Questions about adding camera system to my house

How do you terminate the ends of the CAT5? Or do you buy certain lengths with the connectors already on them?

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would recommend dropping a line from the dvr to your router as well so you can remote view the cameras.

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I am planning on doing this. Do the cameras that you run an ethernet cables to, do they need to be powered as in needing to add a receptacle? Or is the power run through the ethernet?

And if I remember correctly I am pretty sure I need to get a POE NVR as opposed to the standard NVR correct?

Which is better cat5 or cat6? Fixing to do a build and will definitely do the better one now vs later.

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Yes. Make sure the NVR has PoE built in and all you need to do is connect the cameras via ethernet and you're good to go.

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Also make sure that all of the NVR's ports are PoE. Some of them are sneaky with the marketing, selling 16port NVR but only 8 of them are powered.

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Higher cat equals "better"

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As in higher quality wire or more wires? In the process of building and want to make sure I have the latest and greatest.

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For security cameras, cat6 will be more than sufficient for a very, very long time. It supports gigabit over the full 100 meters (and 10gigabit over half that length), so it handles 4K cameras with ease. It will handle 8K cameras with ease. It will probably handle 16K cameras when those become common sometime after we land a man on Mars.

But for a little bit of future-proofing, put in cat6A and get 10gbit over the full 100 meters for just a few extra bucks over cat6.

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Per usual, Korkstand tells the truth. Also, I bought premade cables and dropped 8 of them of them through a single 1.5"(? it could have been 1.75") hole in a 2x4" at the top of the wall where I wanted to mount the NVR. Any more than that and it could have been an issue. The internal wall was hollow so fishing them through the wall once I got them through the hole in the top plate wasn't that bad.

Personally, I used Cat5e cables as they should be able to carry up to 1 GB/s up to 100m, which is more than good enough for 4k (and could theoretically do 8k depending on bitrate). My longest run from a camera to the NVR was about 75'. Our sq. footage is about 2500' on the main floor.

FWIW, I went the the Reolink system that others have mentioned and have been very happy with it. I did all the work myself with zero experience before I started (Just watched a ton of Youtube videos before I attempted it). I will say the standard POE ethernet cable they supply with the Reolink package aren't that great. I've used some of them, and they work, but their quality is significantly less than what I've purchased. Also while the company supplies cables for all of the cams if you buy a NVR package, Reolink's stand alone cameras do not come with ethernet cables.

Finally, as I mentioned in the wifi range extender thread, our house (built in the 90's (not by us)) was prewired with Cat5 cable. The ONLY place they DIDN'T run it was the garage hallway where I wanted to mount the NVR. I was able to take an "old" wireless router (TP link AC1750 v3) and bridge it to our network. It takes the ethernet output from the NVR and allows us to view it remotely. The wireless bridge was a little challenging to set up initially, but once I got it running it's been flawless. As challenging as it was, I explored running cable to the NVR location and was way easier just to bridge it wirelessly (given the utilities in that particular area).

The first think you should do to start this project is to define your budget (I know this is common sense and really don't need to list this step, but Dave Ramsey would be mad if I didn't ) The second is to figure out how many cameras you need. We started with 4, quickly upgraded to 6 and I've got 2 more that should be here the end of the week.

In order to figure out how many cameras you need, I'd take a look at IPVM's camera calculator. Long story short, it can show you the view of different cameras on your property. It's pretty involved, but you'll get the hang of it.

Third, I'd figure out what resolution cameras you need. I personally have 5mp cameras and they've been more than sufficient. I cannot read license plates from cars in the street, but we're over 100' back from the centerline of our street. It hasn't been an issue (we live on a cul-de-sac/dead end street).

After that try to find a system that will meet your needs. POE cameras are great because as mentioned above, as technology changes you can simply swap them out. My personal experience is/was putting up the cameras was the easy part. Running the cables was the hard part. This reminds me of a point that I wanted to make earlier. Getting the cables through the soffit of our house to the attic was, by far, the hardest part of the project. Make sure you have a good "fish tape". I ended up having to take down the soffit in almost every location to get the wires fished into the attic. It was fairly easy once I figured out how to do it, but I pulled my hair out before I did.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

FWIW Reolink has their 5mp 4 camera NVR setup on sale for $279. That's an excellent deal.

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Their 12mp (4k) 4 camera system with NVR and AI motion detection is on sale for $100 of at $499. Act fast, limited time and they have limited stock.

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