Home Security

I got abode last year, really nice system auto arms disarms based on phone location, can use it to program lights, switches full smart home hub etc.. add as many sensors as you want, it has back up battery and cell connection backup, you can self monitor for free or pay subscription. I would buy it again over the big names any day

Are you using that on the exterior or solely interior? The start package seems light but would add up quick with sensors no? Interesting. I'm trying to sort out a singular hub solution if possible...
 
Are you using that on the exterior or solely interior? The start package seems light but would add up quick with sensors no? Interesting. I'm trying to sort out a singular hub solution if possible...

I bought a black friday bundle so it was a lot cheaper but i’m running window shock sensors, motion sensors , acoustic glass, 4-5 door sensors integrated with some porch lights and nest cameras and thermostats. It is all interior but You can get outdoor sirens and program it to start flashing your outdoor smart lights when alarm is triggered.
 
I just had a hard drive die and it is putting my system in a continuous boot loop. I can replace the drive but I find this as a good opportunity to upgrade it with a 4K system. The current CAT5E cables, HDMI(50') and mouse cable (50' with repeater) should work. I have a 4K monitor sitting in a box.

I ordered a QSEE 4K 12 camera system from Costco since it's now $200 off. ($1600)

qsee_4k_12cameras.jpg


Hopefully it isn't the 4TB hard drive that died. That way I can move it to the new one and double it instantly. The other drives I should be able to reformat and get them working again. I can resell the old system to recoup some of the cost.

Now I have to figure out which cameras I have added wide angle and zoom lenses that I can use in the new system.


As for where to mount cameras I would install one toward the front entry and one behind. This is most likely where anyone would enter. You get views in and out.

Next is your vehicles. I have two on the driveway one on the right looking left another on the left looking right. I will increase this with the new system.

An overview of the front yard. This is mounted high and can see everything.

Other access points. One above the back door and another above the Bedroom door.

Overhead of back yard. I can see what my dogs are up to from my phone (new system)

Freeway view. I can see how traffic is in the morning before I leave for work (new system).

Most cameras come with a 3.6mm lens. They can be replaced with 1.8mm to 12mm if you need wider angles or a zoom depending on your needs.
 
Hard to give exact advice on placement. We have no idea on land elevation vs the street. Big plants/trees. I prefer large sweeping views. Do use one of the cameras for a tight shot on the front door. Point at least one camera to the vehicle parking.
 
I've had Arlo cameras at my house for about a year and they have been great for me

I bought 3 Arlo Q, 1 arrived bad, the other failed within the month. I sent all 3 back and bought nest cams. The first thing I noticed is there is way less lag with the nest cams than with Arlo. I absolutely hate using nest cams because I hate google, but In my experience over the past few months Nest is far above the arlo Q. I cannot speak to the Arlo Pro 2 but that it is just too expensive.

If you are going to be in your home for a long time I would suggest going with a wired setup as it is much better than any wifi/cloud cams.
 
I had asked this privately to a member (although the formating of my drawing was probably off...) but since you guys have been so great ill post here for suggestions. I am not sure of the coverage of these cameras - dome vs straight, blind spots, etc. My house is a 2 story cape illustrated poorly below. My front door is at 4 inside the cove, the backdoor is at ***, and the basement door is at 3 chimney side. ||| at **** is the chimney. Would you put a camera in the middle of each wall at the asterisks or basically two cameras each at the corners of the house at the numbers? I'm thinking double at the corners???? Thanks

PS the house is the thing with the ### and the '''' is grass.


'''''2''''''''''''(***)'''''''''''3
'''''''''''___________''''''
''''''''''|########|''''''
''''''''''|########|''''''
''(**)|########||| (****)
''''''''''|######__|'''''''
''''''''''|_______|__|''''''''

''''''''''1'''''''''(*)'''''''''''''''4

I have to agree with the advice from [MENTION=167491]83Mule[/MENTION] on camera placement. On a more serious note, I’m impressed with your drawing skills. That must have taken a good while.

I also agree that ADT is a terrible company. We originally went with them years ago but their components are terrible as well. The cellular service wasn’t very good around here back then and sometimes at 2am the cell service would completely disappear which would set off the alarm. ADT was completely lost on how to fix it and was actually rude about it. It took a lot of work but we finally got our money back and shitcanned that system. We have Vivint now. They are ok, at least everything works. I’ve been thinking of getting a stand-alone camera system as well since the Vivint cameras aren’t the best and use up a lot of bandwidth.

