How to Plan Camera Locations on a House

Why this matters

Most camera callbacks are not equipment failures. They are cameras that work exactly as installed and show the wrong thing: the top of a hat at the front door, a white sky over the driveway at 5 pm, a neighbor's kitchen window in the corner of the backyard view. Every one of those was decided on the day someone picked a spot by eye from the driveway. Moving a camera after the cable is pulled and the hole is sealed costs a second trip and a patched soffit, so the plan is where the job is won.

This card is the walk-and-plan procedure. How many pixels a given task needs, and which lens delivers it at what distance, is the subject of Camera Field of View and Pixels per Foot; this card uses its conclusions and does not re-derive them.

Before you walk: what you need

A tape or laser measure, a compass app, the customer, and about 30 minutes of daylight plus a few minutes after dark if you can arrange it. A camera tester (a handheld monitor that powers and displays an IP camera) and a sample camera on a painter's pole let you see the real view before anything is drilled. If you do not have a tester, the customer's phone camera held at the mounting spot is a weak but useful stand-in for framing.

Ladder work during the walk is limited to holding a camera up to a soffit. Set the ladder at about 4 to 1 (one foot out for every four feet up), on firm ground, with three points of contact, and do not lean out past the rails to reach a corner; move the ladder.

Step 1: Write each camera's job as one sentence before picking any spot

Stand with the customer and get a sentence per camera that names a place, a target and a level of detail: "see every car and person that comes up the driveway from the sidewalk," "identify the face of anyone who rings the doorbell," "see anyone who comes through the side gate."

Why first: the job decides the spot, not the other way round. A camera asked to identify a face has to be close and nearly level with the face; a camera asked to see that someone crossed the yard can be high and far. Those two jobs almost never share a mounting position, and a customer who says "cover the front" usually means both.

What breaks if you skip it: you install a wide view that answers "something happened" and the customer finds out after a package theft that it cannot answer "who."

The four detail levels most of the industry uses (detect, observe, recognize, identify) and the pixel density each needs are in Camera Field of View and Pixels per Foot. Write the level into the sentence.

Step 2: Find the place every person has to pass

Walk the property the way a visitor or an intruder would. Driveways, front walks, gates, the gap between a garage and a fence, the steps to a back door. These are choke points: places narrow enough that anyone using that route is close to the camera and roughly facing it.

Why: a face camera aimed at a choke point gets a usable image of everyone. A face camera aimed at an open lawn gets a usable image of whoever happens to walk toward it.

What breaks if you skip it: cameras end up aimed at the middle of open areas, where people pass at a distance and at an angle, and every clip shows a profile.

Step 3: Stand where the camera will be, and check the look-down angle

Pick the mounting spot and check height against the job. Face cameras want the lens close to the height of a face and a shallow look-down; wide observation cameras want height so the view clears fences and parked cars and so the camera is out of easy reach.

A quick angle check: the drop from lens to face divided by the horizontal distance gives the slope. A lens at 7.5 ft looking at a 5.5 ft face 6 ft away drops 2 ft over 6 ft, about 18 degrees, which shows a face. The same lens at 11 ft drops 5.5 ft over 6 ft, about 42 degrees, which shows a forehead and a brim.

What breaks if you skip it: the camera goes under the highest soffit because that is where the attic access is, and every face shot is a hairline.

Step 4: Check the light at the hour the camera will struggle

Note which way each camera faces. In the US the sun tracks across the southern sky and sets in the west, low in winter, so a camera facing west or south will see the sun at some time of year, and one facing east will see it at sunrise. A porch light within a few feet of the lens floods it at night and can wash out its infrared. Glass in the view (a storm door, a window, a glass railing) throws reflections back at the lens.

Two ways around the sun that do not need a different spot: set the top of the frame below the horizon, so the sun can never be in it, or turn the camera so the bright direction falls at the frame edge rather than the center. Camera backlight and wide dynamic range settings help but do not rescue a view that puts the sun or the open sky behind every subject.

What breaks if you skip it: the camera is perfect at the 10 am survey and useless in the hour before sunset, which is when people come home and packages get taken.

Step 5: Keep the view off what the customer does not own

Look past each target to the background. A neighbor's windows, a neighbor's yard, the inside of a neighbor's garage and a public bus stop all show up behind gates and fences more often than anyone expects. Re-aim first; use the recorder's privacy mask (a blacked-out zone that is never recorded) where re-aiming would lose the target.

Audio is a separate question: recording conversations is regulated by state wiretap and eavesdropping laws, some of which require the consent of every party, so the shop's standard is that audio stays off unless the customer has made an informed choice. The full treatment of what to record, what to tell the customer and what to mask is in Privacy of Cameras and Sensors You Install.

What breaks if you skip it: a neighbor complaint after install, and a customer asking you to come back and move a camera you could have aimed right the first time.

