Long-time lurker and appreciate the incredible knowledge shared here. Due to recent crime, I am working on upgrading my family's home security, including cameras. After a lot of planning I am thinking about adding thermal cameras as well, but would appreciate advice on whether they'd be good for me.
To give an overview, my house is separated from others by a few hundred feet on both sides. There is some flood lighting in between. But in the back there is nothing behind but a fence up to 200' away. There is open farmland beyond that with no lighting at all anywhere behind the house.
I have invested into some cameras including a couple color4K, but mostly T54IR ZEs, ASs, etc. The approach taken was mainly due to focal lengths, pixel sizes, min focus range, etc, for the various points around the house from which someone might pose a threat or need to be identified.
However, I found that none of them will do a very good job for Overview at night back there. For example, with half a moon in the sky, the Color 4Ks can't seem to track someone 75 feet away even with 16.67ms shutter. I know the other cameras have IR but their IR doesn't seem to get out that far with sufficient coverage.
All this has me thinking that maybe thermal might be good for my use case. Specifically: 2x IPC-TPC124X-AI in 2mm for ~170º Overview. The idea would be to know if someone is crossing the fence to get within an area 20-200' behind the house. My thought was that the other cameras (mainly T54IR ZE) would come into play if they got closer and they (ZEs) would Identify if the person got close enough.
Anyway Im not experienced with thermal so I don't know if this strategy makes sense. If it did though, and the thermal cameras could do what I wanted and the range/resolution/thermal sensitivity is as advertised, what about the ability to observe/recognize? Or would I likely be happy with the setup as described? Also, on a tangent, would the visual side of the IPC-TPC124X-AI be sufficient for Overview observe/recognize in the day?
Any advice would be appreciated.
To give an overview, my house is separated from others by a few hundred feet on both sides. There is some flood lighting in between. But in the back there is nothing behind but a fence up to 200' away. There is open farmland beyond that with no lighting at all anywhere behind the house.
I have invested into some cameras including a couple color4K, but mostly T54IR ZEs, ASs, etc. The approach taken was mainly due to focal lengths, pixel sizes, min focus range, etc, for the various points around the house from which someone might pose a threat or need to be identified.
However, I found that none of them will do a very good job for Overview at night back there. For example, with half a moon in the sky, the Color 4Ks can't seem to track someone 75 feet away even with 16.67ms shutter. I know the other cameras have IR but their IR doesn't seem to get out that far with sufficient coverage.
All this has me thinking that maybe thermal might be good for my use case. Specifically: 2x IPC-TPC124X-AI in 2mm for ~170º Overview. The idea would be to know if someone is crossing the fence to get within an area 20-200' behind the house. My thought was that the other cameras (mainly T54IR ZE) would come into play if they got closer and they (ZEs) would Identify if the person got close enough.
Anyway Im not experienced with thermal so I don't know if this strategy makes sense. If it did though, and the thermal cameras could do what I wanted and the range/resolution/thermal sensitivity is as advertised, what about the ability to observe/recognize? Or would I likely be happy with the setup as described? Also, on a tangent, would the visual side of the IPC-TPC124X-AI be sufficient for Overview observe/recognize in the day?
Any advice would be appreciated.