Outdoor Home Security Cameras

[phinix]

I'm looking for a Outdoor Home Security Camera that will meet few requirements.
I've read some reviews but wanted to see what you guys have/use yourselves.

I need wifi outdoor cam, 1080p, with night vision, free-cloud storage.

Wifi, cause I would just pull power cable through my house wall.
1080p as I read that it gives enough details, plus won't be data heavy. Unless 720p is also enough.
Night vision - obviously I want to watch all the foxes that visit my house at night:)
Cloud storage - I dont want to have hub or other storage boxes in my house.
I've read that if you just need few days of 24hrs recordings, there are some cloud services that are free - trying to find one.
If its not free, then any paid but something cheaper than Nest £10/month.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.

[yui]

I'm looking for a Outdoor Home Security Camera that will meet few requirements.
I've read some reviews but wanted to see what you guys have/use yourselves.

I need wifi outdoor cam, 1080p, with night vision, free-cloud storage.

Wifi, cause I would just pull power cable through my house wall.
1080p as I read that it gives enough details, plus won't be data heavy. Unless 720p is also enough.
Night vision - obviously I want to watch all the foxes that visit my house at night:)
Cloud storage - I dont want to have hub or other storage boxes in my house.
I've read that if you just need few days of 24hrs recordings, there are some cloud services that are free - trying to find one.
If its not free, then any paid but something cheaper than Nest £10/month.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.

how much diy are you willing to put into it? free video cloud storage and personal diffusion does not exists, but if you do not care about no one else seeing it youtube and twitch could work, i have no experience with the cameras though, i guess that resolution depends on the distance and optical of the camera, if you try to see something 30cm from the camera 480p should be overkill. and with wifi you would not need a hub either way, just a storage server, although making one can be expensive, and if web facing rather dangerous.
just sharing my thoughts on your project.

[Darthbaggins]

I would go the route of using cloud and a home based data storage/personal cloud - just so you have backups of the feeds you plan on covering. 

[phinix]

Well, I want to get some simple and cheap solution, nothing that I would need to build or buy extra hardware for storage etc

I'm leaning towards Nest camera now as apparently cam itself is around £140, then there is a subscription for £5/month that only records events.
I would be able to watch it live 24/7 on wesbite portal and get recorded only events, which would be any movements on my driveway, so I think it sounds ok.
Dont really need to record 24/7 - I thought about it and events should cover my needs.
Plus its just a matter of drilling a hole in my house to route power cable and accessing home wifi.

[yui]

Just so you do not get bit in the ass, check if your wifi reaches where you plan to put your camera(s) just so you do not spend extra on wifi enabled cameras if you can't use it (depending on what's in the wall wifi can have trouble getting through it

[phinix]

Just so you do not get bit in the ass, check if your wifi reaches where you plan to put your camera(s) just so you do not spend extra on wifi enabled cameras if you can't use it (depending on what's in the wall wifi can have trouble getting through it

Yeah, thanks, will have to check that.

[foxieze]

You could think about PoE if you are drilling through the wall anyway?

[phinix]

You could think about PoE if you are drilling through the wall anyway?

I would only drill for power cable to nearest point, dont want o pull over network cable to the router, its too far.

[yui]

You could think about PoE if you are drilling through the wall anyway?

that is actually clever, and more reliable than wifi, but require a POE switch or 1 injector per camera (old 100MB POE switches can be had for very cheap though) could be worth looking into if your outside wifi signal is poor.

[Techie007]

Professional camera installer here... Do not use WiFi for security cameras if you can help it.  You're gonna have to run a wire anyway to power the camera.  Use a PoE camera and run an Ethernet cable.  Solves both problems.  If you want to know the best value camera currently on the market, it is the Dahua IPC-HDW5442TM-ASE.  While it doesn't have cloud storage, it uses an SD card and has excellent night vision and audio quality—perfect for outdoor/nature type use.
There is a reputable importer on Amazon Prime selling them under the Loryta brand name, shipping from the US for about $155 (not affiliated; I usually import them myself to get a better price, but you have to wait several months then).

[jamster]

Professional camera installer here... Do not use WiFi for security cameras if you can help it.  You're gonna have to run a wire anyway to power the camera.  Use a PoE camera and run an Ethernet cable.  Solves both problems.  If you want to know the best value camera currently on the market, it is the Dahua IPC-HDW5442TM-ASE.  While it doesn't have cloud storage, it uses an SD card and has excellent night vision and audio quality—perfect for outdoor/nature type use.
There is a reputable importer on Amazon Prime selling them under the Loryta brand name, shipping from the US for about $155 (not affiliated; I usually import them myself to get a better price, but you have to wait several months then).

Can you expand on the reasons for this? Is it for reliability of connection or something else?

I generally agree with this sentiment- I avoid wifi for anything 'important', but would like to hear the reasons for someone who does this for a living.

