For those with a relatively simple home CCTV setup?

JustAnotherSaver

If you have a state of the art, cameras pointing at every angle, cabling plastered in to the walls, dedicated room for the computer handling it all kind of setup then i'm not really reaching out to you. You're too advanced for me.

I'm looking for a relatively simple setup. Camera up front of the house as a must, pointing down at the driveway.

There's the side of the house and rear of the house which could be an option but as it stands these are not must have right now. That could change but for now it's just the front of the house.

Something at a reasonable price (i appreciate that is open ended) that could be decent enough for now which may or may not get changed at a later date. "Owt is better than nowt".

I'm not sure whether i'd want always on or motion detecting. Motion detecting - you're relying on it picking up on motion. If the unit is tip top then that's fine but if it doesn't then that obviously presents a problem. Likewise if it's so sensitive that it picks up on an ant walking along the drive then that's also going to be a problem.

We don't actually have a large set of ladders so i'm a little concerned about how to mount it so high up that 1) it picks up a decent view and 2) can't be tampered with but 3) can be accessed easy enough for whatever reason.

I also wonder about power to the thing. If the cabling is quite thin, i wonder if it can just feed through a window opening without damage to the cable. If the cable is too thick then i guess there's no chance of that. Windows are uPVC with top opener.

That's as much as i can think of right now. I'm sure there'll be things i haven't covered so ask away and i'll do my best. I just don't really know where to start with this tbh. I'd prefer not to have to call someone in and be spending near a grand. Surely you can get something decent enough for under £100 or not much over? May not be as good as that £1k setup but should surely be decent enough?

Frozen_up_north

Swann have a variety of CCTV systems, there are cheaper “eBay” systems, but it’s worth a look at the Swann installation instructions.
Re: camera locations... too high and you won’t see as much facial detail as one lower down, you will also need to be able to brush cobwebs off cameras.

Take a look at Swann here:
https://www.swann.com/uk/products/cctv-systems

stef73

Blink xt2 , I have 3 cameras motion detect and message my phone , height one above front door stood on chair , one above back door stood on chair and 3rd points down drive I used a ladder .
Battery powered last ages although 1 is mains very thin cable fits in window gap.
All wireless so no wires and can add on more when you want or need .

craggybuk

I'd consider a cloud based solution such as Nest or Hive. These are always on solutions rather than motion detection.
I personally have Nest. Once camera covered the entire front of the house and has a wide angle lens. Night vision is very good although identifying facial features in pitch black darkness will be an issue. I paid around £150 for the camera, £90 for installation (you could do this yourself if you were more competent than I am) and £48 a year for 5 days of continuous 24/7 recording.

Hope this helps. 

a

Dont worry about thin cabling, but size the drill bit to accommodate the fat L-shaped connector at the end, or rj45 plug unless it is totally battery powered

ifstar

I picked up a zosi set from eBay. 4 1080 cameras, hard drive recording box and you can access from the web or directly on the box. Very easy to setup and I think I paid about 110 although same set is selling for about 130 just now. Cables would be thin enough to feed through windows I'd expect. 

EssexExile

stef73 said:

Blink xt2 , I have 3 cameras motion detect and message my phone , height one above front door stood on chair , one above back door stood on chair and 3rd points down drive I used a ladder .
Battery powered last ages although 1 is mains very thin cable fits in window gap.
All wireless so no wires and can add on more when you want or need .

Blink are OK but their motion detection is very hit & miss. I wasn't impressed with the first camera so I contacted them & they gave some advice to improve things. It didn't work so, in an effort to improve my review rating on Amazon, they sent me another one free! It was no better but at least now I have one front & back. I added an indoor one when they were on sale just in case the blighters get past the two outside! You also have to remember that all cameras have to be within range of your wifi modem & their hub.

bengalknights

A cheap YI Cam from Amazon should suffice

JustAnotherSaver

First off anything that is subscription bases will be an instant no i'm afraid. I want to buy the product and that is it ... i don't want it to keep costing me. Thanks for that suggestion though.

Secondly, it seems actual device suggestions are hit & miss. From looking at the feedback i'm not really sure i'd want to go for motion detecting as you're reliant on it actually detecting. Always on would be better ... possibly.

With all the recording saved to a memory card. Now i know that presents an additional problem but for the most part, you go out to work, come home, if everything looks as it should then you don't need to check the card, you just leave it, so long as the card can easily store about 12-15 hours footage. If something doesn't look right, something is damaged etc then you pull the card and check.

Issue then comes when you're away on holiday and something happens 5 minutes after you leave in to your weeks break.

If anything did end up as cloud based then it would have to be recorded & stored. I've read of units offering live stream. This would be no good. You'd need an actual video file ready to use in the event something happened, so it would need to actually save it to the cloud sort of like a dash cam does in 3 minute intervals (ok i'm not saying the CCTV needs to split in to 3 minutes but something) and then either auto-delete after x-days or you go in and manually delete to free up space. One or the other.

DoaM

bengalknights said:

A cheap YI Cam from Amazon should suffice

Is that a Geordie security firm?

Frozen_up_north

JustAnotherSaver said:

Secondly, it seems actual device suggestions are hit & miss. From looking at the feedback i'm not really sure i'd want to go for motion detecting as you're reliant on it actually detecting. Always on would be better ... possibly.

Motion detection, or at least on my Swann system, works very well. In fact too well at times as it picks up rain/fog, shadows, birds flying, insects at night, etc. There are Swann cameras that work on infra red movement that may be less prone to false triggering, although I am not sure of how far away the movement will be detected.

The problem with continuous recording is that realistically you aren't going to trawl through hours of "nothing happening" to see if you had someone snooping around. Whereas with motion detection, it is fairly quick and easy to see if there has been any activity.