I have a fairly large (for me) security camera system to install and the cost of cabling is keeping this project cost prohibitive. I'll outline what I'd like to do, and welcome comments on the feasibility.
I have 13 apartment buildings that need to have cameras mounted on the outside of them. Some buildings have 4 cameras, some have 3 and some 2. The office is about 700' from the furthest camera, and quite a few are over 500'. There are 31 cameras total, with more than 18 of them over 500' from the office. Running a single analog video/power cable to each camera requires a LOT of cable.
Here is what I'm looking at doing instead:
On each building, use IP based cameras, attach them to a small PoE network switch (with power applied at each switch for it's cameras), and then run a single CAT5 cable to the next building into that building switch's uplink port. The most switches on a single chain would be 4 with a total of 55 megabits of video data. Some chains would be shorter with fewer cameras and switches. There would be LESS than 250' between each switch. The end of each chain would terminate to a video surveillance NVR.
Is this possible, chaining the switches like this?
Thanks for any input.
Best Answer
As long as each switch has its own independent power source for the cameras plugged into it, this should work as long as your NVR can handle that much incoming video. The links between switches should be for data only.
While you're running the wire, you might as well run CAT5e so you can easily upgrade to gigabit PoE switches and higher-res cameras in the future if desired. It wouldn't be a bad idea to use gigabit switches from the start.