Network with Cameras, advice?

[drone567]

So I'm planning in my head; how to set up a network cctv system at home. I've been using two powerline plugs, AV500. I've just bought two more powerline plugs AV1000. I've got two PoE cameras to install. I also bought a PoE injector adaptor. Now I'm wondering how to connect all these up, and use an old PC as a viewing/memory for video(old PC has windows XP). Some questions> if I put the injector into the ethernet loop close to cameras, will it power both cameras? How will the two different speed plugs interact? How could I convert the old PC, to the basic minimum, for it's new role in surveillance? Also I might want to access it from a beach bar somewhere. Has anyone come across any good door cameras? I've been having trouble sourcing that. If anyone has set this type of network up, advice will help me see it, and get what I need in advance. Thanks.

[smargh]

How will the two different speed plugs interact?

No idea. If they are standards compatible, they should be fine. Using homeplugs for surveillance isn't generally a good option given how they can make things unreliable sometimes, but chances are that they'll work okay for your purposes.

if I put the injector into the ethernet loop close to cameras, will it power both cameras?

Most cheap cameras just take a voltage over the ethernet cable. This is NOT PoE and will probably destroy any equipment it's plugged in to except for the cameras. It depends on the model.

How could I convert the old PC, to the basic minimum, for it's new role in surveillance?

Depends on the model of your cameras & what functions they have.

Some people use a NAS as the thing to deal with the camera feeds & alerting: https://www.synology.com/en-us/surveillance/7.2

Some people run ZoneMinder on an old PC: https://zoneminder.com/

I don't think there are many decent Windows-based CCTV archiving/alerting/motion detecting systems. The couple I tried a few years back were very unreliable.

[peterb]

PoE injectors are usually configured one per device, as Ethernet is essentially point to point to a switch or router (unless you are using coax cable with loop through - which I doubt )

You can get PoE switches where some or all the ports will provide power to the remote device, which might have been a solution.

I'm not convinced that an old PC will cut it for video processing, depending on the spec of course. Basically the wiring is as for any network, the cameras are just devices on a lan, so they will need to have an IP address (manual or via DHCP - but a static address would probably be best) and some software that will drive the cameras and act as the DVR.

[peterb]

If you ditch Windows and go for a Linux install, there are several open source solutions. Smargh (we cross posted) mentioned zone minder, there is also

https://www.ivideon.com/ivideon-server-linux/

Google "Linux video surveillance software" and you should get quite a few hits.

[drone567]

Thanks for the ideas. All the plugs are same company, (so hope compatible). They are PoE cameras(eg:reolink RLC-420). I've been doing some reading and they seem best option; one cable, more control. Yes it clicked about the injector only powering one camera, during day, and then I stared thinking about splitters. I saw this on Scan (5 Netgear pro safe plus switch LN66002), which seem to offer what I need. I could feed PoE power into it, and manage both the cameras. I was thinking about Linux for PC, but a NAS, or cloud storage might be better option. I'm using the companies software on this PC, and it works well(it supposed to email me if there is an intruder, which would make for bizarre viewing). I'll have to think about the options, install it, and then add more cameras, etc.

[neonplanet40]

Synology device's have their own camera software system. i havent tried it but it gets good reviews. Not all models have it though.