Home CCTV Camera advice please

  • Thread starter Deleted member 113659
  • Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
D

Deleted member 113659

Guest
Please could I ask for help on this? I’m hopeless with tech things. Despite research (I know 🙄) I’m none the wiser.

I’d like to fit a small camera (Or 2) up at the soffit point at the corner of the house (bungalow) pointing at the front door. The reason being that during the day when my wife is alone, the door bell goes it’s a major effort for her to get to the front door. Obviously it’s fine when it’s a delivery etc but it’s not when it’s a pest caller wanting to talk sh!te about nothing. (Zapping her energy as she’s too nice to close the door on them).

It’d be great if when she hears the bell she can simply pick up her IPhone and see who’s at the door then choose wether to answer it or not.

We don’t need any recording stuff. Just a camera connected to WiFi and a downloaded app. There’s 100’s of cameras online but I honestly haven’t a scooby what’s good from bad. I certainly don’t want a cheap thing so a trusted brand (not that I know one) would be good. 4K quality would be cool too.

Thanks in advance for your help on this. 👍

Ant.
 
Please could I ask for help on this? I’m hopeless with tech things. Despite research (I know 🙄) I’m none the wiser.

I’d like to fit a small camera (Or 2) up at the soffit point at the corner of the house (bungalow) pointing at the front door. The reason being that during the day when my wife is alone, the door bell goes it’s a major effort for her to get to the front door. Obviously it’s fine when it’s a delivery etc but it’s not when it’s a pest caller wanting to talk sh!te about nothing. (Zapping her energy as she’s too nice to close the door on them).

It’d be great if when she hears the bell she can simply pick up her IPhone and see who’s at the door then choose wether to answer it or not.

We don’t need any recording stuff. Just a camera connected to WiFi and a downloaded app. There’s 100’s of cameras online but I honestly haven’t a scooby what’s good from bad. I certainly don’t want a cheap thing so a trusted brand (not that I know one) would be good. 4K quality would be cool too.

Thanks in advance for your help on this. 👍

Ant.
I would go for Google Nest, one doorbell (Nest Hello) and one outdoor camera. Not cheap but excellent quality, super customer support and as easy as it gets to set up and use.

Best of all it will even tell your wife who is at the door both on her phone and on a Google Nest speaker/display in the house. If I ring your doorbell it will later ask if you recognise the photos it caught of me, you then type in”Bobby Dazzler” and then if I push the doorbell again it will announce “Bobby Dazzler is at the door”.

May the moment Google have special offers, and you could get the lots for around £350-400 ish. We have other security and camera systems but I genuinely would only recommend Nest.

Google customer services are spot on, and the promotions are often fair, however you can usually buy them a little cheaper elsewhere, so it’s worth a little “obsessive research” as you can maybe trim 20% off Google’s own pricing.

You can have cloud recording for £100 per year for as many cameras as you like - and it does the clever artificial intelligence for recognising people too - which I don’t think is bad value. There are cheaper options.

Google are great to customers too. They’ve sent me all sorts of stuff for free, a Google Nest Speaker, a Google Nest Hub, and something else, none of which was a BOGOF, they simply emailed me to say if I want one I can have one.
 
Last edited:
I would go for Google Nest, one doorbell (Nest Hello) and one outdoor camera. Not cheap but excellent quality, super customer support and as easy as it gets to set up and use.

Best of all it will even tell your wife who is at the door both on her phone and on a Google Nest speaker/display in the house. If I ring your doorbell it will later ask if you recognise the photos it caught of me, you then type in”Bobby Dazzler” and then if I push the doorbell again it will announce “Bobby Dazzler is at the door”.

May the moment Google have special offers, and you could get the lots for around £350-400 ish. We have other security and camera systems but I genuinely would only recommend Nest.

Google customer services are spot on, and the promotions are often fair, however you can usually buy them a little cheaper elsewhere, so it’s worth a little “obsessive research” as you can maybe trim 20% off Google’s own pricing.

You can have cloud recording for £100 per year for as many cameras as you like - and it does the clever artificial intelligence for recognising people too - which I don’t think is bad value. There are cheaper options.

Google are great to customers too. They’ve sent me all sorts of stuff for free, a Google Nest Speaker, a Google Nest Hub, and something else, none of which was a BOGOF, they simply emailed me to say if I want one I can have one.

