IP POE CCTV setup with Homeplugs..Advice needed

[dawall]

Hello All…A very informative site and some good info.


After much deliberation I have decided to install a 5 cam POE system. Four cams will be situated on each corner of the house and the other on the detached garage. The cams are 2mp’s


I have done quite a bit of research and am hoping I can install it like this:

The four house cams on each corner, the Ethernet wires in the loft running to an 8 port switch (4 x POE). This switch plugged into a Homeplug. A Homeplug connected downstairs in the lounge into the router. The NVR, I already have which is an 8 port POE unit (p2p) will be connected to another Homeplug in the kitchen and in turn connected to a TV. I was just going to have the NVR in the loft but decided against that as I’d rather be able to get to it without getting up the ladder etc.

The single cam on the detached garage will be connected and powered via another Homeplug, either by an injector or using one of these

https://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/products/15060-solwise-pl-500av-poe/

My internet is a wireless system that comes via a small dish also I get the phone from this; there is one spare RJ45 port on the standard non Gigabit router if needed.



That will be my set up as planned, if this is okay?


A problem I have is that I have a satellite TV system that uses Homeplugs to get the encryption/decode signal on 4 TV’s in the house, these are basic Tenda 200Mbps, one for each TV and one at the router. I also have an android box on another TV connected by a 500Mbps homeplug which was one of a pair. I think I’m correct in saying this 500 plug will be restricted to 200Mbps?


Will my CCTV system work like this?


Because of the amount of Homeplugs I will be using, to avoid a bottleneck will I have to upgrade all my Homeplugs to 500’s? (Looks like I will have 7 Homeplugs) I would like to run the recording at around 15 fps.


Regarding the linked Solwise pl 500av POE plug it has the AR7420 chipset, this is what it says on the Solwise site.


For instance the Value AR7420 chipset allow you to have 16 adapters around your home however only 8 of them will work at any one time! The Premium AR7400 chipset allows 64 around your home and you can use all 64 at the same time


Going by the above I should be okay with the POE Homeplug.



Thanks for looking and any advice would be gratefully received…..Cheers.

 

[fenderman]

@dawall Welcome to the forum. Do yourself a huge favor and instead of buying homeplugs pay someone to run the cable where needed. This will save you lots of grief. Use high quality copper cable (not cca)..

 

[rearanger]

honestly homeplugs are Guff.(they are a make do fix) I would only use if you have no choice. run rj45 to router and rj45 to nvr.....I use homeplugs but not for cctv lol

 

[CoreyX64]

Something that is often missed with PowerLine Ethernet that no one ever seems to factor in and is not proactively mentioned, but is make or break: all adapters MUST be on the same leg of power else they will not function!

In the US, all residential power is standard, single-phase 240V service, with 2 legs of 120V and a ground. If you were to look inside an electrical panel, legs of power alternate going down. Breakers 1 and 2 are on leg 1, 3 and 4 on leg 2, etc. devices such as dryers and ovens that require 240, have double breakers that span in the formation of 1 and 3, or 2 and 4, because each half of the breaker pulls from the opposing leg of power.

What does all of this mean? You cannot simply just plug in PowerLine Ethernet adapters and just expect them to magically work. You might get very lucky such that every place you want to put them has an outlet on the same leg of power, but don't count on that. You would need to determine what breakers each outlet in question is on to be able to determine this. But yes, a network will only run as fast as the slowest device, so it would cap out at the theoretical 200M.

What @fenderman said is correct. This is a cheater/band aid solution and I don't recommend it. The only time I would ever use PowerLine Ethernet is to connect to cameras in remote areas, not as a primary means of connection. For example, I set one up a year or so ago to a road sign which was hundreds of feet away from the main building and there wasn't a chance of burying conduit all along the length of the path between the sign and its island, and the building. It works really well. The difference is I have direct access to the wires on both ends, so it's a clear path between the adapters. It never touches the load center/breaker panel. Take the time to run CAT5e or 6 and do it correctly. It will save you headaches later on.

