Depending on the size of your facility, you may require a few too many CCTV camera, this will be dictated mainly by the extent of the areas that you want to monitor.
In order to have a rough estimate of the number of CCTV cameras required, you should ask yourself these 3 questions.
A. Which Are The Most Important Areas That You Would Like To Monitor?
The most important areas of your home or business are the ones that have anything that is of value to you.
In a home setup, the most valuable asset is your family and property. Therefore since your main aim is to protect your family, you may think of the compound, main gate, and perimeter fence as your first choice.
The main aim here is to be alerted immediately about any intruder trying to access your house.
Therefore, you have to make sure you cover all corners of your property.
Compound
The compound includes not only the general outer space of your home, but also areas like the outer parking spots, areas where you keep expensive things like bicycles, tools, and even the swimming pool area.
Entrance Areas
CCTV installation at all entrances is very important. The entrance areas include all areas that can be used to access your house. This includes the main gate, Main door, back door, windows that might be broken into, and even the perimeter wall.
Internal Rooms
The internal rooms include the baby’s room, living room, garage, and even kitchen. These areas are usually overlooked but are still key areas when it comes to overall family security.
B. Which Areas Should I omit or Not Cover?
There are some areas in your house that can be omitted. These areas are less risky, or areas that don’t present any security challenges.
Side walls of the house-If you have covered the perimeter walls and the general compound, there is no need of covering the side wall. There is no way an intruder is going to access it without passing through the perimeter wall.
Upper Windows and doors-Like the side walls, upper windows and doors are almost impossible to access. Therefore, if the compound is well covered by the CCTV cameras, these areas can be omitted.
Private Rooms:- CCTV Camera should not be installed in Private rooms like toilets bathrooms
Interior rooms– many people consider all interior rooms private and will not bother installing CCTV cameras in interior rooms and even the living room.
However, if you have the little ones under the care of someone else, you can consider installing CCTV cameras in the baby’s room, playing areas, and even the living room.
2. Will You Be Expanding Your House or Adding More Cameras In Future
If you have any plans of expanding your house or adding more rooms, you might consider a CCTV system that is flexible enough to allow the addition of more CCTV cameras in the future.
Some other examples include;
- Construction of a new garage or a tools shed in the compound which might obstruct the normal coverage of the existing CCTV cameras.
- A business might expand by adding an extra room or office.
- A warehouse can increase the number of shelves requiring additional cameras to cover all areas.
3. The Cost Of CCTV Installation On A Wired Or Wireless Kit / Type of CCTV system to be installed
You may opt for either a wired or a wireless, installation depending on a number of factors. The wireless installation offers convenience and flexibility, while a wired system will offer a long-lasting solution with low or zero maintenance cost.
Basically, Wired systems are less for the cost of parts but more for the cost of installation at about Ksh 1500 to Ksh3500 per camera, compared to their wireless counterparts at about Ksh5000 to Ksh20000 per camera.
Wireless cameras are slightly expensive to purchase but are very fast and cheap to install and set up they are the best options for indoor cameras, or for areas requiring just a few surveillance cameras.
The table below highlights the Prices for wireless cameras from different manufacturers.
| Manufacturer | HD 1080P Resolution | Price (Ksh) |
| Ezviz | YES | 6500 |
| Anspo | YES | 5500 |
| Hi Look | YES | 4500 |
Wired cameras are cheap to purchase but expensive to install. However, once installed, the overall maintenance of a wired system is very low and actually requires little or no maintenance
4. The budget at hand
If you are working on a restricted budget or you don’t want to overspend, you should not only choose a CCTV system that’s right on your budget, but also one that serves you well.
The hard question therefore is, how cheap should you go? The perfect answer to this question is market research, which will get you right to the best offers in the market.
In Kenya, you can get a high-quality CCTV camera from Ksh 3,500 which will work right out of the box.
5. Remote viewing capabilities
Nowadays almost all CCTV systems can be configured to be viewed remotely on a phone or pc. However, for this to happen, the CCTV system has to be connected to the internet.
This can be achieved either through wireless means over Wi-Fi or be wired to the system through an Ethernet port.
In Kenya, a Sambaza Internet connection which should be good for a small CCTV system.
Prices start from as low as Shillings 2,000 for a speed of 5Mbps TO 10Mbps depending on the locality. Usually, billing is set monthly although this can vary from one operator to the other.
If you however live in remote areas, these services might not be available. In this case, you may opt for other forms of internet connections like Wi-Max or wireless broadband which can be offered by local operators like Safaricom, Airtel, & Telcom.
