How To Plan, Run Wires, & Setup a WIRED PoE Camera System! || Reolink 8CH 5MP System Review

hey guys it's carson miller tech here back with another video and in this video i'm going to be showing you how to from start to finish set up a completely wired security camera system now this is something that isn't typically covered too much here over on youtube because nowadays people mostly want to go with wireless systems but wireless systems typically have two major drawbacks the first one being latency issues and secondly they usually can't record 24 7. so although they do have good motion detection that doesn't always capture everything and sometimes you need the 24 7 recording just to get that split second where something happens so with that said i'm gonna be checking out the real link eight channel five megapixel four camera system from real link and i have checked out some of their wireless cameras before in the past and they've been fantastic but for the reasons that i've already mentioned i've chosen this time to go with a wired system and i do have to mention here up front that rio link did send me out this system for free but they're not paying me to say anything in this video so all opinions are my own and if the system ends up sucking i will 100 let you guys know so with that across the table what i'm primarily going to be focusing on in this video is the whole planning process for figuring out how many cameras you need in your system i'll be going through running ethernet cables and choosing the positions that you want your cameras to be in and then i'll also be showing the setup of the entire system all in one place and then after that i will be giving a little bit more information about this specific system but again i'm going to be primarily focusing on the whole installation process so with that being said let's jump right into a quick little unboxing all right so psych there actually isn't going to be an unboxing although i do have a bunch of boxes all around my feet because i did record an unboxing but i decided to just go with a quick overview of everything that came inside the box to preserve time in this video and not make this part of the video too long so of course in the box you do get a total of four cameras i already mentioned that so these each have a five megapixel sensor inside of them and can shoot up to i believe 1440p and quality so that's awesome with that comes a total of four ethernet caps so these are meant for outdoor installation and those will go and seal off the ethernet jacks on the cameras when mounting outside for my case i'm going to be mounting underneath the soffit so i won't need those but it's pretty cool that they included those because those screw directly into this ethernet jack and you both don't have to worry about the ethernet cord coming unplugged and you also don't have to worry about moisture getting inside of there also on these cables you've got a typical barrel plug power connector so if you want to run these off of just regular power and not over poe then all the power to you and then next to that you've got a reset button alongside those four caps are some mounting hardware which is cool and also some ethernet cable jacks so these are perfect for if you have to go and splice in your own cables it does come with four provided ethernet cable ends you've also got of course the nvr so this is what will record all of the footage between these four cameras this has a two terabyte hard drive inside of it so that means that it will be able to record about two weeks of footage before looping over itself and the way that these work is that it will loop over the oldest footage that is on the nvr and so you never have to worry about it going and overriding something that's new so that's pretty cool alongside that also came of course the power input source so it came with this power brick as well as a power cord and it came with a mouse for usb connectivity because you do have to interact with the interface on this device itself somehow and you do that through a mouse you've also got a provided hdmi cable and then you've also got a provided short ethernet cable that will connect the lan on the back of this device into your home network and then lastly you've got these four ethernet cables that come provided the final thing that came in the box was just some documentation this came with some stickers and some instructions as far as setting this all up but in this video i'll make it really quick and easy and show you how to get this all set up so with all this figured out i do want to mention one thing and that is the fact that these cameras are the older version of this system and the reason for that is because these cameras now represent their lower end version of this system however if you end up purchasing this system yourself you will be getting cameras that look quite a bit more updated and modern and that will look like this these cameras are the higher end version that they have and that's what they sell nowadays it's all the same camera but it has a better sensor inside of it so that is the really only difference between them but if you buy this specific system you will get the newer body and with the same specs as here so with that being said let's get outside and figure out how to know how many cameras you should have for your system and also just planning it all out now that i'm outside deciding how many cameras to put around your house can be difficult but with a couple tips it can actually be quite easy so the main places that you're going to want to think of when you're deciding how many cameras you need is you're going to want to take into account your driveway your front door any side entrance or rear doors that you've got on your house and then usually your backyard as well although this one isn't as important as the other locations as this one's really only important if you've got things that could be a liability if somebody gets hurt also if you've got like a play set you've got kids you might want to cover the backyard but again this one isn't as important but it is something to keep in mind now with your important locations in mind the camera setup isn't much more difficult than that so the easiest way to think about it is basically you're going to want to go and likely draw a top view of your house so just imagine what your house looks like from above doesn't have to be detailed but just the general outline of what your house looks like and then from there you're gonna have to take into account the angle that your cameras can shoot at so for these cameras they can shoot less than 90 degrees so you're going to want to take that into account basically all you got to do is just point your cameras around the edges of your house and that is the easiest way to be able to cover all aspects of your house because if you shoot covering one angle then you'll be able to go and shoot covering the other angle if you go on the other side of the house it's easier to see in a visual so i am drawing this on screen as you can see right now but in general you