Which CCTV system?

[MrMagic]

For security guidance in general (inc CCTV) the 'official' police guidance can be found under the 'Secured By Design' initiative - 

 

https://www.securedbydesign.com/

 

They also have design guides for homes, commercial, even one for self build...

 

https://www.securedbydesign.com/guidance/design-guides

 

They are worth a read... one take away from them is that PIR lights are basically useless and they now recommend well designed dusk-til-dawn lighting focused on key areas and face illumination, not dirty great PIR floodlights.

 

For CCTV specifically also check out the ICO to make sure you keep yourself the right side of t'law.

 

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/domestic-cctv-systems-guidance-for-people-using-cctv/

[Jeremy Harris]

It's interesting about alarms. 

 

Where we used to live there were a couple of houses with alarms that would regularly go off, usually when there was a power cut.  They were like this for many years, and I can't ever recall anyone being called out when one of those alarms sounded.  We all just got used to them going off and ignored them. 

 

Based on that experience, plus a chat we had in the village hall about community policing (which revealed that there was one car and two officers covering about 20 villages) I concluded that an alarm was pointless, as most people would most probably ignore it, and if they did report it the police could well take over an hour to get here.

 

I fitted CCTV when we were still building, as kids kept getting in to the building site.  CCTV worked well to deter them, after I'd caught a couple of them and shown them the CCTV recordings.  I find the main use of CCTV is being able to glance up and the monitor to see who's at the front door, though.  Recording is triggered by a break-beam sensor across the drive, which acts as an early warning that we have visitors.  Also handy for spotting wildlife (and the neighbour's cat).

[daiking]

So basically nothing (except a big dog) is practically any use other than the need to demonstrate a reasonable level of deterrence?

 

?

[lizzie]

20 minutes ago, daiking said:

So basically nothing (except a big dog) is practically any use other than the need to demonstrate a reasonable level of deterrence?

 

?

I have a rescue cocker spaniel who screams his head off at anyone coming near the place......the bark is definitely worse than the bite as when confronted he just rolls over for a tummy tickle?

[Ralph]

It's one of the things I like about living in the country, with retired neighbors. If the CCTV alerts us to any intruders when we're out a quick call will have someone round much quicker than the police.

[Pocster]

46 minutes ago, daiking said:

So basically nothing (except a big dog) is practically any use other than the need to demonstrate a reasonable level of deterrence?

 

?

I always think ( tricky if you are isolated ) that if your home looks secure I.e modern glazing and doors , sturdy fence that must be a deterrent. If I were a burglar I would choose the ‘weakest’ house ....

But I’m not a burglar . I’d rather catch them and administer justice - because that is ‘fair’ 

[ultramods]

I was planning installing CCTV once we had moved into the house and actually have some money again. However someone tried to break into our house at the weekend (it's about 4 weeks from completion), which has meant I ordered the CCTV on Monday.

 

The important thing for me is that the CCTV has good motion detection and can then alert you immediately on smart phone etc. I was planning on going for  4 of the arlo ultra 4k cameras, however some of the reviews suggested that the  motion detection isn't the best. Instead I have gone for 4 of the Ring flood light cams, they will alert you to people in the garden and then you can switch on the flood lights and shout at them (or possibly sound an alarm) with the loudspeaker. I would much rather be able to deter people from breaking into the house in the first place rather than knowing I had CCTV footage of who had broken in stolen/damaged stuff.

 

When ordering what I found a bit odd is that Amazon would only allow me to order one of the cameras (odd considering Amazon own Ring), whereas previously you could buy a 4 pack which saved around 20%. If you go to the ring website you can still buy a 4 pack with the discount.

[Jeremy Harris]

My experience of the built in motion detection was that it can be tricky to get to work reliably, especially if you have anything that may move with the wind in the field of view.  You can block out some areas of the field of view on ours, to try to stop it triggering on things that normally move, but I still found that there was a fairly high level of false alerts.  I ended up switching to beam-break sensing, as that was relatively easy to do for us, and seems to be a lot more reliable.  The only false alerts we get are from animals breaking the beam, and that could be fixed easily enough by raising it up a bit.  I deliberately set it low to record the animals, as I was puzzled by some of the droppings we kept finding around the place (turned out it was a visiting otter).

[ultramods]

46 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

My experience of the built in motion detection was that it can be tricky to get to work reliably, especially if you have anything that may move with the wind in the field of view.  You can block out some areas of the field of view on ours, to try to stop it triggering on things that normally move, but I still found that there was a fairly high level of false alerts.  I ended up switching to beam-break sensing, as that was relatively easy to do for us, and seems to be a lot more reliable.  The only false alerts we get are from animals breaking the beam, and that could be fixed easily enough by raising it up a bit.  I deliberately set it low to record the animals, as I was puzzled by some of the droppings we kept finding around the place (turned out it was a visiting otter).

 

my intention is to test the motion detection, if it's isn't as good as claimed I will be returning them.

[Construction Channel]

3 hours ago, pocster said:

. I’d rather catch them and administer justice - because that is ‘fair’ 

Like Tony Martin? 

[joe90]

Flock of geese ?

[H F]

For those that have cctv, are you recording to a HDD box?

 

also, does anyone have those front door cams from ring.com? If yes, are they any good?

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Home Farm said:

For those that have cctv, are you recording to a HDD box?

 

also, does anyone have those front door cams from ring.com? If yes, are they any good?

 

Yes, we record to a box, but to SSD rather than HDD, and we only record when motion is detected.

 

I'd personally not touch ring.com with a very long bargepole.  They share data without explicitly telling users they are doing so, and I have a general policy of not letting anything I rely on for privacy or security connect to the open internet.  I still cannot get my head around people who willingly install listening bugs in their houses, so that the likes of Amazon, Google, etc can hear all that's said if they wish to.  Hardly a week goes by without the flaws in the security of this stuff, or flaws in the way it's used, getting a mention in the media.  For example, over the past week alone these two stories were published, one about staff listening in to recordings made by "home microphones", the other about Ring sharing access to devices without explicit user consent.