On the note of copper vs copper clad, I've had mixed feelings about this. If you aren't familiar with the difference,
Copper clad is, at its core, aluminum wire with a thin layer of copper surrounding it. The standard dictates that all communication cable be constructed of 100% pure copper. (Coaxial cable is the only exception to this rule) So even if CCA can obtain speeds of whatever the category number calls for (based on the number of twists per inch), on paper it will never be a given category of cable, just twisted pair cable in general.

The CU/AL mixture creates what is known as the "skin effect" by which data travels along the copper portion of the wire (the skin) and avoids the inner aluminum core. In PoE applications, this could potentially become an issue because aluminum has higher resistance values than copper, meaning power transmission cannot go for as long distances as copper could. Higher resistance also means heat when it comes to electricity, so the fire hazard is also tossed around as well. Aluminum also has a weaker tensile strength which mean it's doesn't handle bends and twists as generously as copper. With all of those cons (and maybe more that I can't think of at the moment), I say mixed feelings because I've installed 10s of thousands of feet of the stuff for many many low budget small-ish scale projects without any of the problems mentioned above. In fact I've had no issues at all with it. I can feel the tensile strength difference a bit, as the wire feels lighter and not AS pliable, but seeing as I have about 3000 feet of CCA strung across a network of telephone poles blowing in the wind for over 5 years now, and the network still works great and has been reliable. If I had to do it again however, I would probably use pure copper. Mind you, those projects were completed well before someone actually caught onto the cheap stuff coming into existence, so obviously I did not know it at the time. Am I going to go up and replace it all? No, that's too labor intensive. If something breaks, then that's different. So far all is well.

The price difference between CCA (copper clad aluminum) varies. Generally I've found it to be a $40 difference, which is well worth getting the real stuff. CCA I've found for about $50 for CAT6, and real stuff about $90-95.

Since you're running through chases that are generally going to be inaccessible post install, pure copper hands down. Only jeopardize it if you're willing to replace it later.


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[dawall]

Thanks to you guys for the reply's ... I appreciate your time and I have listened.
I can go this way...If it will work okay?

For the 4 cams in the loft. Connect the cams to the 8 port switch utilizing the 4 POE ports. I can then run a suitable solid copper Ethernet cable from the switch to the router. I have checked the router and its a Gigabit version. I only have the one free LAN port on the router so I'm thinking I can plug a 5 port switch into the free router port? I connect the 8 port switch to the 5 port switch then in turn connect the NVR into the 5 port switch and run the cable where I want to site the NVR...Is this about right?

For the detached garage I'm thinking I will still have to go with a Homeplug as it would be a bit awkward running a cable from there but at least it would just be using the Homeplug as said a cheater/band aid solution. Also I have a spare Homeplug to give it a go without incurring extra expense ....Cheers

I

 

[CoreyX64]

The detached garage I would consider a remote location. This definitely would fall into acceptable HomePlug territory in my opinion, and I would likely do the same thing. Plug one adapter in the house where it belongs, then check various outlets in the remote garage to find one on the same leg of power. Most of them have link lights that will indicate that they can see each other. Fairly straightforward on that.

I'll have to look at the diagram again, but if you have an 8 port switch and are only using 4 for PoE cams, where are the other 4 being used? That should work though. Lots of daisy chaining with adding a 5 port, but it should work.


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[nayr]

hey at least its better than wifi in most cases, since you already have a network in place can you do any performance testing on it?

with the cameras you have described I suspect you'll see about 5-7MB/s (40-60Mbit) throughput for your recordings, can you push that speed through continuously without causing issues for other services?

There is a bunch of free software out there for testing network throughputs, this is where I'd reccomend you start.. you have the advantage of having the system already in place, so you'd be able to tell us better than we can tell you if it would work or not.

but theoretically say it performed much like a 10/100Mbit network, then it would typically be fine for many media streaming devices that all come in under 10Mbit each.. bottle necks would be uplinks likely.. but dont let me talk you out of running wires if you can, cant beat it for reliability.. Ive got ethernet cable I laid decades ago pushing packets perfectly today.

 

[dawall]

Thanks for the above...I think I'll try and use the cables but I will check the throughput.

