Security video surveillance system for the house, summer cottage, cottage: we assemble it ourselves

To be calm, you need to monitor the safety of the house, cottage, summer cottage. You can, of course, hire a watchman, but video surveillance for a private house works almost free of charge (electricity consumption is minimal), and even around the clock. Let's talk about how to assemble such a system with our own hands.

Requirements for video surveillance

To understand what a video surveillance system for a private house or cottage should consist of, you need to decide what you expect from it. That is, it is necessary to determine the tasks that video monitoring should perform. To do this, answer the questions:

• What to track:
  • approaches to the house (windows, doors);
  • inner territory (all or some objects);
  • approaches to the territory (only entrances or the entire perimeter, it may be required to capture part of the passage along the street);
• From what distance to distinguish what kind of person (the degree of recognition and distance, from which they should know).
  

  First, it is worth deciding which objects we will observe

• The need to keep a record. Then you need a hard drive. Its volume depends on the "desired archive depth" and on what principle the recording starts:
  • by movement;
  • constantly.
• Night shooting: needed or not.
• The ability to view the picture from the camera via the Internet from your phone.
• Do I need to view the image from the cameras on the TV.

Draw all points on the plan

Based on these requirements, the composition of video surveillance for a private house is selected. The first thing to decide on is the objects of observation. That is, you need to know what you want to control. Accordingly, determine the location of the cameras, their number. To do this, you need a plan of the site, on which draw cameras and those objects that they will control. Most often this is a camera opposite the entrance to the house, to the garage and to the plot. One is still in the garage. If necessary, add at the corners of the site or at key points.

Video surveillance for a private house: the composition of the system

After you have decided on the tasks and the number of cameras, you can select the rest of the equipment. Necessarily needed:

1. Outdoor and indoor video cameras (with or without infrared illumination).
2. Video recorder. A device for receiving and recording images from cameras. The number of channels is equal (or more) to the number of cameras.
3. Hard disk (the size of the memory depends on how many days you need to store the information).
4. Camera power supply (selected depending on the power consumption).

Security video surveillance for home: the composition of the equipment

This is what video surveillance for a private house cannot exist without. True, you can do without a hard drive. When using IP cameras, you can organize sending information to one of the cloud servers (if you have a stationary dedicated IP address). But you can store a small amount of information on them for free, and to increase it, you need to purchase additional space. But there is always the possibility of access to the archive and there is no danger that intruders who burst into the house will take away the hard disk with information, which makes video surveillance useless for a private house.

The main thing is to correctly arrange the cameras and determine their parameters.

In addition, you will need some materials for installation:

• To connect cameras, you will need twisted pair cables with transceivers or coaxial cable.
• Power supply cable (ШВВП or PVS).
• Sites for installing cameras, a corrugated sleeve in which wires are laid, contactors for connecting wires, etc.).

This is a set of devices and materials so that you can do video surveillance for a private house with your own hands.

Additional system elements

There are a few other devices without which the system can exist, but they make it more reliable (UPS) and more comfortable (monitor and modem). An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is the first thing to buy if your budget allows. It keeps the system running during a power outage. It is selected depending on the power consumed by the system and the maximum shutdown time. On this point, it is better not to save money, and take reliable equipment.

Video surveillance system with Internet access and remote access to information

You may also need a monitor and a modem with the ability to transmit a signal via the Internet. The monitor makes it possible to view images from cameras in real time, and not only in recording. A modem (ADSL router) is needed if you want to view pictures from cameras at a distance - via the Internet.

Wired or wireless

Few people want to pull wires around the site to all devices. I just want to put a wireless video surveillance system for a house or cottage. But behind the ease of installation lies a very low reliability. Conventional devices that support this operate at short distances. In addition, the presence of any atmospheric phenomena - thunderstorms, storms, sunbursts, nearby devices that interfere with your range - can strongly affect or even interfere with the operation of the system.

If possible, it is better to pull the wires - it is more reliable

In the slightest possibility, consider wired systems better. If you really have no problem with wires, look for reliable transceivers with a high signal level and long range of reliable reception.

