A Dive into Security Cameras, Part 1
You should feel safe in your home and for some people, having security cameras provides a bit more peace of mind. For me, I’ve always been interested in footage management and how adding a single device (the camera) can be a super-simple ‘open the box and go’ affthe air to the other extreme of a multi-layered system with object tracking, thermal overlays and acoustic-triggering. Of course, finding a way to tame the chaos of a multitude of cameras recording nonstop and finding a sweet point in automation is its own flavor of fun (or frustration - it’s a very thin line!)
For consumers, there are three broad use cases of surveillance or security cameras
Security: this can be something like a camera watching the driveway for people coming up to the house, or be more subtle like a nanny camera just to make sure the babysitter is on the up and up
Package notification: I think this might be the bigger motivator: we all worry about porch pirates, so having a quick ping to the phone when a delivery comes is great
Glorified baby monitors: this could literally be a baby monitor, an ‘is the pot boiling yet’ monitor, a ‘my kids are swimming in the pool is everything okay’ monitor etc.
At MinMax, of course, I’m looking to cover all of the above. And then some.
There are so many brands and models of cameras that we would be analyzing them forever; according to Synology’s camera compatibility list, they support over 7500 models from 140 vendors. We need to very quickly bring that number down to something that we can process through. I think, with five questions, we can sufficiently narrow down the options:
How do you want to connect and power the camera: via power-over-ethernet (POE), WiFI (with dedicated power) or purely battery/solar powered?
Battery/solar powered gives you the flexibility to setup nearly anywhere (i.e., in a tree!); in addition to having to replace/recharge the batteries every so often, every aspect of the ecosystem will be battery-conscious, so you will generally be limited to motion-triggered capture and on-demand streaming only
POE cameras have constant power so you have the ability to do continuous recording reducing the reliance on motion or event detection; being constantly powered, they will typically give you the best video quality options. Having a wired connection allows for a very stable video stream. The downside is that you will need a direct connection between the camera and the video recording system
Wi-Fi cameras are somewhere in between: they are continuously powered but any power connection will do - their connection to the video recording system is wireless. The downside is that you’re at the mercy of a wireless connection. Video quality will be somewhere in between the battery and POE options
What type of recording do you want to do: motion/activity triggered? Scheduled recording? Continuous (24x7) recording?
This choice is only available if you opted for a Wi-Fi or POE camera
The benefits are pretty obvious: you can capture everything and not have to worry about whether a motion/event triggering algorithm fires correctly or not
The downside is that continuous recording generates a lot of data (and cameras/recorders aren’t exactly concerned with optimized encoding). This adds another layer of complexity when you have to decide take into consideration the video codec used by the cameras. You’ll almost certainly be relying on some kind of centralized video recording system
Are you looking for indoor or outdoor cameras? Do you have impact/vandalism considerations?
Indoor cameras will generally be a bit more svelte and compact as they don’t need to worry about water or snow
When looking at outdoor capable cameras, take into consideration the operating temperature if you live in and an environment where it gets particularly hot or cold
More so for public/commercial spaces, impact/vandal-resistant cameras are available - you’ll just need to pay to play!
What kind of ‘smart home’ integration are you looking for? Or conversely, is there an ecosystem you are specifically looking for?
Having smart home integration can be pretty cool - you can have camera feeds automatically come up when events are triggered etc.
Of course, the downside is that this infrastructure presents a bigger cyber-security surface area to manage (if you care)
Note that you don’t necessarily have to go all-in or all-out — you can integrate individual cameras into your smart-home if desired
Is there anything you want to do with the footage?
Do you want to get the footage offsite?
Do you want to do analytics on the footage (i.e. count people) or generate timelapses?
Do you want to have a dedicated TV to display all of the camera feeds?
We specifically wanted to look at continuous recording: if you plan for continuous and run into problems or limitations (likely disk space), you can always scale something back to make it work. Continuous is just easier to plan for - there will always be 24 hours in a day whereas motion-triggered recording will obvious vary based on how much activity is detected.
