Home Security Camera

[lakngulf]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion.

What should I know before I jump in?

 

[Citydude]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion. What should I know before I jump in?

We have motion sensors instead of the cameras that email me and contact the local sheriff. The cameras would be good for identifying an intruder though.

 

[kthompson]

I bought a Swan system with eight cameras and large hard drive to record and had it set only to record when it detected motion. Hard drive went out at about one year old. Just went out last week, no idea on possible repair.

 

[ch1ch2]

I have had 7 systems. Currently running 3 systems.
1 system would not restart after power failure. Others had hardware failures.
I connected the video out to the monitor to all TV's VGA input. Any of 5 TV's could quickly view the cameras. That stopped with my newest system. It had HDMI video output.

If the system records to it's own hard drive, remember that thieves may take the recorder when they break in. It happened to my son.

The larger the hard drive the better. 1 of my systems rewrites on itself every 4 days. I can get 2 weeks from an other.
Cloud recording can get expensive, but depending on what you get it may cost nothing.
You can monitor your system from anywhere with cloud recording but, so can everyone else. (nothing is 100% secure)
Just my 2 cents.

 

[roadhunter]

A game camera might be a simpler alternative for some applications like this.

 

[BigCountry1689]

The RING doorbell company has a cool system that I put on my aunt's house. Its a solar operated camera that accesses your WIfi and uploads to the Cloud. No wires, solar panel keeps it charged, motion sensor and night vision (effective at about 5-10 feet) just stick up access through your computer setup is very easy and sends alerts to your phone with 30 day storage on the cloud. CANARY and iSMART also has a unique system similar to the RING but I liked the avoidance of wires. The camera is $200 and Solar panel is $49.00. I put 1 over each door, took about 1 hour and done. Solar panel has about 6 foot cord so you can mount to the fascia board and then 1 screw for the camera above any area. My aunts big issue was she didn't want to have wires installed and wanted to keep it simple.

 

[Industrial Toys]

It's all about quality. Usually you get what you pay for. I have been selling cameras for 26 years and found the only way I could ever determine a difference from one to another was put them side to side and switch back and forth. The specs often didn't mean a thing, and usually price determined the winner.

I guess, this is near impossible to do with the packaged systems.

I don't like many of the packaged systems because they use goofy, specialized cables and connectors, rather then industry standard coax or BNC connectors, or CAT 5. They often use fragile (cheap) skinny wire, and if you are five feet short, you have to buy a fifty foot pre-made cable and roll it up.

 

[tjkubota93]

I have a amcrest 960h 8ch with 6 day dvr from amazon. With app i can see on my phone. It initially had 4 cameras and I added 4 more. It uses bnc cables. Had it 2 years. At 89 days there was a software update that bricked my hard drive, they sent a new one. I'm happy with it.

 

[kcflhrc]

I purchased a Q-See system from Home Depot on sale for $189, regularly $379. It came with 4 960TVL cameras and the DVR with a 1 TB hard drive. It has a phone app and also e-mails me when a camera is triggered. It works great and the price was fantastic.

 

[dickfoster]

I think I will bite the bullet and get some kind of home security camera. I am leaning to the type that hold about 7 days, but can, with a setting, send an email picture triggered by motion.

What should I know before I jump in?

Be sure to get a camera with enough resolution that would be good in court. Many of the cheaper ones put out the old TV standard resolution which isn't worth squat. You don't need color while B&W is better in the dark with supplemental near IR illumination. Color cameras have filters that exclude near IR for better color rendition but that really cuts down on night time performace when you typically need it the most.