CCTV - Do It Yourself Tutorial

part I

So you have decided to build video surveillance system yourself. This is not that difficult task but you have to know few very important things before you start.

Let’s start with cameras. You have to decide on how many you need now, and how many you might need in the future. If you think you will be OK with just 3 for now, but maybe later you will add few more, be sure to get Recording Device (DVR or Capture Card) that will let you expand your system in the future. DVRs on the market today starts from 4 and goes up to 32 cameras (even more for IP based systems). 4 may be enough for small store or office, but for everything else you will need more than that. Let’s take an ordinary store as an example. You will need one camera facing cash register, one at entrance, and this leaves you just 2 cameras left for the rest of the store. Probably this won’t be good enough.

So always count the cameras before you buy DVR. Good practice is to leave always some empty channels on your DVR. 90% of the customers usually call us within one year after installing system, and ask for additional cameras. Keep it in mind designing your system.

Here you will learn why it’s better to use PC based DVR.

When you know how many cameras you will need, now it’s time to choose each one of them.

So we have outdoor/indoor, day & night, infra red, day time, hidden, spy, professional, wireless and so on.

It is easy to choose between indoor or outdoor camera. Remember only that with severe indoor conditions it may be better to use weatherproof camera (dust, moisture, low or very high temperature).

If you have enough light around your property, you can use day/night cameras. Infra red are usually used in completely dark spots. Remember also, that LED’s on infra red cameras light up only at low or zero light. You can easily spot the camera red lights. It’s not as bright as flashlight, but you can see dark red light of led’s when you look at the camera.

If you don’t want your cameras to attract too much attention, use small bullet or dome cameras. But if you own for example car dealership, you want bad guys to know that you have surveillance system on operation. This is when you put professional cameras in outdoor enclosures. They will think twice before entering property. Plus c-mount cameras are state of the art products. They use the most advanced digital signal processing. Auto iris, back light compensation, auto gain control, white balance are just some of the features you can find in c-mount cameras. It's also easy to use different lenses from wide 3.5mm to telephoto 100mm.

Every security professional will tell you, that it’s always better to go with hard wired cameras than wireless. And it’s not only about the cost. Wireless systems are much less dependable. They trigger a lot of false alarms – usually “video signal lost” type. On the top of that anybody can buy RF scanner and simply tap into your surveillance system. And you don’t want that to happen.

Since you already know what you are looking for, I should mention few more things. Pay good attention, when buying security cameras. For example most of professional cameras do not come with lens. You have to purchase them separately. Each camera needs power supply unless you use multi-channel power distributing box. You can make your life easy and use plug & play. They are good for short runs (up to 300ft). If you need longer runs, use coaxial RG59 cable and low voltage cable for power. In this case you will need to put that ends on power cable and crimps on coax. This requires extra tools. You can also instead of using coax and low voltage cable, use Siamese cable. It may be a little more expensive, but makes running cables so much easier. When buying PTZ camera remember to get PTZ controller or RS232 adaptor. These do not usually come with camera.

source: camtechsurveillance.com