A POE camera receives data and power from via the built-in ethernet port. There are four ways to connect and power a POE camera
Use a POE injector: you connect your POE injector to your existing network hardware (this provides the data link) and then you connect your POE camera to the POE injector. POE injector itself has a power cable and supplies the necessary power to the downstream device. Having a POE injector is great for testing!
Use a POE switch: here, you just connect your POE camera directly to the switch like any other device. For non-POE devices, everything behaves as usual but POE-devices, will receive power from the switch as needed
Use a POE NVR: essentially the same as connecting to a POE switch, but here, you connect the camera to a network video recorder (NVR) that has POE ports
Use a DC power adapter: most POE cameras will also come with a DC input connector that allows you to connect to a DC power adapter (usually not included). In this case, you will have at least two cables running from your camera: one ethernet cable for data, running to your network infrastructure and a DC power cable to provide power.
Tip:
Even if you plan on using POE infrastructure, I would recommend getting a POE injector (preferred) or DC adapter (works as well). Having one will allow you to do testing while up on a ladder if you don’t necessarily have ethernet cables already in place. A POE injector is more useful since it will use a standard RJ45 connection so it will work also for additional POE devices down the road.
Going with POE cameras means that we need to figure out how to store all the footage and manage all of the cameras in a centralized manner. To do this we will need a network video record (NVR). Most NVRs that work with POE cameras will also have built in POE (meaning, you won’t need to buy a POE switch or buy a whole bunch of POE injectors).
What about Digital Video Recorders (DVR)?
A DVR is essentially the same thing as a NVR — except instead of connecting Wi-Fi or POE cameras, they allow you to connect older analog cameras that use a coaxial BNC connector. For my purposes (and I imagine, for most consumers/prosumers), I’ll be looking at digital (POE) cameras.
In our case, we have a Synology NAS unit that can act as a NVR (and I plan on adding a POE switch). Almost all NAS units will support having security cameras in one way or another, even if it is just via a FTP or network share for the video stream to pipe to although some brands offer a very rich featureset. For some of the more popular brands
ASUStor ‘Surveillance Center’
Buffalo ’Surveillance Server’
Synology ‘Surveillance Station’
TerraMaster does not have a package for managing cameras but can act as a store
Your specific experience will vary based on the management software available as well as the hardware specifications of the specific NAS unit you’re looking at. Some NAS brands (QNAP, Synology) even offer more specialized NVR units.
A word on licenses:
One of the ways NAS brands ‘get you’ is with camera-licenses. Most NAS units will allow you to connect a whole bunch of NAS units (it varies by model, some will allow you to connect 40 or more cameras!) but the NAS will only include one or two camera licenses. If you want to connect more, then you’ll have to buy additional connection licenses. Thankfully these addon licenses you buy are generally transferrable.
The more specialized NVR NAS units from Synology and QNAP come with eight licenses out of the box which sounds great — except those licenses are embedded into that unit. This means that if you ever replace or upgrade that unit, you’ll either have to continue paying the premium for the more specialized NVR, or you’ll have to shell out for individual licenses (which thankfully, can be transferred)..
If you are going with a branded NVR unit (i.e., the same brand as the cameras), then this step won’t matter; if you’re using a NAS unit I would recommend getting a camera that is officially supported by your NAS unit. Consult your NAS IP camera compatibility list to be sure.
Before we dive into the possibilities, it’s important to figure out what we want from our camera. Every scenario will be different and you may even have different requirements for different cameras.
Note!
For audio recordings, please check your local laws on whether or not this is allowed! (you can orf course, always disable audio recording).
Regardless of whether you have a Synology NAS or not, their Supported IP Camera tool is one of the best that I have found because it allows you to specify what features you care about first (whereas all of the other compatibility tools assume you have a specific camera/brand in mind already).
For one reason or another, I started my exploration with Reolink. What I liked the most actually, was navigating the product stack without having to hop through half a dozen layers and (for better or worse), not having a metric ass ton of cameras to sift through, clicking on endless ‘View More’ panels. It was a bonus that the cameras are reasonably affordable and relatively available. I also liked that the cameras were grouped by connectivity only (POE, Wi-Fi, Battery) and they were not grouped by form-factor (bullet, dome, etc.) but depending on what you’re looking for, it may not be an issue for you.
