Recommendations for a web/surveillance cam (outdoor)?

have a look at Hikvision colorvu cameras as they will give you full colour during the night, it has a small white LED and ultra sensitive CCDs with wide dynamic range.

Up to 8 MP (4K range) CVBS is only about 0.5 MP

Available in eitrher ethernet (use a wifi to wired adapter) or in TVI/CVI/AHD/CVBS formats.

Some come with microphones so that migh tbe of interest to catch animal noises

SOme of the colourVu cams come with SD card support onboard so that can get you out of having to buy a Recorder.

Worth looking at:

I have a Tapo c320WS to monitor my driveway/car.

Colour night vision or IR. It has a white light for colour in complete dark conditions or IR illumination for monochrome. It can record to a mirco sd card of 256GB.

It comes with a mains to 9V adapter which has a reasonably long lead. It can be wi-fi or wired ethernet (power can be supplied by wired ethernet). Obviously for wi-fi it needs to be within range of your router nd the mains need to be within a couple of metres from your camera installed position.

Youtube review which gives a reasonable good guide to all functionality

I can also view the live video via VCL on my laptop (to view stream in VCL stream1: rtsp://IP Address/stream1)

The drawback for your application may be the field of view of the lens.

Approx £55 for the camera and £25/30 for a fast quality 256GB sd card.

Thanks. That looks a reasonable price and widely available.

I looked on Amazon and the number of different cameras is mind boggling.

Cheers

Dave R

Those cameras with white lights for colour video at night will scare the bejayzus out of those hedgehogs.

Secondly, these webcams will probably need to be permanently sited. The advantage of a trailcam (plus mounting spike) is that you can put it pretty much anywhere you like, and move it around to check on different spots in the garden.

My main problem with trail cams is water ingress. I bought a cheap one & it was fine for several months, but gradually the rainwater managed to get inside and fog the whole thing up. I bought a more expensive (Browning) trail cam. Again, after around a year's use it started letting in rainwater (I can't find any defects in the case which should cause that.

That one's back with the UK distributor to see what they intend to do about it.

On the C320WS if you select the IR for night the camera will still remain colour for quite low light levels and if it gets too dark it will switch to IR with two IR LEDs to illuminate the scene.

You can also force it into "day mode" if you have a very low light level and it will stay in colour mode without switching on its own white light. The picture will become more grainy with a reduction of light level.

Does it do car numberplates at night ?

Sorry - I don't know if you can read a car number plate in IR. My camera is fitted to the front of my house and there is a cool blue LED street light about 10 metres outside the field of view. My camera stays in daytime mode and in low level colour mode (camera lights not on).

As for having enough resolution to read the number, the linked video shows a number plate at various distances with inserts showing the zoomed in area.

As my car is parked very close to the camera which is still operating in "daytime" colour mode I can read my own number plate with ease from the video.

The camera has a fairly wide field of view and I cannot read the number plate of a car parked in a driveway on the opposite side of the road that is 4 terrace houses away. Google maps shows this distance to be 27 metres between camera position and car plate.

My camera is positioned to cover the car parked in my front garden/driveway and to cover the path leading to my front door. It also just covers the road and pavements outside of my house.

I have my camera recording on the person detection, which works well.

Plenty of cheap ptz wifi cameras on eBay in the sub 40 pound bracket.most will take a memory card. A few will also track motion but not sure if this will work with a small target like a hedgehog. They need 12v power via a supplied wall wart but just as happy with a leisure battery.

Weirdly, YouTube only yesteday plugged an ad for "Optiguard" which appears to be a full functioning camera that simply screws into a light socket (when did the inferior ED fittings become a thing ?).

Looked worth a look, if you want to research.

Our Trailcam is an LTL Acorn which has done us well for some years. Recently it stopped detecting motion, although the camera itself still works. However a Trailcam which doesn't detect motion isn't much good.

There was a guy on line who used to help diagnose, but I think his web site is no longer there. Ah - new version.

Anyway I was looking for a short term solution to the lack of working Trailcam with possibilities for further use as a security camera.

Cheers

Dave R

If the main purpose of the camera ia home security I can't see any problem with scaring the bejayzus out of ne'erdowells with bright, visible light - provided of course the scrotes can't disable the said camera and/or lights.

If the main purpose is watching nature, might it be worth doing some research on the wavelength reception of the creatures you are particularly interested in recording? There are plenty of critters which see comfortably in the UV and IR frequencies and the kind of light you use for background illumination/colour recording may well upset some and be ignored by others.

Nick

Well, there's a thing.

Central PIR wasn't working, but I enabled side PIRs and we are back in business!!

I think I will still go ahead with a security camera for the experience and usefulness.

Cheers

DaveR

Take your time. It's easy to buy the wrong thing.

For example, a PTZ may compensate for inadequate resolution for small items. If you want to study mice, a PIR tells you they're present, then if you want an actual picture, you need to zoom in to get detail.

With a computer and YOLO (You Only Look Once), you can do creature recognition. The computer can tell you a hedgehog is present. But what you do after that, I have no idea. Ideally, one camera would be wide field, and would identify a hedgehog at (X,Y). A second camera with PTZ, does the actual recording.

I have not been able to find a ready-to-use YOLO code example. The web site "medium.com" has a number of useless articles, intended to encourage subscription to the site. And they mention YOLO. That would be an example of automating the recording of wild life.

A wildlife camera seems so much simpler, as it waits for the prey to get within reach, then shoots the pix. Can you easily locate a security cam, where the wild life are ? If so, then maybe zooming in is not necessary. But if placing a camera on the side of the house, that would be too far away. That's when you need a PTZ and so on.

Planning is key.

Paul

We are looking at recording the comings and goings of one or more hedgehogs up and down the side of the house under a car port style plastic roof.

So the target area is pretty well defined, and there is shelter and power for the camera.

The car port has wooden rafters so moving the camera around should be easy.

Further fitting for long term surveillance can be planned once the capabilities of the camera have been explored.

Cheers

Dave R