Running x8 Wires to the NVR from the Attic

[SlickNickTX]

Hi all,
I have an AvertX 16 Channel with 8 Cameras from Costco arriving this weekend. My question to you all is, how did you manage to run all your cable to the NVR? It’s going to be located in my office and I was thinking of installing a 12-Port faceplate then running a short length cable to the NVR from the faceplate for each. If I did this, would I impair the system at all from adding in a connection? Camera > Face Plate > NVR.
I’ve read a couple threads on using a PoE switch then only needing to run a single cable but I wasn’t originally planning on that. Open to all recommendations.

Thanks!

 

[samplenhold]

If I did this, would I impair the system at all from adding in a connection? Camera > Face Plate > NVR.

As long as you do the terminations correctly it should be OK. Whenever you can, use pre-built cables, such as the ones from the faceplate to the NVR.

This is my IT rack setup. Cat5e coming down from the attic into the back of the patch panels. Then pre-made commercial cables from patch panel to the switches. No issues.

 

[Perimeter]

I am really interested in the advice you get, as I am in a somewhat similar position. Maybe I can find some good ideas here too.

Have you ordered a POE NVR?
Are you a business with a business office room or is this a private house where quality of living matters? Like I wouldn't want samplenholds construct in my office. But it would suit me fine in a small utility room directly beneath the attic.

The NVR I have gotten is a bit too loud for my office. So I have decided to move it towards the attic as far as possible, without leaving the heated/insulated part of the house. I plan to use powerline adapters to access it from my office for occasional check ins. I can get a decent connection on paper but have yet to see how well access works in reality.

Good luck with your project.

 

[SlickNickTX]

I am really interested in the advice you get, as I am in a somewhat similar position. Maybe I can find some good ideas here too.

Have you ordered a POE NVR?
Are you a business with a business office room or is this a private house where quality of living matters? Like I wouldn't want samplenholds construct in my office. But it would suit me fine in a small utility room directly beneath the attic.

The NVR I have gotten is a bit too loud for my office. So I have decided to move it towards the attic as far as possible, without leaving the heated/insulated part of the house. I plan to use powerline adapters to access it from my office for occasional check ins. I can get a decent connection on paper but have yet to see how well access works in reality.

Good luck with your project.

The kit I purchased from Costco includes a NVR. I never thought about the noise, I surely hope that isn’t an issue as it’ll be in my office where I work from. This is my private home and I’m upgrading from Arlo’s to an IP system for the first time. I purchased both the faceplate and a PoE switch in case I wanted to go either way. The goal was to have my monitor connected to the NVR and have real-time footage actively playing. I’m not sure how feasible this is if I put the NVR elsewhere.

 

[samplenhold]

The rack is in a closet on the second floor off of a spare bedroom.

Since I don't have an NVR, use Blue Iris, I really do not know much about the NVR aspects. I do know that some NVRs will not take a cam feed from a POE switch.

Exactly which model numbers are you getting?

Maybe @Flintstone61 or @bigredfish can answer the NVR questions as I know that they have used NVRs.

 

[Flintstone61]

I am really interested in the advice you get, as I am in a somewhat similar position. Maybe I can find some good ideas here too.

Have you ordered a POE NVR?
Are you a business with a business office room or is this a private house where quality of living matters? Like I wouldn't want samplenholds construct in my office. But it would suit me fine in a small utility room directly beneath the attic.

The NVR I have gotten is a bit too loud for my office. So I have decided to move it towards the attic as far as possible, without leaving the heated/insulated part of the house. I plan to use powerline adapters to access it from my office for occasional check ins. I can get a decent connection on paper but have yet to see how well access works in reality.

Good luck with your project.

check out Noctua quiet fans. they saved my sanity with my NVR/Dvr's.

 

[Flintstone61]

I have the garage wall of shame layout lol.....I have been using my hardware to learn how things behave for better or worse, and learning alot. The more I learn about budget NVR's the more i see the benefit of a robust PC with a strong POE switch and Blue Iris.
However ease of use for Non-techies wanting to look at the cams via Phone Apps make an NVR tempting. So i have both.
The non techies use the Amcrest APP, and I use the BI phone App.
Turns out my Amcrest 4108 NVR has a thruput of 80MPS.....which I found dissapointing. The stupid old Amcrest DVR/XVR analog recorder had a Gigabit Wan connection on it. FFS!
the more cams I added to the 4108, the more sluggish the web pages got. when i filled the NVR up to it's 8 cam capacity, some cameras web pages were opening so slow, they they would stall out and sit there half finished drawing themselves.
Fck that!
So i tossed the Cisco up there and started changing the DHCP IP's of the NVR cams to the LAN address in the 192.168.0.xxx range...and plugging them into the switch. And then finding them with Blue iris, and also adding them back to the NVR as a detected " remote device" while attached to the Cisco Poe switch.
anything showing a Port 3777 or 80 is on the Cisco, but also working in the NVR when added as a remote device.
So you can plug your new cams into the NVR and see how things perform.
If things degrade too much incorporate a POE switch in the system somewhere.

