My Security Camera Project.

[AUDub 11,147]

So I have lucked into a Lorex 4 camera DVR home camera system and I'm dead set on wiring it up myself. My house is two stories and the plan is to have one under the eaves on each corner with one covering the driveway, one covering the back door, one covering the front door and one covering the garage doors. All of the cameras will be out of reach. 

The problem is the wiring. What I would have preferred was to drill through the soffit, have them meet centrally in a small unfinished space upstairs along the AC lines or some such and run them down to the man cave in the basement where my DVR is located, but there's no way to get them down there without running them through the wet wall on two of the corners. No attic access. Wires exposed isn't an option, so what I'm planning to do instead is run conduit up each corner beside the downspouts, drilling through the wall just above the foundation and entering the house that way.

So, here's where we started. Putting it on my 40 inch in the basement until I find a better option. The DVR is hard to see, but it's that black box on the shelf right below the TV. The computer is a Linux server currently sharing its internet connection. I'm going to make it play nice with the DVR. Maybe have it shoot me texts on movement detection on the door cams during scheduled hours.



First things first, I drilled a 1 inch hole through the drywall, cut out the paneling behind the TV with my saws all and installed that wall plate, then fished the cables through. 




And now I'm just stapling it into place as I route it.




Up over some vent.




And roughly centered in the basement. 



I starred it out to the corners from there, simply stapling to the joists as I went. Avoided diagonal runs. 

Measured carefully to avoid hitting any studs as I drilled. 



Drilled a 1 inch hole with a 6 inch spade bit. Couldn't find my 14. Luckily the 6 was long enough. Put a 1 foot piece of conduit in and hammed it in far enough that the LB body will be flush. This is before I had it hammered in all the way. Also ringed it with silicon caulk. 



Here was the LB body after I cemented it onto the conduit going into my basement. 



And here it is as I'm letting the cement harden after attaching the 7 foot run.



Here's the run itself. 



Time to go fishing.




Didn't bother to fish tape the last foot of conduit. 



Mounted my camera, connected the cable and stuffed them back into the conduit. Capped the conduit off with some duct seal (every tool box needs it, along with WD40 and duct tape).



And we're done. I still need to adjust the aim a tad, and for some odd reason it's an hour fast.. (It's a full color 720p camera but it's in IR mode, for those thinking it is a black/white camera.)

One down, three to go. 

[AUUSN 823]

Dude, that is tight. Well done. I'm lazy and use Arlo:

http://www.arlo.com/en-us/

[AUDub 11,147]

1 hour ago, AUUSN said:

Dude, that is tight. Well done. I'm lazy and use Arlo:

http://www.arlo.com/en-us/

I'm pretty tickled about it. Got me off my ass and onto a new project. Never drilled holes in my exterior for something like this before and I'm happy with how it's coming together.

[augolf1716 21,109]

Have you had any problems in your area or is this just extra protection? Good job by the way.

[AUDub 11,147]

2 hours ago, augolf1716 said:

Have you had any problems in your area or is this just extra protection? Good job by the way.

Thank you! No problems in my area. My father in law threw it at me at the for Christmas, saying he received it as a spare, and I figured a little added security is never a bad idea. He might just be having me field test the install so I can help with his.

I need to figure out a way to key it off my home automation system. I already receive notifications on unlocks and window openings and it wouldn't be a bad idea if I could sync it to send a snapshot every time one is opened.

[SaltyTiger 7,793]

gotta hand it to you Bb42, good work and impressed with your DYI capabilities. Security is one thing I have always been kind of lax on. congrats on the cheerleader. promise you the best time of your life is ahead ( enjoy, it passes quickly ). Cam gets an allowed  beating

[AUDub 11,147]

Thank you. Still got a few more to do but I get the feeling I'll pull the rest off without a hitch. Really need to go get an auger bit. The spade bit gave me a nice clean hole but it was hard getting through all of those framing members with it. Will do that before I wrap it up.

By the way, I'm already raising three girls. This will be girl number four.

It's me and the dog against the world. 

[SaltyTiger 7,793]

1 minute ago, Bigbens42 said:

Thank you. Still got a few more to do but I get the feeling I'll pull the rest off without a hitch. Really need to go get an auger bit. The spade bit gave me a nice clean hole but it was hard getting through all of those framing members with it. Will do that before I wrap it up.

By the way, I'm already raising three girls. This will be girl number four.

It's me and the dog against the world. 

Good stuff. wonderful pic. 3 boys here. Promise you the old saying " blink of eye " means something. Love every moment including the rough ones 

[AUDub 11,147]

Anyway, back to the project. I managed to get the server to play nice. Couldn't key it off my door lock, but I can key it off of motion. Still some fine tuning to do as the occasional car still sets off an alert, but I'm now texted a screen grab. Here are my kids getting home from school this afternoon. 

(my neighbors and I are apparently having a battle of wills to see who can leave decorations up the longest)

[AUDub 11,147]

Second camera is up, covering the back door. Kids are enjoying the winter weather. 

[AUUSN 823]

On ‎1‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 10:18 PM, Bigbens42 said:

Anyway, back to the project. I managed to get the server to play nice. Couldn't key it off my door lock, but I can key it off of motion. Still some fine tuning to do as the occasional car still sets off an alert, but I'm now texted a screen grab. Here are my kids getting home from school this afternoon. 

(my neighbors and I are apparently having a battle of wills to see who can leave decorations up the longest)

Holy cow Ben, do you live on a cliff?

