Low cost Security cameras.

[gus58]

I live in a town of about 300. Our local bowls club got broken into yet again. Can someone point us in the right direction for a good quality camera system that doesnt cost an arm and a leg but will give management a clear enough image for recognition. Stress low cost, they run on a very tight budget…

[mtv]

What type... coax, IP, what NVR do you plan to use.... cameras with or without card recording?

How many cameras?

Do they need to trigger alarms/notification?

What is their definition of 'low cost'?

[gus58]

Im open to any suggestions but something that records remotely and triggers a mobile ph app would be best I guess. With a couple of grand in the bank at any given time if they have a good week is the budget. Its a very small western NSW town so clientele is sparse.

[hoe]

there is a monthly fee for cloud recording, about $5 i think per camera + data sim cost, unless you have wifi on site.

they can be configured to alert you via app when motion/noise/person/vehicle is detected.

multiple people can access the camera via app

[lsemmens]

I purchased an Arlo System from Costco (they are available elsewhere) two cameras, base station, and solar panels for the cameras. cost about $600 (IIRC - don't quote me, it might have been a lot cheaper). Works great and does all that you desire. the on costs are 14.99 per month for cloud storage and, obviously, you'lll need an internet connection to make it all work. I can monitor the system from anywhere with my phone. So far I've only been in Aust with it,but it matters not where in OZ I am, provided I have service, I can look at the cameras.

[Bigfella237]

I know it goes against what you're asking but if it were me I'd be spending the money to stop them getting in, rather than helping the police do their job. Especially when they can catch the little oxygen thieves red-handed and the beak still sends them home to mummy with a slap on the wrist.

Cameras are only a deterrent to honest people. With your target audience all wearing baseball caps, hoodies, sunnies and face masks you likely won't capture anything usable as evidence anyway, and that's if they don't smash the cameras first.

In saying that, I have (what I consider to be) a reasonably high-end system at home, Synology NAS/NVR, Hikvision cameras, etc., but that cost WAY more than your budget already and I'm not finished adding cameras yet (it's an addictive little hobby).

A couple of suggestions: Use high-res 8MP cameras and make sure they have good night vision or the area is well lit (probably a better deterrent than the cameras themselves); If possible, try to have each camera's location visible from another camera so they can't smash one camera and have a black spot; And, make sure whatever system you buy is expandable!

Personally, I hate "ongoing fees" like monthly monitoring, I'd rather spend an extra grand up-front than pay ten bucks a week for some third-party monitoring / cloud storage service, but that's just me.

Andrew

[gus58]

Thx for the replies, there’s some good suggestions, I’ll let them know and see what transpires, cheers.

[lsemmens]

Where abouts are you Gus? Our Bowls club is a bit like fort Knox these days.

[realistix]

Austech users saying jbhifi can solve your issue........Arlo, really? It's a bowls club, with no doubt a lot of money. Forget cctv, get yourself a good alarm system, better monitoring and maybe guard dogs lol.

[RedXT]

Austech users saying jbhifi can solve your issue........Arlo, really? It's a bowls club, with no doubt a lot of money. Forget cctv, get yourself a good alarm system, better monitoring and maybe guard dogs lol.

Op said "Stress low cost, they run on a very tight budget…"

[lsemmens]

Austech users saying jbhifi can solve your issue........Arlo, really? It's a bowls club, with no doubt a lot of money. Forget cctv, get yourself a good alarm system, better monitoring and maybe guard dogs lol.

Which planet do You live on? None of the Bowls clubs I am involved with has a lot of anything, members, money....... pick something else. Maybe inner city Sydney but they would be few and far between.

[Bigfella237]

That comes back to what I was saying about a system that is expandable. If you invest in quality infrastructure at the beginning, then you can add cameras as the budget permits.

I don't know anything about the Arlo brand but from outward appearances it seems to be in the lower end of the market and probably isn't designed for an installation as big as a bowlo.

