Tuesday, August 18, 2026

What system should I get bullet points

Not sure why people do not search the group before posting questions like this. You mainly get loads of people trying to sell you their stuff and others suggesting junk. You can hire someone to set it all up, but odds are good you will end up with their standard setup, not something tuned to your needs. What you need to know:

Avoid WiFi. When you are trying to ID or detect with AI, you want every frame. You will not even notice most frame drops until you are trying to get the one you need that is not there.

Cloud is for backups only. Record to an NVR, and it does not hurt to record to an SD card in the camera as well. My personal favorite is a PC running Blue Iris, since it is dead simple to learn, talks to about everything, and costs only $100. If you are tech-savvy, there is Frigate, which has similar features and is free but has a lot more of a learning curve to set up

Record 24/7. Anything less will miss something.

Filter with AI. You want AI to do the work of looking at all the motion triggering your cams, or you will come to ignore them. Note there will always be a trade-off between always notifying you, even when it is nothing, and missing something significant. You will need to tune this over time. Another reason to do it yourself.

Each camera needs to match its target. Look at where you want to monitor, then where you can put a camera. From there, you have distance and view angle. A site like https://www.jvsg.com/calculators/cctv-lens-calculator/ will help sort the specs you need to get the detail you are looking for. Prefer cameras that support ONVIF but require at least RSTP support.

Lighting: lots of models claim color night vision these days, but get there by slowing the frame rate down to a point where moving objects are blurred or even ghosted. Or they get there with white lights in the camera. Look for videos with moving things in them. Stills are useless. That said, the best are ColorVus, which will give you cloudy-day-looking video for a target area where you can make out your hand in front of your face. In darker areas, you will want to go with IR for night vision. It is much better to use external lighting to get the level you need, since lights attract bugs. Cameras that turn on white lights when motion is detected are a plus.

Networking: As with any IoT, you should isolate them from your main network and the internet. Either have 2 Ethernet cards in the PC, one for the camera network and one for your main network, or look up VLANs. Do not get distracted by NDAA-compliant claims. No camera should be exposed to the internet.

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