TR Forums

I'm looking for some schooling on setting up an outdoor camera system at my home. Anyone with some practical experience(s) they can share? How hard is it to drill holes in my house and run cable?

I'm not sure how much that stuff actually helps; there's a local restaurant that I'm fond of that's had 3 self installed camera systems stolen in the last year. They finally gave up on cameras, but turned down my idea of activating a bear trap and maybe some sort of hard electrical zapper on the door and window latches after hours.

My experience is mostly electrical retrofits and communications, but they use most of the same tools and techniques. If you're mounting under the eaves it's not too hard, depending partly on whether or not you have vinyl soffits. Usually the worst part will be crawling through the insulation in the attic to retrieve and secure the wiring while avoiding a fall through the ceiling. For the amount of time you'll spend in there, a bunny suit and respirator are highly recommended. Also, ibuprofen.

Pulling into and through walls is a whole different can of worms. A through-and-through is reasonably straightforward through woodframe, much more irritating through concrete or masonry, and requires a couple special grommets which you can get at Home Depot's electrical section, usually somewhere near the cable TV and networking supplies. Fishing cables through existing finished walls and ceilings, on the other hand...