DIY Home Security

JimDiGritz · 27 Jun 2018 at 13:13

Hi,

Despite living in a pretty safe area think it's about time to setup a security camera - especially since we may be going on holiday soon for the first time in many years.

There's really only 1 physical approach to our property down a driveway. I have the ability to mount a camera so that it has a view straight down the drive. This location has power and Ethernet nearby, but poor wifi signal)

I'm struggling to understand the technology stack that seems to be available.

I'm discounting the out-of-the-box kits like Nest since they all seem to be wifi/wireless which isn't a great fit. They also seem very expensive for what they are.

I'm thinking one of the £40 cameras on Amazon would fit the bill as they all seem to offer motion detection plus either IR night vision mode or LED lights. An Ethernet connector is all I need for the data to go straight to a cloud storage provider (like AWS or Google). No need for the wifi or SD Card slot.. right?

The software side seems to be the problem. It should allow for notification (by email preferably) of the motion sensor being triggered - of course I'd have to be able to block areas of the image out (like the road!) otherwise I'll get 100's of false positives. The motion detector should also trigger automatic recording directly to cloud storage (no point having a DVR/NAS locally since that would obviously be nicked as well).

Can anyone explain how I hook the chinese IP camera to the software to do the above? Surely I don't have to use the terrible software they supply???

Any input appreciated!

Jim

sovietspybob · 27 Jun 2018 at 13:34

You can DIY it with a raspberry PI if that's your bag, i'm looking to do that later in the year when i get my garage built as i can mount a couple of cameras to that to cover most of my property.

Linus did a video along these lines a few weeks ago --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7p5YEOrlSc

JimDiGritz · 27 Jun 2018 at 13:55

sovietspybob said:
You can DIY it with a raspberry PI if that's your bag, i'm looking to do that later in the year when i get my garage built as i can mount a couple of cameras to that to cover most of my property.

Linus did a video along these lines a few weeks ago --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7p5YEOrlSc

Thanks, that's interesting I've dabbled with Pi over the years even getting a touchscreen working on one a while back I'm trying to keep the solution as simple as possible - surely there's a compromise here with a £40 camera with inbuilt IR & motion tracking plus some kind of app or cloud service?

Jim

Gammawolf · 28 Jun 2018 at 11:19

I'd personally not bother unless its a reoccurring issue. They will be wearing facemasks anyway and you most likely won't get anywhere with the footage. I know a few people that have cctv and they still get their cars broken into and nothing can be done about it. About the best you can hope for is the device itself to be a deterrent, so it doesn't matter how the software is or it functions.

If you want to still do it though, Hikvision make some decent stuff for cheap and the software is not too bad.

JimDiGritz · 28 Jun 2018 at 11:36

Gammawolf said:
I'd personally not bother unless its a reoccurring issue. They will be wearing facemasks anyway and you most likely won't get anywhere with the footage. I know a few people that have cctv and they still get their cars broken into and nothing can be done about it. About the best you can hope for is the device itself to be a deterrent, so it doesn't matter how the software is or it functions.

If you want to still do it though, Hikvision make some decent stuff for cheap and the software is not too bad.

Thanks, that's pretty much where I've ended up after researching all of this - a £6 dummy cctv is probably the best way forward!!!

BigT · 28 Jun 2018 at 12:38

JimDiGritz said:
This location has power and Ethernet nearby, but poor wifi signal

If this is true then you can fix the poor wifi by putting an access point on that nearby ethernet in case that opens up more options for you.

Kaka · 28 Jun 2018 at 15:04

If you have nearby network sockets then I would skip the WIFI route. A hardwired IP camera connected to a PoE switch or injector would give you a much better system overall in terms of reliability and image clarity.

Compared to having nothing at all, CCTV provides that little bit of assurance and piece of mind, even though you may not always identify the culprit.