Neighborhood Surveillance System

[Kevin_J]

Hello All,

I just joined but have been searching and reading about IP camera and NVRs. I have the typical Costco camera setup (analog) and in fact purchased a few camera kit (IP) from Costco recently but took it back after reading here and going to build my own. But to my questions……

I live in a large Master Plan Community. Unfortunately there has been a lot of thefts both homes and vehicles and an whole lot on mailbox thefts. I spoke with many of my neighbors and I interested in a Neighborhood Surveillance Camera System. I understand we cant get the whole community, but maybe a 40-50 camera setup (100 homes) and each area will do the same if they wish. We would all share the cost and assign Admins and guest to monitors. Currently we have a couple residents driving around at night in different shifts, but having a whole video surveillance system would be ideal and safer. With IP camera technology, servers, cloud, ect….I would think that is very possible. But my concern is bandwidth. We live in a Verizon area (Frontier) and most homes has fiber. Bandwidth is available, but not every home is going to order 100m up/down. So that may be an issue.

I did find that Synology has a Surveillance Station system that does a large scale system. Dont know of it will work with cameras being remote? There is a license fee per camera use for $50 each. Dont know why there is a "license" fee but cost isn't terrible. Surveillance 8.0 | Synology Inc.

Ideally we would like cloud base so no one has to store servers or NVRs at there home, but if storing at a home is the best option we will do it. Looking for suggestions and direction. I understand it may be not possible but hopefully there are options out there that wouldn’t cost and arm and leg….maybe just an arm. Thank You!

 

[nayr]

Set your self up a neighborhood WiFi network at the same time?

Synology wont come close to scaling to your needs..

This is going to cost a small fortune and the results will be marginally useful, cameras are easily defeated with a $1 mask.. Install some LPR cameras at each entrance/exit and let people install there own surveillance knowing your getting the vehicles for them.. put up a couple nice PTZ's at these locations and hire a surveillance company to monitor your public and most problematic locations remotely with live guards.. you can probably put em on light posts and link em together with with point to point wireless networks.. with someone watching the feeds the PTZ's will greatly reduce the number of cameras and bandwidth you need.

 

[Fastb]

Kevinj,

Welcome to the forum!
With that large an area, and that many cameras, professional video monitoring should be considered.
Look at "camera captures" sub forum, in the "General Talk" forum.
See posts by @bababouy
You'll get an idea of how quickly the police arrive when someone is monitoring the cams 24/7. And the other sensors to detect intruders.

Fastb

 

[tangent]

Most people won't have enough upload bandwidth on their home networks for this to be viable.

Better logging plates / faces at entrances and posting some well written guidelines / advice on setting up a good camera system on the HOA website.

 

[bigredfish]

This might be worth looking into:
Though your neighborhood/HOA is quite a bit larger than mine, we use a cloud based VMS service by EagleEye Networks. (Michael Dell is a major investor)

We have a small culdesac street with just 41 homes, but similar issues. We have 5 HOA cameras, 3 dedicated to LPR and 2 overview cams, a mix of 2MP Axis and 2MP Dahua cameras. The 3 tag cams record on motion only, and the 2 overview cams record continuous. EagleEye installs a bridge at the camera locations which allows the recording to their cloud service, which in turn allows us to store the video and access realtime stream or download clips as needed via web interface or mobile app. The EE service incorporates a technology that allows the video to be cached at the bridge and upload back to the cloud at non peak times and/or store it temporarily in case of your Internet connection going down.

Bridges can be added to any location at any time, so for instance you may start out like we have with entrance monitoring, say a single LPR cam and an overview cam at each entrance/choke point. Then as you add cameras, you can add bridges to support the cloud based VMS.

My own personal two driveway Starlight cams supplement the HOA cameras quite well as by pure chance I live dead center in the middle of the street, giving us 7 cameras. There's no reason I couldnt add a EE bridge at my home and tie it into the HOA account if I wanted to (which makes me wonder if I can get the HOA to pay for me some new Dahua 8232 Starlights hmmm... but I digress)

We get 10 video clips of each vehicle that makes the trip in and out of our little neighborhood, including 3 shots at your tag..
See our community camera layout here with clips from each camera

Their web based interface allows setup of different credentials for simply viewing, or admin to download video clips and manage the cameras. They create a profile for the cameras (though they have many already created for many cameras models) to do basic adjustments via the web interface, but there is also an admin level VPN to log directly into the camera interface for finer setup and control.

So far we're happy with the service, I think we're spending about $250 p/mo for it (the 2 bridges and subscription plan)

 

[bababouy]

Hello All,

I just joined but have been searching and reading about IP camera and NVRs. I have the typical Costco camera setup (analog) and in fact purchased a few camera kit (IP) from Costco recently but took it back after reading here and going to build my own. But to my questions……

I live in a large Master Plan Community. Unfortunately there has been a lot of thefts both homes and vehicles and an whole lot on mailbox thefts. I spoke with many of my neighbors and I interested in a Neighborhood Surveillance Camera System. I understand we cant get the whole community, but maybe a 40-50 camera setup (100 homes) and each area will do the same if they wish. We would all share the cost and assign Admins and guest to monitors. Currently we have a couple residents driving around at night in different shifts, but having a whole video surveillance system would be ideal and safer. With IP camera technology, servers, cloud, ect….I would think that is very possible. But my concern is bandwidth. We live in a Verizon area (Frontier) and most homes has fiber. Bandwidth is available, but not every home is going to order 100m up/down. So that may be an issue.

