How To...

So you 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 fine with just three for now, but maybe later you will add few more, remember to get DVR that will let you expand your system in the future. We offer 4ch or 16ch DVR. 4 may be enough for small store or office, but for everything else you will need more than that. Let’s take a convenient store as an example. You will need one camera facing cash register, one at entrance door, and this leaves you just 2 cameras left for the rest of the store. Probably this won’t be enough.

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

In “About our products” 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 decide on kind and performance of each one.

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

Deciding if you need outdoor or indoor is easy. 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 night lights around your property, you can use day & night cameras. Infra red are usually use in completely dark spots. Remember also, that LED’s on infra red cameras light up at night time. You can easily see camera. 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. This is when you put proffesionall cameras in outdoor enclosures. They will think twice before entering property.

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. 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 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 using multi-channel power distributing box. You can make your life easy and use plug & play cables. They good for short runs (up to 200ft). If 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. When buying PTZ camera remember to get PTZ controller or RS232 adaptor. This does not usually come with camera.

Our DVR boards work fine with 95% of today’s computers. Sometimes graphic card upgrade is required. They also do not need dedicated PC. You can simply let the system run in the background. You will not even notice the difference in performance of your PC. Of course having dedicated PC is recommended especially for large systems.

Remember that this kind of equipment comes usually in industrial packaging. Manuals, if available are really basic or in electronic form.

This is some basic knowledge required to start shopping for surveillance system. If you need more information, call or email us. Thank you and good luck.

To contact us: