Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and looking forward to delving into the world of Home Assistant very soon.
To start things off, I would like to replace an unused light fixture in my backyard with a night-vision camera. It is higher up the back wall and facing parallel to the back of my house, so it would provide a good vantage point of anyone approaching the back entrance to my basement or sneaking into the backyard from the dark side of my house.
Do they make security cameras that you can hardwire into the house’s 120V supply?
I thought this would be a popular option, due to the easy installation (just swap out your light fixture), but I am having difficulties locating any.
In case you’re interested, my phase I security plan is the following
TP-Link Tapo d230s1 doorbell camera to cover off our big front porch and possibly the car (shipment in progress)
replacing two flood light bulbs, with sensor LED floodlights, to protect one side of the house and our back door (shipment in progress)
this new 120V camera, would cover off the back entrance to the basement and anyone sneaking from the far side of the house
get Home Assistant up and running (possibly on my Beagle Bone Black) & hooked up to the 2 new cameras
Phase II would come later on, by adding some additional PoE camera’s, such as where the (soon to be motion sensing) flood lights currently are.
I doubt you will find a 120V camera but you can easily use a transformer to step that down to the 5-12V most cameras want. If you have 120V then at the very least you can put in a GFCI outlet there to plug a wall wart into that powers your camera. Many cameras come with weatherproof power supplies (or you can acquire one on Amazon). For a wet location this is probably what you want to go with, I wouldn’t want to hard wire anything in a wet location that won’t trip locally when there’s a problem.
There are also cameras that are dual purpose flood light/cameras that you could probably hard wire in since the transformer for the camera would be built into the light, like this one from Reolink:
Thanks for the advice Colorado Four Wheeler, but I was unable to find any on Amazon, at least for my country.
That forced me to abandon my idea of using the old light fixture as an easy power source. This lead me to a better solution … if I move the camera location near’ish my back door, then I can run the power cable (supposed to be 10 ft) above the doorway, down the side & underneath it, to an outlet in my laundry room. This has the advantage of putting it more central in the backyard, but might have a few minor obstructions right against the house … we will see.
I have been looking at the Tapo C510W as it is 40% off right now and seems like a fantastic price point for my first foray into security camera’s. It even appears to use RTSP, so I should be able to get it working with Home Assistant, just not sure about the tilt & panning.
Eventually I want to get 4K cameras with PoE, but need to get my internet switched over to fiber optics first and see if my network “closet” ends up moving. Would hate to have to reroute all the PoE cables. This should give me a quick jump start on getting the bare min up and running.
Thanks again.
EDIT: C520WS is only 28% off, but has their starlight sensor. Sounds like a better choice.