Thanks for all that Rob, I’ll certainly look into the Google System. Although the idea of a camera up in the soffits as opposed to a doorbell camera was because of the layout of the path to our front door. People tend to ring the bell then move down the disabled ramp which would take them out of range for the bell camera. Although I understand they’ll have a super wide angle range.

I’ll look into it. Cheers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 219
I have a ring setup at my house.

The door bell and multiple flood light cameras.

No issue with it and you pay £75/ year or something like that for 30 day rolling recordings cloud backed up.

Ring / Nest are the two of the best you could look at at the moment.
 
multiple flood light cameras.

Are they wireless and if so how is the quality ?

Been looking are replacing both F+R PIR activated floodlights with the Ring light / cameras. I am unable to used wired units (for the comms) as i have no access to the eves to run cables due to a loft conversion.

K
 
Although cameras on the roof by the soffits may seem a good idea try and site them in a place where you can reach them easily, you'll be surprised how often you'll need to clear spiders and cobwebs off the lens!
 
We have a Hikvision setup , 1 dome by the door (which has sound) , 2 on the front and 2 on the back.
I setup line crossing detection for the cam on the entrance to the driveway so I get an alert if someone crosses that line (can be setup for all cams) , the alert pops up on my phone and I can then either view it live or watch a 5 min recording of each crossing later , The nvr is hidden away , all in it was about £1000 fitted , there is no subscription..
IMG_0875.JPGIMG_0876.JPG
 
Last edited:
I use Reolink here. They're POE cameras and unlike the old digital cameras, the quality has been consistent for years. Good night lighting and have built in SD card slots in the event that someone breaks in and steals the NVR
 
We used to use many cameras at work, IP cameras, easy to setup and stream and a few apps available to view the live stream.

As mentioned if you get IR ones they are a pain for spiders webs and need regular cleaning.

I'd have thought if it was just for answering then one of the video doorbells would be the way to go.

For security though then best to think about day/night then you have the IR problem so access must be considered.

Put a notice on your door telling cold callers where to go to. ;)
 
Although cameras on the roof by the soffits may seem a good idea try and site them in a place where you can reach them easily, you'll be surprised how often you'll need to clear spiders and cobwebs off the lens!

As I said Toe it’s a bungalow so will be easily reached from a lil pair of steps. 😊
 
Thanks for all the help guys. All really good/interesting points. Much appreciated. 👍
 
Are they wireless and if so how is the quality ?

Been looking are replacing both F+R PIR activated floodlights with the Ring light / cameras. I am unable to used wired units (for the comms) as i have no access to the eves to run cables due to a loft conversion.

K

I have my flood light cams all wired for power and then they are connected to wifi.

However i have seen ring cameras/door bells powered by solar powered add ons. Haven't done much research on it but definitely a good shout.

Personally i wouldn't mount ring flood light cams higher then ground floor as the quality is borderline pointless tbh.

The customisation on the ring app for there products are very good and you can set up your motion "zones" and times of when you would want the light to work etc including sensitivity.

Ultimately i've bought into the Ring system so now im tied in due to the amount i've spent on the hardware. Its similar to owning an iphone/mac/laptop/pad etc.
 
I have my flood light cams all wired for power and then they are connected to wifi.

I have flood lights front + back at the moment so i have the mains voltage that i intend to use to power the cameras , just was unsure how good the image was through the Wi-fi and what is the maximum distance from the Wi Fi source to camera?

K
 
Thanks for all that Rob, I’ll certainly look into the Google System. Although the idea of a camera up in the soffits as opposed to a doorbell camera was because of the layout of the path to our front door. People tend to ring the bell then move down the disabled ramp which would take them out of range for the bell camera. Although I understand they’ll have a super wide angle range.

I’ll look into it. Cheers.
You can mount the Nest outdoor cameras on the wall or soffits, the mount is a strong magnet so it’s easy to get the angle just right.

Pound for pound the doorbell offers more features than the outdoor cams though, but the biggest benefits are that it has the facial recognition built in and that you always get a clear view of someone because they can’t be more than an arms length away from the lens when pushing the doorbell.

I also use Ring cameras as they have two big advantages, the first is that they offer cordless battery/solar powered cameras and doorbells which means that you can put them anywhere, and the second advantages is that they can trigger audible chimes which alert you that someone has stepped into the field of view, but it also tells them that you know 😁
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom