Best camera for garage?

Jake1979

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The environment will mostly be dark; need a wide angle with good clarity - Any recommendations?
 

Alaska Country

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If it is dark and no light then IR is your only answer. The 5442 has IR for B/W and is available in fixed lens or zoom. The sale price of the zoom is $175 while the fixed lens is less at $150. Perhaps the 2.8 or 3.6 mm fixed would work for your area depending on size, etc. Available in turret and bullet styles.
 

Flintstone61

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I dont think 1 camera is enough to cover everything. but for what it’s worth I’m using an Amcrest 1179ew 5mp and a left over night owl dvr cam.
 

Flintstone61

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oh ok that was substreams from a phone. lemme fix that.
Nightowl 5mp super duper cam2
below,
I must say though it throws off some extra IR to help the other one.
or maybe you could say they compliment each others IR.
Bottom one is amcrest 1179ew, has audio.
The 5442 is a better quality camera in all regards.
But you can buy 2 of the Amcrest for the price of the 5442,
My only dislike on the amcrest is you can grab the eyeball of the turret cam and move it by hand.
The 5442 tureets lock down so as to be tamper proof,
But anybody could block either cameras lens with something.
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CCTVCam

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How about the enw Dahua 180 degree cam? Isn't it effectively 2 x 5842's bolted together.

On the lighting front, I'd get rid of that spotlight unit. They give a very poor localised light only.
 

Flintstone61

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Good suggestion @CCTVCam . The " spotlight" ( if your referring to my pics) is a 5mp Nightowl analog cam. looking from the other side. They're looking at each other.
I like that Nightowl location for a future IP cam to look directly at that door.
But like you say, they might blind each other a bit. Perhaps if they were perched in 2 South corners looking North on angles, so as to not be directly shining on each others lens.
 

CanCuba

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I would suggest looking at a IPC-T2431T-AS S2, the build is not as good as the 5442 but if it’s in a garage the plastic mount is less of a concern and the quality is very good with IR IMHO

Andy has a cheap price on these as well
+1 on this recommendation.

I have 10 2431S-S-S2 which should be similar. They're mounted outside baking in the hot Carribean sun with zero issues for over 2 years.
 

Sybertiger

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I'm embarrassed to show you the mess in the garage but I'll take one for the team. Not that I'd recommend the Dahua N22AL12 (2MP, 2.8mm, dome) but at the price of $52.50 it does the job of showing me if the garage door is open/closed and triggers when someone is in the garage. Mind you, this is a two car 21' x 23' garage so if your garage is larger take that into consideration. I don't think I really need something more expensive in the garage but YMMV. The nighttime image is IR only..It's pretty black at night in there.. The daytime image uses the sunlight from the windows only.

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The Automation Guy

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How about the enw Dahua 180 degree cam? Isn't it effectively 2 x 5842's bolted together.
Personally I don't think a 180 degree FOV is needed/appropriate in this scenario. If you place a camera near a corner of the garage, you only need a 90 degree FOV. If you really wanted full coverage, placing a second camera in the opposite corner would provide coverage on any blind spots created by cars or other items in the garage.

EDIT - just make sure the camera height is below the garage door when it is open. You don't need the top of your door blocking the view of the camera! I suspect this is also why people tend to default to placing them on the middle of the wall.
 
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The Automation Guy

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Plus the 180 doesn't see infrared, so the built in white LED would need to be on.
Well that is an even bigger reason not to use that camera. I would agree that having a camera with IR is more appropriate than having to rely on LEDs or ambient light for this scenario.
 

NickTheGreat

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I also have an Amcrest PTZ, Amazon shows it as the IP2M-841EW. Been in the garage for 3.5 or 4 years now.

My garage is 3 cars, so I put it in a spot that shows Stall 1&2, but can pan to Stall 3. I don't park anything in Stall 3, so I'm not super concerned with monitoring it all the time.
 

CCTVCam

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Plus the 180 doesn't see infrared, so the built in white LED would need to be on.
I'm not sure you need infra red. No burglar / thief is going to be in there in the pitch dark. They at least need a torch or a some light to see. Also the 180 has leds built in. If worried the camera won't see the trip zones, you could put a very small low powered sensor light in there as well as the regular light to give the camera enough light to see it's trip zones and once the PIR has been activated and it sees it's trip wires crossed, have it kick it's own leds on. I have no doubt something around 5 watts or even less in led PIR would be sufficient. You only need enough light for the camera to see the trip wires. Beyond that a 2nd light could become annoying under regular use if you have the main light and the pir coming on so I'd keep it to a minimum to allow the camera to see the trips. Even 3w led could be tried. Buy a bulkhead style so you can choose / swap the bulb as required and I'd mount it on the ceiling / in the rafters so you don't notice it with the main light on.

If you only need 90 degress and IR, a 2.8 or 3.6 5442 is about as good as it gets. 3.6 is about 90 degrees and 2.8 I believe a little more, something iike 107, check the specs before buying).

However, in an enclosed space what you have to remember about 90 degrees is it's a triangle of view that comes out from the camera 45 degrees to each side, so anything close up out to the sides won't be captured. You can rule out the entire wall the camera is on and probably 1/2 the wall either side of the camera. Tilting down will help bring the sides in but risks losing the further away view and lessens the facial shot. Hence why I suggested the 180. If going with a regular camera I'd suggest mounting it above the garage door looking back in and relying on your regular outside cameras to get the facial money shot as the door side is the only side with nothing of value on it. That said, if it's an up and over door and not a roller door, you probably can't do this as the door itself will block the view, in which case multiple regular cams may be your only option if you don't like the 180 idea.
 

wittaj

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Sure anything is possible, but most don't want to run the 180 with the white LEDs on, hence why I pointed out it doesn't see infrared.

Most don't want a night light on nor start adding motion sensing lights in a garage, so a camera with infrared is an ideal candidate.

Plus adding a PIR to a completely dark room will result in momentary blinding by the camera when the light kicks on, thus potentially missing the best chance to catch the perp.

Further, the 180 lights are either on or off and do not act as a motion sensing light.

Further since is it the 1/1.8 sensor versus the 1/1.2" sensor, I don't think a 5watt light would be enough to light up the image to also get a clean capture.

So in that event if a perp came in with just a small LED flashlight, with the 180 without additional lighting, the 180 won't get enough light from the LED flashlight alone to catch a clean capture.
 

RavenDave

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I am a newbie, I had a lorex camera in the garage. It was kind of a waste having an outdoor camera inside. So, I bought a 2 pack of Reolink E1 Pro cameras and swapped out the Lorex for one of the Reolinks. Very happy with the swap. The 2 pack was about $85, look like the price jumped abit now. But 2 of these in a garage and the power to pan and tilt should provide pretty good coverage.
 

wittaj

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I am a newbie, I had a lorex camera in the garage. It was kind of a waste having an outdoor camera inside. So, I bought a 2 pack of Reolink E1 Pro cameras and swapped out the Lorex for one of the Reolinks. Very happy with the swap. The 2 pack was about $85, look like the price jumped abit now. But 2 of these in a garage and the power to pan and tilt should provide pretty good coverage.
How is it on motion? That camera is fine if you just want to look around and be like is the garage door down. But they are notorious for being ghost blur motion during nighttime and infrared situations.

But if the primary objective is to get a clean capture of a perp in the garage, that probably isn't the right camera.

Especially if someone is then also using BI.
 
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