Although I’m primarily looking at POE cameras, I’ve included the Wi-Fi and Battery model breakdown as well with some general comments. Here’s the rough decision matrix for the three different families of Reolink cameras.
A few common terms:
IR-Cut: security cameras use IR illuminators to allow them to see at night; during the day when there is sufficient lighting, these IR illuminators can cause color distortion. Cameras with a an IR-cut filter can filter this out to improve the video signal
Sub-Stream: when you show the camera’s live-view, you are generally viewing the main video stream; but when you are looking at list of cameras with just the little thumbnails? That’s the sub-stream. Generally speaking, the main-stream is the one I am concerned with
Since I’m specifically looking at cameras that are H265 and 4K, this limits me to the 8-series of cameras which are then broken down into two more decisions based on form-factor and to a lesser degree, pricing:
Bullet (810A vs 811A). The 811A is the functionally superior camera in terms of field-of-view and the potential flexibility of having zoom (even assuming that the 811A will likely work with Synology even without official support), but the 810A is likely the better camera for me. With the 811A, I would end up paying too much for features I outright don’t want (2-way audio, lights, siren)
Dome (820A vs 822A). Here, the 822A is the superior camera: better field of view, brighter fixed-aperture lens and with the flexibility for zoom
Compared to the POE cameras, there’s nothing that supports H265 or 4K. Given that we are trading the convenience of not having to pull network cables through, it makes the most sense to go for a PTZ to maximize on the strengths. You’ll want to keep an eye out for the wifi-supportThe lack of 4K might be understandable given the unpredictability of wifi, but H265 is limited by the processor (read: power limitations) — but these cameras all have continuous power.
PTZ (E1 Outdoor): realistically, this is the only choice. The other PTZ options make big compromises on bitrate, frame rate and have dimmer optics. This camera supports 2.4 and 5GHz wifi bands as well as wired ethernet and comes with Person/Car detection as well
Bullet (510WA vs 511WA): like the 810A/811A comparison above, here the 511WA has the superior feature set, but if you’re going to go for the more svelt, battery conscious bullet form-factor, the 510WA is my pick since I’m not paying for features I don’t want
With battery only cameras, we should really be targeting totally infeasible or awkward places to add a camera: trees, unpowered sheds etc. None of these cameras support continuous recording and only one supports H265 or resolution above 1080. For this class, battery life is the big consideration rather than image quality — which is evident by the lack of detailed information on sensor or lens information.
In certain applications (i.e., a private shed) it may be a viable option to run a small solar panel to a large power-bank to “plug in” these battery powered cameras. That may help to provide a substantial boost in effective runtime.
PTZ (Argus PT): although it may cost more power to run the PTZ components, this would allow us to truly maximize the flexibility of a battery camera. Note that any kind of motion triggering will only apply to the field of view the camera happens to be pointed at the given moment.
Puck (Argus 3 Pro): this is the do-it-all battery camera
Most security cameras offer some kind of black-and-white night-vision mode (some even offer color-night-vision but I don’t have a model to test). The way they work is by using IR illuminators to light up the scene with ‘invisible’ light. There are two broad types of IR illuminators:
850nm: much more common, brighter, generally better image, the LEDs will have some glow
940nm: about half the illumination range, dimmer but the LEDs are effectively invisible
Just how visible is the red glow from the IR illuminators? Certainly not enough to overtly draw attention to themselves, but if you’re looking for a telltale glow and have an idea of where to look, you’ll spot it.
There’s no need to worry about whether to go with 850nm or 940nm though — cameras need to be built from the ground up around 940nm illumination and I wasn’t able to find any well-documented, consumer (or prosumer, or commercial for that matter) oriented cameras built around 940nm. If you really don’t want the glow, turn off the IR LEDs and instead, add supplemental lighting (i.e. turn on your porch lights).
So I ordered a single RLC-820A for testing purposes and I thought if I was happy with the camera, I would just order a whole bunch and hook them up to my NAS (after buying the licenses of course!). Something about this process felt a little too easy so I wanted to check a few other things.
There are three constraints that are interconnected
Each NAS will have a limit on the number of cameras you are allowed to connect; most units will come with 2 licenses and additional licenses are available to purchase, up to the total connection limit.
Based on the hardware/performance of each NAS, there is a budget (measured in fps) for a given resolution of camera that will be supported. The budget is split according to the video codec as well. Generally, for a given resolution, H265 will give you a bigger budget.
Based on the available space available in the NAS (or at least the space available to surveillance station), there will be a limit to the number of days backlog you can store before having to overwrite older footage.
While there is nothing you can do to exceed the total connection limit, there are three ways you can make better use of the frame-rate and disk-space budget:
Reduce the capture frame-rate for the camera. This can be a bit of a balancing act: if you go too low, the footage will be begin to be too choppy to be useful
Reduce the bitrate used. Again, we also want to do this in moderation otherwise the footage will be too noisy to be useful
You can transition your cameras from continuous recording to motion-triggered, scheduled-continuous only or a combination
At the end of the day, you need to determine how much footage backlog you want to capture and retain. For some users (more commercial), this may also tie into how fast they can get footage off-site as well.
Synology Surveillance Station (SSS) has a few neat features to explore
Smart Timelapse: continuous recording ends up mostly being small blips of activity in a sea of ‘nothing happening’. With a time-lapse, you can get a ‘fast-fwd view’ of a period of time allowing you to compress overnight footage into a 2 minute clip that you can review with your morning coffee. The smart aspect comes in the way of allowing you dynamically slow down the footage when motion is detected and speed back up when it’s just a ‘sea of nothing happening’
Edge Recording: the nice thing about network recording is everything just magically gets recorded to a share — but what happens if there is a network drop? With edge recording (and a supported camera with an SD card), the missing footage is automatically backfilled from the SD card to the NAS when the connection is restored. Sadly, my camera doesn’t support this feature — it seems like this is only available when you have pricier commercial/government oriented cameras. If this is a feature that is important to you, make sure to check beforehand
LiveCam: one of the neat things about using a NAS as an NVR is that you have all your footage centralized into one location. But what if you don’t have coverage of a certain spot, or you want to take more detailed/specific footage after an event has happened? With LiveCam you can turn your phone into a temporary IP camera to go out in the field.
Live Broadcast: I’m not sure if I would have a use for this but theoretically you could use a security camera to broadcast to YouTube. This feels like it’s a solution looking for a problem, but nonetheless, is pretty neat
I have a perfectly functional DS1817+ so this begs the question of why I might be looking at another NAS. There are three main drivers for this
Reduce drive thrashing: I use my main NAS pretty extensively (both read and write) and sadly, I don’t have SSD caching. Surveillance is a constant sequential write operation which means, if I’m using my NAS for other things, there will be back and forth seeking around. Not an issue for one or two cameras, but perhaps more of an issue as I add more cameras
Transition to surveillance drives: I use NAS ‘optimized’ drives in my NAS which is a fancy way of saying they are rated for continuous operation (from a vibration and endurance perspective). Surveillance optimized drives are also rated for continuous operation but also (supposedly) are also optimized for continuous sequential write access rather than ‘general purpose’ (once setup and initial testing are done, surveillance is 99% write, with only intermittent read)
Segment the workflow: longer term, I’d like to explore automating a quick encode and pushing footage offsite and automated with life-cycle management; by having a separate device, I can keep everything related to this in one space. Of course, I this would allow me to leverage NAS to NAS backups as well
None of these are deal breakers so I’m not in a huge rush so this will be something to explore down the road.
My biggest takeaway is to make sure you thoroughly explore the compatibility of your camera with your NAS (if you’re going with that route) - I would have found out up front that Edge Recording wasn’t available on my camera and would have avoided the disappointment when I realized it’s effectively out of my price point.
Obviously, my next step is installing a few cameras and going from there. A tool like IPVM is super handy for this: it leverages Google Maps and Streetview to help you plan out your layout - you can even select specific camera models and it will dial in the field of view etc. Once some of the cameras are setup, I need to explore how to automate encodes and life-cycle management on the retained footage, stay tuned for a follow up!