can typically get away with only having four total cameras if you want to cover your entire house if you got a generally rectangle or square house now if you've got a little bit more complex of a space then you will likely need to have more than that but that is the easiest way to go and cover your entire house and with all that out of the way all you got to do now is getting to mounting and this is where it can get a little bit more difficult here you're going to want to decide if you want to mount on the side of your house if you want to mount under soffit or if you have to mount in an area where there's a lot of sunlight and glare this is where it can be more difficult for me personally on our house we do have soffit around the entire house so what i'm going to be doing is doing a technique that i've seen in a couple other youtube videos before in the past and that is mounting it underneath the soffit with an aluminum bar that can spin in between the soffit and hold the camera mounted on that aluminum piece the hardest part ends up just being running the wire but as far as installing that ethernet wire that is something that i'm going to be showing you how to do right in just a couple of seconds but first of all you're going to need to know what tools and things that you will need so you will likely need a ladder you'll probably also need some fish tape depending on your attic structure for me i absolutely need the fish tape or i would not be able to go and fish the wire through you'll also need a headlamp for in your attic as well as a drill for this camera install i'm going to be installing the camera up here in the corner so then it can cover this area side of the house and as you can see it is a pretty high up location so i will 100 need that ladder but i'm going to be starting off by drilling a hole up here in the soffit where i want to get the camera installed at step one that you should do before going and messing anything up with your siding or soffiting is to go and check in your attic to make sure that you'll be able to access where your soffit is so i've already verified that this corner is safe to go and drill up in through and i'll be able to get my fish tape through but you're going to want to make sure that you do that yourself or else you'll either be drilling a bunch of holes all over in your soffit or you'll just be making a mess of your attic trying to get to the fish tape so in my case since i've already verified this all you got to do is take a drill and you're just gonna drill a hole up through your soffit step two or two and a half whatever i'm on now is using your fish tape and running it up through the hole and into your attic now this can be a little bit difficult sometimes because you might get snagged up on things but with patience and persistence you will eventually get it up into your attic and you will feel that there will be no resistance on the line so just keep working with it until you get it so i've got the fish tape in now and my rule of thumb is to always give yourself about five to six additional feet more than what you think you'll need just simply so then you have plenty to grab onto when you're up in the attic when going up into the attic all you're going to need is your ethernet cable and your good old friend electrical tape you won't want to forget that or else you will hate yourself later now i'm just going to go skip forward in time to the location of the attic where this cable should be run to i'm almost there now and you can see where that fish tape came up through the roof so i may need to grab a hook to get that but i'm hoping that i'll just be able to reach it once i get closer i've got my slack of cable here and you will want to pay attention to where you're routing this through the attic because you want to try and make it a little bit clean at least that's what i want to do so keep that in mind when you are walking around hey i got it so there we go i have the fish tape now all i got to do is tape the ethernet cable to the fish tape i would overlap at least six inches i usually go for about eight to ten inches just wrap your electrical tape around and then we'll be back on the outside to pull this back through now for the scary moment of truth will it make it back out yes got it so now there we go i've got my cable pulled back through all you got to do is simply take off this electrical tape once you've got this first little bit of cable pulled out i wouldn't stop there i typically like to pull out at least six feet of additional cable just to make sure that you know you have this leeway if you ever have to go and re-splice the end of your cable or a portion of the cable breaks for some reason it's always good to have this additional cable and then all you got to do is just shove it back up into the soffit area and it will just lay up there for whenever you need the additional cable if you ever need that or if you want to go and move the camera to a different area at least you will have that additional cable length and then of course once you have taken the cable and fed it through the other end you're gonna have to go and cut the wire from the box end and then you're going to want to feed this down through a wall or through your house in some way to get it to a central location to your nvr in my case we've got this central location where i drop all of the ethernet cables and new cables that will be added into the house down through the ceiling of one of our small closets and that runs all the way down through the bottom of that closet and then that runs into the basement which is where the networking cabinet and where the nvr will inevitably have its home for the physical mounting as i already mentioned i grabbed an aluminum piece which this specifically is a hillman 1 8 inch by 2 inches wide by 8 feet long was the original length and then i cut that down individually and before doing that of course i went and spray painted the aluminum so this matches almost perfectly with the cream that is already up there so when this aluminum piece is up in the soffit you literally cannot tell that it's even there other than when you're looking for the cameras so that is something that you might want to take into account you don't have to spray paint it you can just leave it as the bare aluminum but i chose to go otherwise so then once you've got your aluminum piece all you got to do is drill a hole to pass your cables through and then also a couple holes to mount your bracket in my case i only mounted with two screws and these were machine screws that are held on the back with some nuts so overall this is super simple and then once you've actually got this up there all you got to do is take your ethernet cable which has a bare end at the moment and you've got to splice on an ethernet end onto this cable it sounds difficult but there are plenty of youtube videos out there showing you how to do this very simply all you really have to do is make sure that you have an ethernet splicing tool which will allow you to go and cap off these ends with that tool so once