Storefront Canopies Surveillance Challenges

+1 for the building across the street :)

Could you slip a wire out just below the truss, into the canopy, and hang cameras on the outer edge of the canopy itself? You'll probably still have blind spots in parts of the alcoves, but that would give you more coverage than something right on the wall.

Across the street is a no go.

We are leaning towards a couple cameras mounted low using long lenses. I'm looking at the Bosch Starlight dome w/ the 24mm lens. It is not ideal (vandalism is a real concern), but "a bunch" of cameras don't fit the budget.

Matt's idea of using the canopy as a mounting point has me intriqued. It's a fabric canopy over aluminum frame, so I need to find out how substantial that frame is. Many of the ones I've seen are pretty flimsy.

How far from the front of the building does the business property extend to the street or sidewalk? Is there a landscape strip between the sidewalk and street? I have seen some camera installs within landscape lighting fixtures that are pretty creative and might work a bit better than attached to the building or the awnings which might pick up a good bit of wind vibration.

Other than the doorways, what purpose does covering the remainder of the building serve if vandalism is not much of a worry and an alarm system for the numerous windows would be a greater deterrence to window entry than cameras.