security camera system

[Ray klosek]

I am looking for an outdoor security camera system for my home. Should have day night capability with good night capability.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

Ray

[Mitchell Andrus]

I am looking for an outdoor security camera system for my home. Should have day night capability with good night capability.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

Ray

Costco has a bunch of this stuff on-line mostly. 4 to 12 camera systems are available.

I'm eager for ideas offered in this thread too.

.

[Sam Layton]

Ray, I am also interested in this thread. My only input is that it is important to use high quality cameras. Google security cameras and read up on them.

If you can not ID a person in the photo, what good is the photo. If the only thing the camera will tell you is someone was there, what good is it. If something is stolen, you know someone was there.

Sam

[Matt Meiser]

Some of my customers use them in indoor plant environments so they can see process areas from control rooms. They use pretty expensive systems, and frankly they aren't all that clear IMHO. A lot of those are poorly lit areas.

Costco would be a great place to buy because if you aren't satisifed its easy to return. I know they stock some in-store.

[Jim Rimmer]

At work we use a company called Surveillance-Video.com Don't know if they are any cheaper than anyone else but they have all kinds of equipment and an on-line chat feature to help answer questions.

[Harry Hagan]

Ray,
First you need to decide if you simply want to “keep an eye on what’s going on around your property” and possibly “discourage” criminal activity, or do you require high quality photos that will aid the criminal justice system in apprehending and convicting offenders in a court of law.

The first situation is relative easy and inexpensive and should be able to tell you when something happened. Don’t count on determining a person’s gender, age, race, hair color, or even what model car they’re driving unless the camera is set up to take a close up. Also, digital zoom will not transform a wide-angle video recording into something usable in a court of law.

If you have a system professionally installed, insist that the installer take you to see a system that they have installed in a setting that’s similar to yours so that you can see actual video recordings made by the system. Do it on a bright sunny day and an overcast night. Cloudy days don’t provide the challenge that high-contrast shadows do on sunny day and cloudy nights are more challenging for a low-light camera. Of course you’ll want talk with the customer while you’re there, too. You’re much better off realizing a system won’t do the job before you make the investment.

Warranty: Some manufacturers’ warranties start when the equipment leaves the factory; not when the equipment is installed. Make sure your equipment hasn’t been sitting on someone’s shelf for six months.

[Dean Karavite]

I did a little researching into this a while back. A decent quality wired system will cost you $700 minimum, but of course you have to snake wires in and out of the house. Affordable wireless camera based systems just don't seem to be up to snuff these days in terms of image quality and/or the software to get them all running is highly complex.

I also found something that cracked me up - there is a market for dummy cameras - they don't work at all, but just having them can be a deterrent. I have not tried that route either.