DIY security cameras - help!

Catfish

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Install the DVR near power. Use the supplied power supplies plugged into a surge protector at the DVR. Run the DC side out along SIAMESE wire (has DC wires, and the coax in one bundle) to the cameras. Since those plug in transformer power supplies fit so well on a surge protector you can get 6" extensions so they fit nicely. No jackleg wiring needed.
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Why? Seems like the items you list still need to be powered.
Do you want hardwired power?
Wireless video?

Because I don't have receptacles anywhere near the camera locations but I do have lights, etc. Cameras are "wireless" but need power.

I like the siamese wire option but I want to explore this one first. I'll re-consider the system I already purchased if I can't install it properly. There's no point in having wireless video if I need to run cable anyhow.
 
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Because I don't have receptacles anywhere near the camera locations but I do have lights, etc. Cameras are "wireless" but need power.

I like the siamese wire option but I want to explore this one first. I'll re-consider this system if I can't install it properly.

How far from the power receptacle? 12v@1a should require 14ga to handle up to 25ft at 2a. Just splice into the existing transformer.

Since you will not need coax any wire pair would be a lot less expensive than a coax/power wire.
 
How far from the power receptacle?
Distance isn't the issue - I don't want exposed wiring or permanent plug-in devices. I'd like to jackleg these into a light circuit, hide the transformers in my attic and run DC out to exterior soffeit-mounted cameras. Is that a terrible idea?
 
Because I don't have receptacles anywhere near the camera locations but I do have lights, etc. Cameras are "wireless" but need power.

I like the siamese wire option but I want to explore this one first. I'll re-consider the system I already purchased if I can't install it properly. There's no point in having wireless video if I need to run cable anyhow.



I am researching getting a system too. Found out there is a difference in "wireless" and "wire free". Wireless cameras if I recall still need power and the wire free have batteries you have replace or recharge.
 
Do you already have a system? If not, look at POE (power over Ethernet) systems. They get power and video off of a single CAT5 Ethernet cable for each camera. I ended up doing the full install myself with no AV experience. I chose POE because you don’t have to run the power wires.


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Cameras are "wireless" but need power.

If they're wireless is POE an option? If so, just go that route and allow them to connect via the wired ethernet port. I don't like my airwaves cluttered with camera traffic.
 
I'll unbox it tonight and see what my options are, assuming the porch pirates leave it alone. Amazon delivered it 30 minutes after I left for work this morning.
 
Distance isn't the issue - I don't want exposed wiring or permanent plug-in devices. I'd like to jackleg these into a light circuit, hide the transformers in my attic and run DC out to exterior soffeit-mounted cameras. Is that a terrible idea?

To do it that way would expose you to issues later if there is an electrical/fire/insurance issue. Get a receptacle installed in the attic, plug in the adapter, then run the low voltage wiring to the camera.
 
FWIW

I have 7 IP (5 wired, 2 wireless) cameras, 9 (all wired) in the next few months. Those 7 currently generate a lot of network traffic. For that reason I run two networks that are physically separated. Both networks connect to a central server via two separate NICs, the server can communicate with both networks but the networks can't talk to each other. The server acts as central storage (8bay, 14TB raid5), DVR, Plex, a minecraft server for the girls, and a Quake server for me. The "home side" of the network is gigabit, the camera side is 100base and the camera traffic keeps it 30-40% utilized. That's why I wanted to separate them.
 
Here are the cameras i bought. they have an ethernet port so POE looks like an option. So i just need a switch capable of handling 1a per port.

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Here are the cameras i bought. they have an ethernet port so POE looks like an option. So i just need a switch capable of handling 1a per port.

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I Google'd the model, the product description makes no mention of them being poe. But the reviews have mixed information about poe working so proceed with caution. If you come this way for anything I have a poe inserter you can borrow to test with.
 
Lots to learn... thanks guys for pointing me where to look.
 
