Moral-Flexibility.Net

We are (with some debate) on the third incarnation of our home surveillance system. The first was an entirely amateur affair, utilizing extremely inexpensive (actually “cheap”) cameras, vulnerable wiring and a recorder capable of only eight hours recording each night (basically turned on as we went to bed). The cost was about $240 for the entire system and we certainly got what we paid for (don’t get me wrong, you can spend $999 and still get a system no better than the one we had, but you’d be hard pressed to get a less effective system).

The Cameras:

We started with low res CMOS (complementary metal oxide substrate) cameras, which generally have poor image resolution and Lux ratings (meaning that the pictures appear more grainy and the camera is unable to see in low-light or nightime conditions without external light sources).

While an improvement over NO cameras this system was extremely limited, and without the assistance of the front porch light and perimeter (motion detection) lighting the cameras were effectively blind once the sun went down.

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When it comes to our household surveillance system I’ve always felt conflicted when discussing any of the “specifics”. This is probably just a side effect of having spent 16 years dealing with security stuff, but I try to listen to my little voice and I’ve tried to strike a balance between sharing information and compromising my own security measures.

Shortly I’ll be posting my “declassified” online journal of my Home Surveillance System (Mark.I) with appropriate screen caps and technical specifications. I feel I can do this as the system now in place (Mark.II - creative names, no?) bears only a passing resemblance to the original.

Some editing is required to make the material coherent, and while it will be remedial to anyone with experience in CCTV it may help others with their own projects and hopefully save them some misteps I made early on.

Stay tuned, I’m working on the editing as we speak.

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of my time up a 20′ ladder, then some more time up that ladder in the rain, and then a little more time up that ladder in the drizzle.

Yes, the ongoing household CCTV project continues, yesterday saw:

1. The removal of old RG6 (for CATV and satellite) from the outside walls of the house (and the holes that had been drilled into the walls sealed).
2. The reconnection of the perimeter cameras on the new permanent wiring and removal of the temporary wiring.
3. Relocation and reconnection of the surveillance system hardware and DVR to it’s new permanent home.

One camera location is giving me trouble, naturally it’s the most difficult to access camera and I was getting frustrated trying to trouble shoot the problem in the rain. I suspect that theres a problem with the wiring as a replacement camera I tried also failed when connected at that location.

I’ll take another shot at it today as I’d like to put this project to bed for a while (although the imminent arrival of a new multiplexer - replacing my multiplexer/switcher cludge - will require me to rewire a bit more in the new future).

One of the features I loved most about our house when we first looked at it was the backyard. Not the size, for it’s easily one of the smallest back yards I’ve ever seen, but rather the sense of an urban escape, a small private space in the middle or urban sprawl.

(This picture was taken early spring 2006 so it’s not a exactly a fair comparison)

Neither Lisa or I have a green thumb, we’ve had to figure most of this out as we go (and for those relatives with some real horticultural knowledge we thank you for your patience and advice!), and it’s not without a bit of pride that we can say our efforts appear to have been, at least, mildly successful.

We’ve concentrated on the small details, edging the garden space, mulching (thanks to Mom and Chris) the garden areas, weeding the lawn and garden areas and seeding the lawn like mad.

(Picture taken July 2008)

We’re going to keep working on it (flowers or something in the garden space would be a good next step), but it’s been an education already and now we’re having to learn about lawn fertilizer and herbicides and all sorts of strange and wonderful things that never mattered to us before.

(Picture taken July 2008)

The new modulator arrived the other day and was immediately pressed into service by yours truly. Going my preferred route with this sort of thing we’re using a surplused commercial RF Modulator instead of a consumer packaged one.

The results are excellent, well beyond my expectations and the cost was about 50% of the modulator I had previously used (and which had died almost immediately). The downside is that a portion of the manual included with this device is well beyond my level of understanding, so there is the remote possibility that I have configured it incorrectly.

I have ordered a second identical modulator tentatively for use as a “spare” although it may be pressed into service to distribute satellite across the CATV system in the house (more on that cludge later).

The lengths of Coax running up the side of the house have been pulled down, and it looks worlds better, hopefully I can repeat this process on the other side of the house shortly.

Ok, that’s it for now.

The second “drill through an exterior wall and then fish wire down uttering as many curse-words as possible in the process” undertaking was almost painless compared to the first effort. Granted this one was 1/3 the number of wires, but all the same it went fairly smoothly.

One run of cable left and we can get on with the rest of the project.

