Catching malicious car vandal

[Locke]

Someone is intentionally targeting my car (Peugeot 206), so I want to obtain evidence of them before going to the police.

I'd really appreciate some advice on how to buy, mount and install a camera for this specific purpose.

My car is almost always parked with the passenger side to the pavement, so I am thinking that installing the camera at dashboard level by the driver's side pillar facing towards the passenger side will make it the most discreet, provide the bast chance of capturing the vandal's face and provide the best horizontal angle.
The other option might be on the driver's side boot hatch for the same reasons.

These are the requirements

-Extremely discreet
-Parking mode only
-Low light ability
-Wide view angle

I don't want to record while driving, in fact as this drains the battery, it would be very good to be able to turn it off except when parked. I also only need it recording for about 8 hours during the day, as my car is not at risk at work.
I drive for about 40 minutes each day.
Heat should not be a problem moving into UK winter, and the places I park are generally shaded.

I looked at the buying guide, and the two cameras I'm looking at are

LIVUE LB100-HD
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131843768668
BlackVue DR3500-FHD
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/B00NWN66F0
In the attachement is how I envisage the set up, either blue or red field of view


Thank you so much for your input

 

[russ331]

Welcome to DCT. Is the car parked outside your home within the view of a cctv setup, which might be a better solution for your needs than a dashcam? @kamkar1 can provide images of what he gets from his cctv setup, which is very effective.

 

[Locke]

Thanks for the suggestion

I have considered that, the wrinkles with it are that I live in a shared house and the road is rather long.
I will discuss it with my housemate and I reckon he wouldn't mind if I set something up, although if (when) he moves out, that will cause problems.
The other thing is I don't know how well CCTV could capture faces at a distance.

The pluses are obviously avoiding the rigmarole of installing a hidden dashcam, no power issues, potentially lower cost and seeing where the little **** goes/comes from.

Perhaps I will do both and install two cameras to capture most of the street.

 

[Deleted member 46308]

Welcome to DCT @Locke

 

[kamkar]

Hi Locke, welcome to the forum.

First of all for use of dashcams you will need pretty much light, so your street have to be well lit at night and best if you park right below a street light.

In regard to face capture it is the same with both dashcams and cctv cameras, and that is if you have a wide angle lens then you also got to have the camera pretty close to the person to capture any facial features.
And here i mean the camera so close the person can almost touch it, but you have to get that close with wide angle lenses as their side effect is they make things appear far away.
Only plus for the cctv camera would be they often have their own IR light source build in .

Myself i live on the 2 floor and my car is parked in a really dark back yard, so i have a PTZ camera on my balcony door so i can tweak the framing of my car as i dont allways park in the same place in the yard.
The cheap Chinese IP camera i use have build in IR lights and 20 X optical zoom.
I normally zoom into level 7 that leave me with most of my car in frame and a little of the area beside it in frame too, so any vandal still got to get pretty close to my car to have any chance of capturing his ugly face.

At night the IR lights make plenty of light for a capture, and you can program it to make guard tours and so on, newer ones can even track and zoom in on things moving, but thats a additional prize i think, but still pretty cool.

I have about 25 M from my balcony door to where my car is parked.

Guy taking a leak behind my car, manual tracking him with this much zoom was not easy, here i had software on computer running and connected to the NVR recorder so i noticed the movement.
I allso connect to the NVR with my little tablet, so i can be anywhere in my apartment and view / control my 4 cameras.

The house behind me ( about 70 M avay ) have a nightly visit by plain clothe police looking for drugs.

 

[kamkar]

The only non CCTV solution i can think off is the warrior G1S action camera it is build for low light so you might stand a chance with that one too.
But as it is a action camera you will have to go out every evening and stash it where its close to your car, possibly inside your car.

Big plus with this new camera is it have a large battery so it can record for hours on end.

http://www.yuncooltech.com/features/index.html

 

[kamkar]

Dashcams with same sensor as Warrior G1S is also coming soon, but it will properly be at the tail end of the year before we start to see those on the shelves.

 

[Locke]

Welcome to DCT @Locke

Thanks

Dashcams with same sensor as Warrior G1S is also coming soon, but it will properly be at the tail end of the year before we start to see those on the shelves.

