Its not the full resolution, but its a good way to check in. Its also only a live view.

This is not an ad for the Amcrest, but I will discuss some of the things that went into my camera decision.

I went with the Amcrest ProHD Outdoor IP4M-1025E. It has an app where you can get a live view of your cameras. The app does not allow access to recordings, which many other cloud services do, but it is also free.

The video is saved on a computer I have sitting at home with a 1 TB hard drive, which provides about 15 days of recording time. If you have a single camera running 24x7, then it will last that long, but if you have more than one camera, that number will be divided by the number of cameras (two cameras would give you about 7.5 days, and thee cameras would give you five days). You can also setup recording to only happen when there is motion to extend that duration, or get a larger drive to store your files on.

The nice thing is that its a rolling storage type, which means that it will always just keep the most recent set of recordings. This is similar to many cloud based options, which would charge $15 per month, and still only store 30 days of video.

Amcrest has pretty good videos about their equipment on their website, including an overview of their software.

Do your research and figure out what works best for you.

Installation

Installation is a bit scary. I had the prospect of drilling a big ol’ hole in the brick on the front of my house. I wanted the wire come out at the baseboard on my second floor. I also was going to be drilling through brick, Tyvek style weather resistant board, and drywall.

It was about 20.5" down.

I had a window that I used as reference, so I measured how far down the baseboard was, measured on the outside, and drilled.

Into the mortar, so it can be patched later.

I used a hammer drill, and a 1" drill bit. I got both of those things from our local tool library, the Station North Tool Library. The hole had to be rather big because the PoE cable had to be fished through, and the cable had a pretty large Ethernet adapter on it.

One of the stumbling blocks was that the hammer drill was not able to get through the Tyvek board. For that, I needed a spade wood bit, but I was not able to get the wood bit to the hole I had already drilled.

So, I went from the other side. That meant that I had to measure very precisely, and then try to make the angle as straight as I could.

Not a great angle, but this is the process of drilling from the inside. I measured from the window on the outside and the inside to figure out where to drill, and then I kept it as level as possible.

For every camera, I missed by a little bit, but was able to see enough light to figure out what direction I needed to adjust. The next video shows the inside of the hole. There is a nail in there that I had to go around. Additionally, you can see that I was not even close to the exterior hole. Without the light on, I could see that the exterior hole was slightly to the right, so I pulled the bit back out and drilled a bit more to the right.

One of the holes I drilled. You can see that I did not line it up perfectly with the exterior hole, but I just had to slightly adjust the hole to the right a bit.

The holes didn’t need to be perfectly lined up, as there was a slight gap between the brick and the Tyvek board, and the cable bends, so I was able to fish it though.

I know there are many ways to fish cable, but I decided to push a piece of stiff wire through the hole, to the point where it was poking outside the exterior wall. I wrapped it around the camera cable, taped it so it wouldn’t come undone in the wall, and slowly worked it through the hole.

The Setup

The hardest part is probably getting the cameras mounted, as the rest fell into place pretty easily.

My graphics budget is pretty intense

A few other stumbling blocks.

I had to set the cameras to have static IP addresses, as the software was looking for them by address. Thats pretty easy to do, as you just set that in the router, and in the camera setup. I just used the first address that the camera was setup with. Its not hard, you just have to know where in your router that is set.

Make sure you have the computer and the cameras on the same networking device. I made the mistake of connecting my computer to my main router, and it killed my internet speeds because there was just that much data being pushed. I have a Microtek router, which is not your run of the mill home router. I under estimated just how much data really gets pushed with multiple 1080p streams.

I was using a repurposed laptop. Windows updates every month, and sometimes would restart. I needed to make sure that the recording software was starting up on reboot, and that the machine would automatically log in as my user. Auto start is a setting in the Amcrest software, and auto login is a setting in Windows.

I wanted my footage to be backed up off site, so I have it saved in my Dropbox folder. I was already paying for Dropbox, as its VERY IMPORANT TO BACKUP ANY FILES YOU WOULD BE SAD TO LOSE. Let me repeat, if you would be sad to lose those kid pictures, and you are not backing them up regularly, then eventually you will lose them. Since I do back up my files, I just threw these in the same folder.

Conclusion

The setup I went with is not the easiest, but it did fit my criteria the best. Some people prefer to go with options that are easier to install and roll with, or ones that have battery backup. There are plenty of options.

If you have questions or want advice based on my experience, I am happy to help. Drop a comment on this thread, or message me on twitter at @cylussec.

Update: A neighbor tried these cameras and was not happy with the software. After doing a search, he went with the AXIS M2026-LE Mk II.