A point to note though, setting up a wi-max connection can be a bit expensive in terms of equipment costs, and also on monthly billing. Other connectivity options include using the new 4G Wi-Fi router.
They offer good internet speeds and are reliable. This is especially good if you don’t want to go over the hassle of signup and installation of Wi-Max or you don’t have enough funds at hand.
4G CPE routers can be purchased from different local communication companies and their prices are as follows. prices are tabulated in the table below.
| OPERATOR | ROUTER PRICE (Ksh) | MONTHLY DATA BUNDLE PRICE | STARTUP DATA BUNDLE |
| Safaricom | 10,999 | 200GB @ Ksh 4,999 | No Offer |
| Airtel | 7,499 | 48GB @ Ksh 3,000 | Free 25GB |
| Telcom | 8,999 | Unlimited Plan @ Ksh 5,500 | Free 10GB |
6. Where the cameras will be installed
Consider where the camera will be installed. Some areas require more specialized equipment and thus are more expensive to install
You may require a CCTV camera to be installed in special locations which might be hard to access or require special equipment.
This type of installation must be carried out by a qualified technician. Prices for such installations are not usually fixed and are usually determined by a site survey to identify the exact extent of work to be carried out, and the type of equipment required to accomplish the task.
7. Size of your premises
The size of the premises can directly affect the cost of a CCTV installation. The bigger the premises, the more the number of cameras that will be required to cover the whole area effectively.
Also, very big areas also require different installation approaches for example a big area can be subdivided into zones, which are more realistic and easier to monitor.
Each of these zones will be treated as an independent installation. Finally, all the different zones will be interconnected to a central command center where all the monitoring and data storage will take place.
8. CCTV Installation Cost On Internal or External CCTV Cameras
Depending on the requirements you may opt for either internal or external cameras.
The major difference between the two is that Indoor cameras don’t have protection against the elements like rain sun and dust.
On the other hand, External cameras are built to withstand the weather elements.
The price range for the ordinary wired CCTV cameras doesn’t vary much for both indoor and outdoor cameras.
In the table below we have compared the prices for some of the available CCTV cameras in the market.
- Analogue High Definition (AHD)
- Internet Protocol Cameras (IP)
| MANUFACTURER | 720P AHD | 1080P AHD | 2MP IP | 4 MP 4K |
| Hik-Vision | Ksh 1,500 | Ksh 2,100 | ksh 4,000 | Ksh 7,000 |
| Dahua | Ksh 1,400 | Ksh 2,000 | Ksh 3,900 | Ksh 6,900 |
| HiLook | Ksh1,300 | Ksh 1,800 | Ksh 3,000 | – |
9. CCTV Installation Cost Depending On The Type of storage
A CCTV system can either store the recording data locally on a surveillance hard disk drive, or store it on a cloud server. These two options can greatly affect the cost of CCTV installation depending on which one will be employed.
A system can either use local storage, local storage plus cloud, or purely cloud.
Either option will offer a solution where you can be able to load earlier recorded data. However, the cloud service is more flexible in terms of storage space, and pricing.
The major disadvantage of this system though is, that it’s 100% reliant on an internet connection, meaning when there is no network the system cant record.
10. Resolution / Clarity Of The CCTV Camera Lens
One of the determining factors in the cost of CCTV Camera installation is the resolution. To normal human eyes, this is the clarity of the image or simply how true the image looks as compared to the original.
The resolution of an image is measured in pixels abbreviated by the letter “P” (ie 1080P) which means a count of 1080 Pixels per every square inch of an image. The more pixels in an image, the more clear it is.
Cost-wise, High-resolution cameras are more expensive than their counterparts. In Kenya, you can currently get cameras with resolutions from as low as 420P, 720P, and 1080P, and the latest models at 4K clarity.
Prices for different models are shown in the table below.
| MANUFACTURER | RESOLUTION | PRICE (Ksh) |
| Hik-Vision | 720P | 1,500 |
| Hik-Vision | 1080P | 2,100 |
| Hik-Vision | 4k | 7,100 |
Conclusion
The cost of CCTV installation can range anywhere from free if you choose to do it yourself, to between hundreds, or thousands of shillings depending on the number of CCTV Cameras being installed. It all depends on whom you will choose to do the installation for you.
The average cost of installing one CCTV Camera is Shillings 2,000 in Kenya. However as mentioned earlier, this cost may vary depending on many other factors.
CCTV installation cost of many cameras can be agreed on as a fixed figure depending on the extent of work involved.
Sometimes you might have some little know-how, and it might be tempting to do the installation by yourself to save some shillings. However, It’s always a good idea to leave the work to the professional CCTV installers.
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