There've been a few thefts around the area recently (garden furniture, cars stolen to order, sheds broken into) and I was thinking that it would be worth spending a couple of hundred quid on a cctv system so that it might deter some or help capture others if anyone targeted us. With ip cameras now, is there any need for professional installation and has any one put one of these systems up themselves? Half decent night vision camera tech is so cheap now that it must be possible to buy a relatively decent camera. It's just power and storage of video that I'm wondering about.
I've been researching these a bit. Not an expert so interested in replies but from what I gather you need to pay a bit for the decent resolution. Anything smaller than 1080p and it would be so grainy that you'd not make out any faces on the screen. Think somewhere in the region of £250-300 for the kit (3-4 cameras and hard drive) and self installation. Professional installation inc. Kit looks like about £7-800.
I'm also interested in this, and as there's so much kit available would also be interested to hear from an expert.
I've got a Synology NAS for file backup and it has software built in compatible with many ip cameras. Might me worth looking at a system like this rather than a standalone security system. You can then choose how many cameras what type etc.
if you have 3 or 4 old smart phones you don't know what to do with you can knock a system up yourself for free https://www.ivideon.com/
If you want a deterrent, could just buy a couple of fake ones. Plenty on sale for a few quid via Argos. Most thieves aren't going to spend the time getting close enough to work out whether or not it's real, they'd either move onto the next target or not be deterred anyway. If you're going to buy a proper set hoping to get footage that is good enough to identify people, go for a camera you can hide and looks out about eye level at the front door. Most wrong'uns will knock the door first to see if anyone is in before doing anything proper naughty. No point having an obvious one that looks down from on high as they can just pull up hoods or look at the floor.
You can get doorbells with cameras in now. My dad has one and it sends his phone a notification when someone rings the doorbell with a live video feed of whoevers at the door.
This. My girlfriends boss has it, and it apparently is fairly cheap to set up. Her phone gets a video call whenever somebody knocks at the door. You can let people know where to leave your delivery, or even pretend to be in the house but getting changed etc. Also allows you to filter out door-to-door sellers from the comfort of your sofa. The camera above the doorbell is enough to put all but the most resolute burglars off.
The first thing I would do when burgling somewhere is find and steal/destroy the cctv recorder. Although admittedly you dont know if it backs up remotely. So I'm not going to risk it.
The first thing I would do with any IP cam would be to hook it up to a cloud based storage system. That's one of the main points of the thread. I could easily put a hard drive somewhere but what would be the point of that? Like you I'd find and destroy it if i were a burglar.
All you need to do is switch off the power in the utility box which is generally by the front or side door and all of this security nonsense is rendered useless whether it;s backed up offsite or not. UPS systems are prohibitively expensive for anything good enough to supply a domestic CCTV system for more than 5 mins. You're better off ensuring that your house is less of a target than your neighbours. The vast majority of burglaries are opportunist. Make sure doors & windows are locked. Decent secure double glazing. Have an alarm system. Burglars will look elsewhere. Where CCTV comes into it's own is to protect cars on drives or defend against antisocial behaviour against property.
A few weeks ago a house up the road had their garden office broken in to, so I decided to go for it with regard to CCTV. I got one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01877E3GO I just wanted to cover the bottom of the garden as that's where my man cave is and where we keep the bikes. I've got power and wired internet down there so no problems fitting the cameras. The other two I used to cover the front and back doors. The system cost £100 less than buying with a hard drive, and a 1TB hard drive cost me £35. I can record up to 15 days and I've put the main unit in a place that is not easy to find. I can view the cameras via the main box, via a web browser or via an app on the phone. I've only had it 5 minutes and am still playing, but I'm happy that all house, man cave and garden entrances are covered.
Thread resurrection time. My current system has been working fine but it's very limited in features and accessing the cameras from outside the home network is "iffy" at best so I've been looking to upgrade somewhat. One of the work geeks showed me his system and it was very impressive, so I'm going to test and probably follow suit. Just ordered one of these as my test camera: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073GQ8T2L Going to setup one of my old PC's to use a piece of software called ISpyConnect. This is open source software available here: https://www.ispyconnect.com/. I know the camera I ordered definitely works with the software. My current cameras only seem to be compatible with the inbuilt system that came with the package. They don't work with ISpyConnect. Hence buying a new one. Once setup I should be able to access from outside the home with ease and have full control over a multitude of settings. I'll definitely be reporting back on here but would be interested to hear if anyone else has any decent systems setup that they're happy with.
ONVIF compatibility is the way to go. The camera I got works with it's own app to give me access away form the network and the ONVIF compatibility lets me record to my NAS drive using the built in software on it.
I've never quite figured those out. They look good in theory but the advert where the bloke in the supermarket tells a ne'er-do-well on his doorstep to sod off shows the weakness. If billy burglar has a face covering on he now knows you're out and has at least 5 minutes until old bill can get there - assuming they'll respond to someone's report about what their doorbell showed them was happening.
