7 Common Security Camera Installation FAILS and How To Avoid Them

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0:00 Intro
0:36 DORI
3:02 1. Camera Height

3:25 2. Choosing Field of View
4:54 3. Aim Your Cameras

6:25 4. Cover Your Cameras

6:58 5. Camera Wiring

8:38 6. Color Night Vision

9:53 7. Person Detection

[TheHookUp]

I just noticed that the labels at 3:55 are reversed. The first shot with the wide angle is 2.8mm focal length, while the second more zoomed in shot is with a 4.0mm focal length.

[s_HipHop]

Common mistake #8: Never deciding what you want and then not buying anything.

[aarontooth]

I carefully scrutinized this video, and following it's guide, I've put all ten of my security cameras up on a single piece of lumber mounted over my front door. I made sure to put the board at the proper height.

[DarthBill]

Not strictly camera info but concerning security vulnerabilities: Where I live, the electrical panels are on the house exterior. In addition to putting a small combination lock on the panel, I also have my NVR, network equipment, POE cameras, and Home Assistant Raspberry Pi all on UPS. My window and door sensors are all battery powered. Food for thought in case of power outage either by utility or break in.

[therizinosaurus]

fantastic video. Three things i want to add, being able to put a camera out of reach is not always an option, in this case you want to take the housing of the camera into consideration. Cameras with dome coverings can make it harder to mess with the camera itself and if tinted can hide where the camera is looking. For blind zone you can also make use of mirrors to help look where cameras can't see easily if you have limited amount of cameras. And finally don't underestimate dummy cameras if you can't afford the number of real cameras you want. Some times the just putting a thought into someone's mind can make them think twice.

[petercaulf]

At last, legitimate advice! I was a Crime Prevention Tactical Advisor (in the UK) for twenty years and was always amazed how many so-called professional installers didn't know this basic advice. Many householders will use electricians to install cameras and alarm systems and generally they make dreadful installers. The mistakes are understandable when they've had no training, but pro companies should know better. Well done.

[scottphillips]

When prepping my security camera installation I got some advice from a local security company. The advice was to place cameras at opposite corners of my home and point them toward each other. The logic was to catch the back and front of a person or car in the area. Sounds good, right? It's not all that great when you have an infrared light on the cameras and those lights point directly into the other camera. In my night images, the light flares from the camera lights almost overwhelms the opposing camera. I hope this helps someone.

[gulliver]

Thanks so much for this video. We've been broken into multiple times. Thieves got into home and unlocked the window. We were unaware of this and they came back. We have multiple wireless camera systems setup. There is an Xfinity security setup with a camera pointed above this window area. Both wireless systems failed because we finally figured out that the signals were jammed. These thieves are very sophisticated as it's a theft ring. Other residents who have wireless cameras cannot capture them. We also had 2 hardwired cameras setup but no footage, just a black screen when we looked at the footage. This video solved our frustrations as to why the hardwired cameras didn't pick up the thieves. Our electrical box is located in the basement. Many items were stolen from that area and the electrical box is right there on the wall. These thieves has to have shut off the main. We did notice our digital appliance clocks, etc blinking at times and we wondered as to why this was happening esp since there were no storms. Mystery solved!

[lazerusmfh]

Pro tip: many cameras have the ability to rotate the image 90 degrees. This am excellent thing to do down long skinny areas. Sometimes called corridor mode. This can be very effective for putting more pixels on target because image sensors are typically around 16x9, meaning more pixels in the horizontal direction.

[matthewhunter]

Great overall video. A few things I found worked.
1. You can never have too many cameras. I have 3 cameras in front of my house, each for a different purpose.
2. Ring type cameras can be great to cover dead areas. These are also useful if your main system doesn't have motion.
3. Add battery backup to wired systems. If possible, include your internet server to the same BBS.

[mistermylo]

Just installed my Blink system last month as an amateur and had an attempted break in (first ever) on my home last week. Thank goodness it did it’s job! Police responded and criminal ran off . Police were able to use my video to log the incident and the criminals ID. It was worth every penny. After watching your video I see some things I need to correct. 👍🏻

[wwolfram]

To help get the most our of narrow side yard area coverage, as mentioned @ 5:52 in the video is to rotate your camera 90 degrees. Normally your camera has a wider horizontal view vs. vertical. By rotating your camera, you now have more vertical view area which works great for narrow areas. The camera or security controller software such as IRIS have a rotate setting so that you do not view the area sideways like your camera is mounted but in a normal way.

[theonlybuster]

I have a camera monitoring my driveway and darkness was always a concern. So to get around this, I installed a solar-powered motion sensor flood light. The sensor for the light is set in the Detection range. This way, by the time someone gets closer, the camera has adjusted to the burst of light and the subject is not illuminated for a better view. Though I'll admit, it took quite a bit of trial and error to get the range and timing right on both of these. But once I got it, it's been completely worth it. Though, for the most part, the light alongside the obvious camera placement has been a great deterrent for would-be questionable characters.

[TDCIYB]

Sadly i only found your channel after buying a Reolink without AI detection.. You are so right about this being a must have feature! Thanks for your amazing content!

[BigMikeECV]

I improved the performance of my surveillance cameras by using an auxiliary infrared lighting device so I could turn off the camera's LEDs. This reduced the number of insects coming to the front of the camera, and also reduced the number of spiders building their webs in this unwanted spot.

[CentralPlainsEnt]

This is by far the best information and content on cameras, how to select them, how to select where they are installed at. I also appreciate how you explained the purpose of the cameras. Most of the websites that are selling cameras do not offer the information that you did.

[largelarry]

Covering all sides of the house including each window and door plus guarding each camera with another camera is smart. Identifying both people and cars passing by is also smart just in case someone is up to no good within the neighborhood, I use optical zoom POE 4K cameras for this. Nice video, thank you.

[Fleed]

Very informative thank you 👍🏼 . Just to add regarding night vision bit. If your house layout allows it, add motion sensor flood light for example in front of your garage, this will brighten up the scene and the camera will record in non night mode. This works too at the back garden or on the side where the rubbish bin placed.

[PhilLesh]

For night vision, you can add an infrared floodlamp to any area where you need more night visibility. Either with or without motion detection.

They make lots of cheap ir floodlights to choose from.

[jhudstudio]

The biggest mistake when I first started with cameras is the motion detection. A must have is person and vehicle detection. You nailed all the recommendations in one video! Also thanks for the video because I have been installing video camera setups for people I know and this video will give them a nice overview of what is needed when I start talking about what I believe they need as well. I don't care for battery cameras or solar cameras at all. I highly recommend that a person get a wired setup. Battery cams have to work off wireless and after 2 or more wireless, it can start to degrade wireless signal and slow it down. I noticed this after I installed 4 at my house. I had 4 wireless but they could also be hooked up with ethernet. The best decision I did was wire them. Now I have 9 5mp cameras and I have no lag or worries about missing events. Thanks again for the video! Keep up the great work!