Home Security System

1. we cannot lay wires all around the home. Wireless is more feasible

2. we want flexibility to move camera as per need such as to monitor maids or Babies.

3. we cannot dedicate a space for display screen, DVR, NVR & clumsy IT equipment.

4. we want a simple solution that can be operated by all family members who may not be technology Savvy.

5. we want an economical solution.

6. we do not want CCTV vendor should visit our home more often. Neither we can put any dedicated person for maintenance or assistance.

7. we want to feel that our home is under our control, even if we are busy or away from our home.

There is no point of unnecessary recordings of useless motions or still building; any number of storage will be less. When we need to find anything in the recording it will be very tedious job to traverse to find the desired frame.

Notification would be useless if we get notifications alerts even by moving leaves, mosquitoes, vehicle at roadside. Eventually we will get irritated and turn off all the new notifications.

So the notifications or alerts should be event-based and solution should also be able to differentiate between human or other objects. Called as Human detection. Next is face detection, but it is still costly & offered by a very few brands.

Notification should be scheduled-based as well as mode-based.

For home, the solution should trigger notifications when we are in away mode. for example; If we are going for shopping in daytime after locking the house; it should trigger us if someone enters our home. Even guard enters in an area where he is not suppose to enter, we must get a notification. (zone feature)

We can mark zone. We can mark areas near gate as one zone so that camera can neglect any movement on road but triggers alerts and do recordings if someone from road enters marked zone (the area near the gate).

I checked solutions of following brands, which I believe are the best in the market:

Hikvision, MI, EZVIZ, IMOU, CP plus, Godrej, Matrix, hero (Qubo) and Many more

If NVR/DVR vendor is saying that they support all other brands camera using (ONVIF protocol), do not fall into it. It may loose intelligent or event based recordings.

Moreover we may be needing different app and software to view live or recordings. So integration would be an additional challenge.

So best if you keep single brand of all the devices for home monitoring.

Cameras can be wired or wireless or both

Wires can be coaxial for analogue cameras or cat5 computer LAN wire for IP-based cam

If laying of wires are not feasible we can go with wireless cameras. wireless and wired devices can mix match. If you are buying wireless camera, please make sure you have wifi signals around.

For example we can connect a few wired cameras & a few wireless camera to the hybrid NVR/NAS/Cloud.

To make your whole home as wireless zone, there are many solutions. The latest is Wifi Mesh. I would recommend Deco M5. I would also write a full blog on this later.

There is no point of recording continuously and endlessly of empty room or road or place having irrelevant motion. We should record only important things which has human motion or useful captures to save storage & other cost.

Now there is a risk of data storage device get stolen or snatched by authorities and destroy the evidence.

We can store it at any location which is hidden at a safe place or better at an offsite location that is cloud

DVR/NVR: It has two purposes:

To record all the cameras feeding to hard disk

To display cameras feeds on a TV or a screen

NAS: dedicated hard disk having a network port

SD card: Locally installed memory card, this can store a few days recording and is used as a buffer between NVR DVR or a cloud

Cloud: In today’s era, its the latest and most appropriate option. We can put our recordings at servers of service providers. We can retrieve recordings, if local storage or device get stolen or if you want to play while travelling. Subscription fee is applicable for cloud recording depending on the number of days of recording you want to retain.

Email snapshots: motions can be captured as a picture and can be sent to your email inbox or can be pushed to your mobile app.

Power can be supplied to cam in many ways

Connecting Cam adapters with direct electric board

Through PoE network switch.

POE injector.

SMPS, for sending power along with network wire.

Do not ever hang a pad lock on front gate. This is an invitation to a thief.

After entering any house, a thief will do the following:

1. Shutdown electricity from main power distribution box or invertor so that all the monitoring equipment & lights will turn off.

2. Search for camera recording device such as DVR/NVR & will take away to safe guard himself.

3. Search for steel almirah or lockers and break it first.

4. Break all the locked doors in the house.