Home surveillance with Dahua - Planning

dnns

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Hello,

after reading some threads, informing myself and your help, I am looking for a surveillance system for a house.

The following requirements:
  • very good image quality
  • PoE
  • Also with night vision good quality
  • Auto/person detection / AI
  • NVR - access also from external, e.g. via VPN
  • Good connection via app
  • "Inexpensive"

The mounting height is unfortunately only about 2 -2.5 meters (6.5 - 8.2 ft.).
So the close focus distance should not be too far due to the mounting height.
The farthest distance during the day as well as at night is about 15-20 meters (50 - 65ft.). Whereby at 20 meters I don't need to see the person extremely sharp.

I had thought of the following setu (linked with click):
IPC-HDW5442T-ZE - often recommended
PFB203W (Wall Mount Bracket)
NVR5208-8P-4KS2E

The Eyeball for the reason that the same Bullet is more expensive.
But I also read about other, good cameras. e.g. HFW5449T1-ASE+D2 or IPC-Color4K-X. Whereby with both the close focus distance is further away.

I would like to access the cameras via iPhone/iPad and view the live data, but also view the motion alarms, or generally view past recordings. Should be possible without problems with the Dahua setup, right?

What do you say to the setup? I look forward to an informative exchange.


Best wishes and thanks a lot
 

cyberwolf_uk

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Hello,

after reading some threads, informing myself and your help, I am looking for a surveillance system for a house.

The following requirements:
  • very good image quality
  • PoE
  • Also with night vision good quality
  • Auto/person detection / AI
  • NVR - access also from external, e.g. via VPN
  • Good connection via app
  • "Inexpensive"

The mounting height is unfortunately only about 2 -2.5 meters (6.5 - 8.2 ft.).
So the close focus distance should not be too far due to the mounting height.
The farthest distance during the day as well as at night is about 15-20 meters (50 - 65ft.). Whereby at 20 meters I don't need to see the person extremely sharp.

I had thought of the following setu (linked with click):
IPC-HDW5442T-ZE - often recommended
PFB203W (Wall Mount Bracket)
NVR5208-8P-4KS2E

The Eyeball for the reason that the same Bullet is more expensive.
But I also read about other, good cameras. e.g. HFW5449T1-ASE+D2 or IPC-Color4K-X. Whereby with both the close focus distance is further away.

I would like to access the cameras via iPhone/iPad and view the live data, but also view the motion alarms, or generally view past recordings. Should be possible without problems with the Dahua setup, right?

What do you say to the setup? I look forward to an informative exchange.


Best wishes and thanks a lot
Your above select ticks all the boxes, but like I say to anyone that will listen no matter what camera you install the night time is when the good stuff happens so make sure you have adequate lighting outdoors via floodlights with PIR.
The more light you can put out there the better to capture that good colour night face ID.

@EMPIRETECANDY suggestion for the Colour range of camera is a good idea, but again more light the better.

As for your statement of "Good connection via app" I find the Dahua app to be terrible...others may agree or disagree... I find the BlueIris mobile App to be one of the best. But for that you would need to install a Blueiris server so your cameras could connect to it. If you went that route you could ditch the NVR as that would take its place. The BlueIris software is about $50 and a PC to run BI would cost about $150 - $300 depending where you purchased it from (we are talking about a box standard desktop PC say i5 processor and 8gb Memory)

There are plenty of threads to BlueIris on this forum, just have a look, not sure what the split is on using BI against a NVR but BlueIris makes a NVR look like a Nokia 3310 whilst BlueIris is more of a iPhone 13,14,15,16.... :)
 

cyberwolf_uk

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*EDIT Added VPN section

Also make sure your NVR and cameras are blocked from Internet access (to many security holes in these IOT products & security is usually an afterthought with them) A VPN solution is a must for accessing them remotely. Your modem / router may have a VPN server built into it or you can setup a quick and easy one for less then $30 using hardware.
 

dnns

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do a layout with your cameras IPVM Camera Calculator
When I select the 5442T-ZE there, the sample images look really blurry at different distances. Even at 10 meters during the day, I only see a blurry image.
The image is much sharper with an IPC-HDW3841T-ZAS, although I was advised against this and the 5442T-ZE was recommended.
 

wittaj

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You sure you didn't select the fixed lens version or wasn't moving the varifocal slider?

I wouldn't put much stock in the actual images though on that calculator. It is a nice tool, but there is some degradation the further you get away, even with an optical zoom, that it doesn't account for.

Or the night images for example are all taken at close distance, so the IR is better the closer you are.

But if you don't believe us, go with the 8MP on the less than ideal sensor LOL.
 

user8963

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When I select the 5442T-ZE there, the sample images look really blurry at different distances. Even at 10 meters during the day, I only see a blurry image.
The image is much sharper with an IPC-HDW3841T-ZAS, although I was advised against this and the 5442T-ZE was recommended.
At 10meters 4mp @2.8mm will give you a blurry image of any face. What do you expect ?

This camera has zoom. So you can zoom to 12mm and you will see the face only at 10m @4mp.

You have to read more. Any beginner want 180 degree FOV with crystal clear image at 50meter and beyond.

