CCTV Supplier for Sutton Coldfield
The call usually starts the same way. Somebody in Four Oaks or Mere Green has had a garden office turned over, and the four-camera kit on the back of the house recorded a grey rectangle where the bottom of the plot should be. No lighting past the patio. Mature trees both sides. That kit was never going to cover a garden that size.
We sell the parts. We do not fit them. CCTV101 is the trading name of Cerrado Ltd (company number 06685310), trading out of Unit 60, Camp Hill Industrial Estate, John Kempe Way, Birmingham, B12 0HU since 2008. Counter hours are Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 17:00, closed on public holidays. Ring 0121 655 0146 before you set off.
One recorder and four cameras will not cover a plot this size
The housing up here is large detached, mostly Victorian through to interwar, on plots that would take three new-builds. Rarely one building. There is usually a detached garage, often a garden office with its own power and its own door and nothing watching either, and you are past eight channels before the house itself is covered. Walmley plots are newer and shallower. Same outbuilding problem.
Buy the recorder for the site you will end up with, not the four cameras going up on Saturday. A 16-channel NVR costs a little more today and a lot less than swapping out an 8-channel next year, and our guide on what size NVR you need works through channel count against recording bandwidth and drive size.
PoE stops at 100 metres of copper, and a garden office at the far end of a Sutton plot can sit past that from an NVR under the stairs. Put a small PoE switch in the outbuilding and run one external-grade Cat6 back to the house, which is what switches and injectors are for. We will not sell you a wireless camera for the far boundary. Brick and forty metres of planted garden between the router and the lens. It will drop.
The ColorVu argument on an unlit rear boundary
Rear boundaries up here are properly dark. No street lighting reaches them, the neighbouring plots are just as deep, and across much of Four Oaks and Streetly, where gardens run out towards Sutton Park, there is canopy overhead killing even the skyglow off the city. Pure ColorVu is designed to use ambient light, and on a lit driveway it gives colour all night off a wide aperture and a big sensor. Take it to the end of a black garden and the LED is doing everything.
That fails twice over. The LED burns the first few metres of hedge, which the camera then meters for, so anything past it goes darker rather than lighter. And it is lit all night in a part of the world where people paid for the dark, so in Boldmere and Wylde Green, where the gap to next door is a fence rather than forty metres of lawn, that LED is somebody’s bedroom window.
Smart Hybrid Light is the honest answer for those positions. The camera sits on infrared until the analytics classify a person, at which point the white light fires and the clip is in colour. Nothing there, no light. Keep pure ColorVu for the drive and the front elevation. We pulled the two manufacturers apart in ColorVu versus Dahua Full-Colour.
Tree cover changes the job twice a year
Anyone who aimed a camera around New Hall in February and went back in July knows this one. A boundary camera looking through bare branches gives a clean view of the gate, and by June that same view is a wall of leaves. Work out what is deciduous before you tighten the bracket, then bias the aim towards the route in. A gate stays put. A canopy does not.
Trees also trigger motion all night, every night. Infrared makes it worse, because a branch two metres off the lens flares every time the wind gets up. On-camera classification is the fix. Hikvision call theirs AcuSense and Dahua call it SMD, and the camera works out whether the moving thing is a person before it bothers anybody. Without it, an owner mutes the app inside a fortnight.
Where the cameras actually go on a plot this size
Rough working order for a typical Sutton job. Adjust for the plot.
| Position on the plot | Light there after dark | What we would fit | Cable note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front elevation and drive | Street lamp or porch light | Pure ColorVu, 4mm | Shortest run on the job |
| Detached garage | None once the security light times out | Hybrid Light with person classification | Further from the recorder than you think |
| Garden office | Whatever the office leaves on | Hybrid Light, plus one on the door | Local PoE switch, single Cat6 uplink |
| Rear boundary under canopy | Nothing at all | Hybrid Light, 6mm, aimed at the way in | Long external run, worth ducting |
| Side gate | Spill from the house at best | Hybrid Light with strobe and audio warning | Keep the cable out of arm’s reach |
The run down from Sutton Coldfield
From B72 through to B76, pick up the A38(M) Aston Expressway and stay on it to Dartmouth Circus. There, do not follow the A38 signs into the tunnels. Come off onto the A4540 Middleway instead and go round east and south until you reach Camp Hill Circus, and John Kempe Way is just off that. The A5127 Lichfield Road through Erdington is the slower alternative.
That tunnel warning is not pedantry. Birmingham’s Clean Air Zone covers the area inside the A4540 Middleway ring road, and our premises sit outside that boundary, so collecting from Camp Hill puts no daily charge on a van that fails the emissions standard. The tunnels are inside it. Check the council’s zone checker before you travel. Parking and site detail sit on the trade counter page.
Collect from Camp Hill, or have it sent
Straight answer on stock. Most lines are not held in depth. What is not on the shelf can usually be got in for next day if the order lands before noon. Ring ahead. A few lines are trade only and need an approved trade account, and trade pricing needs an account too, though counter sales at list price are open to anybody who walks in.
Collecting makes sense on a bulky order, or on anything you would rather see before it goes in the van. The counter shuts at five, and both the Expressway and the Middleway clog, so aim for the middle of the day. For one camera or a power supply, do not bother. Let the courier do it. Express runs 1 to 2 working days and standard 3 to 5, free over £750 to the UK mainland, with terms on the delivery policy page.
Frequently asked questions
Do you deliver to Sutton Coldfield, or is it worth driving in?
Both work. Every postcode from B72 to B76 is a standard courier job. Driving in earns its keep on a bulky order, or once we have confirmed the parts are here. For one small item, the courier wins.
Coming down from Four Oaks, will I be charged for the Clean Air Zone?
Not for the destination. Our premises sit outside the A4540 Middleway, which is where the zone boundary runs. The risk is the route. Follow the A38 into the tunnels at Dartmouth Circus and you have entered the zone, while staying out on the Middleway keeps you clear of it.
Will a wireless camera reach a garden office at the bottom of the plot?
On a plot this deep, probably not, and we would rather say so than sell you two of them. Run cable. A point-to-point bridge between two buildings with clear line of sight works well, but that is a link rather than a camera.
Can I buy from you without a trade account?
Yes, at list price, over the counter or online. An approved trade account gets you trade pricing plus the handful of lines we sell trade only. Apply through the contact page. Approval is not automatic.