Mort

Technically it's on its side. Assuming it has tuned antennas then I'd say it's possible that you're directing the majority of the 'signal' up and around a vertical plane and a bit forward (towards camera). I'm not saying this will be affecting your signal to the point that you're having issues, but laying it flat will likely get you better signal behind the router (the way the camera is pointing) if that's got some dead spots currently, and possibly some range horizontally (at the expense of vertical range you're maximising right now). If you can log into the web interface it'd be interesting to see if there's a power setting or anything to help coverage. A 1960s bungalow should 100% easily be served by a single AP. I'd hold on looking into a mesh solution unless you're after max speeds at all corners of the house and maybe garden coverage. Even if you just replace the Technicolor with something newer you'd be at half the cost of a mesh setup and should have a good enough signal all over. I'd still look at optimising the current router, then checking it's not an issue with the phone, then looking at a decent WiFi router before looking at multiple mesh APs.

What are you currently using for your WiFi routing? Seems like a mesh system could be overkill, if it's just that you've got a dodgy router that isn't any good, or setup badly, giving you bad coverage? Obviously if you have a huge house, or concrete walls (or both), then maybe you need to look at meshing or more infrastructure to make it work. But I had a single router serve our old 4-bed victorian (brick!) townhouse with spare signal for the garden, so might be worth looking into whether a decent router/placement would work better than investing into 2-3 mesh APs? It'd likely be cheaper if so.

I have a DS918+ for all my media at home. I'd definitely say get one with at least 4 bays and go for RAID (even if you're not using all the bays yet). It's a higher price point to setup, but gives you the ability to expand storage easier in the future, and (although I'm in the same boat with all the original DVD/BluRays to hand) no one wants to sit there and re-rip thousands of hours of films when you lose everything to a bad disk. Nothing but praise for Synology though, the 918 has been rock solid for years running 24/7. Not had good experiences with WD disks, but since swapping them out for Seagate drives it's been plain sailing. The OS running on the Synology NAS (DSM) should allow you to set up a DNLA server or host Plex etc. to serve the files to the TV/anything on your network. Not had any experience with Sonos stuff, but it should work easily enough (though be aware that I think you have to enable SMB1 and NTLMv1 which are both not great for security).

Although hideously expensive; have you considered Reolink's proprietary B10/D20 junction boxes? You mount the camera onto them directly so all the cable bits are inside and they have a standard gland on for the ethernet cable to come out?

I've gone with Ubiquiti's UniFi Protect range for my cameras (I'm using their Dream Machine Pro as a router, so can run the Protect application on that). The camera software isn't camera-licensed so I can expand to as many cameras as will technically fit my network without extra costs, and all the footage is all kept locally and off-cloud. My cameras are all PoE as we recently rewired the house and I took the opportunity to run cat6 everywhere in/through the walls and to in-ceiling mount all the internal Flex cameras. They do have some battery operated cameras in their range, but I'm not keen on solar panels etc. (especially as mine are set to record 24/7, not just on movement). I'm running a Homebridge server with the UniFi plugin to expose all the cameras to Homekit, as my main goal was to keep everything centralised in one app (though the individual apps and interfaces still work for the cameras, sensors, lights etc.) We used some ReoLink battery cams in the old house (mostly as a baby monitor) and they were quite good as an experience. Their wired cameras also used to have a general feed to hook into other CCTV systems too, not sure if that's still the case? But their battery cameras are tied to their cloud server, so you can't access them outside of the ReoLink apps. All the cameras at work (University) are HikVision, they do seem to be very popular with businesses. I've not used any to know anything about them really but unless they're required to be online to work, I would assume that some decent firewall rules and network setup could alleviate a lot of the security concerns? I have my home cameras separated off on their own VLAN and with no direct internet access -> they talk to the UniFi controller and that talks to the internet if I want to view remotely, meaning if anything dodgy somehow is running on the camera hardware it can't call home.

Not going to be much help to you, but I ended up going the smart-home route for some of the reasons you've mentioned; I never liked the 'alarm' going off randomly, or by accident (or when power was cut). I never felt like the alarm going off phased neighbours let alone anyone trying to break in (unless you want to pay for a subscription alarm where there's an operator to check and call authorities) One system never seemed like it covered/was everything I wanted. So I settled on a camera system and a set of sensors that all hook into Apple Homekit (as well as run their own apps) seeing as we're a heavily Apple based house already. Meaning I can now get notifications when the door opens, and if I'm not expecting that to happen I can tap to view the camera feed to check if it's someone I know has a key – if not then I can call the police myself, or 2-way talk through the camera to ask them to bu&%$er off etc. We also have 3 cats, so PIR sensors aren't that great in the house, but door/window sensors are. I could also get a vibration sensor on the windows if I was worried about them being broken to gain access (again, all hooking into HomeKit for notifications etc.). Homekit can also AI the video feed so can generate a motion alert if thinks it's a person and it doesn't think it's an animal (not really used this, but have been looking into it recently). If I really wanted I could hook in a regular siren to go off like a 'real' alarm. But as said – it's not something I think is worthwhile. Though I might look at having an internal noise going off through any smart speakers as a deterrent if anyone did get in. The main failure points to this type of thing are that notifications are gone if the internet or power is cut. And notifications are worthless if I'm not looking at the phone or am otherwise indisposed. That said the cameras will still be recording, and if I wanted to be more tradition I could, as said, make a siren go off or lights flash which will do just about the same as any other unmonitored alarm system in terms of deterrent? I'm 100% aware it's more of a homebrew approach, and takes a lot more effort to setup and maintain. But it really suits how I want to monitor my home compared to the "loud noise go off when I'm not home" approach that I don't really like.

