Thinking about ways to improve my security system...

[kennbr34]

So I have a really old, REALLY old, Swann DVR (DVR4-1300) and 3 cameras. They're all analog BNC hookups, but I have a capture S-Video card in my PC that I run the box's video output into, and have been using Zoneminder to view that. The Swann DVR full screens a channel upon motion detection so it's not just the 4-view split all the time. Still, the camera quality themselves on the DVR isn't that high, once I run them through so many different conversions it gets really bad. The video out on the DVR is a BNC male connection, and so I have to run a BNC-Female to RCA-Male converter, that then goes into an RCA-to-S-Video converter, and so you can guess what the video quality is like on the other end. Right now I would be satisfied with a higher frame-rate though, because I use this more for proximity alerts and deterrence than to actually recognize anyone. But recognizing things would be nice...

I was thinking about buying some IP cameras and just putting them all on a switch on the network, but I don't know enough about the Power over Ethernet to know if that's feasible. They're running some pretty long distances, 75-100 feet. They seem like the better option because they're more available in HD resolutions as well. Just not sure about running that much cat5

Was also considering a new capture card, but my PC only has one spare PCI slot, and I like the one I have because it has an ATSC tuner. Beyond that, it only has 1 s-video in ( low quality anyway ) and one coaxial in that is a cable TV tuner. Is there anything available for USB or something like that I could just plug my current analog cameras into and get their raw quality without any conversions in the way?



Edit:
Here is a little video of how it works when the motion detection is tripped on the DVR. I have it set to do that when it detects motions on my windows or doors, but the rest of the image is left for ZM

https://youtu.be/iRDPPSmx-Sk

I am not sure why the framerate is all choppy like that though

[iconnor]

In terms of network length, you can go 100 meters, so 100feet is no problem.
POE is simple, you will love it. Get a used cisco POE 100Mbit switch off ebay for not much or even branch now are pretty cheap.

[kennbr34]

I'm a little bit worried about the framerate issues right now, and I don't feel like they would get better with higher resolution video from the IP Cams. The other thing is that I kind of like having the DVR record everything to just in case the motion detection misses something, but it seems like that's not really very practical to do with ZoneMinder because of the jpeg storage format.

[iconnor]

Well it does work... you just end up with a lot of jpegs.

You could try our experimental h264 storage version. It actually works quite well

[kennbr34]

That does sound cool I was hoping there would be h.264 encoding.

Unfortunately this morning someone came up from the street and yanked one of my cameras down. To compound the situation, the video I did get of the guys is pretty crummy. This kind of makes it a really odd dilemma of whether to upgrade... On the one hand I'd be able to identify them, on the other hand I'd be out a much more expensive camera.

I think the most annoying part of this is the cheap soft screws they ship these things with, the heads are all now stripped out and the base is stuck there.

[AnotherBrian]

resolution will go way up. analog is basically 720x480 but it really is 720x240 because of interlace.
regarding using old poe switches they work nice but the one i had was a bear to configure because it needed a vt100 serial terminal to configure it.
If you have to wire any new analog cams, use ethernet cable and then place frequency balums - that way you don't have to rewire when you go ip camera.

[kennbr34]

That's a whole lot of words I don't know the meaning to. Balum? Is there a special kind of switch needed for these or is it like any regular ethernet switch?

[AnotherBrian]

A balum is an adapter. I believe it ups the frequency of the analog signal. It allows you to use category 5 (5e) wiring but the signal itself remains an analog signal. A wire carrying the signal cannot be connected to a router. The advantage of wiring this way are two fold. First the range is longer than normal coax. The second is that you will now have in place the wiring for a future ip camera. The power supply is also carried over the category 5 (5e) cable - hence the three wire connectors on the balum: coax video, camera power supply, and cat 5 (5e).

[AnotherBrian]

Analog video uses interlacing. All this relates to the AC power supply (60 hertz in USA versus 50 hertz EU) and the nature of cathode ray tube used to display the image. From this you get the NTSC US video format and PAL EU video format. In US you get 480 lines of visible resolution (and in EU you get 576).

