Peeps
5 year old buck +
I would think that depends on how many alerts you get and how often you pull it up just to see what’s going on. It can get addicting to bring up the feed.
Trail Camera for Home Security
- Thread starter Tree Spud
- Start date
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
I can understand that, I thought about running 1 camera out to my apple tree food plot and have a live camera on it, but I would just sit and stare at it all day long, so I will probably resist the urge of having a camera on the apple trees.
But other then that, is it easy to stop notifications when you are at your property, so it stops sending you notifications that there is movement, and it is just you, and your dogs?
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
I am planning on adding an outside motion activated light between the house & barn which should help with night time. Just worried that the barn cat that has taken up residence will be setting it off.
Maybe a quick comment on why you went hard wired would be helpful. We have an old farm house that does not have much accessible attic space.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I don't have any direct experience with the home monitoring systems. You will get better advice from others. Several years ago, I took a look at some of the home monitoring systems for potential use as game cameras. I thought perhaps one could modify one of the home systems for game use at a lower cost. When I looked at the technology, there were some significant differences. One was power. Home monitoring systems usually have access to power, so they don't worry about power management. Next, home systems typically have larger cameras because visibility of the camera acts as a deterrent. They can use things like 4K video to capture not just a pic or two but good resolution of activity. Most are at the home and wired or close enough to use things like wifi.
While there are similarities in the applications, they are different enough to using one approach for the other application or vise versa will likely result in poor performance or higher cost than using a system intended for the application.
This is a generalization. I'm sure there are a few situations where game cams could be a good fit. For example, if you have a quarter mile of driveway and are just interested who is using it, one could set up a BuckeyeCam at the entrance and a base at your house and be notified when a car enters. My Buckeye Cams have a license plate mode to enhance license plate recognition. If you already have a system for monitoring game, I can see where adding a cam at your gate might be reasonable.
In fact, I'm doing something similar. When John W. was getting ready to retire and move, he sold me his BEC Orion cams. The Orions have been replaced by the newer X-series and I was getting concerned that it would be hard to get parts eventually to service my Orion network. So, I bought John's old stuff. My plan was just to keep it on the shelf to handle eventually failures. Well, I could not see just leaving them on the shelf, so I eventually deployed his camera as "temporary" cams. I don't use them for my QDM data collection because I need to collect from the same locations year after year for the data set, but they give me a better perspective of what is going on and I move them from time to time.
We have logging operation from time to time and I wanted to monitor to make sure the number of trucks that left the pine farm was the same as the number of scale receipts we got, so I rigged one of his cams at our gate. I have power there, so I just plugged in a charger and put it in a dry box with a battery so the cam has unlimited power. I can then put it on the highest resolution in burst mode with license plate mode turned on. I get pics of every car or truck that enters or leaves the farm.
Thanks,
Jack
mtholton
5 year old buck +
If you have internet, check out Blink https://blinkforhome.com/. I use it at home and it operates on two triple A batteries that last a year+. No wiring needed. Just setup on wifi, and you have remote motion captured video. Easy app interface on your phone. I get an alert when motion is detected and the video is uploaded to the cloud so no onsite storage is needed. You can also go into live view at anytime to see what is happening. It also has two way communication, so if you saw someone breaking in, you could yell out that you are calling the police:)
No monthly fee either...
I have mine setup to auto arm each evening since I usually turn it off when the kids are out playing.
No monthly fee either...
I have mine setup to auto arm each evening since I usually turn it off when the kids are out playing.
Attachments
Bill
Administrator
Treespud,
Peeps pretty much gave my answer. It’s all hardwired. Decent enough at night, especially inside the house. Outside does get grainy at a distance.
Peeps
5 year old buck +
The reason I went with hard wired vs wireless. Some “wireless” systems need a power cord to each camera but send the video to the hard drive thru the air so with those Didnt interest me. The truly wireless ones are powered by batteries. My cabin is up north and it gets cold up there in the winter. I didn’t want to be messing with replacing batteries. Wireless systems can also run into problems transmitting through multiple walls and other interference. Read they can work good one day and have interference the next day. Mine are all outside so I went hard wired. Some I couldn’t just run straight into the attic so I ran the cable under the roof overhang to a spot where I could drill inside. Overall my research showed hard wired to be much more reliable with a better picture.
TreeDaddy
5 year old buck +
i didn't notice a visible flash
Just changed batteries 2 days ago and walked back and forth in range to test
My only issue is that it has to be turned off manually...... So.....once hogs are trapped,I get a gazillion photos until I drive out to my place and turn the some beach off
bill
35-acre
5 year old buck +
I have setup a couple of ZOSI home systems. They are very similar to the ones shown here and similarly priced. I got mine through Amazon. In fact most of these companies use the same gear and just re-brand it. To get into the technical side of things:
DVR/NVR
This is the "base" that records everything. it will be on-site so you want it hidden/locked or you'll face the same challenge as with trail cameras (someone can take it too just so there is no evidence).
