

As it’s all close range stuff 720P will be fine and you don’t need mega metre IR range. H264 will need a lot less storage than MPEG.

Something like the £74 Foscam FI9853EP would do the job http://tinyurl.com/yawlfhn9  Amazon It says PoE but comes with a 12v power adapter so I’d use this £5 Passive Power over Ethernet PoE Adapter Injector + Splitter Kit Amazon You’ll also want an enclosure to put all the connections in such as this Amazon

Surveillance Station is pretty straight forward to set up and a DS216j can deal with 300 FPS @ 720p H264 so that isn’t going to be a problem. I would suggest you set it at 10fps at which it only need 1.3mbps (so viewing over the internet on your phone should be a doddle) and an hours recording would take up 0.6GB . Set it to motion detection and it’ll need hardly anything unless you’re in and out of the shed all day!

[PlaneMan]

If your’e going to have bikes stored away from the house get a bike rail cemented in. Lock the bikes to it.

99% of tea-leaves will see that and go elsewhere.

[Ed P]

Dave is the pro, I’m just the amateur.

From my perspective you need to apply the normal security rules.

a) What are you trying to protect?

Line of sight is important, but so are access to power and your network. Cabled PoE addresses both these issues in one bit of cable but you will need to look at distance, cable runs etc. Ideally you want something that can ‘look’ at the approaches to your shed. Too high is not good as you just get the tops of the heads of intruders. However, ensure that your camera cannot be stolen by mounting out of reach! I’ll leave Dave to talk about lenses etc, but good lenses come at a cost IMO a1080p camera is good enough.

[edit] Should have said I use Foscam. You might want to look at coupling with Zomeminder as its own software does not do tracking.

b) What are you trying to achieve.?

I’d be surprised if you are trying to ‘catch’ thieves or vandals. You are looking to deter. In this situation good locks and visible alarms help. IMO this also applies to security cameras. I find that zoom is rarely useful but tracking is a must. Nothing deters a potential thief more than a camera that auto tracks and has a big red ‘eye’ (the IR flood) looking at the intruder.

Then it all comes down to budget – do not go too cheap as then you get junk with no way of updating security holes in the firmware. You will also need to spend money on software such as BlueIris for Windows or go the Linux route with Zoneminder or iSpy . This route means you will need to brew your own tracking software. Expensive cameras such as Hikvision come with software and firmware solutions. (Dave can comment on tracking facilities in Hikvision as I do not know)

I personally use Foscam cameras (as I’m a tightwad) and a combo BlueIris JSON homebrewed software tracking solution. If I were starting over I would probably go the Zoneminder/Linux route – I believe Malc is an expert in this area.

I have four cameras coupled up to a standalone 1 Ghz P + SSD and these just about max out the cpu on this box. It handled two cameras easily but it is definitely labouring with four 1080p IP cameras. Soon be time for its own i3Brix box!

[Drezha]

I’m looking at placing the camera in the kitchen as this overlooks the garden path that someone would have to come down to get into the garden (without jumping over fences along the cul-de-sac to get in the back).

Getting the bikes locked to something in the ground is a good call – I believe the shed is on a concrete plinth anyhow, but we’d have to look into it.

I’m looking at deterring or if there is a break in, at least give the police something to work with. Motion detection was something I was looking at as it would mean that I don’t have to have it on constantly. Already taken a look at the Synology camera list, so I’ll have a look into more of them then. I’d only taken a quick look at the D-Link ones earlier and that was because I pressed for time and just wanted an idea of what I was looking at.

My girlfriend would probably prefer me looking into the bathroom, rather than the tech side of things!?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

This is where the site survey come in, without that I have no idea of what focal length (and therefore coverage) you want. Like photography wide lenses = more coverage but less detail and increasing the mega pixels doesn’t do as much as you’d think.

The calculator I use for this is https://www.theiatech.com/calculator as it’ll give you a picture of the detail you’ll get at the given distance etc.

Plumbing the specs of the Foscam in at 20 metres the horizontal field of view is 25m and and the detail is

At 10 metres the fov is 12.7m and the detail is

So you’re not going to be identifying anyone at 20 metres and probably not at 10. However these things rarely get to court as the coppers would probably see enough to confirm enough who they thought it was.

On the court side of things make sure your time is always with 10 minutes of what it should be. Shouldn’t be a problem with the Synology.

