Home Automation and Security Systems Part 3, Camera’s

You now have the camera system up and running, remind yourself why you’ve gone to all the trouble.

16:55 14 July 2017

Great you can see live cameras, view sun rise, next doors cat visiting your prize flower bed, but is that why you really spent all that money.

 

Let’s face it, to a normal Joe public it’s going to get boring really quick so you’re going to ignore it within weeks.  Well don’t!!  There’s no point having that level of investment in time, money and pain and needing to review some footage in six months’ time and finding out its broken, misconfigured or been nicked!

 

On a regular basis check the cameras are recording, no lens contamination and are still pointing in the correct direction.

Cameras recording, the hard drive will fill up the NVR should be set to keep only the last X days of recording.  Check what’s the age of the earliest recording from each camera?  If you’ve not got enough recording can you change any of the other cameras recording strategy to improve the situation.   If not, you’re going to need a hard-drive upgrade.  A lot of NVR’s allow multiple hard drives in the one unit to increase the recording capacity.  If you can just add a second hard drive, no point having a failure and losing one hard drive and all you’re recording at some point in the future.

 

Lens contamination, in my opinion there are three main culprits, birds playing target practice, spiders building a lovely warm web and condensation.  Birds, nothing you can do except to employ the cat who visits your flower bed.  Spiders, there are repellent sprays designed to repel them, you may wish to try those.  Condensation, this is unfortunately caused due to a failed seal in the camera.  Probably very little you can do apart from replace the camera.

 

Still pointing in the correct direction, yes cameras can move, that’s not the only issue.  Trees grow, and love to spread out generally high up in front of your favourite camera view.  Finally, are you really looking at the most import views, over time priorities and circumstances change.  If you have lots of money then add more cameras, however people with limited money should maybe consider reviewing and moving cameras.

 

So, the camera estate is still all good, made monthly checks, then there are only a couple more things to-do.  Check it is possible to recover recording archives, it may be too late once the cat has been to the flower beds.  Don’t turn it off.

 

Thanks for reading the 3 instalments, am going to go home tonight to check my cameras as per my advice, checking the camera point at my cat run hasn’t been disabled by the crafty little beggar whilst planning his great escape.