Home Security WiFi Camera

Just give the kids knives. The violence will stop shortly thereafter... one way or another.

 

What is the latest in this space? With all the construction going on in my neighborhood, there have been a lot of break-ins. I would like three decent outdoor cameras that I can view in real time, go back a week or so, and get alerts when someone comes to the house. Would like to avoid any monitoring charges if possible.

 

I installed Swann DVR-8- 4000 with 8 X Pro 640 cameras. 1 TB storage.
It's been working flawlessly since 2011/2012.

I have a live view screen in my garage/office, I can see who's coming and going.

I'm sure there are way better cameras available now 1080P etc.

 

Arlo Pro. Costco sells a 3 pack for $499. Wireless, battery lasts a long, long time and cloud monitoring is free. Has 2 way audio and a base station with an alarm that you can activate remotely.

 

I have a home built system.

Intel I5 NUC brick PC, 16 Gig ram, 256 Gig SSD for operating system (windows 10 64 bit) 2 Gig storage and Blue Iris for the cam system.

8 1080 POE cams all purchased from Amazon, all are hard wire from POE hubs. 3 are Amcrest PTZ with 2 way sound, to outside one inside. 2 waterproof SVC3, 2 RioLink, 1 small for factor LTS.

Blue Iris works awesome, took a bit to get it all figured out and configured. All cams can motion trigger recording, on the cams with microphones it gets sound too.

One PTZ is at front door, gets anyone that walks up the side walk, it is hung under the eve and has 2 way sound. I have one SVC3 that shoots the full street in front of our yard, one that shoots out of the wall up the front driveway, gets anyone that drives up the driveway. One shoots down the driveway, one up at my shop one PTZ covers the back yard, and 2 cover the main areas inside the house. I ran the cabling including 2 buried in the yard, think I have about 1200 - 1300 bucks in the system

All accessible through the Iris Android app.

 

This sounds like a winner. Ring.com seemed to have the best product, but this is $100 less and I think they charge for monitoring.

How far back does the cloud go?

 

Do you almost hope someone tries something so you get to use it?
Imagine when the cops show up. "Here he is running away, from 3 different angles."

 

I travel a lot, wife wanted to feel safe, The PTZ lets us see the dogs and check on the yard etc.

About 3 months ago my truck alarm went off at 2:00 AM (factory GM anti theft). We have had break-ins in the neighborhood. After I got it shut off I looked at the cams, turned out the truck got scared / anxious and set its alarm off on its own. With out the cams I would have been certain someone tried to break in. Interesting how sensitive the motion detectors are, the up the driveway cam was triggered 5 minutes before the alarm went off by a spider crawling over the lens.

 

Not sure of my model but I’m pretty sure it’s a swann with 1080 cameras and 1t drive. Has worked flawless for 2 years. Mine is used as you to see who’s coming going, just the cameras alone outside are a good detrurant and I added a couple towards the woods for scoping out the wildlife.

 

And I guess you can’t see the 4th camera, something must be wrong. I have no idea how his buddy got shot 29 times.

 

Big fan of Arlo

 

I think its 3 weeks.

 

Another Arlo Pro vote here

 

I was going to ask you how your system is set up???

Always wondered if people have them rolling/recording 24/7 or if they're motion controlled. I see pro's and con's of having it set up either way...



FWIW- I did order two of those Blink (indoor) cams and nearly 3 yrs later they're still operating off the original batteries!!!
Mind you, they only come on if the system is activated and there's motion detection. I don't really turn them on that much to check on things unless we're away.
I recently purchased two more of their XT cams which is their outdoor model.....for $180 off QVC.....very good deal if you ask me.

The thing I like about Blink is their cloud service is FREE unlike most of the other popular options, if I went that route I'd probably just go with SimpliSafe.

 

I have the ring video flood light. It’s works great. Linked it to my wife and my phone. Always know what’s going on at the house now.

 

Blue Iris lets you set it how ever you want. Mine is all event (motion) triggered for recording and keeps 5 days worth of events. I may increase it to 7. Trying to keep from filling the storage . Mine is totally free and I can access and control all the cams (including PTZ) from the app. It took some research on some online forums to get the software tweaked to keep the CPU drain in line but there is great online advice (you need to be a bit of a geek to do this)

 

I'm looking forward to their home security when it comes out.

 

I am using the YI cameras from Amazon for remote viewing. Cheap and easy. Can purchase cloud storage and has on-board SD storage. Satisfied with them overall, but it's a pretty basic setup.

 

Blue Iris, Decently configured PC, you can setup to the cloud if you want to but a decent size local drive will do a great job. Totally configurable will work with almost any Camera, has generic configuration drivers that can work for most that may not have a specific driver. Has a remote APP for Android and I-phone. software is 70 bucks if I remember right. I spent a little time online, there was a great tech article on getting the configuration optimized. If you try and run it at full res and high FPS rates it will tax the CPU and there is no value in the high frame rate. Once I got them all optimized it is 100% real time no delay. As long as you can interface the cams to the PC it can probably handle them.