Requirements and considerations for IP surveillance cameras for home use

[Saqr]

Dears,

Let me first thank your cooperation and help in this forum. A surveillance cameras project for home use is to be done. All IP cameras will be linked to a local network through a switch. A group of cameras , 5 to 10 , are mostly ONVIF compliant HIKVision cameras of 5 megapixels. Network is built on a telco modem/router and an 18-Port PoE Gigabit switch. Currently I have a DS920+ and three IronWolf disks of 12 TB each.

Q1. Regarding cameras footage storage, will it be better to use an NVR of the vendor, i.e. HIKVision, or the NAS device will be sufficient ?
Q2. I have read that it is recommended not to mix surveillance recording with another service in same disk (post), does this apply in my use case ? What are the basic storage requirements and considerations for the network to accomodate surveillance use in addition to normal storage and collaboration use ?

Summing up, camera use will be in a home environment.

 

[Sly870]

Also interested in some decent POE camera's for home use.

 

[Jan Janowski]

My background on this subject:
Home use.
Using HiKvision 2CD2042WD-1 cameras.
13 of them, 12 presently installed. POE and local power. H264 & H264+ (But avoid +). No audio. 3K sensor, 1920x1080/30 video from stream. Not using their DVR, just loose cameras and 2x NAS.

Each camera presently set to ftp pics to one NAS, based on camera motion detection, each camera to separate folder of NAS. I Use a custom timed script file to clean folders by date and folder size. (Script-file uploaded here for other’s use. )

On 2 NAS’s: 2 SS Licenses on one, 3 on other. SS sets cleaning schedule by date and size. SS does motion detection for video.
5 cameras saving 1920x1080/30fps video to both NAS’s with Shared folder Sync.

Also use Shared folder sync so NAS with timed script file(s) running nightly on camera ftp folders are updated to second NAS, so both have identical files….

SO: One NAS does all the work (718+) and BOTH have all the files! (Other NAS is 720+)
DS CAM Accesses live video without any ports forwarded in router. From anywhere.
DS FILE Accesses pictures without any ports forwarded in router. From anywhere.

This was started 2 years ago and due to SS settings and script file, I no longer do any maintenance on the files.

Now the issues:

The camera I selected, I did based on feature set, but also on price! This camera has had firmware security flaws, causing people to dump these cameras cheaply. I upgraded them with new firmware that fixed the back door (2019), but NOT the flaw from last September! It appears HiKvision will NOT update firmware on this model!
I isolate the cameras via firewall, so the cameras cannot phone home or be accessed…. Access from LAN only.

Also note HiKvision is famous for Not supporting many camera models for a Myriad of reasons….

Seagate Ironwolf CMR drives used in NAS’s as SHR for past 2 + years. Without an issue.

But with all this stated, I’m happy with my results. What started out as a learning experiment, became completely use-able! PS: Home Insurance company, once they saw the synopsis of the system here, accepted it, and gave a discount on insurance.
So, it kinda: Paid For Itself!!

 

[Buhagim]

Hi i would be interested in your script file as i am about to start on the web cam installation journey

Do you still consider Hikvision worth purchasing if you were to start again?

Mike

 

[Saqr]

Hi Mike !
I did not use a script file for web cam installation. I did it manually.
Regarding Hikvision cameras, they are functional and working well but the user interface is not standard compliant to any standard and not that good looking.

 

[Jan Janowski]

Did mine manually too. I don’t need audio, and pix quality is good. Would post video here of what SS captured if I could figure out how-to. I think you’d be impressed on the video capture that SS created out of a IP stream!
I’d buy same HiKvision cams in a heartbeat!

 

[Buhagim]

Thanks guys - much appreciated

 

[Jan Janowski]

Hi i would be interested in your script file as i am about to start on the web cam installation journey

Do you still consider Hikvision worth purchasing if you were to start again?

Mike

It is uploaded at this site.

You edit three things:
Directory of NAS to affect.
Number of Days you want to save before deletion.
Maximum Size of Directory (In case a spider creates perpetual motion to prevent filling hard drive! It happened here! This setting overrides days kept if spider tries to fill the drive).

Creating a timed user script file that runs at different times overnight has worked flawlessly on 13 different camera’s directories for years. I know this because I don’t have any maintenance to do when I check, and, the timed script file has an option to send email on fail only…. And unless I do a typo on directory name I never get an email saying it failed from 13 different timed script files, running nightly, for years!

Again: It was uploaded to this site for use by anyone who wants it.

One last thing: NAS. The 13 cameras motion detect ftp 1920x1080 JPEG pics to a 718+ (Ironwolf's in SHR, with 6GB Ram) NAS is not at all out of breath doing that 24/7 (including doing Shared folder sync to 2 other NAS’sin addition to 3 SS cam licenses creating 1920x1080/30fps Video from 3 cameras IP streams and motion detecting in SS saved to different drive directories!! timed script files run 5 minutes offset from one-another starting at 1AM every night.