Also bear in mind that there are brands out there, "Ring" comes to mind, that lock down their protocols so only their products are compatible with each other, including cloud storage and monitoring. So you can't add their products to an existing system, and you can't add products from other manufacturers to their systems.

Assuming you decide on IP Cameras, I'd estimate, at a minimum, you'd be looking at around a thousand bucks for a decent NAS/NVR (including a reasonable sized hard drive), and the same again for a decent UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply), then add around five hundred for a decent PoE Ethernet Switch, then maybe three hundred per camera.

Depending on your intended coverage, you may get away with sharing an existing LAN, but as you add more cameras you'll find the data transfer speeds will drop dramatically, plus it's a little more secure using a dedicated LAN for the cameras.

It sounds a bit silly but, what will cost you an arm and a leg is labour, if you don't have someone who can do it for love. Technically, you need several different licences to install these systems, ranging from a master security licence, to a cabling licence just to run Ethernet cables.

[Fail 999]

Hey Bigfella, I also use a synology NAS for camera monitoring and management. Once you get over the initial cost of the NAS and camera licenses, you can add pretty much any camera you wish. Wyse cameras come to mind as a good but very inexpensive camera. I recommend the synology nas. synology is also bringing out their own cameras which promise to be very good, and come with their own camera license. Looking forward to trying one once available where I live.

[Bigfella237]

The thing that originally sold me on the Synology setup I have now is that it's not just a CCTV NVR, mine also doubles as my Plex server and cold storage for backups & media files, but I'm running out of HDD space (it's maxed-out with 16TB WD Reds) and Ethernet bandwidth so I'm just now planning a new system to move the CCTV and cold storage to a new rack-mount Synology NAS and free up the original NAS for Plex server duties only.

The new NAS has dual SFP28 fibre ports too, which when bonded will give me a 50Gbps link back to the switch (assuming a maximum of 1Gbps per UHD camera that should be way more than I'll ever use), only my current network switch just has 1Gbps SFP ports so unfortunately I'm needing to upgrade to (actually, add) a new switch as well that has the faster fibre ports. As it turns out, that new PoE switch will be the most expensive component of the whole upgrade (it seems it ain't cheap to play with fibre networks)!

It's kind of ironic that my cameras will actually be the cheapest part of the whole new system (they were the dearest part when I started-out)... and they aren't cheap cameras!



Andrew

[Fail 999]

So true. I originally bought the nas for local file storage and backup, but its role has expanded to other uses as well, and does very well with the security cameras. The 4 camera license from synology wasnt cheap, though.

[Bigfella237]

Yeah, the camera licencing does annoy me somewhat, but at least it's only a one-off charge. I may have mentioned it earlier but the thing I really hate is ongoing fees... Sure twenty bucks a month for cloud monitoring sounds cheap compared to a thousand for your own NAS, but a) the longer it goes on the more money you could've put towards owning your own equipment, and b) if the business that runs the cloud service decides it's not making them rich fast enough they can just shut the whole thing down and then you're really screwed.

This happened just recently with the first NAS I ever bought to run Plex, it's a WD HomeCloud (or MyCloud, can't remember which) and as far as Plex servers go that was a nightmare! They had the whole thing locked-down so you couldn't even access your own media files on your own NAS without being connected to the internet and logged in to the account they force you to create on their servers.

Then you could only install the version of Plex server that they made available, and they always ran a dozen versions behind what Plex released, and they only ever did one update in ten anyway.

And to top that off, WD have recently been emailing owners of these NAS saying:

We’re reaching out to inform you that starting June 2023, Western Digital will no longer be providing functional updates, security updates, and support for My Cloud Home devices on the WD Discovery desktop app. At this time, remote access to your My Cloud Home™ device will also no longer be available through the WD Discovery™ desktop app.

Luckily I stopped using all that crap long ago when I bought the Synology NAS, I still use the public network side of the WD as a dump drive for various DVRs/PVRs around the house, and that I can access directly across my LAN without their login, so screw 'em!

Sorry, end of rant...