CCTV Systematic

[drdel]

I see on the Random Irritations thread a bit of discussion on CCTV systems so rather than divert that thread I thought the subject might be worth its own or a day for two ?

Personally we have a Ucam247 system which is now donkey's years old. It's softwares uses Adobe Flash which is now defunct so although it still works fine I can't reset the zones. Consequently I'm in the market for a new system.

It seems maker's are a little vague on real world capabilities. The ones with a tracking ability are quite big and advertise 300° field of view: this is what you can pan and manually play with but in reality the fixed (usually 35mm) lens only covers about 120° so unless the camera picks up motion in that narrow 'wedge' it won't track. The battery versions quote battery life way beyond reality and their real range us pretty short (no doubt to extend battery) they also seem to have poor night performance.

Most now seem to offer Cloud storage which can be a good idea but at a subscription cost, the alternative us wireless NVR modules sitting on your own network but their wireless range may be an issue in a karge garden/property.

Any things you guys have experienced?

 

[GreiginFife]

As I reported on the other thread, we have a PoE system from Sannce which I bought on Amazon for about £300. It included 4 cameras and the DVR hub but no hard drive, so I fitted a 2Tb Western Digital Purple HDD. It's purely for home security so not massively bothered about cloud options as the HDD gives me around a weeks worth of playback before overwriting.

The only negative of the system was the supposedly Cat6 cables they supplied were terrible but I bought a drum of Cat6 for about £25 and some ends to make up my own cables and it works perfectly. We have cameras on all 4 corners of the house that give us 360 degree coverage including the driveway and the back garden as the priority areas.

It has an app called "Sannce Sight" which works very well and gives me live feed of the cameras from anywhere I have a mobile signal. It also has an HD option in the app which is crystal clear and you can record live from it on your phone.

Usual functions like motion alerts and camera trigger are available but I don't use them as cats set them off all the time.

The night vision functionality is excellent for such a cheap system, we can see objects at the far end of the garden clearly at night and as pointed out, captured clear images of wrong-uns that were trying to break in to cars round our way last year.

Edit to add: Here is an image captured from the cameras just now (yes, I need to update the clock )

 

[PJ87]

Have a stand alone system that records to hadddrive installed when we moved in 7 years ago

Since then have added couple of ring spot cams

 

[RichA]

Next door neighbour and I both bought Eufy systems from Amazon after an attempted theft of my car from the drive.
It includes a stand-alone HD, doorbell cam and separate cameras, any number us which can be added. I've installed one at my MiL's too. Very impressed with the usability through the app.

 

[drdel]

My old and now obsolete system allowed me to specify a pre-recording time so when an event was triggered the video record started a few seconds ahead (5 seconds) in my case. It's a good function which I don't seem able to find in the new products.

 

[Piece]

I currently use Nooie cameras. Half as expensive and twice as good as my previous (now defunct) Hive cameras.