Looking for ideas on monitoring driveway.

[cmx]

A few years ago i put cameras around my uncles barn, recently he has had people walking in his driveway trying to get to the river and crossing over the fence and tearing it up causing cows to get out!

Beside his driveway is a wire fence and power poles and a cow pasture its all open farm land.

Please excuse my 1 st grade drawing.

There is 220 feet space between the barn and driveway and the driveway is 1,100 feet long, i was thinking about running a cable from the barn to the fence line and put a camera up as you can see down the entire driveway from there.

Question is can i mount it to the power pole? probably not the best idea and then that leads me to what camera to buy, i was thinking maybe a combo unit with a 180 Panoramic lens and a PTZ below that can follow people.

 

[samplenhold]

What kind of a power pole are you talking about?


Is it wooden or metallic? Just supplying his place or other places too? How often has the power company worked on it?

If it is just a wooden pole to your uncle's place and the power company is never out there, it would probably be ok to mount a cam or two on it. There have been folks here that have done that but I do not know what the long term issues have been for them.

If it is a metal structure that transports high voltage across the countryside, they get inspected fairly often and I would think that you would have issues from them rather quickly. I doubt if you could get permission to mount cams on those.

If you decide to run Cat cable to them, 220 feet is doable. Placing several cables in a buried conduit would work with a couple of extra pull strings. Use cables rated for direct burial even if you put them in conduit since there will end up being moisture in there over time. Or just direct bury them, but that would mean if you decide to run more cams, you will have to trench again. Or just run several extra cables in the beginning. Realize that lightning can cause quite a problem with that much cable strung out acting like an antenna. So make sure you properly ground each cable. If you could run power to the mounting place, you could setup radios to send the signals back to the barn and you would not have to plan for lightning.

As far as what cams, that will depend on what you are trying to achieve with them. You have to make that decision. Do you just want to see what happened? Or do you really want to ID "who let the cows out! Moo, moo, moo moo, moo!" Are you looking for advanced warning of a perp coming down the road? The choice and placement will depend on what you want to achieve. Also the question of night versus day is another factor. If you need night ID then that is a whole different ballgame at those distances and I would imagine that you do not have much light there.

 

[cmx]

Sorry yes they are just regular wooden power poles, the power company has maybe been out twice in the last 20 years and the power poles are for his house/barn only.

Hes just looking to record these people as they are repeat offenders and maybe send it to the police.

He can see everything around his house/barn but not the driveway as it's 220 feet from the barn.