I did find that Synology has a Surveillance Station system that does a large scale system. Dont know of it will work with cameras being remote? There is a license fee per camera use for $50 each. Dont know why there is a "license" fee but cost isn't terrible. Surveillance 8.0 | Synology Inc.

Ideally we would like cloud base so no one has to store servers or NVRs at there home, but if storing at a home is the best option we will do it. Looking for suggestions and direction. I understand it may be not possible but hopefully there are options out there that wouldn’t cost and arm and leg….maybe just an arm. Thank You!

You can simplify this and save yourself a ton of money and headaches, and I'm sure most of the guys here will agree with me on this. You can manage all of this from one NVR and if you don't have anywhere to mount the NVR, you can put it in a Nema Box somewhere in the community. You can run a business class service from your ISP to the Nema box and put the modem in with the NVR. When you are installing remote cameras, all you need is power at the location and you can transmit the video back to your NVR with Ubiquiti access points, which are about $60-$80 bucks on Amazon. This way you or your community can manage the system without any extra fees or contracts. I have heard nothing but nightmares from businesses that buy into a cloud based service with licensed cameras. They are locked into long term agreements and when they need service or need to upgrade, they are charged a huge fee,.

Example: We needed a license plate from an industrial park in Ft. Myers a few years ago for a burglary case that we were working. We contacted the company that was managing the video and asked if they could give us video of our suspected vehicle as it drove through the main entrance to the park. They said sure, just fill out this credit card authorization form. It will be $85 per hour and a minimum of 4 hours plus any other admin fees. Our customer, who paid their dues to the industrial park association, ended up paying $450 for the video and it turned out that the cameras were outdated, covered with dirt and spider webs, and didn't even capture a tag, and we had to wait three weeks for it after the credit card was charged.

 

[bigredfish]

I dont want to sound like a shill for EagleEye, but using their service we have complete control of the cameras and are able to pull footage ourselves on demand easily and as frequently as needed, no charges. They simply provide a convenient web based interface and storage.

You choose/buy/install your own cameras (or have your contractor do that if you're not able) and they build a profile for it for common settings and tasks and to view/download via the web dashboard, but as mentioned you retain complete control via web based vpn to access the cameras directly. Agreement is 1 year and cost based on your storage and number of cameras/bridges. It may well be cheaper doing it yourself with local NVR's and access points, but from a system management perspective it takes a lot of the hassle out of things.

Of course this doesnt take the place of professional monitoring services or contractor installation.

 

[bababouy]

I dont want to sound like a shill for EagleEye, but using their service we have complete control of the cameras and are able to pull footage ourselves on demand easily and as frequently as needed, no charges. They simply provide a convenient web based interface and storage.

You choose/buy/install your own cameras (or have your contractor do that if you're not able) and they build a profile for it for common settings and tasks and to view/download via the web dashboard, but as mentioned you retain complete control via web based vpn to access the cameras directly. Agreement is 1 year and cost based on your storage and number of cameras/bridges. It may well be cheaper doing it yourself with local NVR's and access points, but from a system management perspective it takes a lot of the hassle out of things.

Of course this doesnt take the place of professional monitoring services or contractor installation.

I stand corrected. I believe that we were dealing with TYCO on that one, and their contract was for 10yrs I think.

 

[hmjgriffon]

i'd be curious what kind of quality you are getting on the streams over wireless. Full bitrate? framerate? constant? can you read all of the license plates? if something actually happened would you have footage you could actually identify someone with or yep, there is someone busting shit up, lol.

 

[bigredfish]

i'd be curious what kind of quality you are getting on the streams over wireless. Full bitrate? framerate? constant? can you read all of the license plates? if something actually happened would you have footage you could actually identify someone with or yep, there is someone busting shit up, lol.

Mine? We're currently running 15fps @ 8K bitrate, CBR, iframe15, on the HOA cams (3 on one router at entrance and 2 on the other at the culdesac.)- they are hardwired via cable 30MB down and 5MB up. We're upgrading that to 12-15MB up to be able to run full 30fps and 16K if we want to - no wireless. We get 3 license plate reads per vehicle with 99% certainty.

 

[hmjgriffon]

I am moderately interested in such a thing, of course it requires living in a cookie cutter neighborhood with an HOA that rules what I do with my own property

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[bigredfish]

True, but most seem to forget it's by choice, and my property value is about 30-40% more than the homes one street over that were built by same builder, within a couple of years of each other, but who let their HOA go under and who enjoy parking pickups on blocks in the front yard.. We don't force anyone to live here or abide by any rules they haven't already read and signed off on before the moving van gets here.

True I'd much rather have a nice place miles away from neighbors, but job and age demand I stick it out here in boring HOA land just a bit longer

 

[hmjgriffon]

To each his own, property value don't mean much unless you sell anyways, if you die there then yeah lol, it just feels like too much conformity, give me an acre I can have my own shooting range on lol

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[bigredfish]

... give me an acre I can have my own shooting range on lol

On THAT we can Agree!

 

[nayr]

you need more than an acre for a decent firing range.. Ive got about 10 out in the desert up against a ridgeline.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^
My new best friend

 

[hmjgriffon]

you need more than an acre for a decent firing range.. Ive got about 10 out in the desert up against a ridgeline.

I say 1 acre because that is the minimum allowed to shoot on in city limits in Florida lol.

 

[hmjgriffon]

But yes, I'd rather move into @nayer's neighborhood and share access to cams but I want my own gear that I control.

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[NoloC]

Is it me or do a lot of these threads get off topic?

But I do love a Travel log...

 

[hmjgriffon]

Is it me or do a lot of these threads get off topic?

But I do love a Travel log...

That's what makes them awesome.