After poking around here a bit, I’m interested in making a wired PoE camera system for my home. I’m not 100% sure how many and what kind of camera I want, but the PoE offerings from Reolink (both camera and NVRs) seem quite solid.
I’ve read through the u/mblaser excellent primer on why you should have a PoE switch, even with a NVR. I’d also like to buy some parts, and then be able to add more as I need. So, if I get not quite the right camera for my front, I can almost certainly find another use for that same camera elsewhere, and replace the front camera with a new offering. I want wired-only operation, I would like to run only one cable, and I’ll want to record the video on something besides the SD card, at least at some point.
Budget depends, but let’s say I’m wanting to get in the ground floor with 2 cameras recording to another network device for under $500, but would go $600 to future-proof. If that budget is crazy, having one good camera is more important than having 2, or insuring I have both the PoE switch and NVR.
So, two major questions:
1) What’s the “least” initial investment I need to build a system? I need a camera, but do get a camera and an NVR? A camera and a PoE switch? Just the camera? I would like to have some kind of video feed I can view as I tweak the camera. I’m confident I can learn out how to set up VLANs on my router or the like if I needed to hook it up to my home network for a little bit.
2) What do I need to look out for in “future proofing?” Like, needing more ports than I thought on a PoE switch, or certain features/version of the NVR? I don’t think I’m going to go PTZ cameras, but I’m worried some of the cheaper PoE+ 8-port switches won’t have the juice for anything close to 8 cameras, but I don’t want a $200+ switch.
Thanks in advance!