Thread: CCTV - My Setup
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      12-10-2015, 03:54 PM   #1
mrbmwx3
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CCTV - My Setup

Hi, after some request for some information regarding IP Cameras, I’ve decided to post as much info here as possible regarding the hardware and software that’s needed. I work in IT so a lot of this to me is second nature, but if there are any questions or you need me to explain something better, then let me know and I'll do my best.

Before I continue, it should be noted that the info given below, is what’s needed for my setup, it’s certainly not the only way but it works for me.

The hardware needed for my setup is listed below,
Synology NAS
IP Cameras
PoE Switch or PoE Injector
Network connectivity/ethernet cables/powerline adapters

I bought two of the following IP Cameras, HIKVision DS-2CD2032

These are outdoor cameras providing full HD recording and IR for night vision. They are also being sold under the Trendnet Brand and I think they make cameras for Swann too. However I recommend buying the HIKVision brand itself as the firmware is much more advanced and flexible. The Trendnet firmware gives you less options which I cover later on. These are also Power over ethernet (PoE) enabled which means that they can get power directly through the ethernet cable (no need for a separate power supply), in my case Cat5e. All you need is a PoE capable switch/router.

The camera is fitting to the outside wall, I have them just above 1st floor level, however it is recommended that you have them as high as possible for obvious reasons, there needs to a balance between what you want recorded/captured and how high you locate the camera as these cameras have no zoom functionality.
After drilling a hole through the wall, the ethernet cable is fed through and simply plugs into the camera. I house all the cables in a weather proof plastic housing just to give it that extra protection from the elements.

The ethernet cable then runs all the way to the room which hosts the broadband modem/router/PoE Switch, the ethernet cable connects directly to the PoE switch, this is the one I have PoE Switch

PoE switch is then connected to my broadband modem/router, so the camera is now part of my network and has access to the internet and all my computers can see the camera.

The next part which I guess is optional, but for me this is what makes it all work. You connect a Synology NAS to your network. You can find their products here.

I have a 4 bay NAS which has 4 x 3TB Hard drives, raid 5 giving me 9TBs of storage which is more than enough for camera recordings, movies, photos and with plenty spare. The main thing is to choose a powerful unit, having cameras attached does take resource on the NAS and the last thing you want is to have the camera attached and recording and the NAS becomes slow for streaming movies, accessing files etc. My DS415+ is fine for this, but I wouldn’t want to live with anything slower.
The Synology NAS has it’s own OS called Disk Station Manager and what this give you is essentially apps e.g. Download Station (allowing you download files from torrent sites etc), Photo Station (for photo management and provides an online album which you can access via your browser) etc. But the important one here is something called Surveillance Station (SS). What SS provides is another method to manage the camera and recordings. Once you configure SS to know about your cameras, you can then have the ability to manage and configure certain aspects of your camera, e.g. motion detection, recordings, how long to record for, archive period, what action you want once motion is detected. The important feature for me is the ability to notify my iPhone once motion is detected. It also has the ability to take multiple snapshots and send them to my email, reason why I do this is covered towards the end of this post. What’s also important is that you can configure the NAS to be accessible remotely, they have built in Dynamic DNS form synology and all of this is Plug and Play, i.e. you don’t even have to open up ports on your router/modem as everything is channelled through synology servers themselves. Once you have that remote access, Synology provides iPhone and Android Apps for example Download Station, Photo Station, Surveillance Station etc. Surveillance Station iPhone app called DSCam, allows you to view your cameras, recordings, live view etc. As long as you got internet connection on your phone you can view your recordings and live view anywhere in the world. HIKVision also has their own app (iVMS-4520), which I generally use as it provides a better live view picture with less lag. They also do applications for OSX and Windows. One important point is that not all IP Cameras is compatible with the Synology NAS, they do have a compatibility list on their website.