Private house surveillance cameras

It should be said right away that cameras are divided into internal and external. Internal installations are placed in heated and unheated rooms. The temperature range can start at -15 ° C, but the main difference is the level of weather protection. Indoor cameras have an IP20 protection class, maybe a little higher. Outdoor - from IP65 (but better than 66). There are also vandal-proof versions - with a reinforced casing.

Types and forms of cameras for security video surveillance at home

Next, you should decide on the type of camera design:

• Dome... They are named so because of their characteristic appearance - a hemisphere. They are mounted on a level ground. Robust and compact design.
• Case... This is what the first surveillance cameras looked like. This is a mounting pad with a camera body attached to it. Street options can be covered with a visor. They are good because they can turn in different directions, in different planes.
• Cylindrical... These are, as a rule, hidden cameras (indoor and outdoor). They represent a cylinder, on one side of which a "pupil" is installed. All the filling is hidden in the body. When mounted, only the lens remains outside, everything else is hidden.

All of these types can be fixed or rotatable. Rotary are selected according to the angle of rotation and tracking speed. The tracking function can be useful. When the camera pans to follow a moving object that is within its range. There are also hidden cameras. They are miniature and, as a rule, cannot turn, and "inspect" only a certain sector.

Analog or digital

When choosing video cameras, the main characteristic is the clarity of the picture that it can provide. For digital cameras, these are pixels (like cameras in phones, etc.)digital devices), for analog cameras the same indicators are reflected by the characteristics of TVL (television vertical and horizontal lines). In order not to go into details, we give a table of correspondence between TVL and pixels.

Correspondence table of characteristics of analog and digital surveillance cameras

Usually, video surveillance for a private house is done on the basis of analog cameras with TVL 600-800. Their characteristics are sufficient to fulfill the required level of recognition from a distance of 10-15 meters. If you want to recognize visitors from a long distance, you will need more powerful cameras with TVL 1000 and higher. There are monsters that have this characteristic - several tens of thousands, but such cameras cost ... more than a summer house, for example.

Why are analog cameras used more often? Video surveillance for a private house does not usually require a long recognition range. Analog cameras with such parameters are cheaper. In addition, modern analog cameras have long ceased to transmit a purely analog signal. It is also encoded, but the encoding has a different format. There are three types of analog-digital cameras on the market - AHD, TVi, CVi. The most common are AHD. They differ from conventional analog ones in that they can transmit a clearer picture. If you need video surveillance for a private house to be not too expensive, choose this type.

IP cameras. What is their difference?

If you need the ability to connect to cameras over the Internet, you will have to install IP cameras. They provide a very clear image with the ability to scale, but require system support (software must be updated). IP video cameras are more expensive, but they are also a miniature computer system. Each camera has a processor, RAM and long-term memory, a built-in interface (for creating a network) and a matrix that forms the image. It can also be:

• drive (Micro SD card);
• USB for connecting external devices:
  • Wi-Fi;
  • camera movement control module;
  • zoom control module.

IP cameras are no different in appearance. Except that RJ-45 connector

That is, it is a full-fledged digital device with the ability to adjust parameters and connect via a network. The network can be wired or wireless. In analog-digital cameras, some additional features can also be implemented (sending a signal to a specific phone number, for example). But this is more and more difficult to implement - each function needs its own pair of wires.

But note, even if the IP camera is wireless, it will have to be powered somehow. Yes, each has batteries. But it is better to consider them as a power option in case of a loss of light. So the food will still have to fail. There are, of course, options with POE (a technology for supplying power through the wires through which information is transmitted). But they must be connected through a POE hub or a DVR that supports this technology. And this is more expensive equipment. It is cheaper to supply power supplies to each camera (but the installation is more difficult).

Example of IP camera characteristics

Besides the usual ones with a fixed lens, there are also varifocal and zoom IP cameras. Varifocal are manually adjusted on site. That is, you can change their characteristics within certain limits. Zoom cameras can be controlled directly from the DVR. The settings are changed through the zoom control module (for example, RS485), which is connected to the camera's USB output. This is much more convenient, since you see the changes in the picture during the setup process.

