Idea's for CCTV

n.hussain03

During the lockdown there has been an increase in the opportunistic thief. On our Nextdoor site there has been a lot of posts of CCTV with thieves walking around trying car doors and porches(they stole shoes from the porch of one house!). I always was going to install some CCTV eventually but now seems like a good time. 
I have seen a few articles but PoE CCTV seems to be best best. The loft is not fully boarded but is partly, I was thinking placing the NVR up there in some sort of server rack, running the Cat5/6 cable to each of the camera's down the eaves. I would probably just use an app to check the CCTV rather than a dedicated monitor. 
Anything that I am missing? Also brandwise what should I look out for? Hikvision appears to be the best, but apparently Swann is made by the same company. 

tiggerbodhi

HIK Vision Installer here, POE is the more common way of installing now days, but mainly in commercial premises as the CAT5/6 cable is easier to run long distances, you can make use of the customer LAN for longer or remote locations and run 4K cameras.
The HIK POC (Power over Co-Ax) is a good compromise, cameras are up to 5MP, one cable to each camera (no shotgun cable) and only one power supply for the NVR required, also substantially cheaper than POE IP cameras.
Install the NVR in the loft is a good idea, don't forget you will need a CAT5 to your router for APP access.
Sighting the cameras is the most important, go as low down as you can to avoid getting lovely shots of the tops of heads or hoodies, I would generally put one camera at about 2.5m to 3m high covering from the front door/porch, yes the miscreants might smash or nick the camera but they are often stupid enough to give you a close up of their face doing it!
Night vision is excellent on HIK, but again consider installing an IR flood light across from a camera if it may struggle, make sure you aim them to avoid reflections off of walls etc. 
Personally you get what you pay for, although a camera may be listed as 4MP it really depends on the lens/optical quality, I would not want to speak ill of a product,  but I take a lot of Swann out to be replaced with HIK or Alhua, both POE and TVI.

Mutton_Geoff

If you want a comparison between Swann and other cheap fixed lens cameras, take a look at the video on CCTV42 website. The framing of each camera is vital. A load of pretty wide angle shots might look good on your phone but are useless for identifying perps.

https://www.cctv42.co.uk/help-advice/video-tutorials/
No connection to this firm, just a happy customer.

n.hussain03

Mutton_Geoff said:

If you want a comparison between Swann and other cheap fixed lens cameras, take a look at the video on CCTV42 website. The framing of each camera is vital. A load of pretty wide angle shots might look good on your phone but are useless for identifying perps.

https://www.cctv42.co.uk/help-advice/video-tutorials/
No connection to this firm, just a happy customer.

That was very useful, I can see that not all camera's are created equal.

n.hussain03

tiggerbodhi said:

HIK Vision Installer here, POE is the more common way of installing now days, but mainly in commercial premises as the CAT5/6 cable is easier to run long distances, you can make use of the customer LAN for longer or remote locations and run 4K cameras.
The HIK POC (Power over Co-Ax) is a good compromise, cameras are up to 5MP, one cable to each camera (no shotgun cable) and only one power supply for the NVR required, also substantially cheaper than POE IP cameras.
Install the NVR in the loft is a good idea, don't forget you will need a CAT5 to your router for APP access.
Sighting the cameras is the most important, go as low down as you can to avoid getting lovely shots of the tops of heads or hoodies, I would generally put one camera at about 2.5m to 3m high covering from the front door/porch, yes the miscreants might smash or nick the camera but they are often stupid enough to give you a close up of their face doing it!
Night vision is excellent on HIK, but again consider installing an IR flood light across from a camera if it may struggle, make sure you aim them to avoid reflections off of walls etc. 
Personally you get what you pay for, although a camera may be listed as 4MP it really depends on the lens/optical quality, I would not want to speak ill of a product,  but I take a lot of Swann out to be replaced with HIK or Alhua, both POE and TVI.

I never knew PoCoax even existed. I have tried searching and there is a lot of retailer selling it? I am probably looking in the wrong place. I dont mind putting the Cat5 in at the extra cost, I am more familiar with the CAT5 and IP networking. 
I already have a PIR light over the porch which comes on so that should be good for the camera. I was going to put the camera's quite high but it makes sense to put the camera's lower so you actually get a shot of peoples faces. 

Grumpy_chap

Mutton_Geoff said:

If you want a comparison between Swann and other cheap fixed lens cameras, take a look at the video on CCTV42 website. The framing of each camera is vital. A load of pretty wide angle shots might look good on your phone but are useless for identifying perps.

https://www.cctv42.co.uk/help-advice/video-tutorials/
No connection to this firm, just a happy customer.

I just stumbled across this thread as I was out looking at CCTV systems today - and the SWANN seemed to be the product to go for.

On that video, how fair is the comparison?  It seems to show the CCTV24 as much better, but that has been set with a very high zoom level compared to the SWANN camera?  Would the SWANN camera be just as good if zoomed in?  That, of course, means either setting the camera to zoom in permanently, or being available to respond over the app to zoom in manually when an incident occurs - I suppose in the domestic setting zooming in when there is an incident is not a regular event that will be achieved.