Home Improvement → Re: Appx. hours of labor?

Here's a PoE version. What are you wanting to watch? If you are just starting out building a system, I'd get some cheapass Foscam cameras first. They can always be moved to cover other areas later.

I want one in my front yard and one in my back yard. Would I buy a PoE adapter for each camera I buy? I want to record either to a card on the device (it will be high enough) and/or to a DVR either in my house and/or remotely.

PS. I don't see a link.

Foscam is a manufacturer and some of their products have POE.

This says it's an indoor camera, but I thought the night vision is useless behind glass?
»www.amazon.com/Foscam-FI ··· +outdoor

What's a decent foscam to buy? I had one in my bookmarks, amongst the hundreds of other things in there.

You want an outdoor camera if it is going to be outdoors and one that has POE if you want that feature. Something like this perhaps

»www.amazon.com/Foscam-FI ··· 08PEUNUU

The camera robbin linked to has the same model number that I just ordered but appears to have a different lens. The difference is either a 4mm lens with 42 degree viewing angle (which is what I ordered) or the 6mm lens with 25 degree viewing angle.

That looks decent, I'll buy one for front, and one for detached garage (back). If the range isn't good enough, I'll buy a third to put on the rear of the house. At least everything I care about will be covered.

So if I buy 3 cameras, I need three of these?

Check the angle of view for your mounting locations before deciding on a certain camera. You may need a different lens.

How? I don't understand the difference that leibold posted.

Is that camera you linked 802.11g also? I see a wireless antenna on it but no mention of it. Can I power it with PoE and then connect and record using 802.11g?

You have to look at the degrees of viewing angle. That tells you how wide angle or telephoto the camera is. Absolutely no reason to power with POE and then use wireless. You have already run the wire -- use it. Wired is always better that wireless.

Depends. Three of those would certainly work. That may be the way to if you have cameras on opposite ends of the house and don't want to run dedicated Ethernet cables over the full length of the home.

However if you bring the Ethernet cable from each of those cameras to the same place in the home then you can use a single POE switch instead (I have an 8-port switch where 4 ports are POE enabled).

Most security cameras are fixed focus, meaning that they don't have a zoom lens that would let you zoom out (wide angle) to see the whole width of your property and then zoom in to get a good look at that suspicious guy standing at the edge of the driveway. While there is digital zoom that can partially make up for the lack of an optical zoom lens, the resolution of those cameras isn't high enough to get any detail when zooming in.

For an inexpensive fixed focus security camera it is therefore important to select a model with the right viewing angle: wide angle gives more coverage of the property but less detail and typically less useful distance while a tele lens will provide greater detail even at longer distances while omitting things that are outside of the narrower viewing angle).

If you find it difficult to make the choice between zoom lens and wide angle lens, you can pick a model that does have a zoom lens (those do tend to cost more then a fixed focus lens). If you do get a zoom lens it also makes sense to get a pan and tilt mount for the camera so that you can direct the camera where to point when you zoom in (the combination of Pan, Tilt and Zoom features in a security camera is often indicated with the abbreviation PTZ).