Thread: School me on modern home security cameras please.

I do work for a security company over here in the Wild West and they only use Uni View cameras as they record audio as well
5 Mp has more than enough clarity for what you are looking for

Hik Vision is the other brand with a good rep 8 Mp but no audio from what I’ve been told

If you want model numbers etc I can ask the question

Gav

Also install a good backup system. Two melon head bull terriers are good.

I have a couple of WYZE cameras dotted about. They would come close to your requirements & are relatively inexpensive.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Also install a good backup system. Two melon head bull terriers are good.

Given it’s out the front of the house, they’d probably run away and I’d be back to square one... 😆

I'm a bit biassed because CCTV is part of is what I do for a living, so take this with a pinch of salt.

A good start would be what you currently have to see if you can leverage those on a newer recorder. Start with make and model if you can round it up.

Originally Posted by Homestar

- Automatic cloud storage for the video - happy to pay for this service, I’m not looking for some cheap, janky solution. Would also prefer a web based system to review video, rewind, snip short parts of the videos out etc if such a thing exists.

This pretty much rules out any actual security solution and puts you in back the realm of the IoT vendors and their ecosystems.

Pelco (a real CCTV company, but somewhat in decline due to some terrible business decisions in the early 2000s) tried this a few years ago now and found rapidly that nobody that values security takes a cloud solution seriously, so there are no really good solutions to that problem.

If you were willing to compromise on that and have local storage, then a PC based solution like "Blue Iris" would be closer to ticking all your other boxes. Accessed from outside over a VPN closes off most of the gaping security vulnerabilities. I'm personally not a fan of the software, but the price is right.

If you were going to stop at 8 cameras, then Milestone do a free version of their X-Protect software. That's a "real" CCTV system that would pretty much tick all of your boxes.

Of course another option is a Chinese NVR (Hikvision, Dahua, whatever). They'll pretty much work with most ONVIF compliant cameras these days, but their user interface is generally bletcherous and sometimes worse. Load them up with a couple of big drives though and they'll shovel footage to disk pretty reliably.

If you are set on going the "S in IoT stands for Security" route, then the Arlo series gets good reviews as does the eufyCam, but it well and truly ties you into their ecosystem with pretty much no other options. I can't offer any first hand experience on that gear.

The Chinese stuff is the lower middle ground (above Swann and below Axis/Bosch/Panasonic/Pelco/Sony). Personally I have some Hikvision cameras and for domestic use the cheap ones are pretty ok.

Friends don't let friends buy CCTV from Bunnings.

I looked into the options like Arlo and Ring and if you care to check ProductReview for reviews of any of those sort of systems you'll be quickly disabused of the idea.

Hi

I looked into open source security systems soem time ago. This open source one has is established, maintained and covers lots of camers models ZoneMinder - Home

For my farm I looked at expensive proprietary systems and cheaper systems like Jaycar have and didn't like any of them. I decided to build my own. I use two Mobotix cameras on my farm (it has audio but its not needed) and I did my own software in Python and web interface. These days I'd use smaller, cheaper Raspberry Pi's with small web cams and a solar panel. More flexible as each is effectively independent.

PS. Lots of cameras do audio as well as video.

Mike

Originally Posted by Arapiles

I looked into the options like Arlo and Ring and if you care to check ProductReview for reviews of any of those sort of systems you'll be quickly disabused of the idea.

Never had a single issue with the Ring set up.

Their customer service response to queries is very prompt.