Friday, December 17, 2010

Things to Consider Before Buying an IP Camera

IP Security CameraSecurity systems are great and one of the most popular types of cameras to get is an IP camera. The main market for small security camera systems is typically small businesses and homes. The problem is that many people just jump right into getting a security camera system or an IP camera and do not fully consider all the options. Before you run off and buy an IP camera for your small business or home, there are a few things you need to consider.

Ask yourself if you want a complete picture or more detail. The purpose of why you want a surveillance system will determine what field of view you need. With overview images, you will have a view of a complete area such as an office, a parking lot or a driveway. You will also be able to monitor the general activities in the specific area. A highly detailed image is valuable where you have the need to identify specific details of any products, objects or people.

Another thing to consider is what area are you going to be monitoring and how wide is that area. When you take the specific area into consideration, try and determine the strategic points of your area and how far away they are from each other. Knowing this will determine what type of IP camera you need and just exactly how many you should get.

Another question to ask is when will you need your camera?Will you need to monitor only in the day time? Only at night time? Or in both day and night? Day and night IP cameras are intended for indoor and outdoor use in which there are poor lighting conditions. One thing to note is that when lighting levels drop to a certain point, the IP camera will automatically switch to night recording, using infrared technology to keep quality in black and white mode.

Ask yourself what type of housing your camera will need. You need to know that in areas of humidity, dust, snow, rain, high winds and other elements, adequate housing is necessary. You need to ensure that your device is protected from all elements, even from human vandalism.

Do you need the installation of your camera to be discreet? Do you want to install a camera and not let anyone else know that it is there? This is another important factor to take into consideration. It also helps in determining the type of camera, the camera mounts and the housing you will need.

Quality of image is important to everybody, but what you need to do is determine how important it is to you. The best way to find the best camera for you is to look at various screenshots and images from different IP cameras and determine which one looks good enough for you. IP cameras with progressive scan technology are ideal for people who plan on recording moving objects.

How about audio? Do you want to just see your camera feed or do you want to hear what is going on as well? If you do want audio, then you need to determine whether or not you want one way or two way audio. A majority of IP cameras out there that have audio functionality have a built-in microphone as well as input for connecting additional microphones and speakers.

So there you have it, pretty much everything you need to know about picking the right IP security camera for your small business or home. If you take all of these things into consideration, then you will have no problem getting the absolute best camera to suit your needs.
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3 comments:

  1. Excellent and exhaustive questions to ask ourselves when we are about to buy a surveillance system! In any case it's better to seek professional help if we find it hard to answer these questions!

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  2. Your comment about quality of image doesn't go far enough. I think the question that needs to be asked is what detail do you want to see. For example, do you want to be able to identify a person's face or license plate number? This is determined by the pixels per ft (or meter) provided in a certain size field of view. Take a look at www.kintronics.com/neteye/neteye.html for a lot more technical information about all this.

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