Blue Iris

Hello everyone,

We have been planing our new house for a while and I knew I wanted to use BI for a small security camera setup. Our plan is to have 4 cameras that feeds alert video to our phones and possibly a hard-wired monitor in our house. I haven't spent a lot of time studying BI, but now's the time to get going. I thought I remembered a sticky on this forum for newbies that answered a lot of questions an inexperienced user might have, but now I can't find it.

I'm looking for suggestions for the following:
1. Rough wiring. Should I use use CAT6 and PoE for the cameras (some have suggested dual wiring to each camera for future troubleshooting)?
2. Electrical box. Should I install the wiring in an electrical box at the camera location? The cameras will be mounted to the ceiling of our porch (on front) and deck (on rear) that are T&G wood, so there's no sheetrock that I will be able to cut through to access the wires. The other possibility would be to just drill a hole in the wood ceiling and surface mount.

I appreciate your help and look forward to any recommendations you have.

1. I personally prefer pure POE over CAT6. I also have have my POE switch on a UPS. That way, when the power goes out, the cameras are still operational. I've never had an issue where I had to troubleshoot my cameras with a separate power supply. For what it's worth, my cameras work off of POE out of the box. No POE splitter required.
2. Since this is a low voltage setup, no electrical box is required (if you're in the US, that is. Not sure about abroad). That is not to say you can't use one. Based on your description, I think you would definitely benefit from one to keep nature away from your cabling. I'm assuming you'll be using conduit to protect the CAT6 from your house to the camera?

What cameras are you thinking of getting? Network switch?

>assuming you'll be using conduit to protect the CAT6 from your house to the camera?
The wiring will be in the unfinished (but closed to the elements) ceiling. If you think conduit is needed, I will be happy to do that. Should I install a regular 1-gang rectangular box or round? I don't know if most cameras are set up to mount directly to those or not. I tried looking at a few of the popular cameras but I wasn't able to find tech specs on the base plate.

>What cameras are you thinking of getting? Network switch?
I haven't decided on either. Right now, I think I'll stick with 4 fixed dome cameras (no P, T, or Z for simplicity). Do you have a suggestion for the cameras and switch? Presently I'm working on the rough wiring, so I have a little while to soak up the institutional knowledge here before deciding on the actual hardware.

Thank you so much for your help!

Hi WNCEric,

1. The idea is to run two cables where you presently need one as it is easy to do during the building phase - but much harder in 5 years time when something has damaged a cable or you decide to add a second camera. You connect one, and coil the other up and prevent moisture getting in the ends.
2. I'm in the UK, so don't know the rules where you are. Since it is all low voltage (with PoE) I don't use electrical junction boxes - but you do need to ensure that water can't get into your cables and joints.

Ask as many questions as you like

WNCEric wrote: ↑Sat Apr 18, 2020 3:55 am >assuming you'll be using conduit to protect the CAT6 from your house to the camera?
The wiring will be in the unfinished (but closed to the elements) ceiling. If you think conduit is needed, I will be happy to do that. Should I install a regular 1-gang rectangular box or round? I don't know if most cameras are set up to mount directly to those or not. I tried looking at a few of the popular cameras but I wasn't able to find tech specs on the base plate.

>What cameras are you thinking of getting? Network switch?
I haven't decided on either. Right now, I think I'll stick with 4 fixed dome cameras (no P, T, or Z for simplicity). Do you have a suggestion for the cameras and switch? Presently I'm working on the rough wiring, so I have a little while to soak up the institutional knowledge here before deciding on the actual hardware.

Thank you so much for your help!

I'm starting to get a better idea of your place. Conduit would be useful if the wiring is directly exposed to the elements where animals will have easy access to chew on them. They'd also be useful if you don't have direct access to the wiring, that is, you would need to destroy something to get to the cable. For myself, I don't bother with conduit because it takes all of 15 minutes to drop another line from my patch panel to the camera if a rat happens to get up into the attic and chews my wiring. It's not worth my extra time and money to protect the cabling from animals. I hope that makes sense.

I have never seen a camera designed for junction boxes. If you get a junction box, get the round ones for light fixtures. It'll be easier to retrofit it for cameras. You'll also be able to hide it in the ceiling so it won't just stick out visibly and be an eyesore.

Not knowing your budget, it's hard to recommend cameras. I personally use Trendnets like the IP-314 because it has decent quality at night at a very reasonable price. I'm not sure how well they'd last in the long run, but I figure I should be upgrading cameras as technology gets better, so durability isn't on my mind as much as video quality. POE switches can be found cheaply. TP-Link makes some great entry level switches. You can get more advanced ones like Ubiquiti, or crazy like Cisco or Juniper, but having a large managed switch will probably be overkill for your situation.

I'm going to add one more thing, since you'll probably run across this: plenum cabling. It is pretty much a requirement to use plenum in a commercial environment where you have bundles and bundles of network drops running all across the ceiling. It really is a fire hazard. In a residential setting, you'll only have a handful of drops spread out along a whole bunch of plywood and 2x4s. Plenum I guess will technically help, but only by a hair. And besides, it won't be fueling much of a fire anyway since most of the time it's in the attic and not a mezzanine. With that in mind, I made the decision that spending over twice as much money to get plenum cat 6 was not worth it for me. I just stuck with normal copper cat 6 bulk pack. Oh yeah, don't get the copper coated aluminum. You'll regret that very quickly.