How to choose camera parameters

The required camera parameters depend on the degree of recognition needed and from what distance. For example, the “recognition” process is possible if the picture contains from 122 to 244 pixels. The parameters of the camera depend on the distance from which the identification should take place: the longer this distance, the more expensive the cameras will be.The more detailed you need to consider the visitor or the car number, the clearer the picture should be.

If you only need observation without recognition, choose wide-angle (with a wide angle of view, lens size approximately 1.8-3.6 mm). They will need fewer, as they "see" a larger sector. The resolution is enough about 1.2-1.5 megapixels. It will be quite inexpensive video surveillance for a private house.

Video surveillance equipment: choosing camera parameters

For a clearer image, a larger lens is needed - from 4 mm and higher (up to 50 mm are quite budget models). The larger the number, the larger the picture, the easier it is to recognize the object. But at the same time, the viewing angle is smaller. The larger the lens, the more cameras you need to cover the same area. They "capture" less space, respectively, we get the overview in quantity.

Infrared surveillance

Many cameras have built-in infrared LEDs. They are located around the "eye" of the camera. These cameras have an additional feature - the backlight range. Usually there are quite decent numbers - 30 meters or so. In reality, only the silhouette is visible at this distance. That is, you can tell if it is a person, a cat or a dog, for example. It is possible to determine the sex of a person. There will be no other details.

But from a distance of 10-15 meters, you can already see something (with the camera, in which the backlight hits 30 meters). So infrared observation really works from a distance two to three times less than the illumination range.

For real work in the dark, we look at the range of the IR illumination and the minimum illumination

If there is no illumination in the place of observation, it is better to choose cameras with high sensitivity. This is the "minimum illumination" characteristic. The lower this figure, the better. The minimum threshold at which you can make out something is 0.01 Lux, but even lower values ​​are better.

Registrar

This is the part of the system that coordinates the operation of cameras and records information. Here it is clear that the cooler this part of the system, the better. Important selection parameters:

• supported recording formats (must match the type of signal from cameras);
• the type and number of cameras and the resolution with which it can work;
• number / capacity of connected hard drives.

If possible, choose those options that can work with more powerful cameras than you have chosen and leave a couple of "seats" in reserve. This gives you a double win. First, you can modify the system at any time. Second, information will be processed faster and more reliably.

Video recorder for connecting video surveillance cameras for a house, cottage or summer cottage

There are such types of video recorders for a home video surveillance system, such as hybrid. They are compatible with all types of cameras. Until recently, they were very expensive, now they are more accessible. Not a bad option for a device to which you can connect any cameras.

Some are planning to organize video surveillance for a private house through an existing computer. This is possible, but the computer must be dedicated. You cannot work or play on it, it must have a fast enough processor to handle the required number of video channels. You will also need a solid amount of fast hard drive. And keep in mind that the PC should work around the clock without shutting down. In general, it is better to buy a DVR or at least plan to buy one.

There are video recorders with the ability to record sound. But for this, the cameras must also support this function, and you will also need to pull additional wires. But then you can not only conduct video surveillance of the house, but also receive messages from visitors at a distance. It can turn out interesting.

Self-selection or ready-made sets

On the popular site "Aliexpress", and many local sellers, there are ready-made sets of video surveillance.They also have options for online selection. You change the number of cameras or their parameters, the video recorder and other significant system components change automatically. If we talk about Chinese manufacturers, if you don't take the very cheap ones, there are pretty good budget options with a relatively low price: Dahua, BESDER, Hikvision. There is a regularity here - the cheaper, the worse, so look for an affordable solution.

One of the kits from aliexpress

Wouldn't it be cheaper if you take it separately, not as a set? Maybe. You can make a set, then look for analogues and compare the results. There is one more trick. If you can't do it with the selection of components, call a couple of consultants from firms selling equipment for video surveillance systems. Explain what you want and how. They draw up a project for you with an approximate list of equipment, announce the price for equipment and installation. This service is free for almost everyone. Even if the service costs something, it is a little money (be sure to specify in advance whether it is paid or not, and if it is paid, how much it costs).

Comparing the projects, looking for the same equipment from other sellers, analogues in the network, you will draw a conclusion. Either assemble video surveillance for a private house yourself, or buy a ready-made system. With or without installation. This is your choice.