FWIW

I have 7 IP (5 wired, 2 wireless) cameras, 9 (all wired) in the next few months. Those 7 currently generate a lot of network traffic. For that reason I run two networks that are physically separated. Both networks connect to a central server via two separate NICs, the server can communicate with both networks but the networks can't talk to each other. The server acts as central storage (8bay, 14TB raid5), DVR, Plex, a minecraft server for the girls, and a Quake server for me. The "home side" of the network is gigabit, the camera side is 100base and the camera traffic keeps it 30-40% utilized. That's why I wanted to separate them.
Seems very impressive! How much do you charge to advise/install?! :cool:

Good luck Catfish, you are a braver man than I. I would like to put some cameras in, but after talking with my neighbor who did his own, I realized I am way outta my depth!
 
Seems very impressive! How much do you charge to advise/install?! :cool:

Good luck Catfish, you are a braver man than I. I would like to put some cameras in, but after talking with my neighbor who did his own, I realized I am way outta my depth!

It's really pretty simple. Physically running the cat 5 is the hardest part. Choose a location for the Dvr that minimizes cable length.

And don't buy a kit. Ebay/Amazon IP cameras, blueiris, and an old pc will give you more control and functionality.
 
Just FYI this rabbit hole is deep. I sent back the Heimvision junk and I'm currently looking into building an NVR with Blue Iris. There's an old Cisco POE switch humming in a rack behind me and I've been pulling ethernet cable throughout my house and I'm shopping for an off-lease server. Don't go down this hole if you aren't prepared to geek out on it. @Brian K what model server did you get to run all that?
 
Ring cameras are battery operated and wireless and the battery lasts for a couple months before needing recharging. 10 bucks a month keeps your video in the cloud. Picture is very nice. I put them up at my moms. No wiring at all.
 
Just FYI this rabbit hole is deep. I sent back the Heimvision junk and I'm currently looking into building an NVR with Blue Iris. There's an old Cisco POE switch humming in a rack behind me and I've been pulling ethernet cable throughout my house and I'm shopping for an off-lease server. Don't go down this hole if you aren't prepared to geek out on it. @Brian K what model server did you get to run all that?

It's a dell 730 tower. Server 2016, 32gig, 10 core (20 thread) cpu, mirrored 250g ssd for the os, 4tb storage for the BlueIris, 8x 2tb raid5 drives for the Plex and general storage.

The server, os, and ram were free, I added the drives and cpu. I also gutted the DVD so it's just a hollow shell for the 4tb drive.

Running 7 cameras and streaming to 3tvs it idles around 18-20% cpu load, rotating between 2 cpus at a time. Word to the wise, record direct to disk with no encoding. Encoding will peg cpu usage.

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Ive been looking at 730s on ebay. how loud is that rig?
 
Ive been looking at 730s on ebay. how loud is that rig?

At boot it's ridiculous. Like a 747. Just chugging along it's pretty quiet but you can definitely hear it when the house is still. I have the main CPU fan set to adjust as needed to keep it quiet. Since the main fan is also the CPU fan I added a second quiet case fan that runs wide open just to keep the drives vented.

I wall fished the cable line for the modem to the top of some kitchen cabinets due to it's central location for the WiFi router. The server lives there too so I can see it if it alerts a bad drive. Not wanting to foot the power bill for dual power supplies I keep one pulled out cold-spare style, I went round and round with the idrac controller about that. I ended up downloading some dell server management idrac software and was able to finally tell it to stop alerting and stfu.

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Temps are running a little high. I probably need to pull the cover and dust off the heat sink.

I was wrong, dual mirrored 500gb drives for the os, not 250. They're little 2.5" drives to save space. The 4tb drive is broken down into two volumes, new and stored, I may need to adjust the retention settings because I can't get "stored" to fill up.

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Plex isn't in the top 15 or so..

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It's probably not an issue, but I didn't like having all the camera traffic on my primary 1.1 network, so I used a second nic on the server to keep it seperate. The 2nd port is the 0.1 network and all the cameras connect to that, the server more or less keeps them segregated because of the way it's configured. 1.1 can't see 0.1 and vice versa, but I can connect to the BlueIris client via 1.1 and it can see all the cameras. That second gigabit nic runs about 30% utilization all the time.
 
Nice system, how much power are you using including the UPS?
 
Nice system, how much power are you using including the UPS?


