1 months research into security cams for my cabin

[Darryl Licht]

OP ---

My question with this in the survival and prep forum is: what good will all these electronics with internet access be if the SHTF??? You got a faraday cage for emp/solar flares? Other than that Q, you've spec'd out some awesome equipment. Synology NAS is a great NAS, but I'd also look at Drobo NAS.

Originally Posted by the86d

Make sure you throw a good drive-set in the beast... Enterprise drives should work well, I assume, but die too.

For cheap drives: My <2 year old OEM Seagate ("5 year warranty") just started on S.M.A.R.T. errors, and I wouldn't trust Western Digital drives further than I could throw them on a time-line...

Are you going to do a RAID 5 for fault tolerance?

Get a non-beeping UPS too, and hide the NAS somewhere out of plain sight.

I have had more Seagate Barracudas fail than any other drive. The WD Black enterprise drives are very reliable.

[Chaparral]

+ 1 on the Kudos to PC, you posted some awesome data.

Originally Posted by Darryl Licht

OP ---

My question with this in the survival and prep forum is: what good will all these electronics with internet access be if the SHTF??? You got a faraday cage for emp/solar flares?

I find that I rely on my cameras everytime the dogs bark aggressively at the gate. That's several times a week, 52 weeks a year, year in and year out. At my place, the house is 120 feet back from the street, up a hill and behind a winding driveway so there is very little line of sight to the mailbox/perimeter. The cameras save me a lot of footwork.

[Chaparral]

Originally Posted by sdkevin

A guns laser pointed at the cam makes it useless.

Basically -- easily defeated.

I have multiple cameras with overlapping fields of view, some of which are at right angles, others at acute angles but at varying distances, through holes in the vegetation etc. You'd need two extra persons each with a laser to get from point a to point b up my driveway or through one of the gardens. I also have auxiliary IR illumination that light up the fields of view but which may be nowhere near the camera they are assisting. Some are in vegetation, some are mounted high up on root parapets. Those do a handy job at blowing out any NV.

That being said, to do it this way with PC's recommended hardware would definitely run into some serious bucks...I'm just using cheap ebay/Harbor Fright/qSee stuff from Costco.

[msmith556]

Originally Posted by TetVet

Excellent thread. Running hundreds of feet of Cat5e may not be the best or most viable connection scenario for some rural installations. Also .. easily defeated with a $5 diagonal cutter (dikes). An alternative is to go wireless .. a 200mw 2.4gzh 8 channel A/V transmitter is the size of a postage stamp, and very inexpensive. RCgroups dot com is an excellent resource for such stuff. With solar PV .. a totally independent CCV install .. just like a gate opener. This way you can also have Multiple DVR's within range of your transmitter range(s) for redundancy.

If you have a "Gauntlet" to monitor such as a road, consider two cams facing each other .. here a 9' by 22' (box) field of view, each cam installed 24' from the "Box" (48 feet apart) .. 9 feet off the ground. So if a zombie sees the cam he is facing and messes with it, said zombie will be recorded by the cam behind him. This road Is on my private property. If that ain't enough .. there are now a raft of GameCams now available for under $100 which are easy to secret around your install in case the gauntlet cams are somehow compromised/disabled.

CCV visibility really depends on the application, by I think that a hidden cam is not a deterrent (D'oh :-). The way I figure it, legitimate roadway users don't have a problem, and trespassers Are discouraged. If you have No business being out here .. better stay the hell out .. Period. This is Not Optional for killing any Prescriptive Easement issues here in California. DVR's with time-stamp on Disc is of course .. a given.

Final note .. I use Crucial SSD's exclusively .. if you use them in your computers or DVR's, upgrade your firmware .. they will loose time at about 5,200 hours of On time with older firmware .. very easily upgraded.

Again .. excellent thread .. thanks OP for initiating. Just the world we live in I guess .. we ain't in Kansas anymore ToTo

Posted with 100% recycled electrons .. Vets (and others) save another 5% http://www.freedommunitions.com/category-s/53969.htm

I cant find those transmitters on that site, whats the range of those transmitters? It sounds like an interesting alternative to running cat5, but how do those receive power?

[TetVet]

Originally Posted by msmith556

I cant find those transmitters on that site, whats the range of those transmitters? It sounds like an interesting alternative to running cat5, but how do those receive power?

http://www.rcgroups.com/fpv-equipment-862/

Range varies by frequency and power .. and your budget. Here, we are discussing purely terrestrial systems, as opposed to air to ground .. which is more akin to LOS. The more junk (buildings .. trees) ya gotta get through, the lower frequencies are better .. even the 900mhz stuff (like your cellphone). Bear in mind, that with RF you have a receiver for each channel, so you could actually dedicate higher dB antennae for troublesome links .. even flat panels, yagis or parabolics which are directional.

RF systems don't care about WiFi or whether the internet has gone down, and the bad guys can only guess where multiple DVR's are located. I offered the FPV stuff here just to illustrate that there is lots of stuff .. off the shelf .. that is not mainstream, that works incredibly well .. fly .. crash .. fly again

Power .. I'm 100% off-grid, so power loss is not my concern, but every cam should be battery powered .. not just back-up. Keeping the battery charged .. PV .. 120vac line to charger .. 24vac or 18vac to charger, the latter having much simpler and cheaper installs, both codewise, and costs. The 24vac are common to doorbells .. the 18vac are common to gate openers .. very low current .. skinny wires .. even telephone "drop-line", low voltage outdoor lighting wire, or thermostat wire. For larger acreages with marginal PV .. just hop on your quad and change out the batteries once a week

Here is an example of an appropriate "Charger" using low voltage AC for battery maintenance .. http://www.lightobject.com/Universal...ator-P576.aspx .. under $10 bucks.