 

[Flintstone61]

1 thing I learned from @bigredfish about his NVR's was that he figured out that these NVR's he's used all seem to perform optimally when they are kept about 60-65% capacity in order to keep the frame rates he wants and the Data streams fast enough to keep his images looking good. He can give more exacting details, im generalizing.

 

[Perimeter]

check out Noctua quiet fans. they saved my sanity with my NVR/Dvr's.

Already in!

When I powered the NVR the first time, I knew I would not be amused - too many comments in the net as to noise.
So I looked at it in disgust, opened the lid and unplugged the little bugger. While I used the NVR, I just left it open. With just a cam or two, it didn't warm up much anyway. I did order a noctua fan right away though. However, a good part of the noise is generated from the placement of the fan, pulling air in through a grid. And if you have a faster HDD inside, there is nothing you can really do but swap it too. You can cut out the grid, but not the HDD. I have some old 2.5" HDDs I am using at the moment for testing. Once it goes into the storage room, it will be more noisy again. The furnace will prevail. I would not want it in my office though.

The goal was to have my monitor connected to the NVR and have real-time footage actively playing. I’m not sure how feasible this is if I put the NVR elsewhere.

That is exactly my plan as edited. I can't get cables to my office, it is powerline, wifi or bust. I will set up my system upstairs in a utility room. My plan is to connect that system via powerline to a second ethernet adapter on my PC to be able to view the cams but keep them seperate from the internet. As you can read between the lines, I haven't done this yet. What I have done is to set this up in my office without the powerline connection but on cable instead. With the NVR and cams I have bought, I can access all cams and the VCR from my office PC either directly or through the NVR or with the aid of an app from the manufacturer. I haven't tested the powerline part with the NVR yet, only with single cameras. But with powerline, mileage varies widely anyway.

 

[bigredfish]

Guys, FYI I'm the least knowledgeable networking guy in this thread. I very much rely on trial and error

Here's some examples of what I've done that worked out well.

At my old home, I had the NVR about 40 ft away in a utility room from my office. I wanted to be able to remote view/playback and access the NVR from my desk without running cable from NVR to desk
So I installed a 8 port Netgear switch at the PoE NVR location. (as @Flintstone61 showed, PoE NVR's are versatile in that you can run a mix of cameras some connected directly to the NVR internal PoE ports and some external on a switch the NVR can see)
The NVR connected from its LAN port to the switch. Some cameras used the NVR PoE ports, some were connected to that same switch. (was helpful in testing and swapping stuff out)
That switch connected to my LAN via a simple $70 WiFi extender, thus connecting to the NVR was via WiFi when I needed to. Even for monitoring 12-15 cameras using SmartPSS during the day, using substreams, it really didnt put any hurt on my home network.
For additional full time monitoring I'd connect a monitor to the NVR via its HDMI output

A buddy has a much bigger property and is running a 5232 PoE NVR which is connected to a nearby switch on his LAN.. I think he has 26 cams running currently. For the most recent addition we ran a cable from the switch near the NVR to another switch 65ft away where we added 6 cameras to that switch. So 1 line back to the NVR. Like me he is using some NVR PoE ports and some cameras obviously on external switches. He is also using Ubiquity radios to get a signal from that NVR nearby switch to a barn 200ft away.

 

[bigredfish]

1 thing I learned from @bigredfish about his NVR's was that he figured out that these NVR's he's used all seem to perform optimally when they are kept about 60-65% capacity in order to keep the frame rates he wants and the Data streams fast enough to keep his images looking good. He can give more exacting details, im generalizing.

Again Im not near as scientific as some of the more knowledgaeble folks here, but as I like to run 30fps at 8192-10240 bitrate on most of my cameras, I'll pull up a wee bit short on max camera capacity. For instance I was running 13 mostly 4MP on a 5216 without trouble and currently running 7 on a 4208. Once you add a PTZ or some of the newer fancy cameras, power consumption is something to watch

 

[Ri22o]

This is my network rack setup.

The runs come from the camera > patch panel > POE switch. The POE switch is then connected to the NIC card of the BI PC through a port on the patch panel.

You can see the service loop on the left side of the photo.

I have noticed no issues with this. Some of the cameras connect to a remote POE switch that then follows the same path to the network rack POE switch.