Seems thieves are reconning our neighborhood, so am starting to research this topic and look at possibilities.
If anyone has researched this lately, would appreciate any search keywords, gotchas, ‘works better with Apple products’ advice, learnings from mistakes etc. Would expect to view recordings on Mac/i-/iPad-OS/Linux.
I tend to be on the privacy end of the spectrum so am particularly worried about security of the wifi (planning to connect system to a previous router), how to keep it from reporting to a mother ship or surveilling our home network etc.
Other considerations:
EU resident so I need to mind the local regs; expecting hardware to be similar to US though
do not want to use a cloud; local storage only (if possible on a usb stick in the router)
do not want to use an App that requires invasive privacy settings
would prefer no App at all, just periodically revu the recordings
would like to set the hours of activity
remote access occasionally would be good but only with highest security
prefer one time purchase instead of subscription
do not need to converse with people seen on camera but audio recording would be useful
I suppose notifications when something is seen would be useful but perhaps too much so
rather not have any connection to any AI analysis of what is seen (manufacturer sites not clear if that is done on-device or if sent to humans or robots for analysis)
The few I’ve looked at online make it clear I need to research more, there are so many initialisms and references to features I’ve never heard of, vague promotional statements, and few downloadable user guides to explore setting up procedures, app requirements etc.
At the moment using a couple of ‘wildlife cameras’ on AA batteries and SD cards. They work fairly well with sensing and recording but do tend to eat the batteries and if I set up 5-6 of them it would take a while to collect their cards and review recordings.
I wouldn’t touch a Eufy product. Two years ago, news broke that their security was very lax and they were uploading videos to their servers, while claiming to not be doing so. And they’re a Chinese company.
They claim they’ve fixed all these problems, but I wouldn’t give them a second chance. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Any chance you could use a powered ethernet system? I think Swann still have kits that use ethernet instead of wifi and power the cameras via the ethernet cables so no battery woes. Of course installing cables is not an easy task - hence the attraction of wifi systems.
The Swann kit stores video on a local hard disk and live video/recordings can be accessed via TV/HDMI or an iOS app. If the base station is connected to a home router then live video and recordings can be accessed remotely via the iOS app.
Old technology but it seems to address many of your concerns.
I recently was on a wildlife conservation trip. Many of the research and animal protection groups in the reserves and conservancies I visited used non-networked, battery-powered cameras in their fieldwork. So I’d say your use of similar cameras isn’t a compromise or an improvisation.
Now, if I were trying to record criminals doing bad things outside of my house, I would plan my video setup around the assumption that the criminals would try to disable any cameras they spot. So I would conceal each camera as much as possible and minimize things such as cables, mounts, and other attachments. I also would want to avoid having any single points of failure in the surveillance system that are not in a secured place. This means, as you might have guessed at this point, that I would go with standalone wildlife cameras.
If, on the other hand, my objective was to deter criminals, I would use big, boxy, fortified cameras along with motion-activated lights.
If it’s an option, this is what I’d use. We used PoE for a set of eight cameras around the office and only needing a network cable was great. We bought relatively cheap outdoor cameras based on the recommendations of our software,
We used SecuritySpy and it made a very useful system. You do, of course, need an old Mac to run it on, but you can easily use local storage. It runs its own web server so you can log in from a browser, and they also have a very nice phone app which allows you to view cameras remotely. The software has many, many options, but is reasonably easy to set up and we found it very reliable.
Our house is long and skinny, so there’s a long perimeter to observe. I’d prefer hardwired as afaik it’s more ‘secure’ at least to its base station etc. We have a flat roof with a couple of old unused chimney shafts where cables could snake down. I’ve been thinking more of cameras mounted away from the house instead of, for example, on corners of the roof on some kind of poles/outriggers. This would also make is easier to avoid filming neighbor properties, which is the rule here.
I might use a mix of wired and wifi, will see how it goes as I research. We don’t have a tv so viewing on Mac-iPhone-iPad-Linux would be the best.
Personally I’m also old technology so wired would be fine for me.
Another plus of wildlife cameras is easy portability depending on how they perform in any given location. I tried one particularly motion sensitive on inside our house door, looking through a clear glass panel. Although I came and went numerous times and did activity inches in front of it, it didn’t make a single recording in 5-7 days. So some learning is there, as I suppose will also be the case with solar/wifi units.
For those, I could get some inexpensive and minimally disruptive posts and spikes to mount them in the ground in locations I think would work and reposition over time before mounting more securely.
Deterrence would be the goal. We had a police security review visit once and the list of suggestions was long and expensive. It is hard for folks like us to ‘think like dark wizards’, but on the basic logic of making our home appear more risky than neighbors, having visible cameras and more motion lighting might be a good compromise. We could stretch the Topic to infinity batting back and forth such considerations, though.
The recent recons have been fairly bold though, one hoody-clad person with a side pouch actually rang the doorbell at the front door of a neighbor house near midnight several times. At our house a bolted gate appears to have been forced open (not particularly difficult) and a terrace door left open (there is a slight chance I forgot to close the terrace door but unlikely wind would have opened the gate).
Another weak point in all this is the manufacturer apps. Is there any way to be sure they are not saving or leaking data out to the manufacturer or their contractors? I want to protect our home but don’t want video of our property spread around the internet.
When our company was rebuilding our main offices, we used several solar powered trail cameras to monitor the site. Each had a SIM card, and we used FTP to upload files to our FTP server. It worked very well, until they were stolen. They’re self contained, light, portable, easy to install, and easy to steal. We had footage of the thieves in their garage but it didn’t identify them well enough to bother trying to get them back.
You may have a more permanent way to affix them to a building or pole, but if they’re visible they’re a target.
@trilo wow with SIM cards! This is getting complexer and complexer, but interesting ideas!
Theft of cameras themselves can be an issue for sure. Truly determined thieves will defeat anything we set up. If we can deter the others by making our house look more risky than others then that is a step forward.