Security system outdoor cameras question.

[Moho81]

That Night Owl system has some pretty bad reviews.  
Anyone have any experience with the system that Harbor Freight sells?
https://www.harborfreight.com/8-channel-surveillance-dvr-with-4-hd-cameras-and-mobile-monitoring-capabilities-63890.html
 

Just looked at the HF.  I'd be cautious.  No mention if 720p or 1080p.  I wouldn't go with anything less than 1080.  I want to read the plate# or see face clearly at a longer range. 

If you open the quickstart manual, it says this: 
• Camera Recording Resolution will be set to 1920 x 1080, FPS will be 15, and Bitrate will be 4096

I don’t own the HF camera however a friend that installs for ADT installed the HF cameras on his pole barn and he says he can’t complain one bit about the quality. We watched a friend pull up his driveway and could read the plate from probably 20 feet away if not more.


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[mowin]

1 minute ago, Moho81 said:

 

 

I don’t own the HF camera however a friend that installs for ADT installed the HF cameras on his pole barn and he says he can’t complain one bit about the quality. We watched a friend pull up his driveway and could read the plate from probably 20 feet away if not more.


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Interesting.  I'm looking for  40'.  Not sure if that's realistic unless I spend a few G's, lol...  Hence this post. 

 

[screamon demon]

Hey  man - since i moved away 5 years ago i only lurk on here. Not much hunting to share from Florida. However, i am an IT professional. Recenty i have gotten into Raspberry Pi and Arduino. My son had a school project and wanted to duplicate the technology used at the harry potter world for the interactive wands. Spoiler alert the wands are plastic with a reflective tip. We used a raspberry pi with a noir camera for his project. When first hooked up it was pretty fantastic to see how well it worked in the dark. There are a lot of web pages focused on home security using the pi - if you are a bit of a DIYer you can easily set some systems around your place cost effectivley. The raspberry pi is less than $40 and the noir camera was $18 including the ir lights. 

Some googling in that space may give you some other ideas and/or options

 

good luck

 

[Elmo]

I've been doing a lot of IP camera installations lately as we're upgrading the analog camera system at work to IP cameras but I'm not an expert.

For home use, Nest is awesome.  But they're expensive.  It's $200 per camera and you have to pay a monthly fee per camera if you want to record to the cloud.  That being said, they give you a ton of storage and a pretty cool app on you phone.  Person I set it up for has a house in London and one in NYC and anywhere in the world where she gets internet connection, she can open the app and see live video of both homes.

For work, we use Milestone (super expensive) and HikVision (cheap enough for home use...note: it's a Chinese company).  But even HikVision is more expensive than your traditional home systems but you also pay for what you get.

Also note:  Most of these DVRs and NVRs uses standard computer hard drives so sometimes it's more cost effective to buy an empty DVR and then buy a hard drive from some where else and insert it yourself.

[mowin]

48 minutes ago, screamon demon said:

Hey  man - since i moved away 5 years ago i only lurk on here. Not much hunting to share from Florida. However, i am an IT professional. Recenty i have gotten into Raspberry Pi and Arduino. My son had a school project and wanted to duplicate the technology used at the harry potter world for the interactive wands. Spoiler alert the wands are plastic with a reflective tip. We used a raspberry pi with a noir camera for his project. When first hooked up it was pretty fantastic to see how well it worked in the dark. There are a lot of web pages focused on home security using the pi - if you are a bit of a DIYer you can easily set some systems around your place cost effectivley. The raspberry pi is less than $40 and the noir camera was $18 including the ir lights. 

Some googling in that space may give you some other ideas and/or options

 

good luck

 

I'll definitely look into it.  Thanks for the info. 

[Moho81]

Interesting.  I'm looking for  40'.  Not sure if that's realistic unless I spend a few G's, lol...  Hence this post. 
 

Let me send him a text and see exactly which HF system he has and what distance he could read a plate at. Just using the reading a plate as an example. I’ll send you a message when i get an answer.


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