[Ed P]

Just to correct you a bit. With motion detection the camera remains on, but you only store clips when motion is detected. IMO a camera peering out of a window does not cut it.. The IR lamp will not work properly, I think you will get reflections and it is less visible to someone mooching around. Better imo to mount about 8 ft up and run the ethernet cable to the camera. If you go for wifi instead you only need a9v DC cable that you can safely run yourself.

[Dave Rice]

Totally agree with that, windows and IR don’t work, nor rain on the pane.

I’ve just noticed E-Buyer are doing Hikvision cameras at pretty much trade prices.

Hikvision 4 MP WDR Fixed Dome 2.8mm £88 http://tinyurl.com/y6u32mvy DS-1280ZJ-DM21 Deep Base £8 http://tinyurl.com/y9guzw2k They are IK10 vandal proof as well.

The other one I use a lot of (and is on my house) is the Hikvision 4 MP EXIR Bullet £106 http://tinyurl.com/yb5cfabv as it has 50 metre IR. It’ll be the 4mm version. DS-1260ZJ Deep Wall Bracket £11 http://tinyurl.com/ybh8582c

Or there’s the “pig nose” 4 MP WDR EXIR Turret £102 http://tinyurl.com/ya8n3rox which is like a dome but easier to point in the right direction and has EXIR like the bullet.

These are proper professional quality cameras and I use loads of them. They all have proper dual streams, you set up the second stream at a lower setting for use with mobile viewing (saves bandwidth).  All have a 120dB Wide Dynamic Range. You’d need a PoE switch or a 12v DC wall wart and use with the splitter / injector leads.

At these prices I wouldn’t touch anything else.

[wasbit]

Motion detection can give lots of false alarms from trees, shrubbery, cats, birds, spiders etc.

In the past I’ve mainly use bottom of the range cameras because all I’m interested in, as with a dashcam, is proving that an event happened rather than identifying a perpetrator or number plate ….. either is just a bonus.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
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[Ed P]

With motion detection you get out what you put in. You can eliminate a lot of false results by suitable choice of parameters e.g. number of changing pixels (this is a balance – lots means clouds, few means leaves or pigeons). Good software will also do vector analysis of detected objects.

As you will have a restricted approach you should be able to use a combination of masked areas and object size to eliminate a lot of false positives. That said, any camera does need regular housekeeping to delete things like postmen, yourself, large dogs and other objects.

I’ll still go back to my original comment – that a visible tracking camera is a great deterrent.

However no camera set up is fool proof (see cat burglar video). What you are trying to do is to persuade the intruder to choose somewhere else, which is why I believe very visible protection is important. e.g. visible camera, notices, tracking camera and  visible large padlock, plus a notice saying everything has been marked and registered with the police. IF you are one of the lucky few who still has a police station, go there and see what crime protection advice you can get.

[Dave Rice]

Those Hikvision cameras include Line Crossing Detection: | Cross a pre-defined virtual line and Intrusion Detection: | Enter and loiter in a pre-defined virtual region. I use these to cut the amount of false recording right down. If you cross the line from left to right or there’s any motion in the box for > 1 second it records 5 seconds before and after.

[Ed P]

Ditto BlueIris software  which I use on the Foscams. As each line cross can give a different interrupt it is extremely easy to program a simple tracking movement from zone to zone and so avoid a lot of vector calculations.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve just been playing with the new Surveillance Station 8 and one of my Hikvision cameras. It’s come a long way since I last looked at it.

There are all new analytics. Basically you draw a zone(s) on the live view preview and set the sensitivity and type. You can set that on top of any motion detection being instigated by the camera (or just have all motion detection done by SS too).

The live view will dynamically switch streams to reflect the resolution being displayed i.e. if the camera is full screen it’ll go for the high quality stream and if it’s one of many it’ll switch to the balanced stream. It will suggest settings for you or you can set your own.

You can also decide which stream to use for mobile viewing, by default it’s the Balanced stream as that makes most sense. Two way audio works too if the camera supports it. You can use your microphone or have it play some predefined clips.

I was at a Synology training course on Tuesday and asked if it supported the cameras i/o circuits and was told no, third party i/o units only, but they were wrong. My camera has a PIR on it which (in theory) can be used as an event trigger and a white light which can be used as an alarm output i.e. PIR detects something which starts a video recording and turns on the light.

You can set quotas, retention settings (in days) and archives for each camera. These are set by default so if you forget it won’t eat all your disk space.

So it’s quite capable these days and if you already own a Synology is probably worth looking at. With cameras licences at £50 a pop after the first two, if you’re starting from scratch then an DVR makes more sense.

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