I just helped a buddy set up a 8 camera Samsung system from Costco. We ran cable to every camera which was a ton of work in a tight attic but the cameras are very clear.
 
I will add more to think about when ordering a security system. Many times the claims of the recording do not match the bandwidth the NVR can record at. You can get a 16 channel NVR that claims 1080p recording but when you look at the specifics it can only record up to 4 cameras at that frame rate. If you add more cameras you have to drop the recording to 720p or less. This is pretty common.

The system I just ordered has a recording bandwidth of
820 mbps or 40 MBPS
With 12 8MP cameras recording at 30fps H265 medium compression it will use 17.7 MBPS.
That is more than enough room for recording all cameras and playback.

With all that data you will need a gigabyte POE (power over Ethernet) switch if you want to control your cameras independent of your NVR. Like set them to be color 24/7, set static IP addresses so you can remote into each camera separately.

This is advanced and might be over your heads but I am just putting it out there for your education.
 
Last edited:
I was able to fix all three of my hard drives late tonight. I used a Linux System Rescue bootable CD and used GPARTED to re-partition each drive. It was a slight PITA but it got each drive working again. I will put both 3TB drives in my old system and the 4TB drive in the new one when it arrives. 3am, who needs sleep?
 
I bought a black friday bundle so it was a lot cheaper but i’m running window shock sensors, motion sensors , acoustic glass, 4-5 door sensors integrated with some porch lights and nest cameras and thermostats. It is all interior but You can get outdoor sirens and program it to start flashing your outdoor smart lights when alarm is triggered.

After your input and since adobe seems to rate well I really started to look at their system. In fact it would be perfect to secure my current rental with has forced air heating. however I wanted to ask your experience on the particular sensors.
On the spec sheet, it is recommended that the motion sensors not be aimed at heater and air conditioner but my new place has radiators and mini splits.... Do you know if they would work in this instance? I can't really aim it for coverage without it crossing the path of some sort of HVAC. And the range of 40 feet seems impressive but then there is like a 6 foot blind spot right below the sensor at 6.5 ft mount height.... I don't have pets so I can potentially mount lower... Don't know if all PIR sensors have these kind of issues with HVAC or are they generally smart enough??? I was really hoping the to blanket the area with motion sensors vs glass sensors because I have a ton of essentially double hung/slide windows so I would need 2 sensors for each window....

The other thing is I was reading up on the acoustic glass break sensors but then it has all these do not use in conjunction with window treatments etc.... False alarms from music etc. How much are blinds going to affect these? How about false triggers?

Vibration sensors/ window sensors would make this impractical for me....
 
I will add more to think about when ordering a security system. Many times the claims of the recording do not match the bandwidth the NVR can record at. You can get a 16 channel NVR that claims 1080p recording but when you look at the specifics it can only record up to 4 cameras at that frame rate. If you add more cameras you have to drop the recording to 720p or less. This is pretty common.

The system I just ordered has a recording bandwidth of
820 mbps or 40 MBPS
With 12 8MP cameras recording at 30fps H265 medium compression it will use 17.7 MBPS.
That is more than enough room for recording all cameras and playback.

With all that data you will need a gigabyte POE (power over Ethernet) switch if you want to control your cameras independent of your NVR. Like set them to be color 24/7, set static IP addresses so you can remote into each camera separately.

This is advanced and might be over your heads but I am just putting it out there for your education.

I guess the real question is what recording resolution is diagnostic? And I am sort of losing you on the gigabyte POE but essentially you need 1 per between the camera and the security hub and 1 total from security hub to internet router??
 
I guess the real question is what recording resolution is diagnostic? And I am sort of losing you on the gigabyte POE but essentially you need 1 per between the camera and the security hub and 1 total from security hub to internet router??


TK422 is referencing an advanced setup. On some camera systems, it's possible to run a single ethernet cable to a remote area. Remote area could be a separate building or just a long cable run to the other side of the house. Running a singular Ethernet cable is also easier. At the other end the user would install a Powered over Ethernet (POE) switch. Then control the cameras over the POE switch. The POE could have a direct connection to the security NVR or connect over the internet. POE switch helps/eliminates the footage problem of long cable runs.