I'll have to look at the diagram again, but if you have an 8 port switch and are only using 4 for PoE cams, where are the other 4 being used?

I wasn't going to be using the other 4 ports as yet...Are you suggesting I run 2 cables from the 8 port switch...One to the router the other to the NVR? It sounds plausible, would this do the job?

I'm trying to keep the cables to the minimum. If I went with the 8 port switch in the loft and the 5 port switch to the spare port of the router downstairs, would it just be a matter of the connecting the cable from the 8 port switch to the 5 port switch and connecting the Ethernet port in the back of the NVR to the 5 port switch? Both switches would be Auto-MDI/MDIX

Cheers

 

[dawall]

....Got this showing LAN speed

 

[CoreyX64]

As @nayr said, the individual bandwidth consumption PER CAMERA is well within FE (Fast ethernet) specs. In fact, most cameras only employ FE controllers. I'm not aware of any that are gigabit at present. However, the collection of multiple on a single switch, the worry becomes the trunkline. Depending on how high the bitrate is set to on the cameras, the trunkline between the 8 port PoE switch and the network could saturate which could result in video frame loss/other problems with the streams. An NIC or switch's bandwidth rating (FE, 100Mbps, GigE, 1000Mbps) is only the theoretical max that it can process. In practice and in the field, you will never reach those. For example, I recently upgraded to 100M down/10M up internet service. The router prior to this upgrade was only FE-capable. It's been in service for so long and has been extremely reliable, I completely forgot about the bottleneck. Speedtests only yielded around ~85/10, so there was about 15Mbps of loss. Going to a GigE-capable router solved all of this, and that 15M overhead I gained back. You get the concept though. Always better to have a little more capacity than cut it close. Most of the stuff can be estimated based on specs too. Measurement is a sure fire way to know, but isn't explicitly required.

I wasn't going to be using the other 4 ports as yet...Are you suggesting I run 2 cables from the 8 port switch...One to the router the other to the NVR? It sounds plausible, would this do the job?

Sorry about that, I forgot the 8 port and 5 port would be in different locations. By all means that would be fine. Yes, keep the NVR and cameras tied together on the 5 port switch (make sure it's gigabit), isolate it from the router and the rest of your network's traffic if possible. Hopefully your 8 port switch is 8 FE ports with 1 GigE uplink. So like this:

Cameras > 8 Port PoE switch > 5 port switch > router ..... everything else
NVR --------------------------- >^

This way camera traffic is not flooding your entire network. It's isolated to that first switch between cameras and NVR.

I'm trying to keep the cables to the minimum. If I went with the 8 port switch in the loft and the 5 port switch to the spare port of the router downstairs, would it just be a matter of the connecting the cable from the 8 port switch to the 5 port switch and connecting the Ethernet port in the back of the NVR to the 5 port switch? Both switches would be Auto-MDI/MDIX

That's all there is to it. MDI/X is a non-issue since you're dealing with modern residential grade equipment, it's generally always automatic. Also since you aren't going device to device, (through a switch), no crossover needed.

 

[nayr]

according those results your getting > 100Mbit throughput, I would expect you'll be fine.. but there is also stability to consider, run some really long throughput tests and monitor packet loss.. might have it run all day long since this may be susceptible to interference from appliances such as vac cleaners, etc.. if you dont find any packet loss after hammering on it for a while then I think you can call it good for relaying a handfull of video streams through it 24/7

design your network so any heavy usage will go right into your main gigabit switch, so choking up remote uplinks will be unlikely.. ie, computers/fileservers/nvr and keep your powerline network just for media streaming devices.. I suspect you'll be just fine.

 

[dawall]

Thanks to everyone who replied, probably saved me some cash and certainly a few headaches. The cameras should be with me next week so will be setting everything up the week after...Happy days
Cheers

 

[dawall]

Just a quick update,

I got everything installed as per above with the Homeplug on the garage. All is running very well. 5 x 2mp vari focal cams, 1 x NVR (Ali express's finest) working fine on the android tablet and PC. Thanks for helpful the advice

I have an android box connected to a TV...Would anyone please know if there was an app or a way to view the cams on the TV via the box?

Thanks