I have a 2TB hard drive in mine and the recordings go back 2 months. This is HD quality on a 4 camera system that records 24 x 7.
You need a TV with an HDMI port to see what's on it and or at a minimum to perform the setup (there are some far more technical options that remove this requirement).
The system can run without internet. But if you do that, you won't receive alerts and you can not view it remotely (which makes this an "after the fact" solution). As you noted you have limited (10GB) of internet, so if you connect that to the system, my guess is that you wouldn't go over that with alerts. But if you started doing a lot of remote viewing, you would consume more of that 10GB.
Cameras
Each camera needs a power source of some type. They sell extendable power cables that I have used. They are thin (two-wire) that is very common with a lot of small electronics. You need to know how close the nearest power outlet is compared to where you want the camera. If it's further than 8 ft, you'll probably need the extender cable too. They're cheap and come in like 20 and 30 foot extensions. I've run mine under siding, through windows (and then just closed the window on the wire), and if you really wanted you could just drill a tiny 1/8" hole if you were willing to cut off the end of the wire and re-connect it once the wire is through a wall)
You have two options for hooking them up:
Initial Setup
It's truly plug and play.
Plug the mouse in.
Plug the DVR/NVR to your TV via an HDMI cord (you have to supply that)
Plug the DVR/NVR into a power source and follow the on screen steps.
The DVR/NVR has it's own WiFi and when you plug in the camera to a power source, it automatically connects to the DVR/NVR and displays on the TV (like - that way easy!).
Very very simple. You don't have to be technical.
Alerts, Remote Viewing and Internet
This is where things get more complex (or into an area that I'm unsure about due to your internet connection type).
You said you have some capability to use internet but it's satellite. I understand the technology but I don't know what device you have. But here's what I can tell you. The DVR/NVR that I am familiar with has 2 ways to get it connected to the internet:
Generally you can configure each camera by time of day (Record Motion, Send Alerts, etc.). Typically they are all setup to do the same thing. And because the unit I'm used to setting up stores video for so long, I just let it record all day and I have it send motion alerts all day. I do not have it send emails. There is a phone app that lets me know if something alerted and it's also how I view the system remotely. typically the system is always alerting for some reason (branches, flowers blowing, birds, etc.).
Other stuff
The night viewing is great. But keep in mind, the best range to see someone's face or read a license plate is closer than you think (even during the day). As an example, I had someone go through my truck one night (I forgot to lock it). I could see someone walk up, I could see the light go on inside the cab but my camera is close to 50-60 ft away so I couldn't tell you anything about the person.
The systems are typically not expandable. So I learned this the hard way after the above incident... I wanted to add a camera or two. I emailed back-and-forth with the company and they said it can't be done. They are "hardended systems" that come pre-configured. So if you even think this is a possibility down the road, I would recommend buying an 8 camera unit and if you only put out 4 or 5 to start you still have options. The cost isn't that much more to leave 2 or 3 in a box for possible later use.
The hardest part of the whole thing was figuring out where to put the cameras. Seriously! Which way a camera points, where power is, where windows and doors are that need to be on camera took way more time to figure out. You have to do all of that before you buy so you know what you're doing for power to the cameras.
And a "pro tip" - Setup the DVR/NVR and just test a camera inside the house near the TV. Then setup the phone app. That way you can then use the phone app to adjust the camera (angle/tilt) while you're out on a ladder mounting the camera instead of running back to the TV every few minutes.
I set one up at my house and one up at my dad's house and I can monitor them both from my phone. He can monitor his (not mine - I didn't want to confuse him). They are really seemless.
DVR/NVR
This is the "base" that records everything. it will be on-site so you want it hidden/locked or you'll face the same challenge as with trail cameras (someone can take it too just so there is no evidence).
I have a 2TB hard drive in mine and the recordings go back 2 months. This is HD quality on a 4 camera system that records 24 x 7.
You need a TV with an HDMI port to see what's on it and or at a minimum to perform the setup (there are some far more technical options that remove this requirement).
The system can run without internet. But if you do that, you won't receive alerts and you can not view it remotely (which makes this an "after the fact" solution). As you noted you have limited (10GB) of internet, so if you connect that to the system, my guess is that you wouldn't go over that with alerts. But if you started doing a lot of remote viewing, you would consume more of that 10GB.