Step 6: Trace the cable path to the recorder before you commit to a spot

For each spot, find how a cable gets from there to the recorder: attic over the soffit, a path down an interior wall or a chase, a basement or crawlspace run. Pick the recorder location for ventilation, a nearby outlet and the customer's router, not for whichever closet is empty.

Why now: a spot with no cable path is not a spot. A soffit over a vaulted ceiling with no attic space above it is a different and longer job. The routing technique itself is in How to Run Cat6 for Cameras Through a Finished House; here you only confirm each spot has a route, and note anything over about 80 m measured along the route (the Ethernet channel limit under TIA-568 is 100 m including patch cords).

What breaks if you skip it: the crew finds the problem with the drill in hand and moves the camera to wherever a cable reaches.

The plan for a three-camera house

A two-story house with the street on its west side, an attached garage, a covered front porch and a side gate into the backyard on the east. The customer wants to know who comes to the door, what comes up the driveway, and whether anyone uses the side gate. Recorder in a laundry closet with an outlet and a short run to the router.

SITE PLAN, NORTH UP, STREET TO THE WEST
             neighbor side window (masked)
 sidewalk          fence---GATE---lot line
     |                       ^
     |  +---------+--------+ |  C3 looks north
     |  | GARAGE  |        | |  up the side yard
 <======C1 soffit | HOUSE  | |
drive|  +---------+        | |
 <------C2 ceil.  |RECORDER| |
walk |  | PORCH   |laundry | |
     |  +---------+--------C3 east soffit
C1 10 ft, aims west down the driveway,
   frame top at the sidewalk, 40 ft out
C2 7.5 ft, aims west at the walk, porch
   light on the far side of the door
C3 9 ft, aims north at the gate
CABLE all three home runs via attic to
   the chase beside the laundry closet

C1, driveway. Job: see every car and person entering the driveway from the sidewalk, at observe level. It faces west, into the setting sun. Rather than move it, the plan sets the frame top at the sidewalk line. With the lens at 10 ft and the sidewalk 40 ft out, the look-down to the far edge is about 14 degrees (10 divided by 40 is 0.25). If the chosen lens gives 40 degrees of vertical view, the bottom edge sits about 54 degrees down and meets the ground about 7 ft from the wall. The whole frame is below the horizon, so the sun cannot be in it, though a wet driveway can still throw glare. The trade the customer agreed to: the street itself is not covered. Reading plates at the street would be a different camera with a narrow lens, and the pixel math for that lives in the field-of-view card.

C2, front door. Job: identify the face of anyone at the door. The first idea, the garage soffit at 10 ft, looked down at about 40 degrees on a visitor at the door and saw brims. The porch ceiling at 7.5 ft sees a face at 6 ft out at about 18 degrees. The porch light hangs beside the door, so C2 goes on the opposite side of the door from it, and its view is pitched down onto the steps so the bright street sits in the top of the frame rather than behind every face.

C3, side gate. Job: see anyone who comes through the gate. Mounted on the east soffit at the south corner, looking north up the side yard so anyone coming through the gate walks toward the lens. Holding the sample camera up showed the neighbor's side window about 25 ft beyond the gate in the upper right corner. Turning the camera far enough to lose the window cut off the gate latch, so the plan keeps the aim and adds a privacy mask over the window, and the customer was shown both views and chose that.

Cable path. All three are home runs: C1 through the garage attic into the house attic, C2 from the porch ceiling into the attic over it, C3 straight up into the attic. All three drop down the chase beside the laundry closet. The longest, C1, measures about 34 m along the planned route, inside the channel limit with plenty of slack.

What changes the plan

A one-story house with a low roof. Soffits sit near 8 ft, which helps face cameras and hurts reach-resistance; the spots get easier to tamper with, which matters more for a rental or a house left empty in winter.

No attic access over the front. Vaulted ceilings or a finished bonus room over the garage turn a soffit spot into an exterior run in conduit or a wall fish. Price that before promising the spot, or move the camera to a soffit with a path.

A customer who wants the street. That is a different job from the driveway: a narrower lens, often a separate camera, and a closer look at privacy, because a camera aimed at a public street sees neighbors coming and going every day.

How to confirm the plan is right before anything is drilled

Hold the sample camera, or the closest thing you have, at each marked spot on the pole and look at the tester screen with the customer. Check four things per camera: the target from the job sentence is in frame at the detail level written down, no sun or bright sky dominates the frame at the time of day it will struggle, nothing the customer does not own is in view unmasked, and the cable path is confirmed from the attic side. If you can return after dark, check C2 with the porch light on.

Then write the plan, with each camera's job sentence, height, aim and any mask, onto the ticket and get the customer's initials on it. When they ask in six months why the driveway camera does not show the street, the answer is already on paper.

References

• See related: Camera Field of View and Pixels per Foot
• See related: Privacy of Cameras and Sensors You Install
• See related: How to Run Cat6 for Cameras Through a Finished House
• See related: How to Mount and Weatherproof an Outdoor IP Camera
• TIA-568 cabling standard, for the 100 m channel limit