I'm recording in 2K on my 2K system with 11cameras. Not close to maxing out the internal bandwidth of the system. TK422 referenced the systems max bandwidth. This is the internal bandwidth of the security system talking to the cameras. Does not reflect internet access. The cameras are little computers that also talk with the NVR. I have about a 1.5second delay between the camera view and what I see on the monitor. My old analog system was instant. The old analog system was low resolution. I have about a 2 second lag between camera view and my cellphone remote access.
 
The security systems have made a lot of changes in the last 10 years. Earlier models of NVRs only came with 4 or 6 ports so if you had more cameras than that you had to have a switch and a power insert for each camera or a POE switch.

I don't know if this has changed but if you plugged the camera directly into the NVR it took control of your camera. That includes IP addresses. Depending on your network you might want static IP addresses. At least with my current system if you want to login to the camera directly you had to have it on a POE switch. I will see how the new one is when I get it.

My current NVR has a recording capacity of 32 MBPS. The new one will have 10x that at 320 MBPS. The more cameras you add and the higher the MP the higher the recording capacity will be needed.

Many of the cheap NVRs you can buy online don't have the capacity to record all of the cameras they come with at the highest settings. As an example you get a great looking 12 3MP camera system but the NVR can only handle 80 MBPS. If you only connect 4 cameras you can record at 1080P /30fps but if you add more cameras you have to drop the resolution to 720p.

This link can explain it more.
 
I got the 4K system in. The cameras are so clear. At least the one I have hooked up so far in the office.

The good news is the 4K cameras come with a waterproof CAT5 connector.

The bad news is I will have to run all new lines through the attic. each camera comes with 100' of cable with the connector.

The good news is that will give me a chance to do cleaner cable runs.

I picked up 70' of plastic rain gutters to make cable trays in the attic and in the garage.
 
Saturday Update.

I moved the 4K NVR to it's permanent location and connected the 7 1080P cameras up to it thru the 16 port POE switch. It worked as it should.

Then I installed the cable track in the garage and part of the attic.

Next I installed the first 4K camera, ran the cable thru the garage and attic and to the POE switch. I was able to change a few settings such as color 24/7 since there are lights there at night and change the default passwords so it can't get hacked as easy. I also set a static IP.

I noticed that camera would blackout for half a second every few minutes. It looks like as I expected it was overwhelming the 10/100 POE switch. I set the IP back to dynamic then moved the cable directly into the NVR.

That solved the blackout issue but I tried to connect directly to the camera with the new IP and it's a NO. I couldn't even ping it from the network. I guess even new NVRs built in switches don't allow direct access to the cameras.

So for this setup it's good to have a POE switch to configure the camera but then plug it directly into the NVR other than that. You could also get a power inserter for cheaper and plug it into your network to configure it before plugin it to your NVR or later if you need to change any settings.

You will not have the problem of overwhelming a 10/100 POE switch with 1080p or less cameras. It is a problem I created with upgrading to 4K.
 
Last edited:
Is it possible for you to dial down the resolution on a few cameras to 1080p to help with the transport bottleneck?
 
That was with only 1 4K camera and 7 1080p cameras. I could have dialed it down to 1080p and it probably would have been fine but it defeats having 4K cameras.

The other solution would to get a 16 port Gigabit POE switch. Most are 10/100 with gigabit output. By the time you get 16 full gigabit ports with POE it's quite costly.

This will work fine. It's not that often you really need to make any changes to the cameras themselves. If I need to make a change the POE switch will be right there.
 
Ring + Costco.

The Ring is excellent for anyone who approaches the front door or gets close enough, but it's fairly useless if they try to stay away from the front door, especially at night.

But the best Home Security device is a gun and lighting. No sane person will want to continue trying to break down your door/gate, as soon as they hear a gun get racked. :lmao: Also, lights. Sounds dumb, but criminals *apparently* are scared of lights.
 
I use Yi Home from amazon - 4 cameras were like $140. we use them instead of baby monitors for convenience and like them. All wifi based and can be viewed from anywhere
 

Forum statistics

Threads
278,304
Messages
3,554,041
Members
248,016
Latest member
Advally Service

Trending content

Back
Top