Delving into home security...

[slicendice]

At the risk of tempting fate, I've thus far been fairly lucky when it comes to suffering break-ins, thefts, etc. But it feels like reports of thefts and suchlike around where I live are increasing; every other day there's been some kind of break-in...some at night, some in the middle of the day, some where intruders have brazenly taken a series of running jumps at a door until it breaks. Now I know that no home security system is 100% guaranteed to prevent such things happening, but from what I've read, they can help to lessen the likelihood of becoming a victim.

 

I do have an alarm fitted at the moment (was installed when house was re-wired 5 years or so ago), but it only covers some of the house (downstairs) and tbh it rarely gets used any more as it kept going off at random times for no obvious reason (and didn't appear to be caused by spiders as the sensors were regularly cleaned). So I'm thinking about getting something a bit more useful. I do appreciate that just having the alarm box on the outside of the house can, apparently, act as a deterrent, but it would make sense to go beyond that for those times when it doesn't act as a full deterrent.

 

So I've started to delve into the world of alarm systems and surveillance cams...and what a vast world it is! But then I suppose that goes for most things tech-related. At the moment, what I'm wondering is:

 

• what sort of alarm system is best - wired or wireless? Appreciate one of the biggest differences is probably ease of installation, but that aside, is one notably better than the other?
• is it worth getting door sensors that get triggered when the door opens? Or would the IR room sensors make them a bit redundant?
• are outdoor surveillance cameras worth it?
• if they are worth it, is it better to have two independent systems (i.e. an intruder alarm and then a separate surveillance cam system) or one integrated system? Appreciate that having one system may be easier to use due to the very fact it's integrated, but it seems the options are much more limited if you go that route (i.e. not as many packages that include alarm and cameras) - and if you mix 'n match two independent systems, you can probably get something more comprehensive/suitable.

 

If anyone can help with the above, or has any recommendations or info on their own system, I'd be very grateful.

[Mort]

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.

[slicendice]

Thanks Mort, that's some useful info 

 

I'm also not entirely convinced by the audible alarm...I guess it might raise an eyebrow amongst neighbours if it went off in the middle of the night, but it generally seems that if an alarm goes off during the day, everyone just assumes it's a false alarm and the owner's set it off by accident! In fact I just read an article about how people react to audible alarms and it stated: "Over 30% of neighbours would ignore it while the majority, 42%, would have a quick peek out the window"

 

Can I ask what cameras you went for? Did you go wired (PoE) or wireless? I've delved into quite a few brands recently - it seems HikVision is one of the biggest names at the moment, but there appear to be question marks around security (as it's partially owned by the Chinese government). The cams are supposed to be quite good though. Another one that seems to be good is ReoLink - the cams look well spec'd for the price and the app is apparently very good. The low light/night performance is not brilliant, but I think unless you're paying big bucks, that's probably always going to be the case. But for me, like you, it's more about being alerted to the fact that something's happening so I can take steps to stop it

Edited 2 March, 2023 by slicendice

[Mort]

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.

[VWD]

Different tweak. Circa high tech systems, we had a different form of protection. W were all good neighbours. The would bees would get spotted by a neighbour and other folks told. System still exists, today. Its called Neighbourhood Watch. Simple concept.

It gives the limited police ( no political comments intended, please) a lot more eyes in residential streets.

Perhaps it's time to return to a simpler life and see those around us as neighbours and friends, where we all protect each other.

No need for high solutions, my other addition is( for those at home for part of the day) a rescue dog.

[Aspman]

With alarms what you are actually doing is

1 - putting off casual attackers, they will look for alarms and if they see a box on yours then they will probably move on to another property

2 - if they decide yours is worth the risk an alarm going off points a finger at them and might make them give up or at least islikely to make them cut short their time in your house

 

cameras are three fold

 

1 - same as above and obvious camera system is a deterrant

2 - if you do get burgled a camera system makes recovery or prosecution more likely

3 - depeding on your system you can check who is at your door or if you have shut the shed remotely

Wired vs wireless. Wireless is easier to put in, wired is more reliable but harder to install.

App systems again are easier to use but you run the risk of a system being discontinued by the supplier or app support ending.

Cyber security considerations, if you want to view camera feeds remotely the feed needs to be pushed to the internet, that will mean that a 3rd party is either hosting that data or the box has a direct connection to the world. You run the risk of your feed being visible to the world and cctv systems do not have a good security reputation on that side.

My home came with an alarm system, we normally only use this during holidays as the house is occupied the rest of the time.

As it was a new build I had cables run for external cctv, we have 5 HD cameras.
I'm not too worried about cyber security since I only have external cameras, if someon wants to hack in and see my drive well tbh help yourself. I would be less happy if there were internal cameras.

Our cameras are POE so only need one cable for data and power. We have a combination of active lighting and low light cameras. They have teh facility for movement detection and have built alarms and warning lights but tbh I've never sat down to figure them out. Those facilities were more trouble than they were worth.

[Wonderloaf]

I'm an avid shooter so security is important for me. As per the police I have level 3 security which consists of sturdy doors/windows with good locks, an alarm that can 'dial out' and I have a camera system around my property that also alerts me to movement etc. I went for POE cameras and found them very easy to setup. 

[slicendice]

In case anyone's interested, I ended up going for a Reolink 4 camera POE kit. The install was relatively straightforward...it was a bit grubby crawling round the loft and threading cat 6 cable all over the place, but not too bad.

 

The kit itself was very easy to setup once wired in and it does everything I need it to. Picture quality is good and the app is excellent. I upgraded the supplied 2TB drive to a 6TB drive, so there's plenty of space for recordings. 

 

Happy to provide more details if anyone's interested.

[SteveTheElder]

Thanks @slicendice, useful to know what you went for.

 

At what height are the cameras?

I'm thinking if too low, they could easily be tampered with; whereas too high and they may not pick up faces so harder to ID any miscreants.

[slicendice]

Yep I did spend a bit of time um'ing and er'ing about the height. There's a house just down the road that had some put up just under the gutter on a single storey extension, and it would be an absolute doddle to walk up to them and simply move them so they were pointing up at the sky or give them a smack with a hammer or something. 

 

So I went for putting them under the gutter of the second storey and totally out of reach. No, it wouldn't be as easy to identify people, but tbh I don't think it would actually be that easy to identify someone even if the cams were lower...as whoever the intruder was, they'd be able to see the cams in place and would therefore have made the decision they were still going to intrude anyway, so must be pretty confident their face was suitably covered with mask, etc so as to prevent identification. And I've seen footage from a Ring doorbell where the intruders were kicking the door in, so they were literally a few feet from the camera...yet they couldn't be identified as they had masks on.

 

I mainly wanted them in order to act as a bit of a deterrent and show that there is security in place - apparently, if opportunistic burglars are out looking for target properties and they see one house with cams fitted and one without, they'll almost certainly go for the one without. Plus it allows me to see if/when anyone does enter my property so I can keep tabs on comings and goings - the alerts are pretty good, so it will inform me if anyone has approached the house...so if it does look dodgy, and I'm not in, I can take steps immediately to try and do something about it (phone neighbour, police, etc). And if I still got broken into, it's further evidence to provide to the insurance company and police.