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Security Camera Suggestions

enisthemenace

enisthemenace

Well-Known Member
Dec 5, 2009
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Runnells, IA
First if all, I absolutely HATE that I have to think about this. People suck. I mean, most of you are OK, but you get what I mean.

Anyway...woke up this morning to take the dog out. The dog is a 16 year old lab/border collie mix, so as you can imagine, he’s a little slower than he used to be, but he is in pretty decent health all considering. No pain at all. Guy is a trooper. He can’t hear anymore, and hasn’t been able to for a few years. Because he can’t hear, we do tie him up when it’s bathroom time. One of those long wire cords with red plastic covering the wire.

That cord was cut last night. It is not as though something chewed through it, as it was clean. We live out in the country, so theoretically, it could only be a couple/few people who did it, and I want to know exactly who is ******* around my house in the middle of the night.

Any suggestions for security cameras/systems that are somewhat affordable, have good night vision, easy to install and would be hard for someone to see? I don’t want a system that has motion detected lights either, as I want to catch these ******** in the act. If I do, not only are they paying for the minimal dog cord damage, these clowns are going to get a bill for the security system too.

Thoughts?
 
Country living person here. We just installed the Nest floodlight and cams for our property. Four total. So far it is a good thing, and helps us settle as we know people will be curious and sometimes do stupid things.
 
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keepngoal said:
Country living person here. We just installed the Nest floodlight and cams for our property. Four total. So far it is a good thing, and helps us settle as we know people will be curious and sometimes do stupid things.
Click to expand...

Does the “floodlight” turn on with motion sensors, or does that describe some other feature of the system?
 
enisthemenace said:
First if all, I absolutely HATE that I have to think about this. People suck. I mean, most of you are OK, but you get what I mean.

Anyway...woke up this morning to take the dog out. The dog is a 16 year old lab/border collie mix, so as you can imagine, he’s a little slower than he used to be, but he is in pretty decent health all considering. No pain at all. Guy is a trooper. He can’t hear anymore, and hasn’t been able to for a few years. Because he can’t hear, we do tie him up when it’s bathroom time. One of those long wire cords with red plastic covering the wire.

That cord was cut last night. It is not as though something chewed through it, as it was clean. We live out in the country, so theoretically, it could only be a couple/few people who did it, and I want to know exactly who is ******* around my house in the middle of the night.

Any suggestions for security cameras/systems that are somewhat affordable, have good night vision, easy to install and would be hard for someone to see? I don’t want a system that has motion detected lights either, as I want to catch these ******** in the act. If I do, not only are they paying for the minimal dog cord damage, these clowns are going to get a bill for the security system too.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Ring has a nice set with a floodlight camera and individual cameras. High quality and good clear pictures. You do have to pay a subscription to store video files.
https://shop.ring.com/products/floodlight-cam
 
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keepngoal said:
Country living person here. We just installed the Nest floodlight and cams for our property. Four total. So far it is a good thing, and helps us settle as we know people will be curious and sometimes do stupid things.
Click to expand...
Does Nest have a floodlight camera?
 
2forISU said:
Ring has a nice set with a floodlight camera and individual cameras. High quality and good clear pictures. You do have to pay a subscription to store video files.
Click to expand...
Correct, its $3.00 per month per unit or $10 for unlimited devices. We subscribed to the $10 a month thing.
 
Wyze makes a $25 camera which you can monitor on your phone or with Amazon's Echo Show displays. The camera has an SD card slot that allows you to record locally to the camera so you don't have to rely on a cloud service and subscription. The downside with the camera is that it relies on local power (via USB) and I think it's mostly indoor use, which may not be ideal for your use case. The camera does have night vision capabilities and the app has some fun free features, such as time lapse recording and also 2-way voice. Might be a good solution for a garage/shop area.

https://wyze.com/wyze-cam.html

My use case: I live in split-foyer house. I have the camera setup in our family room (basement) and an Echo Show 5 in the kitchen. My wife uses it to check on the kids if she hears yelling from downstairs so she knows if she needs to get involved or not.
 
I just got a system from Arlo and it works great. I have the Arlo Pro 2. I researched the others here and went with Arlo for a couple of reasons.

1) For up to 5 cameras and 7 days of cloud storage for recordings there is no monthly fee. I have four cameras set up and you can download the clips if you want them for more than 7 days, so that gave me everything I needed.

2) I recently set up a smart home system using SmartThings and the integration into that system is really good with Arlo. The other ones mentioned integrate as well, but the Arlo looked like the simplest to tie in for what I wanted.

Haven't had any issues with the cameras. They motion sense and have good night vision. Also a good wide angle view. Get notifications on my phone and can easily view from anywhere.

Note since they are tied into my SmartThings system I use that for turning cameras on/off and cycling through various modes. (For example the camera that I have inside the house I shut off when I'm home). The Arlo system has the ability to change modes like that, but I don't have experience with it since I have it integrated into SmartThings.
 
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keepngoal said:
Flood light comes on with motion when dark enough. It doesn't come with enough daylight.
Click to expand...

Ok. I’ll keep it in mind. The floodlight motion sensor feature I’m sure is supposed to accomplish 2 things:

1. Help with image quality at night
2. Serve as a deterrent for trespassers

I really don’t want to deter these idiots at this point (plus, I don’t want a floodlight turning on while I’m trying to sleep). I want to “catch them” doing something stupid.
 