I did all the prep work for this setup whilst I was refurbishing my house, so it was easy to hide all the ethernet cables under the floor boards and chase them into the walls. So my setup is quite concealed, however I can understand this won’t be possible for all and even getting a network connection to the camera and back to your modem/router might be a nightmare.
However it’s still possible to have a neat setup by using Powerline adapters. These uses your mains power cables as ethernet cables. All you do is plug in an adapter into a spare mains socket, one near the camera and one at the near the router/modem, ethernet cable goes from adapter to camera and adapter to router essentially acting like an ethernet cable connected directly from camera to router.
These Powerline adapters have come a long way since they were first introduced when they kept failing, were slow and were quite big. Now, you can get some quite small ones, nearly the same size as a normal plug, much higher speeds and they are much more reliable. Obviously dedicated ethernet cable is much better but its definitely not a bad alternative and recommend them over wifi for locations where wifi reception might be an issue. The thing to bear in mind here is if you go down this route, you will need to have PoE injector, something similar to this.
This provides the power to the camera, however, this would mean there is no need for the PoE Router or switch at the other end.
Saying that I believe you can get PoE Injector inbuilt to the powerline adapter, so no need for the above separate PoE Injector.

You don't need a NAS, you can get the camera to record directly to a hard drive on a PC, but that does mean you have to have that PC on 24x7 and doesn't give you all the good functionality from the SS. Saying that I believe the HIKVision software for PC can do some of the stuff mentioned above, I've haven't really looked into that side of things as I use my NAS for most of the stuff I need.

I haven’t tried any other camera, but these cameras have been brilliant for me, picture quality during the day is brilliant, you can obviously set it up to have full HD or much lower resolution therefore recordings take up less storage, night vision is fine for my purposes, but I’m sure you can get much better cameras with night vision, however you pay the price for them. These cameras do not move i.e. no Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ). You can get PTZ cameras, but they are much more expensive, HIKVision one is about £400, however this allows you to move the camera remotely.

Motion detection is great, you do get false positives, such as shadows, rain, foxes etc, but the camera firmware allows you to set the sensitivity, the area you want to monitor and various other settings, so you simply mess around with these settings until you get the right balance. I have it recording 24x7 in full HD (last thing you want is to capture something but the quality isn't good enough to make out the detail). The cameras have two streams, what this means is the camera has the ability to deliver the video feed to two different places and have to different video settings. For example I use stream 1 for the recordings and this is set to high bitrate, high frame rate, full HD etc, but use the second stream for Live View, which is set to a much lower resolution, lower frame rate and lower bitrate. This allows me to view the video easily over 3G or 4G signal on my phone without much buffering and eating too much data. I don’t need a high resolution and high frame for live view, as long as it gives me a clear picture and I can tell what’s going on thats fine as I know if I need to review high quality videos I can revert back to my recordings which is in full HD.

I set mine up so it records in 30min clips, then starts a new recording. If motion is detected it immediately starts a new recording and records for 1minute. In SS it highlights these records in a different colour so you can easily tell which video clip has motion detected. You don't have to record 24x7 but I chose to do so as I have the space. I keep recordings for 30days, then old ones will be overwritten, however if you wanted to keep a clip, you have the ability to lock it and it won't be deleted.

You can arm certain aspects on schedule, for example only have motion detection on say at night between 9pm to 6am, or have it only send push notifications during the day between 7am and 9pm. The whole setup is very configurable and very flexible. My setup is actually quite basic, however if I wish to do so, I can replace both my camera very easily with a more expensive IP camera with PTZ and audio, I believe some of the good PTZ actually tracks motion once detected. But at this moment in time, my setup is fine for for what I want it to do.

The only thing I want and haven’t sorted out is cloud backup/recordings, all of this is no good if someone breaks in nicks the NAS with all my recordings. To mitigate this, I configure my NAS to take snapshots if motion is detected and send them to my email.

I hope this all makes sense, happy to help answer any questions. I’m sure a lot of people know about this sort of setup anyway, but I’m always looking to improve security so do share you experience/setup/suggestions.

Obviously this won't stop people from getting in the house, people can easily hide their faces or knock down the camera with a long pole or even have ladders ready, however it does give me real time alerts and at least I can tell what is going on around my house, and even if they do disconnect, I can view the video until then and obviously contact the police. The SS provides me with email and push alerts if camera is disconnected or goes offline so I'll know if something like this happens. As mentioned in another post it has also proven useful to prove couriers didn't turn up and scum just nicking my solar lights.

Personally I love it and recommend the setup to anyone looking to set it up themselves.

Last edited by mrbmwx3; 12-10-2015 at 04:43 PM..
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