Any of you guys have one for your home? Recommendations? Things to watch out for? Prices seem to be coming down significantly.
Peter.

three dot sight, red dot sight, laser sight all good for surveillance

I asked about surveillance not target acquisition. If I am not home then red dot sights don't do me much good, do they?
Peter.

Lots of decent stuff and lots of knock offs. Test one before you buy if possible lots of cheap cameras focus ok from 5-8 feet but do not focus properly at 15plus. Lots of cameras advertised as Sony only have a Sony microprocessor for video and the rest is crap. Made in China is cheap, Made in Japan or Korea is better,(sorry not made in USA).Mid priced DVR's are a good buy, again avoid China (substandard parts), get at least one terabyte of hard drive space and buy one with a dvd drive so you can copy what you may need for law inforcement or the insurance company. I personally opt for record on movement rather than constant record, it saves a lot of disk space. Good luck

quote:

Originally posted by Just Mike:
Lots of decent stuff and lots of knock offs. Test one before you buy if possible lots of cheap cameras focus ok from 5-8 feet but do not focus properly at 15plus. Lots of cameras advertised as Sony only have a Sony microprocessor for video and the rest is crap. Made in China is cheap, Made in Japan or Korea is better,(sorry not made in USA).Mid priced DVR's are a good buy, again avoid China (substandard parts), get at least one terabyte of hard drive space and buy one with a dvd drive so you can copy what you may need for law inforcement or the insurance company. I personally opt for record on movement rather than constant record, it saves a lot of disk space. Good luck

Good advice. Those prosecutors in TX could have benefitted from having cameras around the house before opening the door. It does little good to carry outdoors, then assume you are safe inside the home.

I intend to have one installed before Hurricane season. I would also like to have IR cameras and a license plate reader as part of the system.

Thanks guys. I was concerned about local storage vs cloud storage. I agree with movement recording. My main thought waa that anyone with half a brain, when seeing cameras would just look for the storage location and just remove or wreck that. Now, concealed cameras would be ideal.
Peter.

Peter, as you know, cloud storage is highly dependant on your high speed internet connection. No connection, i.e. hurricane, tornado, etc, then no cloud. As a backup, you will need to see if you can provide an alternate method of the system reaching the internet. I have some clients that have purchased a cell "hot spot" in case the wired internet to the house goes down. AT&T makes a 4g hotspot. I beleive there are some security systems that will do the routing from one to the other, although I can not find the brands right now. I believe within a year or so, the Microsoft Connect gaming system will be able to be used as a monitoring device. It can currently be used as an end point for corporate video conference today, so the cameras in it are already connected to the internet, as well as the gaming. Of course they will steal that too.

I am not a huge cloud fan. I would rather see a fake recording device somewhere findable and the real one secured on prem. That way your information is still your information, not the internet's information.

quote:

I would rather see a fake recording device somewhere findable and the real one secured on prem.

That is a great idea!
Peter.

Peter, the one I saw that worked the best had an old piece of coax attached to the back of an old VCR like normal that the other end was put through a hole to the ceiling, simulating going to the camera, but the 3' length of coax had the other end frayed some and was just stapled to a rafter. If it was pulled out, it just looked like the coax was pulled loose. They powered the VCR and that was it. Under $20 including the cost of the old VCR.

I have an area in the great room made to put knick-knacks on , it's 12 ft up and had power for back lighting. Can't see the DVR unless you have a ladder and know where to look. Most decent camera's now come with IR, you would be suprised how good you look in a pitch dark room. Think long and hard and place camera's correctly the first time, cable installation is the hard part.

So, do you want them to see the cameras or not see them? The cameras I have seen are still quite sizeable and not easy to conceal.
Peter.

Camera's in site, DVR is not. Dvr is where the incriminating evidence will be.

Just came back from the local radio Shack. They have cameras that, via the Internet, can be viewed from your smart phone! Priced pretty reasonably as well.
Peter.

I had a break in on my farm and what they did was got underneath the motion sensor lights and knocked them off. I asked the sheriff what he thought and he stated if they know you have a system they will wear a hat and glasses until they eliminate the cameras. Most camera don't give enough clarity to identify unless the mut sticks his face close. There are quite a few uncover type dvr cameras which work much better since they don't know they are there. An alarm works the best since they have to reduce their time anticipating that police will show up, make sure they have cell capability. a really nice system is Simplisafe. The sheriff also states game cameras hidden works well, but as the old sying says locks keep honest people honest
Also if you go with a video system you need a camera to watch the other camera so you will record when each camera is eliminated

Good comments raamw! Yes, the doors are always locked, but my concern is if I am out of town for several days. Your point about concealing the face is well taken, hence my thought about concealing the cameras. Of course, advertising the presence of cameras keeps out the casual perps!
Peter.

A good DVR is the key. Cameras can always be upgraded. A DVR should have a jack for a flash drive or memory card. It should also allow video to be seen remotely from your smart phone.

Getting cameras that can be used to ID someone or even read a plate is going to cost you.

Just set the DVR to record everything and recycle its memory. You can get a couple of weeks worth of recording depending on number of cameras, quality of video, and storage capacity.

IR cameras are generally a short range affair. Outside you can install an infrared light on a motion sensor over an area you want to record. The separate IR light can give much better results than the lights built into the camera and won't give away a camera's position.

Cameras work best in conjunction with a good alarm system, one with a loud siren.