- Find your house
- stick a virtual cam on it
- Move the person icon to the middle of where you want focus
- pull in the sides of the triangle
- see what it says Distance and HFoV
- You can then play with resolutions to get a basic idea of the detail you would see if a person was standing at that location.
- You now have the spec you need for that cam.
- Repeat till you have everything you want covered, covered.
What you end up looks something like this (totally random house in Australia)
Now granted you will probably need to round those to standard value or plan on getting zoomables to get the view angles you want.
Note too if a cam just says view angle instead of horizontal view angle it probably means diagonal which is a bit larger.
I might suggest if things are bad you want to install some hidden ones to catch anyone messing with the conspicuous ones. Some will see cams and move on while some are too stupid to even look for cams. Others will try and disable them. Another good idea is to turn off any in cam lights and use secondary lighting. Not only makes cams harder to see at night but helps keep bugs from spoiling your view and often helps with glare.
ReplyDeleteIf you are looking for actionable footage then it is all about getting enough in focus pixels of the target. That of course depends on distance to target, area covered by the cam, the focused distance of the cam and lighting. Generally cams in the $50-$200 range seem to get you the best bang for the buck. I always suggest you start with this free online tool to see what specs you need to see the detail you want. https://securitycam101.rmrr42.com/2020/05/getting-cam-specs-easy-way.html Keep in mind that "ideal conditions" is a best case not an average so you should pad specs a bit if budget allows.
Now if all you want is better motion detection, depending on range, you might be able to get away with something as simple as a Wyze cam.
Even if you decide to go with an installer I'd look at the above tool to get an idea of if the installer is under or over selling you.