Just wondered what people here are using for general security monitoring of their home?
We used to have a comprehensive hard wired system in our previous home, it sat there recording onto a central professional CCTV HDD recorder. It was quite an effort to install and constantly consumed energy. Over time (10 years) the system became out dated cameras replaced but was still operational. When we moved we didn’t take it with us and to date we have yet to replace it.
Before I go off and do what I did before I wondered if any of the ;modern home style systems were worth a look at? Pros and cons etc.
I am not so fussed about remote access and would rather avoid aving to subscribe to a service for it to work. I note that some new cameras are battery powered, are these any good and what sort of real life battery life do you get? .
Yep good call indeed. Been looking for a while. Don’t think I can install a wired system so will have to go wireless as it’s less of a hassle. Any help in regards to the pros and cons etc. would be grateful.
To my mind, remote access makes a lot of sense. You can see what’s happening on your phone, and take appropriate action, or ignore it if it turns out to be a cat or the postman who triggered it by accident.
We installed Blink in the summer, there was an offer on Amazon Prime day, the next week they introduced a new model!
We’re very pleased with them. They are not the last word in security cameras but reasonally inexpensive and more than adequate for capturing people around your property when you are out. They only capture when movement is detected and you can view on a phone or tablet in real time or your libary of recordings. They are easy to install as they are battery powered using 2 AA lithium batteries. They claim 2 years life, they are still going after almost 9 months and reporting that capacity is still good so I’m not complaining if we only get a year between changes.
Recordings are captured to the cloud but there is no ongoing subscription, Blink are part of Amazon so I’m reasonably confident they will still be around.
It’s quite interesting seeing what goes on. Our open porch is on the side of our property, out of sight of the road. One day the postman delivered and then started peering through the glass panel of our door, and around him. Then he got a bottle out of his pocket and had a pee into it!
The picture is a still taken using the camera, minus postman.
Thanks for your thoughts, all, I agree with ChrisSU remote access is useful and I suspect from having done some searching about, that remote access is now very common, in fact our last system could do it, but it was a bit clunky and the works ‘fire wall’ blocked my access!
We used to watch footage on our previous system and what we learnt was that people do the same thing at the same time very day! We did spot our neighbour once clamber into our back garden while he was tinkering with our joint fence, wandered up to our back windows for a good look. I was tempted to have a polite word about his behaviour but in the end we moved away.
I also spotted the antics of our two teenaged daughters during a summer holiday when we were away and they stayed. the comings and goings, this might be disclosed at some point in the future if needs arise! Funny how you can forget its there. I did wonder if it would catch the car falling on me or me falling off a ladder one day during DIY. :0)
I forgot to mention, on one occasion we came home to find the council’s lamp post half knocked over. Our cameras spotted the refuge collection truck reversing into it earlier that day. And the one day I left my car parked on the road, it spotted my neighbour drive straight into it, whilst rummaging in the foot well of her car, it kind of reduced the argument about who might be more careful in future.
Haha. You really don’t want to pick up plastic half litre bottles with yellow/brown fluid inside on the verge of our major roads either apparently. Those lorry drivers are on a tight schedule…
We have a home network built from Ubiquiti kit and have recently added four of their cameras (hardwired and run from POE switches so only one cable to each camera). Everything records to a hard drive in the device (a cloud key) that runs the network. Everything is available remotely on our phones. It works like a charm and all that kit would probably fit in a shoe box. Drilling the holes took longer than setting up the software. Nothing more to say really. It’s fun seeing the local wildlife running about. Not so fun that one member of that community was a rat…
Hi, had 2 Netatmo cameras set up a few months ago, electrician wired them both to the mains. All runs via the network and cloud storage (free dropbox account) Have to say, I’m over the moon with them. Only negative I can highlight is the lack of audible feedback like something along the lines of the Ring doorbell systems, it’s a shame as I’ve always wanted to shout “get off my land” at some loitering herbert but certainly not a deal breaker. Got a deal on the 2 of them via the web. Good luck. Forgot to mention, no monthly subscriptions either.