you've got that capped off then all you got to do is put this into the soffiting which just to show you how it fits in here goes in like so and then you kind of spin it in from the other side and that's how it looks it will go with this hole over this hole here so then they match up but that is how that goes and then once this is up here all you got to do is take your camera put it up onto the bracket screw it in and then you're to the adjusting now all you got to do is plug in the ethernet and just cross your fingers that everything powers on i would probably suggest just verifying that the camera is connected before putting it up here but i have already verified it myself so just shove the cable back in and then tuck your cable from the camera up into the soffit area as well get all that wire up in there been in this camera like i did before and you are all set now take out your phone and as long as you've got the other end of the ethernet cable already plugged into your nvr and you've got it synced with the rio link app then all i got to do is go to the rio link app open it up to this camera and then i can go and get to aligning the camera to the position that i want it to be at so as you can see i've got the live view right here and all i got to do now is move my camera to where i would like it to point to now once you've got your camera positioned you are all set you've just got to replicate this for the number of cameras that you want to use in your specific setup but after that you've got free reign to have access to all of your cameras from within one app and i absolutely love the fact that this real link app works so well the biggest strong point of these cameras i've got to say is the mobile app now the nvr os that they've got running on there is not the best because it doesn't even allow for keyboard input so you've got to do everything through a mouse so whenever you're typing in a password or you're typing in your email or something like that you've got to go and use a mouse to move everything around and click on the screen on an on-screen keyboard aside from that the os of the nvr is pretty quick to pick up on it took me probably about 20 minutes of just playing around with it to realize everything that was in there super easy to use and it varies from system to system so i'm not going to talk too much about the specific os of this for the mobile app though i absolutely love this app it's been great throughout the years and it has not changed one bit and as far as how great it is and it's really great just simply because how easy it is to use it so say i want to go to this camera i can just double tap to access it i can change its view quality i can go and take a photo or a video from within here i can enable audio you can go full screen you can do so much from within this app it's amazing as far as i can tell you can do everything that you would do from the nvr on this mobile app but my overall opinions as far as the rio link eight channel nvr system goes is at this point amazing i have not had a single issue with the system thus far it was super easy to set up aside from running the cables to the cameras but as far as plug and play this thing is absolutely plug and play all you got to do is really go and just plug in the cameras and you're all set you just have to go and link your system to your network and then from there you can go and access the system from your real link app as long as you've got an account if you don't of course just set one up but it's super easy you can get everything in your mobile app which is typically where you want to view it and if you don't want to use the mobile app then you can go and of course access directly from that nvr the nvr os is not the best but it is workable and most os's on nvrs aren't that great anyways the one thing that i wish that they would have is like a web version of that app i do want to mention here that i was wrong there actually is a web interface as long as you are on the local network and you are accessing the ip address of the real link device you'll be able to get a screen that looks like this and here you will be able to log in the only issue here though is the fact that you have to have adobe flash player in order to go and access the camera views and even play back anything so that is a little frustrating especially if you're on a mobile device but if you are wanting to take a quick glance at the cameras from a computer or a tablet then this is a good way to go but i would like them to go and update this web interface to support html5 because who even uses adobe flash player at this point literally nobody i don't know why this is still stuck in adobe flash player now the one thing that the system doesn't cover is if you've got somewhere like a shed that you need to cover as well and that's where something like the real link loomis comes in and i'm not just trying to go and be a shill for relink or anything but they also sent me this as well the one thing about this that is great over the other cameras is the fact that it has a integrated spotlight so if it senses motion it'll throw that on it'll have great night sight and it will just go and scare off anybody who may be around their wireless cameras are typically compatible with their solar panels which means that you never have to worry about recharging these cameras but this one specifically only has a usb a lead out of it so you will have to go and plug it in through a usb power brick or some other form of power which is a little bit upsetting especially if you're mounting this outside you still got to run power to it but even still this is your better option as far as if you need to get to a more remote location and you can't run a networking cable to it so this is also compatible with that real link app and will join everything together all into one place like before if you're interested in purchasing either of the systems that i showed off in today's video i will be leaving links to purchase those down in the description below so if you want to find those those can be down there but if you enjoyed this video make sure to let me know by clicking the thumbs up button down below as well as subscribing for future videos like this if you want to see more like this in the future also some random video will be right down there and my last video should be right over there so go check those out but with that being said that's it for this video hope to see you in the next one peace

Channel: Carson Miller

Views: 1,387,519

Keywords: tech, technology, carson miller tech, carson m tech, gadgets, tech geek, gadget, 4K, YouTube, 2020, reolink, wireless reolink camera, Reolink 8CH 5MP PoE Home Security Camera System, reolink 5mp, how to install poe camera outdoor, how to install poe camera, best poe camera system, poe cameras, how to install camera in soffit, security camera in soffit, security camera, home security, 5mp security camera, nvr setup, reolink nvr setup, reolink lumus, reolink nvr review, cameras, camera

Id: osNnMjEhmZw

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020