How to start designing a video surveillance system?

Question

CCTV

In connection with the recent murder of a resident of the village of Kuzmolovsky :
Before me, as one of the participants in the initiative group, the question arose of organizing a budgetary video surveillance system. Getting funds from the administration will not work. From you, as from specialists, I ask for help and determining the direction of movement:

• Where to begin?
  
• What are the main factors/points in system design?
  
• Pitfalls (equipment characteristics and its installation, cloud storage and data processing services)
  

Thanks in advance for your help and detailed answers.

Answer 1

The first thing to start with is the definition of a specific task (scenario) of using the system.
When it comes to design, it is very important to decide how exactly video surveillance should help, because the video surveillance systems themselves cannot determine that there is a fight on the street, and theft is on the premises, this must be done by the operator.
By their mere presence, such systems also do not know how to prevent crimes (especially those committed by drunks and drug addicts) - look, London has more than one hundred percent surveillance coverage in the center, and what, there is zero crime from this? Moscow is also full of cameras, it hangs on almost every entrance, because of this, cars didn’t stop stealing from the entrances, drunks didn’t stop gathering on the benches in front of the entrances, and they didn’t stop robbing there (if the area is “bad”).
A system that only deals with recording is practically useless (how would it help the murdered person in this particular case?), especially since all the local drunkenness and hooliganism of the police have long been known for sure - there are only six streets in the village, so finding criminals is all still not a problem.
If you hang cameras in places where criminals are constantly gathering now, they are very likely to move to others - will you keep chasing them in circles to rearrange the cameras? Hanging the whole village with cameras is possible, but it will either come out expensive, or you won’t be able to see anything on them.
So before you think about installation and cloud services, first think about how this system will actually help in reality.

Answer 2

The first thing to start with is the definition of a specific task (scenario) of using the system.

Very true. Resonates with an article from Freeze Frame: The First Step to Effective Video Surveillance . Read it.
You need to understand the problem: is it necessary that the image from the camera allows you to recognize people you know, or is it required to receive pictures for the police. In these cases, there are different requirements for the number of pixels per meter at the distance where the observed person can be (125 and 250 pixels per meter, respectively). If you install megapixel cameras, read this article from the same cycle. Articles use this camera placement program to
calculate pixels per meter .

Answer 3

With the safety of the one who is responsible for them =). A responsible person with a large perforator .... and as sad as it sounds =( cameras with excellent optics and the ability to shoot at night. Otherwise, you will get the most amusing videos. + autonomous power supply for the entire network segment (most often poe) + very large network storage (10 cameras + 2 weeks storage period). And at this moment we understand that the phrase "budget video surveillance system" does not go well with "you need a lot of cash. " Therefore, most often they put an outdoor camera above the entrance and bring it to network storage for someone. + UPS thousand for 40. Total ... umm ... something is already out of the budget.

Answer 4

In my opinion there are two options. The first is to try to do it yourself, a great option, for example, after reading these books 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , of course, you will have to buy them beforehand, but you can read something for free, you will come very close to understanding how to do it. The second is to involve a professional contractor.