Front door, driveway, back yard and both sides. Seven steps, in order. Most of the work is running cable and mounting — the electronics side is close to plug-in.
Walk the property before opening a box. Stand where each camera will sit and look at what it actually sees — faces at a door, plates on a driveway, the approach rather than the thing being approached. Mark each spot and the route the cable will take back to the recorder.
Still to add: Photos of a real walk-through, plus the two or three placements we end up correcting on almost every job.
The recorder needs mains power, airflow, and ideally your router nearby. It does not need to be visible — a closet or utility room is better than a shelf, because a recorder someone can pick up is a recording someone can take.
Still to add: A photo of a tidy install, and the real note on drive fitting for each model.
One Cat6 run per camera, recorder to camera, no splitters. The same cable carries both the video and the power, which is the whole point of PoE — there is no separate supply at the camera end. Leave slack at both ends.
Still to add: Run lengths per kit, the drill and fish-tape list, and attic/soffit photos.
Mount, aim, then tighten. Aim with the recorder already showing you the live picture rather than from the ground by eye — it is the difference between one trip up the ladder and three.
Still to add: Anchor and screw sizes per mount, and the junction-box detail for each camera in this kit.
Cameras into the recorder's PoE ports, recorder to mains, recorder to your router. The cameras are found automatically; nothing is configured per camera to get a picture.
Still to add: Port-by-port photos and the first-boot screens for this kit's recorder.
Set the time zone, set a real password, and set how long you want to keep footage before it overwrites. These three decide whether the system is useful six months from now.
Still to add: Annotated menu screenshots and our recommended retention per kit.
The recorder pairs to a phone app so you can view live and scrub back. This runs from your recorder, not from our server — nobody else holds the footage and there is nothing to subscribe to.
Still to add: The pairing walkthrough with screenshots, and the router note for remote access.