Video surveillance is a common and effective way for homes and businesses to apply to their property. Unlike previous, video surveillance is no longer a thing that must be relied on by professional video surveillance companies or services to make a design and accomplish the installation. In fact, it is a trend that such work is done by end-users themselves thanks to the improved camera system and power solution. However, just for these reasons, the effectiveness of the completed surveillance system is limited. Generally, most cases resulted from some typical mistakes that people, or end-users, this article mainly indicates several key points that may help reduce mistakes in the design phase before a practical start-up is implemented.
Camera Types
The video surveillance system is constituted by what equipment, the answer can be found from our previous article. In a manner of speaking, the most essential part of video surveillance should be the security cameras. Cameras vary in different types. It seems like a truth that the more options are available, then the more questions or problems are triggered. Questions like analog or IP camera, what are the differences, WiFi or PoE wired Camera, which should choose, fixed lens or zoom lens, which is better, are waiting for the installers to figure out during the start-up system design. To sum up, if you plan to get a system with higher quality image, then you should turn to IP camera; if you want to have a more reliable video stream and monitoring with an easier connection, PoE wired type definitely meet your need if wires cabling is possible; if have no idea what field of view can best fit to capture the desired image, then zoom cameras are able to supply greater flexibility.
Moreover, it is known that cameras come in different shapes, which indeed suits different applications and mounting environments. In the following, we simply list some that are commonly used for home and small businesses, including mini cameras, bullet cameras, dome cameras, and PTZ cameras. Mini cameras are tiny or covert that most used as backup surveillance with less attentiveness. Bullet cameras are designed with a bullet-like shape, it should be the most popular type, which suits monitoring a close area with a fixed viewing angle. Dome camera as its name implied looks like a dome and is mounted on ceilings in most situations, giving an excellent integration because ceilings are places where people passing by do not pay too much attention. While PTZ cameras, stand for pan-tilt-zoom cameras, not a necessity for most home and small business applications, as they intend to cover a large surveillance range to serve remote monitoring, like parking lots. PTZ cameras certainly call for high investment, not only because its pan-tilt-zoom advanced function but also because it requires to employ people to operate and watch the system at the control center.
Camera Features
Camera features also matter a lot to get a proper video surveillance effect and realize a good use experience. According to statistics, the majority of burglaries occurred at nighttime. That being said, video surveillance system largely pays off at low light conditions. Consequently, it is supposed to use cameras that are able to offer night vision so as to record down the behaviors and characteristics of the criminals with clear image.
What’s more, the installation environment is crucially influence the decision on whether indoor or outdoor cameras being applied. Needless o say, indoor cameras only can be utilized at indoor safe places for the reason that they lack capabilities to work under harsh circumstances with high risks for water ingress, lightning shocks, vibration, extreme temperature, and so on. On the contrary, outdoor security cameras are specially designed, providing great resistance to water, dust, vandalism and extreme temperature, etc. Regarding these kinds of cameras, focus on the IP rating is a shortcut to know which is under consideration. The higher the IP rating is, the better protection is present. Unlike the previous conclusion that indoor cameras are not suitable for outdoor deployment, outdoor cameras can be placed indoors to achieve safer and more reliable video surveillance.
Additionally, in the system design, you should know that cameras often work with NVR to achieve 24/7 reliable surveillance, so it may happen occasionally that people will buy cameras and NVR separately from different companies account for budget or specific demands, which may result in a compatibility issue, so it is quite important to choose cameras featuring onvif compatibility that allows cameras to be integrated to NVRs that are not from the same companies.
Power Budget & Bandwidth
Security cameras commonly adopted in video surveillance systems are network cameras, which need to deal with two issues, one is power, and the other is network. As discussed earlier, video surveillance system mainly depends on cameras, and to make live view or remote view to be a reality, data produced from the cameras is transmitted over LAN, WiFi or internet network. For WiFi camera system, the router is the crucial device providing WiFi and internet network and communication, cameras only need to be linked to corresponding WiFi, and data can be processed and display image on monitors or mobile devices. While wired camera systems, there are more choices for networking and communication, such as routers, PoE NVRs, or network switches. All these devices have their own power budget and network speed capability.
In fact, security cameras not only differ in types and features, determined by their functions and designs, power consumption of the cameras is also different. Some regular ones only consume low power, some with advanced design, like pan-tilt-zoom, or while light, or heater are demanded a high power to work. So, since those networking devices have their own total power budget, if multiple cameras are connected to a single device, it is recommended to calculate if the power budget is adequate for all the cameras. If you adopt daisy network switches or routers, the second one that is near the camera side, its network speed is shared by all the connected cameras too. Just like using one router at the main control location to support multiple WiFi cameras, the more cameras linked to its WiFi network, the low bandwidth is remained or accessed by each camera. Therefore, it is of great significance to know how many cameras are planed to install and connected to a single network device.
Long Distance Deployment
Most people are aware that WiFi camera is not a proper choice if the cameras need to be installed afar, or have no condition for a open area because WiFi signal can’t reach long range and easier to be affected by obstructions, like walls. In video surveillance system deployment using wired cameras, sometimes cameras need to be placed at remote locations where are over 100m(328ft.) from the networking devices, such as the network switches. Directly using a long cable to finish the connection won’t make sense in these long-distance running, because Ethernet cable has its transmission distance limit, which can only reach a maximum of 100m(328ft.). To solve this issue, Ethernet extension solution that makes Ethernet or PoE extended and cover a longer distance for the remote cameras. PoE extenders, repeaters are devices that are applied universally.