A beam of electrons are shot to the surface of the cathode ray tube that causes phosphorus to emit photos from which you see the tv image on the old tv. The beam is shot horizontally every other row - lets say odd number rows. Then the beam is reshot for the even rows. When watching, the two images (od rows and even rows) is projected so fast that the mind seess them as one image. If however, there is a moving object such as a person running, first even rows get projected, then the odd rows get projected with the person slightly moved. In this situation mind sees a blur.

Hence, in reality, analog has about half the resolution of digital due to interlacing. Digital even at the same resolutions as analog is much better than analog.

[kennbr34]

A balum is an adapter. I believe it ups the frequency of the analog signal. It allows you to use category 5 (5e) wiring but the signal itself remains an analog signal. A wire carrying the signal cannot be connected to a router. The advantage of wiring this way are two fold. First the range is longer than normal coax. The second is that you will now have in place the wiring for a future ip camera. The power supply is also carried over the category 5 (5e) cable - hence the three wire connectors on the balum: coax video, camera power supply, and cat 5 (5e).

You mean the router would not read the analog signal right? I was talking about when I do eventually get some IP Cameras, can they be connected to any random switch and use the 5v ethernet power? Just wondering because it didn't seem like enough power to me.

I have been wondering what those adapters were! I have seen them a few times on amazon. It would make sense, running wire is pretty annoying.

However, I'm considering whether I want to put an IP camera outside, given how much more expensive they are, and given that someone might come and snatch it. I don't want to replace a $50+ camera every time thief comes by and thinks it looks good. Splicing ethernet cord seems like a much greater pain in the butt if they cut the cord as well.

So that said, I'm thinking about sticking with analog for my outdoor cameras, but getting some IP cameras for indoor. Are there any options that power with an AC cord but connect over WiFi?

It would be great to have a higher resolution camera outside to recognize faces/license plates, but I think it makes more sense to have higher resolution cameras indoor incase thieves actually get in, and might be easier to get setup.

[kingofkya]

From wikipedia.
The original IEEE 802.3af-2003[2] PoE standard provides up to 15.4 W of DC power (minimum 44 V DC and 350 mA[3][4]) on each port.[5] Only 12.95 W is assured to be available at the powered device as some power dissipates in the cable.[6]
The updated IEEE 802.3at-2009[7] PoE standard also known as PoE+ or PoE plus, provides up to 25.5 W of power.[8] The 2009 standard prohibits a powered device from using all four pairs for power.[9]

For prespective you coudl run nearly any led light bulb if you wanted too off a poe cat5 cable and be well with in current range.

I have seen higher end anolog ptz stuff running 24v over a single pair of cat5 wires to PTZ camers for years now so..
Also i have personal run poe way out of spec to about 1000foot with an old axis camera on the end so without any issue.

[AnotherBrian]

Concurring with King!

You mean the router would not read the analog signal right? I was talking about when I do eventually get some IP Cameras, can they be connected to any random switch and use the 5v ethernet power? Just wondering because it didn't seem like enough power to me.

It may fry the router - i wouldn't plug a cable running a analog signal into a router. Sure you can connect an IP camera into any router or switch but the camera needs a power supply. A standard AC/DC 12v power supply works with my camera. The camera does not come with the 12v power supply - just use an extra one around the house and change out the connectors.

However, I'm considering whether I want to put an IP camera outside, given how much more expensive they are, and given that someone might come and snatch it. I don't want to replace a $50+ camera every time thief comes by and thinks it looks good. Splicing ethernet cord seems like a much greater pain in the butt if they cut the cord as well.

Your would be thief can't tell if the camera is ip or analog. If they aren't stealing the analog cam now why would they start. The cameras cost about $80. If they were to steal it, they would presumably just unclip the RJ45 connector - no splicing.

The way I am configured is as follows:

cams-----POEswitch------home router
zoneminder-+

With this configuration, all the traffic from the cameras to zoneminder occurs without going through my home router.

BTW I am running 7 cameras ($80 variety) at 1920x1080 resolution - way beyond the resolution of an analog camera.

[kennbr34]

Concurring with King!

You mean the router would not read the analog signal right? I was talking about when I do eventually get some IP Cameras, can they be connected to any random switch and use the 5v ethernet power? Just wondering because it didn't seem like enough power to me.

