After the break in, we have just installed a CCTV system. You definitely get what you pay for...
My Neighbour has a Samsung 1080 System, and he gave us some footage from his after the burglary. What I found was, during the day, it has a nice picture, but once night kicks in, while you can make out people etc, there is no definition, and the chances of getting anything you could use is next to impossible. Even the cars going past were really just a blur.
We ended up going for a Lorex 4K system from Costco, partly because of the price, but also because when we looked it up on line, it seemed to be the sort of system Techno nerds were raving over. It came with 6 very high definition cameras, and an 8 channel recorder. The cameras are also low light, so if there is any ambient light, they still record in colour until it gets truly dark, then the cameras have long range infrared built in, which works very well. The resolution is so high, you can zoom in up to 4 times, before it starts to pixelate.
The cameras use PoE (Power over Ethernet), so you only have to run one RJ45 cable to each of the cameras. In order to make wiring a lot easier, and not have to try and run all of the cables back to the recorder, which we wanted near the TV, I purchased a separate PoE network hub, which is installed up in the loft, and most of the cameras link into that, so I only had to run one cable down to the recorder, and because our internet is at the other end of the house, another down to the internet router. To be honest, wiring is what takes the time, but the way I did it, I poked the wires through the eves, into the loft space, and used conduit to bring the cables down the outside wall of the house to the living room. It gave me a chance to sort out some other TV/Satellite/Phone/light cables at the same time.
The hardest part after working out the best locations for the cameras, is the actual setup of the recorder, as they can do so many things, and you have to work out what features you actually want/need. I have been playing with something each night, just to see what it does, and the documentation can be very frustrating.
It has a Masking feature, so if one of your cameras should overlook some ones window, you can mask that area so it is not recorded.
It also has alarm zones, where you can set it up to send you an Email if anything in that area moves. It takes a bit of tweaking setting the sensitivity and trigger thresholds to stop false alarms, but has proved very good.
One big tip... where ever you put the cameras, spiders will move in, and for some reason one will want to sit right on the lens... I have had to put a duster on a telescopic pole so I can knock him off every so often.
Before we got this system, I experimented with some wifi cameras, but found that they would loose connection to the wifi too often to be reliable enough for a system that you want to go to in an emergency, which is why I decided to go for a hard wired system, and Ethernet is much easier to work with than having to use coax based systems.
There are many ways to view the cameras, either via software they manufacturers provide, but I found that for my Android system, an App called TinyCam, which works very well for me.
To view it remotely, you will need to sign up for a DDNS service, and there are no longer any online free ones that I could find, but luckily Lorex do provide their customers this as a free service, and the recorder updates it automatically.
I forgot your other questions now! Doh