In anticipation of the new (old) system I’ve taken dozens of photos illustrating the shortcomings of the old system, and a few of the new system now that the more obvious weaknesses have been eliminated.

I’m also getting pretty good at plastering over the holes I cut into the interior walls to facilitate the wiring. I’ll be pretty good at this just in time to finish. Murhpys law, ain’t it?

Now that I have the leisure to plan out the new home for the DVR/Camera stuff I’ve been sketching things out in some detail. I’d like to make it as easy to work on the system as possible, while keeping the mess and clutter to a bar minimum.

Just to give you an example of how messy this is, we’re talking about a dozen 12V power lines running off the supply, 5 RG6 lines in for camera feeds, almost two dozen smaller runs of RG6 split off the switcher, multiplexer and DVR (keeping count? So far thats approximately 40 wires running around in that space).

I figure I’m going to have to rack mount some of this stuff, and create a patch bay of sorts to make re-organizing things easier down the line. I’ve no experience with this so I’m trying to puzzle out the most effective way of doing this.

So far this is what I have, using f-type connectors off the board:

DVR (First Bank of connectors)
8 connectors on the board which feed directly into 8 BNC connectors on the DVR

Cameras (Second bank of connectors)
8 independent feeds (one for each camera), split once for 16 connectors all total.

Multiplexer/Switcher (Third bank of connectors)
12 connectors (inputs for both the multiplexer and switcher)
4 connectors (outputs 3 multiplexer, 1 switcher)

The middle (or second) bank is patched to the upper (first) and lower (third) banks to distribute the video signals (except for one output from the third bank which is fed into the DVR bank)

Wow, this seems to call for 40 connections off the board and a tubload of wire (RG6 with f-types sounds a little labour intensive for this, I can’t help wondering if I can get by with RG59 and RCA connectors instead).

Any thoughts? Bueller?

On reflection f-type connectors would drive me crazy, I’m trying to find a deal on a crap-load of RCA panel mount connectors as that’s probably the easiest (and most economical) way to go.

Ok, the bedrooms now have coax outlets run from inside the house instead of lengths of coax running up the outside walls. It wasn’t really an asthetic choice as no one really sees that side of the house), but lets assume that dozens of zombies are grabbing at the house trying to get inside and they grab hold of a convenient length of coax and WHAM! I have to sit out the rest of the zombocalypse without cable.

Not cool! (truthfully I’m just trying to get all the wire and conduit off the exterior walls to clean things up a bit, but the zombie thing is a valid point too).

Of course now that I have proper RG6 runs to each bedroom and a seperate RG59 composite feed for the bedside monitor I discover that the Modulator I had (to introduce the multiplexed signal into the CATV feed) appears to have ceased functioning in any useful manner. I’d had concerns from the outset, and this settled it for me.

In fact if you have a second. Both the video distribution and modulator modules I had originally acquired were Steren and they looked to be junk from the moment they arrived. The documentation was horrible (the voltage was not marked clearly on either device, and of the transformer blocks included only one had the output voltage listed - multimeter to the rescue, but honestly?).

The upshot? No confidence, and I’ve chased my tail enough on this. I’ve ordered a surplused commercial unit which should be a little more robust than the Steren garbage, and I’ve got the wiring ready and waiting for it’s arrival (Canadian supplier too, should be faster shipping than something coming across the line).

I’ve also ordered a new amplifier for the CATV signal (although truthfully with only three runs I’m not sure it’s needed, but better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.).

So, one more weekends worth of wiring and some new techno-toys and the DVR system can move to it’s new enclosure (at that point I can then show you all the pictures of the old arrangements, the old wiring and I can point out all the weaknesses and blind spots - once they’ve all been corrected).

This morning we ran some errands and I bought a bigger masonry bit to better facilitate the previously mentioned wiring. It was up to the task, and two holes in the exterior wall (and three in the interior) later we’re off to the races with three runs of RG6 and assorted support wiring.

This WAS the big one, with this run supporting three cameras, the other two efforts to bring cable in from outside are much smaller in scope at two and one camera respectively. This run also has a hole to allow power out and generator power back in, for the time being I’ve done nothing but leave a length of paracord through that hole so I can seal the interior walls back up and pull the wire through when I’m ready to tackle that project.

Now, taking a short break from fishing wire through exterior walls I’ll see if I can’t drop some cable from the master bedroom down to the basement for that integrated CCTV feed.

-GRIN-

Good times!