[Serious]Home Security Cameras

[Zeph]

Retrospectively this shouldn't be too surprising, but I had a pretty serious break-in attempt go on a couple hours ago. I was about to go to bed (4:30ish am) when I heard a family member go into the bathroom. A minute later, I see the headlights from the truck light up and shine in through my window. I run upstairs and ask about it and see that it's got to be someone out there. I run over to the front door and when I get there I hear the truck door shut. Whoever it was ran off leaving the truck unlocked.

The truck's key is RFID to the ignition, so they either managed to spoof the wireless signal, brute force the keypad, or O_o pick the lock. The vent window to my Civic was broken out a few weeks back and things have been stolen before. It doesn't help the mind that last weekend some kids held up my grandma's neighbor at gunpoint (those kids got hillbillied and still haven't come back for their truck, but that's beside the point). I want to have ID on anyone who tries shit like this again. If they can get into a newer Ford truck like that, the house is a peace of cake.

Anyone have experience is setting up cameras for home security? I have pretty much no money right now, so I'm gonna have to use a webcam for now. Looking at storefronts for Security DVRs and cameras, I get the feeling that the market is still stuck back in the tape days. 720p sensors seem stupidly expensive and the DVRs themselves seem like overpriced tiny hard drives with reviews warning of horrible firmware.

Minimally, I'll need an outdoor camera for the driveway and one for the front door. Long term, I'm thinking 8 or 9 depending on field of view and sensor quality.

I'm guessing that a few wireless networked cameras would be nice, but I have no idea what aspects of them are useful other than the wireless feature (running wires would be quite hard at my house and the shitheads would probably end up trying to cut them anyways). Whatever I wind up going with, tonight has shown that I definitely need something IR-capable to see who's running around my place at night.

[Donut]

I'm not sure what kind of luck you'll have on here. All I can say is that I was trying to set up a home camera system this past summer (just for fun, not because of a threat or anything), and ended up being displeased at how much shit I'd need to get it going.

Minimally, a decent resolution, tamper proof camera (with night vision) will run you between $100 and $200 USD. The camera I was looking at is wireless, and the receiver could plug into a TV (and by extension, a capture card). The camera wasn't motion activated though, so it would always be recording. My plan was to plug it into a computer and have some recording software just constantly dumping frames to the hard drive, but I don't want days of useless footage when nothing is happening. Multiple cameras would be an issue with that set up too. You could theoretically have multiple capture cards, then use like, XSplit or something to have both feeds get recorded at the same time, but that's getting real expensive real fast.

My recommendation would be to check out this subreddit. I see lots of questions about cameras there.

[Patrickssj6]

Not a solution but a cheap alternative meanwhile: Get some bright backyard lights with motion detection.

[Spartan314]

Not a solution but a cheap alternative meanwhile: Get some bright backyard lights with motion detection.

This.
It might be because I live in a nice neighborhood, but paranoia has led to lights being installed, and nothing's happened.
Most houses around here that have been broken into are those that are empty for a while (people that go on vacation), I have little to no information on how to keep things safe when people are actually inside the houses. Hope things work out for you dude.

[Cortexian]

As shitty as some of their networking hardware is, D-Link makes a line of consumer, prosumer, and enterprise surveillance cameras. Get some of the PoE ones and just run some CAT6 from a PoE switch to them, then have them store all the data on a PC/NAS/both.

Or, if running the cables is harder than using WiFi and plugging them into wall socket power, do that.

They make indoor and outdoor cameras.

[PopeAK49]

You could try setting up some automatic sprinkler systems that have motion sensors. I plan on buying some next summer to keep pesky kids out of my lawn. They are pretty cool, and can be useful for other things. Nobody wants to get sprayed with water unexpectantly in the middle of the night. Probably cheaper than cameras too.

[Amit]

You could try setting up some automatic sprinkler systems that have motion sensors. I plan on buying some next summer to keep pesky kids out of my lawn. They are pretty cool, and can be useful for other things. Nobody wants to get sprayed with water unexpectantly in the middle of the night. Probably cheaper than cameras too.

Yeah, it'll keep the cats, Hmong, and other animals off the lawn as well.

This thread is highly relevant to me as my house was broken into in February 2012. However, I saw how much surveillance equipment cost and instead focused on having my parents increase the strength of the entrances into the house. /r/HomeDefense is a great subreddit to discuss stuff like this.