It is NOT possible. Most setups are some overview cameras to see what happens and some cameras to identify the person. So you have to think first about where a person goes,.. you only need one picture to identify a person.

Here from calculator... but the face would look a bit better on 2,8mm in my opinion, depends on codec and bitrate ...

10m2.PNG10m.PNG


Or just add some reolink duos... maybe they will fill your needs... or maybe not... even the colors match perfect on them... hookup would agree
vj_iXM-XTjiS21217uMZlMRhMA_Mhy9SNBfQt2-H0ME.jpg
 
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dnns

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@wittaj


Of course I believe you, that's why I'm here asking for advice.

Yes, my mistake. I had set the angle to 114 degrees and probably it is then normal that the image is blurred at 10m.

@user8963
The 5442T-ZE has 4MP@1/1.8".

A friend still recommended this one to me: HFW5449T1-ZE-LED.

Attached is a picture of the plot and my ideas. The house is about 15x11m.

Or are four cameras just too few, because you can't cover 100-115 degrees at a distance of 10-15m sharply?
 

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wittaj

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The HFW5449T1-ZE-LED is on the proper MP/sensor ratio, but that is a full color camera that cannot see infrared, so unless you have a lot of ambient light, that camera will not see much past 15 feet once you dial in the settings to eliminate blur.

The LED lights on these cameras are gimmicky (until you get to the 4K/X that is incredible with just a little bit of light) and are no different than standing outside with the flashlight from a cell phone - bright looking right into the LED, but trying to see something more than a few meters away and it is dark.

If there is any question that you do not have enough light (and most do not - most of us have to force the camera into color at night if we want color because the camera doesn't believe there is enough light), then you are better off with the 5442 series that can see infrared.

And yes, once you get much beyond 10-15m, the wide angle cameras will let you RECOGNIZE something happened, but not IDENTIFY and get a clean capture.

Most of us have areas being covered by several cameras - an overview and then one or more optically zoomed in to pinch points to get the clean capture.
 

sebastiantombs

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My observation is that you're trying to cover too much with too few cameras. Each side of the house needs two cameras, each looking back toward the other, to provide decent coverage and improve the chance of actually being able to identify someone, day or night.
 

Teken

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At the end of the day nothing is stopping you from running the major wiring infrastructure which is the cornerstone of what you’re building upon. If your currently limited by finances to install say eight cameras.

Nothing stopping you from installing the cable for all eight. Once finances have become available you can install whatever you want.

Going this route will allow you to see first hand the video quality (day / night) while also confirming the blind spots. In the ideal world you would purchase a few of each camera and place it on a test rig to help validate the proposed location.

A little more time consuming but this is very much like a wood cutter.

Measure twice cut once!

You’ve already did the most important thing and that is research and asking questions on this forum and others.

Add to this knowledge is sitting down pen to paper and confirming essential things like 120 VAC dedicated power, UPS, home run all cabling, noise abatement, cooling, physical storage of equipment, security for the same, SPD protection, long term energy consumption balancing, isolation of the security network, etc.

People often fail to take into consideration fan noise. This is followed by increased energy consumption due to extra 24.7.365 hardware not present before. Review all the maximum power consumption of every device considered and accept or iterate to find that balance especially if you live in a place where electricity is more than $0.20 per KWH! More so if you’re on a ToU tier etc.

Lots of older retired folks are on fixed income so understand this extra long term costs.
 

SouthernYankee

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Not enough cameras. You are trying to cover to big an area with to few cameras.
Most of my cameras do not have AI i use Blue Iris and DeepStack for the smarts. I record all cameras continuous 24/7/365

1) the front door needs three cameras, one doorbell camera pointing out, one pointing at the package drop area, one pointing back to the front door.
2) the garage entrance Needs two cameras pointing out mounted no higher than the top of the garage door. Each side of the door.
3) the inside of the garage need two cameras one point at the garage door and one point at the house entrance.
4) each entrance to the house must be covered by a camera.
5) each camera must be covered by another camera, If i can destroy a camera it must be covered, recorded by another camera.
6) in my house all public areas inside are covered, kitchen, living room, dining room, halls, game room, den
7) all outside doors are covered by a camera inside, pointing out.
8) I currently do not have any license plate reader cameras, but it is on the todo list.
 

mat200

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@wittaj


Of course I believe you, that's why I'm here asking for advice.

Yes, my mistake. I had set the angle to 114 degrees and probably it is then normal that the image is blurred at 10m.

@user8963
The 5442T-ZE has 4MP@1/1.8".

A friend still recommended this one to me: HFW5449T1-ZE-LED.

Attached is a picture of the plot and my ideas. The house is about 15x11m.

Or are four cameras just too few, because you can't cover 100-115 degrees at a distance of 10-15m sharply?
Hi @dnns

Also see the DORI section in the cliff notes .. equation for pixel density and "ID distance" is there.. based on 100 ppf - about 300 ppm ( you can convert the equation to metric - feel free to share it if you do, thanks )

basically, your FOV is too wide if you want to see something sharply at 10-15M away from the camera. ( if you have a 8MP camera )
 
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