It may fry the router - i wouldn't plug a cable running a analog signal into a router. Sure you can connect an IP camera into any router or switch but the camera needs a power supply. A standard AC/DC 12v power supply works with my camera. The camera does not come with the 12v power supply - just use an extra one around the house and change out the connectors.

However, I'm considering whether I want to put an IP camera outside, given how much more expensive they are, and given that someone might come and snatch it. I don't want to replace a $50+ camera every time thief comes by and thinks it looks good. Splicing ethernet cord seems like a much greater pain in the butt if they cut the cord as well.

Your would be thief can't tell if the camera is ip or analog. If they aren't stealing the analog cam now why would they start. The cameras cost about $80. If they were to steal it, they would presumably just unclip the RJ45 connector - no splicing.

The way I am configured is as follows:

cams-----POEswitch------home router
zoneminder-+

With this configuration, all the traffic from the cameras to zoneminder occurs without going through my home router.

BTW I am running 7 cameras ($80 variety) at 1920x1080 resolution - way beyond the resolution of an analog camera.

Well what I mean is the POE-switch a special piece of hardware or does any random 10/100 ethernet switch power the camera? I don't understand why they would call it power over Ethernet if I also have to use a 12 VDC, so I'm assuming you meant using an analog with the balum there. I would probably just skip over the balums and just buy an IPCam and ethernet cable.

They did steal one of the cameras, I mentioned it in a previous post. I'm not sure if it was a random incident though. At first I thought maybe they had just seen the IR glow from the street and thought maybe it was worth a couple bucks, but there was apparently an assault/attempted-assault at my apartment complex recently and my neighbor who was the victim mentioned the police were asking about the surveillance footage. It's possible the perpetrator had his friends come by and steal the camera, but I don't know why they would do that; it's possible they're not very smart and thought they would also be stealing the footage, and it's also possible they just did it out of spite because he's that type. Just an awfully strange coincidence, and also strange they only cut one.

In any case, I'm not too broken up about it because it was only $10. Had it been $80 I would be pretty upset. I planned to mount them higher up next time, but still it makes me suddenly a little less comfortable putting an expensive one out there.

[AnotherBrian]

Here is a photo of an IP camera. There are two connectors shown, a RJ-45 port and a power connector. The user has two options. They can power the device through a POE Switch in which case the power connector is not used. The other option is to use a router (or non-POE switch) plus an external power supply like a run of the mill AC to DC 12 V power supply. In this case, both connectors would be used. I suppose some IP Cameras do not have a power connector because a) it adds cost and b) it introduces a point of failure (such as shorting out etc).



A switch is a piece of equipment. A POE switch is a switch that injects power into the connection. Switches route ethernet packets and do not peer inside of the payload of the packet. A router, on the other hand, peers into the ethernet packet and decodes the IP packet. The router has knowledge of the IP world whereas a switch only sees the devices on the LAN. Your router probably has 4 ethernet ports. If you needed more ports, you could connect a switch into one of the ports and then it would be as if your router had many more ports.

[kennbr34]

Here is a photo of an IP camera. There are two connectors shown, a RJ-45 port and a power connector. The user has two options. They can power the device through a POE Switch in which case the power connector is not used. The other option is to use a router (or non-POE switch) plus an external power supply like a run of the mill AC to DC 12 V power supply. In this case, both connectors would be used. I suppose some IP Cameras do not have a power connector because a) it adds cost and b) it introduces a point of failure (such as shorting out etc).



A switch is a piece of equipment. A POE switch is a switch that injects power into the connection. Switches route ethernet packets and do not peer inside of the payload of the packet. A router, on the other hand, peers into the ethernet packet and decodes the IP packet. The router has knowledge of the IP world whereas a switch only sees the devices on the LAN. Your router probably has 4 ethernet ports. If you needed more ports, you could connect a switch into one of the ports and then it would be as if your router had many more ports.

Okay I was hoping it would just be a simple switch like that, I still have one up in my closet somewhere. I just wanted to make sure I didn't need a specialized one in case the power needs for the cameras was greater than a standard ethernet switch would provide.