What about voltage losses? Using 22 guage solid .. 18vac .. 100 feet .. 1 amp .. your voltage loss will be 3.23 volts. A 250 foot roll of 14 guage Romex .. 18 vac .. 1 amp .. your voltage loss will be 1.26 volts .. or 5.04 volts per thousand feet .. still lots of overhead between your 18vac and your charger requirements. Kapeesh

http://www.calculator.net/voltage-dr...=1.0&x=52&y=10

Code requirements .. general rule of thumb, ac or dc under 48 volts is considered "Low Voltage" (actually 50 .. better to err on the low). If in doubt for your location, just ask. That's Exactly why you have soo many wall-warts cluttering up your computer room .. lol. Only the wall-wart is UL certified .. the peripherals are considered low voltage


Happy Trails .. To You

Addenda: I do urge you to familiarize yourself with the POE (Power Over Ethernet) capabilities of Cat5e, in regards to powering and controlling remote cameras. Here we have 22 mountainous acres with dwellings up to 1/4 mile apart, so wireless has distinct advantages not needed in a typical residential home. I'll be using Cat5e to wire up 6 inductive proximity sensors on a CNC router, hence my revisiting the cable's POE specificatons. It looks to be about 13 watts using a single pair .. up to 57 watts, depending on how many pairs are dedicated to POE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

[sdkevin]

I have multiple cameras with overlapping fields of view, some of which are at right angles, others at acute angles but at varying distances, through holes in the vegetation etc. You'd need two extra persons each with a laser to get from point a to point b up my driveway or through one of the gardens. I also have auxiliary IR illumination that light up the fields of view but which may be nowhere near the camera they are assisting. Some are in vegetation, some are mounted high up on root parapets. Those do a handy job at blowing out any NV.

I've learned to not post details...

[msmith556]

Originally Posted by TetVet

http://www.rcgroups.com/fpv-equipment-862/

Range varies by frequency and power .. and your budget. Here, we are discussing purely terrestrial systems, as opposed to air to ground .. which is more akin to LOS. The more junk (buildings .. trees) ya gotta get through, the lower frequencies are better .. even the 900mhz stuff (like your cellphone). Bear in mind, that with RF you have a receiver for each channel, so you could actually dedicate higher dB antennae for troublesome links .. even flat panels, yagis or parabolics which are directional.

RF systems don't care about WiFi or whether the internet has gone down, and the bad guys can only guess where multiple DVR's are located. I offered the FPV stuff here just to illustrate that there is lots of stuff .. off the shelf .. that is not mainstream, that works incredibly well .. fly .. crash .. fly again

Power .. I'm 100% off-grid, so power loss is not my concern, but every cam should be battery powered .. not just back-up. Keeping the battery charged .. PV .. 120vac line to charger .. 24vac or 18vac to charger, the latter having much simpler and cheaper installs, both codewise, and costs. The 24vac are common to doorbells .. the 18vac are common to gate openers .. very low current .. skinny wires .. even telephone "drop-line", low voltage outdoor lighting wire, or thermostat wire. For larger acreages with marginal PV .. just hop on your quad and change out the batteries once a week

Here is an example of an appropriate "Charger" using low voltage AC for battery maintenance .. http://www.lightobject.com/Universal...ator-P576.aspx .. under $10 bucks.

What about voltage losses? Using 22 guage solid .. 18vac .. 100 feet .. 1 amp .. your voltage loss will be 3.23 volts. A 250 foot roll of 14 guage Romex .. 18 vac .. 1 amp .. your voltage loss will be 1.26 volts .. or 5.04 volts per thousand feet .. still lots of overhead between your 18vac and your charger requirements. Kapeesh

http://www.calculator.net/voltage-dr...=1.0&x=52&y=10

Code requirements .. general rule of thumb, ac or dc under 48 volts is considered "Low Voltage" (actually 50 .. better to err on the low). If in doubt for your location, just ask. That's Exactly why you have soo many wall-warts cluttering up your computer room .. lol. Only the wall-wart is UL certified .. the peripherals are considered low voltage


Happy Trails .. To You

Addenda: I do urge you to familiarize yourself with the POE (Power Over Ethernet) capabilities of Cat5e, in regards to powering and controlling remote cameras. Here we have 22 mountainous acres with dwellings up to 1/4 mile apart, so wireless has distinct advantages not needed in a typical residential home. I'll be using Cat5e to wire up 6 inductive proximity sensors on a CNC router, hence my revisiting the cable's POE specificatons. It looks to be about 13 watts using a single pair .. up to 57 watts, depending on how many pairs are dedicated to POE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

thanks, im using POE currently, but I think it has limitations to a couple hundred feet. I was considering wireless because of that.

[msmith556]

my dogs do not like anyone walking around the property with hoodies on. Their barking is my perimeter alert for me to check the monitor