[Leslieann]

If its not free, then any paid but something cheaper than Nest £10/month.

I tried rolling my own using PIs, cell phones and some software and a server, not only was it not great but trying to do it without paying for pretty much anything made it a massive pain in the neck. Between low quality streams, high bandwidth, false promises (pi do not do this as well as people claim) and absolutely atrocious configuration it just turned into a nightmare.

If I had to do it again, for a single cam I'd consider just upping to a private Youtube, for anything more I'd probably just get a Nest/Ring/mass produced kit.

Can you expand on the reasons for this? Is it for reliability of connection or something else?

I generally agree with this sentiment- I avoid wifi for anything 'important', but would like to hear the reasons for someone who does this for a living.

Wifi can be easily hacked, the more connecting to it the faster it can be hacked, these constantly stream making them the perfect target for hacking wifi.
If you must use wifi make sure it's on a second wifi and firewalled from the rest of the network. I would even consider whitelisting only where the signal needs to be sent.

Even easier than hacking is to knock them offline.
You don't even need to hack the wifi to send a false packet and boot a wifi camera/laptop/cellphone off a network. This was sort a joke among IT people for a while when it came out to just boot coworkers and friends offline at random. Funny for friends, not so funny when your whole security goes down before they rob you.

[jamster]

Can you expand on the reasons for this? Is it for reliability of connection or something else?

I generally agree with this sentiment- I avoid wifi for anything 'important', but would like to hear the reasons for someone who does this for a living.

Wifi can be easily hacked, the more connecting to it the faster it can be hacked, these constantly stream making them the perfect target for hacking wifi.
If you must use wifi make sure it's on a second wifi and firewalled from the rest of the network. I would even consider whitelisting only where the signal needs to be sent.

Even easier than hacking is to knock them offline.
You don't even need to hack the wifi to send a false packet and boot a wifi camera/laptop/cellphone off a network. This was sort a joke among IT people for a while when it came out to just boot coworkers and friends offline at random. Funny for friends, not so funny when your whole security goes down before they rob you.

Am totally aware of these factors, when I ran cameras (not for security, just so the wife could watch the kids from work when they were really young) they were on a segregated vlan, and blacklisted to internet access.

Was more after the opinion of someone who installs cameras for a living, and which main points he uses to convince clients.

The knocking offline reason, especially, is an obvious one but seems like most burglars would not bother (too much effort, too little technical sophistication). Brother-in-law's place was broken into a while back, and they had cameras and an alarm system linked into the local police department, so the thieves just knew they had a limited amount of time to grab stuff before leaving. They didn't really care about the presence of cameras.

[Coreda]

If you want to know the best value camera currently on the market, it is the Dahua IPC-HDW5442TM-ASE....

This guy knows what's up. The 5442 models are very well regarded. They're known for the excellent night time performance with a good lens and sensor which allows for image clarity and higher framerates compared to most consumer grade IP cameras which often have blurry clarity for moving subjects and inappropriate resolutions for the lens/sensor (do consider when watching demo videos of any camera if they only show a static subject rather than moving since it's not representative of what one realistically needs for night performance).

They feature firmware which allows for human/animal/car detection, defining boundary points like virtual tripwire lines and object placement detection. The IPC ID suffixes denote different features. Here 'ASE' = Audio, SD card (IIRC), Extended PoE but there are other variants, too.

The general advice as with almost any IP camera is restricting their network access to just time servers and isolated from one's regular network. Regardless of the feature sets and brands, even industrial brands, virtually no one in the security or IP camera communities suggest not isolating them :p

[Leslieann]

But why do you say that wi-fi is better not to use? It seems to me that on the contrary it is a good idea

Why would you think wireless is better than a physical connection?

Wireless is easier but it's also much more easily hacked.
Even if you think it isn't so easily hacked (the more devices the easier it's hacked), it's pathetically easy to knock devices off a wireless system leaving you with no security at all. And then there's the bandwidth limitations, not just per camera but your router as a whole and range limitations.

The only thing wireless has going for it is, is ease.

[phinix]

I'm after a simple solution, don't care about hacking etc
This is just to see who the f** throws rubbish on my driveway etc
That Nest cam with online account sounds very good for me.

[TacticalCoder]

I want to do something similar to what my neighbour did, but I'm a DIYer so I'll do it all myself.  Many neighbours here in the (non-gated) community do something like this:



So basically a pole and two or three cameras on the pole.


I could go away with only putting fake cams or real cams which I wouldn't even wire: as long as it looks like it means business it would already deter most thieves.  Basically: it's a statement.


But ideally I'd like to use real outdoor (rated IP45 or IP65 or something like that) cameras.  I'll probably follow the advice in this thread and go for PoE ones.

[Leslieann]

Good fakes cost almost as much as real ones these days.