No clue. I want to say the power supply is 1100 watts. There's actually two UPSs up there. One for the modem and router, one for the server. There's another in the garage for the POE switch.

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Your 7 cameras are generating 2-300 Mbps traffic all the time? how fancy are they?
 
We have one Nest on the porch, you can't see it from the street, was going to put my own system in, the Nest was cheaper with the 14 day video vs paying for the electric bill for the server and a UPS 24-7.
 
Your 7 cameras are generating 2-300 Mbps traffic all the time? how fancy are they?

4mp. Wouldn't call them fancy, maybe $50 on Amazon. After some trial and error with other cameras I found these had really good audio quality. Which initially wasn't a concern, but after some shiznet went down with Jenny's crazy daughter it became very important.

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I purchased a used R630 server and a stack of drives to go in it. I am limited on storage since this server only takes the little 2.5" SFF drives which get $pendy when you go over 1TB. I'm looking into how to set it up now. How happy are you with your 4TB partition for NVR storage?
 
I purchased a used R630 server and a stack of drives to go in it. I am limited on storage since this server only takes the little 2.5" SFF drives which get $pendy when you go over 1TB. I'm looking into how to set it up now. How happy are you with your 4TB partition for NVR storage?

Kinda, kinda not. I partitioned the 4TB drive into two 2TB partitions. One partition is for recording "new" video. Oldest files are moved off to the "archive" partition with a X day retention, then delete. It only stay's about 50% full. I think I just need to tweak the retention settings. Right now I think I'm keeping around 22 days worth of video. As far as speed goes, it works just fine, but it fragments the drive something horrible, which whatever, but it bugs me.

I looked at a few of those 1U servers, the drive costs pushed me away. 8 2TB 3.5" drives was only $300. RAID5 isn't the best for data protection, but it's better than nothing. I keep two spares on hand. RAID5 offers no benefit in speed for writes, but is stoopid fast for reads.

Find the server locally?
 
I know I mentioned I keep the cameras on their own subnet and own physically segregated network to keep the traffic off my home network. I'd forgotten the other reason I did that was so they couldn't access the internet and "phone home". Also being off internet they couldn't be accessed individually from the internet and that's way easier than building a bunch of rules into a flakey consumer grade router.
 
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No I went to Ebay and I think I did ok. Sounds like this is going to be fine. Now I’m off to dive into Linux, Bluecherry and Cisco switches. Thanks for the help!
 
That server is has 10 1.1ghz cores or about 11 GHZ of computer power. As long as it was free or low cost it is OK, but it is going to be a power hog and heater. If you could find a single quad core 3 ghz on a consumer grade board you would have more mojo. Servers are built to last, but if you are buying an old server you are probably getting what you paid for. After about 7 years you are on borrowed time. The other thing you will notice is many apps cannot utilize all the cores. So even if you have 10 Xeons many of the cores will be unused. It is possible the only thing capable of using the other cores, in your case Brian, is the OS. For many consumer grade applications 4 fast cores is much better than 10 of any size cores. As for a second network, unless they are physically separate with their own switch it probably doesn't matter as much. But it is hard to say without knowing how it is laid out.
 
they are physically separate with their own switch

Yes they are. The server has four NICs. I'm using two of them. One for the home network, one for the camera network. The server can see both networks, the home and camera networks can't see each other.

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And I wanted the extra cores for video encoding, which the OS would have used all of them, but it was easier to go direct to disk without encoding and not strain the hell out of the cpu.
 
Well, you peg the CPU's on that thing and it will sound like its going to take off. But there is an argument, that thing is made to run high use 24/7. Electricity wise, its a really inefficient room heater. You could water cool a more modern processor with faster cores and it would suck less power, produce much less heat. My guys here sometimes want to take an old server home and i try to tell them you can make a much better test machine running VM on a good consumer machine with SSDs and not have to live with the hovercraft blowing in the corner. A buddy of mine had a bunch of old servers from my old job in a closet, it was so hot he had to buy a AC for the room. He was paying over hundred a month in electricity to run it. It did look cool to open the closet and have a rack but it was like an oven in there. He ended building a new powerful machine that replaced all of them as VM's.
 
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