Home CCTV

[Sundayjumper]

Anyone got any useful experience with home CCTV ? I was getting curious about it so I bought myself one of THESE KITS this week.

Amazon next day delivery - ordered about 11pm Monday evening, arrived Tuesday lunchtime, awesome

Unpacking - surprisingly heavy, cameras have metal bodies and feel chunky

Instructions - utterly baffling, badly translated, incomplete, possibly intended for a different product

I picked this particular kit because as far as I could tell from the garbled spec, the cameras were true PoE. From sifting through reviews it seemed that although a lot of systems describe themselves as PoE, they're some kind of proprietary / bastardised implementation meaning they will only work with the matching base unit. I've already got a PoE switch and network points around the house so being able to plug in to the existing network was a big plus. And fortunately, it works. An interesting outcome of this is that the base unit (NVR) acts as a PoE switch. I've got an AP plugged into one of the camera ports and it works just fine. This might open up some further possibilities ?

The software is almost as flaky as the instructions but I'm gradually figuring it out. There's lots of clever-looking stuff in there for alerts and suchlike. More tinkering needed to get it all to work.

So far I've got two cameras set up for front & rear of house, currently set to record 24/7. The picture quality seems pretty good. The night-time IR works well, the back garden is fully visible even when it's pitch dark to the naked eye.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Next job is to fit a camera indoors to see what the dog gets up during the day !

[DeskJockey]

Don't know the product, but from a general cyber security perspective I would research their software/online portal security if you plan on using it remotely or disabling it, if not.

A lot of IoT devices (and these could fall into that category) have very poor/appalling security that can leave them vulnerable to attack and. exploitation.

[JonMad]

I saw some fascinating CCTV from a neighbour of my sister this weekend, which captures some complete scrote breaking into my sister's car (65 plate Qashqai), being very brazen about it and hanging around for ages even though the alarm was going off repeatedly. So I now think CCTV not a bad idea. Will be interesting to see how you get on.

[Shlergen]

I've got nest front & back, easy setup and just works and no on-prem storage required. Pretty good detection & quality.

[Sundayjumper]

...easy setup and just works...

That's certainly something you don't get with these Chinese systems !!

I've spent a huge amount of time over the weekend working through it. Useless instructions and not very intuitive software, but spending some time with it you do start to 'get' the logic and you can figure it out. Fortunately the translations for different languages are all stored as plain text so I've been slowly translating the so-called "English" into actual English. Most of it is just literal translations that don't quite suit the context, but there's also some weird capitalisations going on, and then simple typos like misspelling & not putting a space between words.

There's a facility to email a snapshot when motion is detected - you can set the motion detection from the main unit, but the email & the snapshot has to be configured directly in the camera. The system doesn't work as a system.

The first night with the snapshot facility running, I woke up in the morning to over 3,500 emails

There was a spider's web dangling near the camera, invisible during the day, but stood out very clearly with the IR floodlight at night. Every slight movement was triggering it.

Last night I only got 15 emails. Mostly bugs flying in front of the camera, two of a cat walking up the drive, and one of the Touareg randomly turning its headlights on for about 40s just before 1am. That one's weird.

I'm still pretty happy with the setup. It's definitely only suitable for people who are happy to tinker though. It's nowhere near plug'n'play.

[unzippy]

I think we need a new term, something like "Beany Suitable"

[mik]

WRT spiders webs - spray/wipe the camera body and mount with this. (Not the lens - duh). Is pretty effective.

[Sundayjumper]

WRT spiders webs - spray/wipe the camera body and mount with this. (Not the lens - duh). Is pretty effective.

I have a can of exactly that in the garage. Good tip !

[Beany]

I think we need a new term, something like "Beany Suitable"

You sniff, but if I wanted CCTV, I'd just plumb in an IP camera to my NAS by feeding it the IP of the camera, and let the NAS sort out motion detection, recording schedules etc.

The Synology stuff I've worked with is easier than literally any proprietary CCTV boxes I've had to work with, by a wiiiide margin.

clicky for linky

[Sundayjumper]

The Synology stuff I've worked with is easier than literally any proprietary CCTV boxes I've had to work with, by a wiiiide margin.

