CCTV Camera System Recommendations?

microsoftword said:
Your post made me think you were referring to people recording on homebrew style cameras and recorders, but I see now your point is that video evidence, in general, isn't very useful in court for most cases. Did I understand you correctly?
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Yes, video evidence is scarcely useful. You could intimidate someone with evidence without taking it further and that's usually enough. In court it's a tough sell and costs a lot of money.

Even if the sell was easier in court, most home users would not have something so significant stolen in monetary terms that it's actually worth it.

So, it can be a benefit. Car was stolen. By whom? We don't care, we can see it was since you were clearly in the house.

Businesses have it for insurance purpose, lowers premiums, deterrent, health & safety.
 
netstrider said:
Yes, video evidence is scarcely useful. You could intimidate someone with evidence without taking it further and that's usually enough. In court it's a tough sell and costs a lot of money.

Even if the sell was easier in court, most home users would not have something so significant stolen in monetary terms that it's actually worth it.

So, it can be a benefit. Car was stolen. By whom? We don't care, we can see it was since you were clearly in the house.

Businesses have it for insurance purpose, lowers premiums, deterrent, health & safety.
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In your experience, the way a car tracker lowers car premiums, would a camera system lower household insurance?
 
microsoftword said:
In your experience, the way a car tracker lowers car premiums, would a camera system lower household insurance?
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By about R10 bucks a month, yes. The insurance company is not the court and a bit more lenient. If they were not they would never make any money - that's my opinion anyway.

Video surveillance is not going to prevent anyone from entering your premises, ever.

What intelligent surveillance does is alerting the operator that someone is at the fence, or at the boiler, or the boiler is heating up, or there's unusual motion at an unusual time of day. So it's more about analytics. From there, it's up to the oprerator and SOPs to react, or the integration mechanism which may lock gates, sound alarms, send SOS, gas the ATM chamber, etc.

Alternatively, you could send a team there. The camera can follow the person, the camer knows in which zone the intrusion was detected. That's smarter surveillance.
 
netstrider said:
By about R10 bucks a month, yes. The insurance company is not the court and a bit more lenient. If they were not they would never make any money - that's my opinion anyway.

Video surveillance is not going to prevent anyone from entering your premises, ever.

What intelligent surveillance does is alerting the operator that someone is at the fence, or at the boiler, or the boiler is heating up, or there's unusual motion at an unusual time of day. So it's more about analytics. From there, it's up to the oprerator and SOPs to react, or the integration mechanism which may lock gates, sound alarms, send SOS, gas the ATM chamber, etc.

Alternatively, you could send a team there. The camera can follow the person, the camer knows in which zone the intrusion was detected. That's smarter surveillance.
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100% agree with you on this
 
microsoftword said:
100% agree with you on this
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Thanks, I do think we are detracting from the thread though.

In essence, without some decent analytics, surveillance is nothing more than an insurance premium reduction for most home users and a nice convenience to have.

The peace of mind, albeit false, may be worth it.
 
netstrider said:
Thanks, I do think we are detracting from the thread though.

In essence, without some decent analytics, surveillance is nothing more than an insurance premium reduction for most home users and a nice convenience to have.

The peace of mind, albeit false, may be worth it.
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Which is precisely why I say that anybody who is serious about using their cameras as an early warning system for their families safety needs to make sure it has person/vehicle/AI motion detection abilities,normal motion detection and even IR motion detection is simply too unreliable and will detect pets/stray cats/birds/leaves/clouds/rain etc.

We've successfully prevented 3 break in attempts at our business premises and on 2 of those occasions even managed to apprehend the perps in the act due to accurate motion detection,2 times were at night and once was on a sunday morning at 11am in the morning.(I called security company and gave them details as to where they were and where they would try to escape from on one occasion,on the second occasion we actually got the SA police to catch them!)

This was achieved using Blue iris software using their sentry AI add on,previously with normal motion detection there were far too many false alerts which leads to a person ignoring them,the other option is turning sensitivity to low which resulted in missed events.
 
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netstrider said:
Thanks, I do think we are detracting from the thread though.

In essence, without some decent analytics, surveillance is nothing more than an insurance premium reduction for most home users and a nice convenience to have.

The peace of mind, albeit false, may be worth it.
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This. When my alarm goes off while I'm at work I want to be able to check whether it's a real alert, or just my neighbours cats having an orgy in my yard again...