From the experience I've had wiring the house up, the RJ45 ends are paradise compared to trying to punchdown and stuff four sockets in a double backbox! 😩

Not sure on the doorbells, but we have a Reolink Argus that we used as a baby monitor and it'll happily sit for 2-3 weeks on PIR mode recording movement. But watch it live for extended periods and you can kill it off in a couple days. I think the WiFi probably taxes the batteries more than the actual recording does. After setting up all the new cameras with PoE I'd definitely never go back to a battery/wifi camera unless it's in a really stupid place. Wired is just so much more reliable and consistent, it outweighs the hassle of the cabling no end (especially PoE where you don't have to worry about plug sockets or mains wiring). I'll be running ethernet to the door when we redo the porch, for the doorbell, 100%.

Yeah, I'd say it's taped/friction fitted between the joists for sure. I can see the layers from the base of the pitch all the way up; being Tiles -> Gap -> Breather membrane -> Joists/insulation -> Tape, so there's definitely the ventilation space even if there might not be anything (except physics and the membrane) stopping the insulation lifting up to fill the ventilation space. I'd say it's not perfect, but I'm more confused as to whether the gaps should actually be there than if the insulation is fitted well. But I guess that's more call to get someone in the trade to check it all over before it's out of sight.

Yeah, we're looking at insulated plasterboard if possible. Was just wondering if anyone had enough knowledge on here to red flag it, but will get a roofer in to have a gander before we cover it up just to be sure. Definitely got the ventilation and air space above – which is why I was wondering about the gaps, as the (cold) space above only has the membrane between that and the room at the sides of the roof. My brain says that makes the majority of the insulaton redundant, but I'm also aware I have zero knowledge on the technicalities of building/roofing/etc. so might be a normal thing to stop damp/interstitial condensation or something?

Anyone know about roofs/insulation? We’ve just rewired in the new house, and we’re replastering a dining room extension that had a bit of renovation work that the rewire flagged, it originally had a flat roof that’s been converted to a pitched roof. There’s currently 100mm of board insulation between the rafters, but at either side of the frame there’s a gap of 1-2inches between the wood and the brick walls. Should these gaps be filled with insulation as well to ‘seal’ off the room from the cold roof? Or is this how it’s done for airflow or something? Only really noticed as I was going to tidy up some of the aluminium taping and ended up actually looking at it. Now I’m not too sure if we need to add some insulation before boarding it?

Currently I'm on 3G internet with Three, topping out at 40ish up and 10 down 😭 (getting around 4,100 ping on the PS5 when the Mrs is watching Bridgerton upstairs 😭 😭 😭 ) We've just moved to a new house and CityFibre are building a whole fttp network in the city and our area is 'almost' live. So rather than being tied into a 12 month contact with someone else I'm waiting until August/September for that to go live. In the old house we had Virgin, so just used ethernet from the modem to the WAN port. I'm hoping that when we get CityFibre we may be able to direct connect, from what I can get from researching the CityFibre network uses VLANs so you need to tag the WAN with a VLAN ID if you're using your own router, so I'm wondering if I can get the fibre connection straight into the SE (which would be a godsend for installation) and just give them the MAC address. But will need to talk to the installer when the service is available to see if I need to try and fit a modem in the rack or not.

I mostly just did it to futureproof. I only needed 5 PoE ports (2x APs and 3x cams), but now we’ve moved I’m running 11 cables to wall outlets around the house as well as the NAS and server bits in the rack, I needed to get a switch to go with it and as I was being lazy I just got a Ubiquiti one when I ordered the SE. I only went with the PoE version in case I add any extra cameras/APs or devices in the future, probably could have saved a bit by getting the regular one, but this way I don’t need to worry about swapping it out and tidying up the cable spaghetti if I go nuts and put a couple of indoor cameras in the ceiling to watch the cats and add an AP to cover the garden or something. I think I’m justifying it more to myself than you at this point. TL;DR - more money than sense.

With the new house I went with the a Dream Machine SE, a couple of WiFi6 Lite access points and one of their 24port PoE switches to do the same. Still need to run the ethernet for the cameras once I've tidied up the outside of the house, but if you're willing to buy into the whole ecosystem then I'd definitely say it's worth looking at over Nest/Ring etc. I decided I wouldn't need the dedicated NVR just for a few cameras and a doorbell, but there's space in the rack for their 1U NVR if I want to expand in the future. Overall, I liked the idea of all-local storage and no per-camera licenses, so ultimately found the UniFi stuff fit best for what I wanted (plus there's a very good homebridge plugin that supports the Protect cameras/doorbell over HKSV, as Homekit is our smarthome backbone). Definitely not the cheapest option though, unfortunately.

Most of the G4 Unifi Protect cameras offer basic AI features (ID for person/vehicle/animal/package, but not facial recognition for individuals or ANPR). They have a couple of 'AI' branded cameras in Early Access currently that are meant to improve on this (not sure on the details), but aside from a couple of the more indoor based cameras they are all PoE/wired and all of them require a UniFi controller (NVR/UDM Router) to run the UniFi Protect security software so you'd have to buy into the whole system.