[AUDub 11,147]

4 hours ago, AUUSN said:

Holy cow Ben, do you live on a cliff?

On a hill with a very steeply graded driveway. It's a nightmare whenever it freezes. 

Edit: When we moved in, the movers couldn't get their van up the driveway - for obvious reasons - and had to park it on the street and unload from there. I tipped them well.

[WarTiger 3,901]

Nice project.  I have 8 cameras up managed by two separate DVR's.  But my camera cables are starting to fail so I'm starting the process of replacing aging equipment.    After having the set up I've had for about 8 years, I'm upgrading when I do mine.  I had enough of the BNC cables/connectors.   I'm going with IP cameras next go around and doing PoE injectors or running them to a PoE switch.   IP cameras are a bit pricey so its going to be a gradual change. 

[alexava 6,973]

On January 4, 2017 at 9:02 PM, Bigbens42 said:

Thank you. Still got a few more to do but I get the feeling I'll pull the rest off without a hitch. Really need to go get an auger bit. The spade bit gave me a nice clean hole but it was hard getting through all of those framing members with it. Will do that before I wrap it up.

By the way, I'm already raising three girls. This will be girl number four.

It's me and the dog against the world. 

Nice family. Your wife looks like a teenager too. You got time for that #5! 

[MDM4AU 332]

On 1/4/2017 at 9:02 PM, Bigbens42 said:

Thank you. Still got a few more to do but I get the feeling I'll pull the rest off without a hitch. Really need to go get an auger bit. The spade bit gave me a nice clean hole but it was hard getting through all of those framing members with it. Will do that before I wrap it up.

By the way, I'm already raising three girls. This will be girl number four.

It's me and the dog against the world. 

I feel you, man. I quit with 3 daughters. I don't even have a dog. Congrats, though. Beautiful family! You're a blessed man.

 

[AUDub 11,147]

So I'm still noodling with the project. One camera, the most difficult, remains to be installed. I've busied myself by trying to better interface it with my home automation system. I have a Mi Casa Verde Vera that uses ZWave to operate my lights, thermostats and door locks. I want to key my floods to come on during the evening when the cameras detected motion and have them go off after about 15 minutes. Easily done but for one thing: the Lorex system does not play nice with a home automation system. It will not spit out those motion alerts except as an email. So I had to get creative. 

Now, in my first pic, there's a server to the right of the TV. I receive e-mails from the Lorex upon motion detection, and the Vera can activate scenes or devices in response to HTTP calls. What I ended up doing was setting up a Thunderbird mail client on that server, and had the Lorex also send those emails to it. There are certain add-ones for Thunderbird that will filter the body of an email for certain characters. If the filter catches them, it can be set up to run a script. I created a simple script for each camera with curl, the Linux equivalent of wget, and they send an HTTP call to the Vera. On Vera I simulated motion sensors for each of the cameras and set up a scene to have the floods come on for 15 minutes when they're tripped.

Seems to work like a charm but I'm having to mess with the sensitivity and threshold values again.

[RunInRed 16,404]

I've got six on the exterior of my house.  I went with a Swann system ....  

After frustratingly spending almost two weekends trying to run outdoor speaker wires through attic, I decided to pay the geek squad to install the camera system.  Best money I ever spent.

 

[AUDub 11,147]

Got the final camera up. The end result:

Each keyed to a floodlight and will flip them on upon sensing motion during certain hours. 

[alexava 6,973]

Do you have them operated by a PLC or something similar. 

[AUDub 11,147]

43 minutes ago, alexava said:

Do you have them operated by a PLC or something similar. 

A Mi Casa Verde Vera II home automation system that, while limited on the PLC capability out of the box, can do it very well with aftermarket plugins. 

For an explanation of how I was able to get the light triggering to work, see this post. 

I am using the PLC capability so the lights will stay on indefinitely if they are cut on manually. At least until the house master virtual switch cuts everything off and locks the doors at midnight every night JIC we left anything on/unlocked before bed.

[AUDub 11,147]

Birds were curious yesterday.

 

[augolf1716 21,109]

Looks as big as an airplane lol

[RunInRed 16,404]

On 1/7/2017 at 10:12 AM, WarTiger said:

Nice project.  I have 8 cameras up managed by two separate DVR's.  But my camera cables are starting to fail so I'm starting the process of replacing aging equipment.    After having the set up I've had for about 8 years, I'm upgrading when I do mine.  I had enough of the BNC cables/connectors.   I'm going with IP cameras next go around and doing PoE injectors or running them to a PoE switch.   IP cameras are a bit pricey so its going to be a gradual change. 

Question ... I currently have a 6 cams managed by a DVR (Swann).  These are non-IP but I can access the DVR and see my cams remotely through their desktop and mobile apps.  HOWEVER, their software is terrible.  I've been doing some research and intrigued by Sighthound and their motion/people detection capabilities coupled with their mobile alerts.  Here's the rub, with non-IP cams, I'm struggling to figure out how to bolt this software on w/o (hopefully) having swap out hardware/rewire, etc.  What are my options?

[RunInRed 16,404]

Anyone?

[AUDub 11,147]

You need to find out if your Swann system exposes an RTSP path to interface with Sighthound. I was able to get the Lorex system to play nice with my automation unit, but, alas, I can't take advantage of any of the motion detection capabilities. Can't promise it will play nice. Does Sighthound offer a trial? Might not be a bad idea to trial it and noodle around.