Bullet or dome?
IP cameras come in various shapes and sizes, and it’s important to pick the right one for the location. The traditional design, with a cylindrical or oblong camera housing attached to an angled wall-mounting, is called a “bullet camera”. Such cameras are easy to install – you just need to drill a few screw holes – and the design makes it easy for manufacturers to fit infrared LED illuminators around the lens, making them ideal for nighttime surveillance.
If you want to position a camera outdoors, check its ingress protection (IP) rating. For all-weather use, you want a camera with a minimum IP65 rating, and if you need it to survive sub-zero temperatures then look for one with an internal heater or an optional protective shell.
For indoor use, dome cameras provide a discreet alternative, with certain vendors now offering lowprofile “smoke detector”-style models. A dome camera can be mounted securely on a ceiling, and metal bodies and polycarbonate lens covers make them hard for vandals to damage.
Many dome designs also offer PTZ – pan, tilt and zoom – capabilities, with a motorised lens body that can be remotely controlled. Panning and tilting allow you to direct the camera’s view horizontally and vertically, so the camera can cover a much larger area. Zoom lets you get a close-up view of anything interesting, should you be watching an incident unfold. If you want this feature, choose a camera with optical zoom: digital zoom merely magnifies the picture, and doesn’t actually add any detail.
Higher-end PTZ cameras may offer an automated patrol mode, which moves the camera between different preset pan and tilt positions after a certain number of seconds, so you can record what’s going on over a larger area than a fixed-position camera could. Some cameras can even detect moving objects and automatically track the lens to follow them.
Intruder alert
A key feature of modern IP cameras is their motion-detection capabilities. Rather than recording thousands of hours of empty rooms and courtyards, you can set your camera software to store footage only when something’s moving. You can have alerts sent directly to a specified email address whenever unexpected movement is detected, and footage can be uploaded to FTP servers, network shares and, in some cases, local microSD cards – so you have multiple ways to get at your recordings even if the camera gets smashed, or the local network goes down.
Sophistication improves as the price goes up, with the better models supporting multiple detection areas and facilities for fine-tuning sensitivity. If your camera has a microphone then you can also trigger actions when noise goes above a set level. Some cameras have internal speakers too, allowing you to have a two-way audio conversation with an unexpected visitor: alternatively, in the case of some Axis cameras, the camera can simply play a warning sound if triggered.
Power to the camera
Naturally, your security camera needs to be powered. The easiest and most reliable way to handle this is using power over Ethernet (PoE), which lets you drive your camera over a single network cable, without being constrained by the locations of your power sockets. Many vendors assume you’ll be using this and don’t include a mains adapter in the box.
If your office doesn’t already have PoE, the simplest way to get set up is to buy a PoE injector, which adds power to a single Ethernet connection. It’s a small box that can be had for as little as £20. If you’re deploying IP cameras around the premises, however, a multi-port PoE switch is likely to be much more cost effective, allowing you to run multiple cameras (or other powered devices), while taking up only a single power socket.
“An IP camera could even reduce your insurance premiums, since its mere presence can deter would-be criminals”
All hail Internet Explorer
IP cameras normally give you the option of streaming video in two codecs, namely Motion JPEG (MJPEG) and H.264. The former is outdated technology: you’re better off always using H.264, as its video compression process is more efficient, especially when there’s little or nothing happening in the viewing area.
To illustrate the impact of this on network usage, we used the ColaSoft Capsa analysis tool to monitor an IP camera feed. In our graph above, you can see MJPEG using 18Mbits/sec, while H.264 used 1Mbit/sec with no motion, rising to around 4.2Mbits/sec when motion was introduced.
Unfortunately, Microsoft Edge doesn’t support H.264 plugins, and many cameras won’t work with Google Chrome in H.264 mode either. Things are improving, but for now you might have to get used to the idea of using Internet Explorer 11 to monitor and control your cameras, as it supports both codecs and all their plugins.
Another option is to use the viewing software bundled with the camera. Quality and features vary hugely across vendors, but most consoles will allow you to monitor multiple cameras at once, and some also offer facilities for remote viewing over the internet.
For some must watch
An IP camera can be your tireless security guard, constantly monitoring your premises and your property. It could even reduce your insurance premiums, since its mere presence can deter would-be criminals, and even the most basic models can be a godsend in the event of an attempted burglary or other incident.
The only question is which one’s right for you – there’s a huge choice out there to suit every pocket and every premises. Read on to see which IP camera is right for your business.