Hello from Metro Detroit

A

AleksanderSuave

n3wb
Apr 15, 2019
11
2
Detroit, MI
Hey all,
new to the forum, and a newb to the camera world. Im in metro detroit.

I'll give a brief intro..
last year I sold a house that unfortunately taught me the value of a security setup the hard way. My old house was vacant for a few months after I moved to the new one, got broken into while we were finalizing an offer on it, and the furnace, water heater, and other odds and ends were stolen.

Lost a bunch of money on last minute repairs to make the deal go through, had to deal with reinspection, etc, basically delayed the house sale by 2 months, so I also lost a few months worth of extra mortgage payments on that, and spent about $700 as well on a combined arlo pro and ring setup (to make sure I wasnt hit a second time, which seems to be the norm with new appliances and mechanical) that I sold with the house to give the buyers (a family) peace of mind.

The new area I'm in is one of the safest in the state, but has had a rash of late night break ins lately, between cars and garages, so I think its time to invest in a camera setup on the new house as well, to be proactive. My current neighborhood is very into the "ring" ecosystem but when I used that with my old house, it required buying their dedicated repeater just to make the doorbell work, so I dont think I'd be interested in that.

I'm looking for a multi-cam setup that I can have dump video into my cloud access (google drive - unlimited storage for my business) and looking forward to doing some reading in here and searching to find what is best for my needs.
 
Welcome.
Start here: cliff notes.
Avoid anything wifi or cloud based, if you value reliability.
You want to know who did it, not just what happened.

Cameras are the second line of defense, the first is a good, LOUD monitored alarm system.
Lots to absorb here, so take your time. Buy once, cry once. ;)
 
Thank you. Definitely digging into the cliff notes.

I have a 100 pound german shepherd as the "passive defense" alarm currently, so he is pretty good at being vocal when anyone is in the driveway, in front of the house, or at the door...but I have a "dead zone" of not visible area between the garage and front door due to the way the front of the house is built, that is my first point that needs addressing, along with the opposite side wall of the garage (and side of the house) that has no visibility from the inside either.
 
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:welcome:
My standard welcome to the forum message.

Please read the cliff notes and other items in the wiki. The wiki is in the blue bar at the top of the page.

Read How to Secure Your Network (Don't Get Hacked!) in the wiki also.

Quick start
1) Use Dahua starlight cameras or Hikvision darkfighter cameras or ICPT Night eye cameras (https://store.ipcamtalk.com/) if you need good low light cameras.
2) use a VPN to access home network (openVPN)
3) Do not use wifi cameras.
4) Do not use cloud storage
5) Do Not use uPNP, P2P, QR, do not open ports,
6) More megapixel is not necessarily better.
7) Avoid chinese hacked cameras (most ebay, amazon, aliexpress cameras(not all, but most))
8) Do not use reolink, ring, nest cameras (they are junk)
9) If possible use a turret camera , bullet collect spiders, dome collect dirt and reflect light (IR)
10) Use only solid copper, AWG 23 or 24 ethernet wire. , no CCA (Copper Clad Aluminum)

Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan .

Dogs are great alarms. Dogs also are great IQ testers. Bad guys have cars so there are no safe areas !
 
Welcome to the forum.
 
scary to hear that most of the chinese cameras are hacked.

Ive had mixed bags of experience working with China for my business..so always prefer the USA route for suppliers..
 
:welcome:
 
By hacked I mean, that they are originally Chinese only cameras. They have been modified my someone to include english and any other features they feel like adding. They more than likely will not allow firmware upgrades. They also may not work with the original vendors other products. It is buyer beware.

Both Amazon and eBay sell hacked cameras.

You must buy international versions of the camera and have faith in the vendor to support the product.

If all you look at is price, you are going to get screwed in the long term.
 
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As I write this, AT&T is here to install new internet for me (gigabit)..my installer just left for 20 minutes, he came back and turns out he lives in the next sub over, his doorbell cameras caught a guy scoping it and was able to get cops out there fast.

I definitely need to figure out the camera situation today..
 
Solid copper cable, no copper covered aluminum. Monoprice.com has good stuff. I would suggest a refurbished PC from eBay instead of an NVR and run Blue Iris software on the PC, see other subject areas. I like the Netgear Poe switchs.
 
I love monoprice, I use a ton of their power, USB, and audio cables as it is. Need to do some measuring. Thank you for the reminder. Completely slipped my mind.

I was looking at blueiris as well, after reading that you use that Dell as an NVR, Ive got a spare laptop that sits in my office, plugged in all day, and a spare mini PC I pulled from one of my photo booths, I think one is i3 and the other is i5. The mini pc would be pretty ideal to dedicate to this, I have it hooked up to a 45" tv as a monitor and its got wifi built in or I could run a long ethernet cord through the basement for it to go right into the router and transfer faster.

the hardware Download Blue Iris specs page recommends an i7 for "Ideal" operation but that seems like overkill for most software. Only thing I'm worried about is that neither of the two computers mentioned have a dedicated graphics card.
 
AleksanderSuave said:
I love monoprice, I use a ton of their power, USB, and audio cables as it is. Need to do some measuring. Thank you for the reminder. Completely slipped my mind.

I was looking at blueiris as well, after reading that you use that Dell as an NVR, Ive got a spare laptop that sits in my office, plugged in all day, and a spare mini PC I pulled from one of my photo booths, I think one is i3 and the other is i5. The mini pc would be pretty ideal to dedicate to this, I have it hooked up to a 45" tv as a monitor and its got wifi built in or I could run a long ethernet cord through the basement for it to go right into the router and transfer faster.

the hardware Download Blue Iris specs page recommends an i7 for "Ideal" operation but that seems like overkill for most software. Only thing I'm worried about is that neither of the two computers mentioned have a dedicated graphics card.
Click to expand...
read the wiki for blue iris hardware. you dont want dedicated graphics and your hardware is likely under powered but it depends on your load. i7 is a meaningless term.
 
AleksanderSuave said:
https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Com...00FNPCKUU/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

this is what I'm running with 16 gb of ram, confirmed in the system settings its on windows 10 pro, i7 processor, 4500U @1.8 ghz
Click to expand...
Thats a perfect example of i7 being meaningless. That processor is weaker than a third generation i3-3225 processor. A system with a 3rd gen i5-3570 can be purchased for 100 bux. for 180 you can bump up to a i5-6500 sixth gen system. Start reading.
 
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Didnt realize that was such an underpowered processor, but i see now thats the case after reviewing user benchmark.

$150 seems to be the sweet spot for 8 gb ram, 500 gb hd, pre-loaded with windows,and i5 4570-4590.
I found a few different variations of that between dell and HP, so thats going to have to work
 
Welcome. I am also in the metro Detroit area (B'ham). I know alot of people use Blue Iris and I almost went with that software but came across Milestone Xprotect (Milestone Systems Video Management Software | Milestone Systems) They offer a free version that includes up to 8 cameras (you can add more for a price). What I liked about this software was the low CPU demand compared to BI. I have ~10 year old i5 desktop that runs Xprotect, my home automation software and is my home server for backups. I have my motion sensitivity pretty high so most cameras are recording most of the time. I have 2 & 4 MP cameras with 5 of the 6 cameras recording and my CPU is about 75%. The other thing I like is this is corporate software with all the same features as a higher end package, just limited to 8 cameras. What that means for me it is very solid. I keep meaning to check out BI but this just works for me.

I hope this helps. Let us know what you do.

Carl
 
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