Tips to Expand your Field of View for cameras

Many cameras I see waste coverage area by trying to get the center of the camera to point to some special place like a door or gate.

By doing this sometimes the camera ends up having 30% or more of the screen looking at a stupid wall that never moves.

Better to move the camera to allow each edge to have the least amount of wall or roof even if your gate or door ends up off center.

You get more coverage and still can see the door or gate.

image
See example images.

4 Likes

Thanks for the writeup! You get a gold star for the day!
:star:

I notice this alot also, lots of wasted potential and coverage opertunities This also helps with IR bounce back at night because it forces the wall or soffet to be more out of frame and away from the camera. Thanks again!

I agree with you Omgitstony that @dville has made a good point about the most effective aiming of cameras. I give dville a Heart.
The only way I see to improve his setup is to expand it with a camera mounted on the neighbor’s house with sharing rights. And, of course, the neighbor would share in the view of dville’s camera. The picture below shows a mutual sharing of neighbor’s camera.

This is the link for the original post:
NeighborsSharing Camera Views

4 Likes

Yep! I agree that a good best practice is to have camera coverage of cameras. In this situation above in the OP, I’d want a camera also watching towards the street or front of the house. The camera view shown essentially has its “back to the threat”. Here is an example of a location (along with neighboorsharing, but maybe it’s the neighboor you are watching!) To mount a camera looking forward.

a792eef730cb4a3a0fb30cfba36afafa226662d4~2

And thanks again to @dville for making a post about this to help the community. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Good advice. There are a few cameras watching the front of the yard.

The camera I show is watching a wall that has one door and a window along the right edge.

The backyard where your red arrow is pointing is covered by two cameras.

Every entry point (window or door) has camera coverage.

You cannot approach the property from any angle and not be seen one one of the cameras.

3 Likes

Omgitstony you have stated the kernel of this discussion as succinctly as I have ever heard ‘camera coverage of cameras’. This concept is what I have been advocating among my relatives, friends, and neighbors. The implementation shown below for typical tract housing can be also used for larger more expansive homes.

In the picture below, ‘camera coverage of cameras’ is implemented. The cameras at the left corner is a double installation that view the front and side of the house with a 90-ish ° blind spot at the corner. This blind spot is covered by the right corner camera, the right camera’s blind spot is covered by the camera at the left corner of the front door. This front door camera has no blind spot.

The picture below is a closeup of the double camera installation, it is about as simple as it can get.

The third picture below shows some fabrication details for the double mount bracket.

The last picture below shows a triple camera mount that provides full 270° coverage at the corner of my house.


I hope the above shows how simple it can be for those with DIY skills.

Victor Maletic

4 Likes

deville
A slight improvement of your camera’s aim shown in your picture would be to lower the camera’s angle to barely clip the top of the windows to provide more foot-ware coverage in the foreground.
Just a thought.

1 Like

Quite the wordsmith! Nice! :slight_smile:. Thanks for the note.

That last pic I posted was from a PAN camera that does what the heck it wants when that guy walked into the neighbors back yard.

I have since replaced the PAN camera with 2 old V2 cams to have 180 degree coverage of the back yard wall too wall.