Cameras
Each camera needs a power source of some type. They sell extendable power cables that I have used. They are thin (two-wire) that is very common with a lot of small electronics. You need to know how close the nearest power outlet is compared to where you want the camera. If it's further than 8 ft, you'll probably need the extender cable too. They're cheap and come in like 20 and 30 foot extensions. I've run mine under siding, through windows (and then just closed the window on the wire), and if you really wanted you could just drill a tiny 1/8" hole if you were willing to cut off the end of the wire and re-connect it once the wire is through a wall)
You have two options for hooking them up:
- You can hard wire the cameras to your network (if you have a network). But with outbuildings and such that can get really messy. Plus I think that you mentioned not a lot of access to attic, etc.
- You don't need hard wire them. The systems come with their own WiFi for exactly that purpose. The two systems I have setup only use the built in WiFi for the cameras to connect to the base unit. The cameras also act as antennas - this is a great feature! So you can have one camera (CAM-A) 30ft away from the base unit and one camera (CAM-B) 30ft past that camera and as part of the setup you can use CAM-A to connect to CAM-B which basically extends the range out to 60ft (I hope that makes sense).
Initial Setup
It's truly plug and play.
Plug the mouse in.
Plug the DVR/NVR to your TV via an HDMI cord (you have to supply that)
Plug the DVR/NVR into a power source and follow the on screen steps.
The DVR/NVR has it's own WiFi and when you plug in the camera to a power source, it automatically connects to the DVR/NVR and displays on the TV (like - that way easy!).
Very very simple. You don't have to be technical.
Alerts, Remote Viewing and Internet
This is where things get more complex (or into an area that I'm unsure about due to your internet connection type).
You said you have some capability to use internet but it's satellite. I understand the technology but I don't know what device you have. But here's what I can tell you. The DVR/NVR that I am familiar with has 2 ways to get it connected to the internet:
- Using a home WiFi that is connected to the internet (meaning the DVR/NVR connects to your wifi wirelessly).
- Using a hard-wired solution that connects via an RJ45 Ethernet cable directly to the DVR/NVR.
Generally you can configure each camera by time of day (Record Motion, Send Alerts, etc.). Typically they are all setup to do the same thing. And because the unit I'm used to setting up stores video for so long, I just let it record all day and I have it send motion alerts all day. I do not have it send emails. There is a phone app that lets me know if something alerted and it's also how I view the system remotely. typically the system is always alerting for some reason (branches, flowers blowing, birds, etc.).
Other stuff
The night viewing is great. But keep in mind, the best range to see someone's face or read a license plate is closer than you think (even during the day). As an example, I had someone go through my truck one night (I forgot to lock it). I could see someone walk up, I could see the light go on inside the cab but my camera is close to 50-60 ft away so I couldn't tell you anything about the person.
The systems are typically not expandable. So I learned this the hard way after the above incident... I wanted to add a camera or two. I emailed back-and-forth with the company and they said it can't be done. They are "hardended systems" that come pre-configured. So if you even think this is a possibility down the road, I would recommend buying an 8 camera unit and if you only put out 4 or 5 to start you still have options. The cost isn't that much more to leave 2 or 3 in a box for possible later use.
The hardest part of the whole thing was figuring out where to put the cameras. Seriously! Which way a camera points, where power is, where windows and doors are that need to be on camera took way more time to figure out. You have to do all of that before you buy so you know what you're doing for power to the cameras.
And a "pro tip" - Setup the DVR/NVR and just test a camera inside the house near the TV. Then setup the phone app. That way you can then use the phone app to adjust the camera (angle/tilt) while you're out on a ladder mounting the camera instead of running back to the TV every few minutes.
I set one up at my house and one up at my dad's house and I can monitor them both from my phone. He can monitor his (not mine - I didn't want to confuse him). They are really seemless.
Last edited:
Bill
Administrator
Spud,
Just got a good example emailed to me. Maybe a bat or bug.???
here is a lorex stand alone.
But i also have motion lights. So if something sets off the motion light and the camera. Here is the view. Again could have been a critter, moth, bat what ever. I’m actually surprised how many deer use my driveway ;)
Just got a good example emailed to me. Maybe a bat or bug.???
here is a lorex stand alone.
But i also have motion lights. So if something sets off the motion light and the camera. Here is the view. Again could have been a critter, moth, bat what ever. I’m actually surprised how many deer use my driveway ;)
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
That's excellent!
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
Great stuff 35! Thanks!
H20fwler
5 year old buck +
These are very handy if you have a telephone pole or tall tree close to house or building you want to watch. Any decent trail cam will work and it will be up high enough that a bad guy probably wouldn't notice and if they did they would need a ladder. I use them for trespassers in woods.
https://www.cabelas.ca/product/1002...MItLewuqGQ6QIVzZ-zCh2oEwsnEAQYAiABEgLUzfD_BwE
https://www.cabelas.ca/product/1002...MItLewuqGQ6QIVzZ-zCh2oEwsnEAQYAiABEgLUzfD_BwE