Just to add my thoughts and make this a longer thread .... I definitely agree with everyone about going PoE, if you're setting things up at this level of sophistication I think it makes total sense. I personally use Ubiquiti switches as they are nice a fully manageable. Some can be very pricey but they don't have to be, and the management software is completely free (unless you opt to use one of their CloudKeys but running the server software on the same system running BI works for me). Having a junction box is a nice idea as somewhere clean to terminate the connections but the cameras are unlikely to mount directly to it, you can put a screw through anything though! My cameras came with simple three screw mounting brackets that I just put directly into a solid material wherever I would mounting it. I did NOT pre-run cables for cameras when building and wish I had, but I've been able to do it pretty easily with some thought. THe advantage of running conduit is that it makes it very easy to replace or run more wire in the future. It wouldn't hurt running some to key points in your house even if you have no current need there... just as jumping off points in the future. I love using conduit because of a trick I learned years go to not have to use fish tape. Have some twine or string at one end and tie a plastic bag to it. Go to the other end and use a shopvac to suck it through and you're done in about 3 seconds. Anyway, the thought on this is yes, you could run two cables and only need one, but what will we be dealing with in 10 years? Will you want Fiber and 10G speeds so you can run your nifty 8K (or 16K???) cameras? IDK, but for a few dollars more when it's VERY easy to do may be worth future proofing your home.

Oh and I am interested in cameras. I currently run two SV3C cameras. I had done some homework on them and they are very cheap and I'm pretty satisfied with the quality. Of course I don't know what I'm missing out on but price point was always going to be #1 for me. My bullet cameras were about $50 each so I can't complain at all. It took a bit to figure out how to do firmware updates but now I've got it down. They're working great with BI. That said, being a network security engineer... I monitored and would definitely NOT recommend these have any access to the Internet, lol. They don't need access to anything* really, as technically BI talks to them.

*If doing Direct to Disc they likely need DNS and NTP to create their own time overlays.

Thank you strogg, TimG, and Matts1984!!!

So if I'm hanging these below a T&G wood ceiling, would the rough wiring (one CAT6 and one backup per camera) just be the wire hanging through a hole drilled in the wood ceiling? I'm sorry I'm asking some dumb questions, but I want to get this right. Cameras and switches you can swap out. The wiring (in my case) not so much.

Thanks!

Most cameras come with a pigtail with a female connector at the end. You can terminate the structured cable with RJ45 male connectors and plug them in directly. Alternatively, you can terminate the structured cable with a female connector, then use a 6 to 12 inch patch cord to connect the two together. I did the latter because I am terrible at terminating with male connectors. It is easier for me to terminate the structured cable with a keystone jack and a punch down tool.

So I guess to answer your question, yes: just leave that one wire dangling. You'll want to have it go through a hole big enough to fit the camera pigtail, though. Those are usually 3/4" in diameter or more because they are weatherproof.

You've given me some great ideas. I'll run conduit all the way (it's not over 25') from the camera's planned placement to the unfinished part of the basement (where the switch will be) so that I can swap out entire lengths of cable if need be. With that in mind, would you still run two cables per camera?

As far as the cameras go, am I correct to assume that there is a recess for the RJ45 cable to plug into so that when things are all connected, the camera mounting base is perfectly flat with just a protruding cable?

>would definitely NOT recommend these have any access to the Internet, lol. They don't need access to anything* really, as technically BI talks to them.

I was planning on having BI send motion alerts to my phone. Does this fit well within your security viewpoint?

Thank you again for your assistance!

If you have conduit run, I personally don't see a need to run two cables. It's easy enough to run a new one then. Basically you'll want the ability to run cable to different corners of the house easily, you can always fudge a few feet here and there if needed. In my case I do have one exterior area with two cables, one is a camera and one is an eternally mounted, weather safe Access Point.

While I'm sure there are different designs, my experience has NOT been that there is a recess for the RJ45. The camera itself does not have a female plug on it. There will be a pigtail wire (that does allow the base to mount flat) that splits to an RJ45 plug and a power cord. The pigtail may be 6" long or something and allows for the network cable and a power adapter.... or if using PoE, you do not have to use the power connection. The tail will look something like this:



This is where you need to ensure the hole in your ceiling is large enough to stuff this thing or if you use the junction box, it would fit in there. I think a cleaner install would be no junction box but this is all your choice.

Yes yes, the alerts are totally fine. Essentially from a network perspective, the cameras need ZERO outbound access (possibly do need DNS and NTP if they need current/correct time for an overlay). The BI server connects to the camera(s) to get your feeds. Any motion alerts or feed viewing is done between your phone/browser and the BI server. They will not need direct access to the cameras. I mostly mention this because with my cameras I was fully aware of what country they came from and the price point (though image sensor is quite good in my opinion). I ran a packet capture when I first set them up out of curiosity and they were trying to talk to all kinds of internet domains (in the country I was aware of) on ports/protocols I definitely do not want cameras using. I've done subsequent firmware updates afterwards that may have changed some behavior but I learned enough that there is no need for them to talk outbound anyway. They run just fine in their little isolated network.