Thanks for the info. Do you have particular models of CCTV you'd recommend? Is around £150 viable? I suppose I could aim the camera at the car each day and it would really help determine this ...gentleman's routine and now that I think about it, may be the better solution.

Then I would need it to be steerable remotely, have IR lighting

How long will the battery on the Warrior G1S last? I would need about 12 hours minimum.
I wouldn't mind leaving it in position after parking in the afternoon/overnight and charging it at work.
I also can get an external battery pack fairly inexpensively; a 21,000mAh is about £30, which I could use to power it.

 

[kamkar]

No the CCTV solution is the expensive route, not only do you need the camera, but you also need a NVR ( network Video Recorder ) and a harddrive for it to record on.

I got my cameras off ebay, and my 4 channel NVR i got from the UK

You don't really need 20 X zoom unless you park really far away, so 10 X optical zoom will be a little cheaper + you can get a mini housing and not the football sized one my 20 X camera is.
Something like this should do you fine.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142013212591
As for NVR i have is a brand called qvia and that in turn re branded Dahua recorder.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131923684368
And then you will need a 1 or 2 Tb harddrive to put in the recorder, if you just have the 1 camera you can make do with a 1 Tb harddrive no problem.
you can off course also do even smaller harddrive, but as they are not that expensive i would stick with 1 Tb drive.

The warrior G1S claim 7 hours of recording on its build in battery, i am not sure what can be done for external power with it, cuz i assume you have to unscrew the end cap to get to the USB port to power it that way, but then its no longer waterproof.
Off course the latter is no problem if you put it in the car.

My CCTV setup don't have a joystick to aim it as you see on high end gear, but via the NVR box connected to my TV ( HDMI ) i can bring up a set of icons so i can click on those with my wireless mouse to move camera around and zoom.
Not as smooth as a joystick as you can only do 1 axis at the time, but for aiming camera at non or slow moving things no problem.

I can do the same on my computer, launch software, connect to NVR box and control and view / preview footage there.

And via wifi and the wifi router the NVR is connected to i can also do more or less the same on my tablet.

Here is a pic of the software running on my PC and the tablet below.

For the most i have the tablet on a bed table beside me when i sleep, but it is not really needed as everything get recorded anyway, but i like too be hands on with vandals / thieves

You can find lots of reviews and what not relating to ip cameras and NVR boxes on youtube.

 

[Locke]

Excellent recommendation. It looks like I can do that for £200, and perhaps I can sell the equipment on once I have solved my problem.
Also, I have scouted out the road and the window and I think I can mount the camera under the 1st floor window ledge, which means I shouldn't have problems with my roommate

The furthest distance the car will be is about 40 metres and the street is fairly well lit

Thanks for your help!

 

[Paul Schmehl]

40 meters is a long distance for a surveillance camera. Most cameras have a range of 5 to 10 meters. I think your best bet would be a wireless security camera with pan, tilt and zoom, but it needs to be long distance. A standard cam won't do.

This camera would almost meet your specs. https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01ICNEWLY It's range is just under 30 meters for night vision.

This one is a little more expensive. https://www.amazon.com/gp/B00CZ1L3A8 It's range is just over 30 meters.

 

[Viking]

Guy taking a leak behind my car,

Now you know why you car start to rust and you though it was the salt from the street at winter time.

 

[Viking]

As for NVR i have is a brand called qvia and that in turn re branded Dahua recorder.

You can build a low power, super, kick ass, Xpenology (Synology) server cheap and its legal.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah some NAS can act as a recorder too, but i am not too well versed in that part of the game.

 

[Module 79L]

I don't want to record while driving, in fact as this drains the battery, (...)

I don't know where did you get this idea from but it's completely wrong. When the engine is running, the car's whole electrical system is powered by the alternator, not the battery. The only time a car's battery could be drained by a dashcam is if it's left recording permanently while the car is parked and even that would probably take a couple of days to drain a fully charged battery.
Unless you're referring to the camera's battery, but that would be a subject for a different discussion and it's late and I have to go to bed.