GrindingAway said:
I just got a system from Arlo and it works great. I have the Arlo Pro 2. I researched the others here and went with Arlo for a couple of reasons.

1) For up to 5 cameras and 7 days of cloud storage for recordings there is no monthly fee. I have four cameras set up and you can download the clips if you want them for more than 7 days, so that gave me everything I needed.

2) I recently set up a smart home system using SmartThings and the integration into that system is really good with Arlo. The other ones mentioned integrate as well, but the Arlo looked like the simplest to tie in for what I wanted.

Haven't had any issues with the cameras. They motion sense and have good night vision. Also a good wide angle view. Get notifications on my phone and can easily view from anywhere.

Note since they are tied into my SmartThings system I use that for turning cameras on/off and cycling through various modes. (For example the camera that I have inside the house I shut off when I'm home). The Arlo system has the ability to change modes like that, but I don't have experience with it since I have it integrated into SmartThings.
Click to expand...

I have read about the Arlo system. Supposed to be top of the line, but pretty pricey. Would you agree?
 
enisthemenace said:
Ok. I’ll keep it in mind. The floodlight motion sensor feature I’m sure is supposed to accomplish 2 things:

1. Help with image quality at night
2. Serve as a deterrent for trespassers

I really don’t want to deter these idiots at this point (plus, I don’t want a floodlight turning on while I’m trying to sleep). I want to “catch them” doing something stupid.
Click to expand...
There are other Nest products that are just cameras. Battery operated too.
 
I've installed Ubiquiti cameras in a couple places and have been generally happy. The G3 camera (not the dome) may work outside, depending on the size of the space you are looking to cover. I believe the G3 can be mounted pretty much anywhere outside. One variant of the G3 supports the addition of an extra ring of IR LEDs, but I haven't tested it. I think these cameras are typically ~$150 each, with the IR ring extra. There's also a 4k variant for ~$500, I believe.

The G3 Dome won't work well outdoors because 1.) you're limited to mounting it beneath an overhang, 2.) it's IR LEDs are weak compared to the G3, and 3.) the plastic bubble over the lens has reflection issues if the lens gets dirty. The G3 Dome works well for interior locations, though.

The Ubiquiti cameras are powered over their wired Ethernet connection, so only 1 cable per camera needs to be run.

For video storage, I believe that the cameras have a microSD slot in them, but I've never tried to use it. I've always setup the Ubiquiti NVR software on a local computer. Ubiquiti provides the software for free. They also sell an NVR appliance for about $200 which can support up to a dozen cameras or so. Their NVR software can be made accessible remotely via their cloud service (this isn't required, though), so you can check recordings and live feeds from anywhere.
 
One other option: trail-cam. It'd be motion-activated and have powerful IR LEDs. Biggest downside would likely be having to hassle with battery replacement and retrieving the memory card to check videos.
 
enisthemenace said:
I have read about the Arlo system. Supposed to be top of the line, but pretty pricey. Would you agree?
Click to expand...

I got the Arlo Pro 2 with Hub and 2 Cameras for around $250. It's $299 on Amazon at the moment which looks pretty similar to the Nest and Ring options especially if you can avoid the monthly fee. Also I didn't look much into the Nest cameras but they might require a hub of some kind.

I do remember the two add on cameras were more than I thought they should be. I didn't look into that when I got the system. Also extra batteries are not cheap. I was going to get one to have one always ready to go, but didn't and found that recharge time is pretty fast.

In the end don't go too cheap. We had some issues with security at a church I used to go to and the police said they get tons of video footage from the low end cameras people buy that is worthless to identify people. I have a Ring doorbell and the quality is great. So I don't think you can go wrong with Ring, Nest, Arlo etc.
 
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I've suggested this before on here, but if you want more control over your system (and not have Amazon/Google watching your video feed), I'd suggest BlueIris. It's a roll your own type of system, so you can purchase nearly any brand camera you want and connect to it. The other upside is that if your internet is down, you don't lose anything, because it all resides internally.

https://blueirissoftware.com/
 
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enisthemenace said:
Ok. I’ll keep it in mind. The floodlight motion sensor feature I’m sure is supposed to accomplish 2 things:

1. Help with image quality at night
2. Serve as a deterrent for trespassers

I really don’t want to deter these idiots at this point (plus, I don’t want a floodlight turning on while I’m trying to sleep). I want to “catch them” doing something stupid.
Click to expand...

Most of the cameras discussed here have IR LEDs that "light" things up so the camera works at night. The light isn't visible to us but makes the image quality good at night.

With the Arlos I have outside I do a combination. None are floodlights, but in some instances I use motion detected by the camera to turn on smart lights. For example the camera on the front of my garage turns on the lights on the front of the garage so there is light when we get home. The light in my back yard does that sometimes depending on the time of day etc. (I don't really want the neighbors complaining about my lights coming on and off every time a stray cat passes through). That all requires some kind of smart home system, but I mentioned it because the image quality seems fine at night with or with out the light.

One note I have heard is if you are planning to use IR/night vision the camera needs to be outside. If you try putting it on the inside of a window pointed outside the glare off the window will ruin the image. I thought about using some lower cost indoor cameras until I read that.
 
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