It looks like Synology require you to buy a licence per camera ? So in addition to buying the NAS, because I don't have one already, that all starts to add up quite quickly.

I know the the setup I've got is cheap & cheerful, I was curious to try it out. Synology looks like a good upgrade path if/when I need to.

[Ascender]

I went with HIK Vision but am going to switch to something like Nest, especially as Apple are going to start offering free cloud storage for compatible cameras.

Once up and running they were fine, but everything about the software, firmware, NVR etc was like an early 90s implementation of how a product should work. Totally shonky and a PITA when you want to do anything at all.

[Beany]

The Synology stuff I've worked with is easier than literally any proprietary CCTV boxes I've had to work with, by a wiiiide margin.

It looks like Synology require you to buy a licence per camera ? So in addition to buying the NAS, because I don't have one already, that all starts to add up quite quickly.

I know the the setup I've got is cheap & cheerful, I was curious to try it out. Synology looks like a good upgrade path if/when I need to.

Yeah, price of convenience, innit.

[unzippy]

The Synology stuff I've worked with is easier than literally any proprietary CCTV boxes I've had to work with, by a wiiiide margin.

It looks like Synology require you to buy a licence per camera ? So in addition to buying the NAS, because I don't have one already, that all starts to add up quite quickly.

I know the the setup I've got is cheap & cheerful, I was curious to try it out. Synology looks like a good upgrade path if/when I need to.

Yeah, price of convenience, innit.

Yu've changed.

[Beany]

It looks like Synology require you to buy a licence per camera ? So in addition to buying the NAS, because I don't have one already, that all starts to add up quite quickly.

I know the the setup I've got is cheap & cheerful, I was curious to try it out. Synology looks like a good upgrade path if/when I need to.

Yeah, price of convenience, innit.

Yu've changed.

You say that, but I still have a DL380 in my spare room for doing stupid, overly complicated things.

[Sundayjumper]

...I still have a DL380 in my spare room for doing stupid, overly complicated things.

I assume that if I knew what that was, I'd be impressed ?

Update on my shonky CCTV system - a couple of extra options appeared in the camera setup yesterday, and now the cameras keep changing their IP address on a seemingly random basis. Not DHCP, they're picking addresses outside the range the router is set up to dish out.

[Beany]

...I still have a DL380 in my spare room for doing stupid, overly complicated things.

I assume that if I knew what that was, I'd be impressed ?

Twas more for Balmers benefit, (HP) DL380 (G6) is a chunky dual processor server. I have this exact one which was bargaintastic at the price with that amount of RAM. Dual hex core CPUs are a cheapy cheap upgrade, too.

I realise no-one else will care, but for the three of you who do, you can get some usefully modern hardware on ebay these days for not much if you sniff aboot!

[240PP]

Twas more for Balmers benefit, (HP) DL380 (G6) is a chunky dual processor server. I have this exact one which was bargaintastic at the price with that amount of RAM. Dual hex core CPUs are a cheapy cheap upgrade, too.

I realise no-one else will care, but for the three of you who do, you can get some usefully modern hardware on ebay these days for not much if you sniff aboot!

£50

[unzippy]

You say that, but I still have a DL380 in my spare room for doing stupid, overly complicated things.

Should keep the room nice and warm

[Beany]

You say that, but I still have a DL380 in my spare room for doing stupid, overly complicated things.

Should keep the room nice and warm

Yeah, £50. it's not a powerhouse by modern standards, but the 64gb of RAM would cost near that even used....

Balmer, I have the IPMI hookedup so I only fire it up when needed. If I do something interesting, I'll pick up something less violent on power for 24/7 use.

Although idling, running a couple of light VMs or basically not running Prime95, it only draws 115w or so...

[GG.]

I've just pulled the trigger on an Annke 4x 8MP POE bullet camera system. The specs look decent but as SJ found, I'm sure the software and associated app will leave a lot to be desired.

Will update as to how I get on...