I think at this points the cats are having an orgy on my bird fountain specifically because they know they're on cctv and want a free sex tape... I know they're kinky like that because I can swear that I saw the one cat get spitroasted by two male cats the other day.

I digress, but as you can tell I don't like my neighbours cats.
 
I would like to know if the package if purchased through the reolink website has to go through SAPO because that would suck as they seem to have better deals than on Amazon.

falcon786 said:
Will take pics later tonight when I'm home I can currently only remote view on extremely low resolution due to my Telkom ADSL line's pathethic 1mb/s upload speeds(Vumatel finally installing fibre in my area this month!)

I bought them when they went on special from Amazon R750 was total cost for each including customs and shipping etc delivered to my door.

Not sure of pricing lately but a friend bought them cheaper directly from the Reolink website and they deliver to SA for free.

Try to get their new AI cam's even if they cost a bit more AI is really the way to go if you want accurate real time alerts on your phone for any camera system in this day and age.
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Pl
 
Ive used my cameras to check when an alarm is triggered at night and day. No need to walk around outside in the dark and you can also check what has triggered the alarm when your out and let armed response if they need to sort anything out.

My dogs ball also rolled out the front gate and neighbours picked it up. Had to walk across the road and ask for it back.
 
jezzad said:
Ive used my cameras to check when an alarm is triggered at night and day. No need to walk around outside in the dark and you can also check what has triggered the alarm when your out and let armed response if they need to sort anything out.

My dogs ball also rolled out the front gate and neighbours picked it up. Had to walk across the road and ask for it back.
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The one thing I want to do is to integrate my alarm with my NVR, so that when my alarm goes off I get sent pictures of all the cameras. It probably takes me 5 minutes to find the cause of my alarm going off which by that time armed response has already called me.
 
SAguy said:
The one thing I want to do is to integrate my alarm with my NVR, so that when my alarm goes off I get sent pictures of all the cameras. It probably takes me 5 minutes to find the cause of my alarm going off which by that time armed response has already called me.
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My Hikvision system can automatically send images via email if line is crossed or there is movement in a highlighted section.

It has face detection as well but you need to be really close to the camera
 
there is also nvr software available to load onto you computer if you dont want to spend on the nvr hardware.. like ivms4200 from hikvision and i think dahua has smartpss which does the same.
 
jezzad said:
My Hikvision system can automatically send images via email if line is crossed or there is movement in a highlighted section.

It has face detection as well but you need to be really close to the camera
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Mine too, but I'd then need to activate that every night before going to bed - since I don't want emails every time my dog is in the yard or something.
 
Anyone know of a way to integrate your Hikvision cameras with Google Home?
 
jezzad said:
My Hikvision system can automatically send images via email if line is crossed or there is movement in a highlighted section.

It has face detection as well but you need to be really close to the camera
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SAguy said:
Mine too, but I'd then need to activate that every night before going to bed - since I don't want emails every time my dog is in the yard or something.
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Too many false alerts with these systems unfortunately especially with bugs in summer.

AI.
 
I have 2 analog cameras, I did a bit of checking and there seems to be a video server that can convert to IP/digital.
Does anyone perhaps know of a converter that can convert the analog streams to ip/digital that is budget friendly :)
 
I'm also looking for cameras for my place. Crime is getting bad here. Wednesday morning between 4 and 5 they broke into my property. Nine electric gate motors were stolen in my area the same night. This morning they tried to break into my parents place.

Any suggestions for an online store with best prices?
 
SlowInternet said:
I'm also looking for cameras for my place. Crime is getting bad here. Wednesday morning between 4 and 5 they broke into my property. Nine electric gate motors were stolen in my area the same night. This morning they tried to break into my parents place.

Any suggestions for an online store with best prices?
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https://store.reolink.com

Prices includes courier shipping to SA and you don't need an NVR with these cams so saves money there also,just insert at least a 64gb sd card into each cam and use a POE network switch to connect them all into your home network.
 
My installer is advising I go with HIK or Dahua (more on the latter) IP system. I asked for 16ch (starting with 8 cams).

i currently have an 8ch analogue system and theres always something here or the other causing interference. I’ll keep this system though, and just do maintenance every now and then.

Is there any other brand or specific system you guys would recommend? no budget, so go wild if you need to.

thanks
 
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