After many hours spent browsing front door monitoring consumer products (including trying and returning the Ring doorbell), I have concluded I should just go with something that can be scaled up to an eventual whole-house solution. I'm currently thinking I'll start with Blue Iris on one of my PCs, and a wired IP camera or two covering the front door area. After drowning in information for a couple of weeks (DVR, NVR, CCTV, SDI, CVI, TVI, IP, 720p/1080p, megapixels, field of view, etc etc, and soooo many cameras to choose from) I finally found this site, which is proving to be very helpful!
Okay, so I know I will start with Blue on a PC instead of an NVR (at least for now), find a POE switch, and run the ethernet cable. What I really need, though, is some camera suggestions. I figure I will use two, one to catch a closeup of the someone at the door, and one to cover the area from the door 25 feet or so to curb. If one wider angle camera can cover both--90 degrees would be required--I'm open to that, too.
The part I'm leary of is the audio. The wireless Ring unit I had produced only garbled audio. If the Fukikam (now Vimtag) 351HD we have indoors produces useful two-way audio I have yet to hear it. Ditto with the Lorex LNC234 I tried out. Surely I may not have tried hard or well enough. But truth told, it didn't seem realistic to me that any mics and speakers hiding in the last two could really be up to the task of producing good two-way audio from a distance of several feet from the person talking. Which means, probably, an external mic and speaker, which is fine.
So, I would be grateful for any suggestions for 1) camera or cameras that will cover the front door and out to the curb, and 2) external mics/speakers that will work with the camera and with Blue Iris to provide clear, trouble-free two-way audio with someone at the door. Oh, at the other end would be an app running on an Android Nexus 5 or an iPhone 6.
Thanks in advance,
Tony
Okay, so I know I will start with Blue on a PC instead of an NVR (at least for now), find a POE switch, and run the ethernet cable. What I really need, though, is some camera suggestions. I figure I will use two, one to catch a closeup of the someone at the door, and one to cover the area from the door 25 feet or so to curb. If one wider angle camera can cover both--90 degrees would be required--I'm open to that, too.
The part I'm leary of is the audio. The wireless Ring unit I had produced only garbled audio. If the Fukikam (now Vimtag) 351HD we have indoors produces useful two-way audio I have yet to hear it. Ditto with the Lorex LNC234 I tried out. Surely I may not have tried hard or well enough. But truth told, it didn't seem realistic to me that any mics and speakers hiding in the last two could really be up to the task of producing good two-way audio from a distance of several feet from the person talking. Which means, probably, an external mic and speaker, which is fine.
So, I would be grateful for any suggestions for 1) camera or cameras that will cover the front door and out to the curb, and 2) external mics/speakers that will work with the camera and with Blue Iris to provide clear, trouble-free two-way audio with someone at the door. Oh, at the other end would be an app running on an Android Nexus 5 or an iPhone 6.
Thanks in advance,
Tony
, so no, don't really need it. Our front door opens on an outdoor atrium and it's another twenty feet to a sliding door to the house. I just thought, wow, in the old days lots of apartments had intercoms to see who had pressed the button at the front door on the street--why not do that here, and with video? But I'm not crazy about the the products sold for that purpose. The inexpensive ones don't get uniformly good reviews, and the expensive ones...well, why not start building a complete solution with that money? So I'm casting about looking for advice.