Planning CCTV for a shop: cameras, storage and phone viewing

Plan coverage before buying cameras

A shop needs cameras at four places, a recorder with room to grow and a phone that shows the live feed from anywhere. This guide walks through where the cameras go, which resolution each spot needs, how much storage a month of footage takes and what keeps the phone app safe.

Where the cameras go

Four spots cover most shops. Add one more for every ten metres of aisle.

• The entrance: at face height, pointing at everyone who walks in, with a wide 2.8 mm lens that sees about a hundred degrees
• The till: from above and slightly behind the cashier, so the screen, the drawer and the notes being counted all read clearly
• The stock room: one dome over the back door and one over the stock shelves, where most losses happen out of sight
• Outside: a weatherproof dome under the awning, rated IP66 or IP67, with infrared that reaches about 30 metres after dark

Resolution: 2, 4 or 8 MP

Resolution decides what a frame can prove. A 2 MP camera (1080p) shows who was in an aisle. A 4 MP camera reads a face at the door or a note at the till. An 8 MP camera (4K) suits one camera covering a yard or a wide shop floor. Every step up costs more storage, so match each spot to the job it has.

How much storage a month takes

One rule covers it: a camera recording at 1 megabit per second fills about 10.8 GB a day. Multiply that by the bitrate, the number of cameras and the days you keep.

A four-camera shop on 4 MP cameras, recording all day for 30 days, lands between 5 and 8 TB: one 6 TB or 8 TB surveillance drive. Recording on motion only brings that down by half or more, and a quiet shop at night sees far more. Recorders report their live bitrate, so check it after the first week and size the next drive from real numbers.

Watching from your phone

Every modern recorder comes with an app. The recorder connects out to the maker’s cloud, the app connects in, and the shop’s router needs zero open ports. Three things keep it working:

• Upload speed: about 1 to 2 Mbps of upload for each stream you watch, so a fibre or 4G line with steady upload suits it better than a shared hotspot
• Motion alerts at set hours: alerts for motion between closing and opening, so the app speaks up only when it matters
• Locked accounts: the recorder’s default password changed on day one, two-factor sign-in switched on in the app, and one account per person who watches

Power, cabling and the notice at the door

IP cameras take power and video over one network cable from the recorder (PoE), so each camera is one run back to the box. A small UPS keeps the recorder and router up through a half-hour outage, which is when break-ins tend to happen. Label every cable at both ends; the next technician will thank you.

Footage of people counts as personal data under data protection law, Kenya’s Data Protection Act, 2019 included. A notice at the entrance saying that cameras run, a set retention period such as 30 days, and footage shared only with the police on request keep a shop on the right side of it.

Sources

• The Data Protection Act, 2019 (Kenya Law)

Storage figures follow from the bitrate: one megabit per second for 86,400 seconds is 86,400 megabits, about 10.8 GB a day.