unfortunately our village appears to be going through a 2nd wave of break in’s and burglaries this year. where as the earlier round was breaking into outbuildings & garages to target nice bikes and kit, this time the scrotes are breaking into houses to get the keys for cars and the outbuildings we’ve all turned into mini fortresses.

looking to get some outdoor CCTV fitted to the house as a deterrent / gather evidence if needed and thinking wireless CCTV seem like an easy self fit solution, however i know nothing about it other than aware of things like Blink & ring etc.

pro & cons of wireless vs a traditional system? anything i should be looking out for? can you set up a systems that will wirelessly record to a hard drive in the house or do you do it cloud based? assume they run of their own power source – how long can they run for? can they stand up to unrelenting peak district weather? are they any good etc etc

any advice appreciated

In a (sort of) recommend what you’ve got, the Arlo systems with a base station (pro?) are pretty good and don’t need a subscription to get decent use out of them. You can record to basestation or cloud or both.

Picture quality & alerting is good and batteries (rechargeable) last a couple of months.

We have them covering entrances.

The “essential” version really needs a subscription to be useful (you get three months at the start).

We have Eufy – must say I’ve been impressed. Quick notifications, lots of options for fine tuning how you want the cameras/system to work, easy to download footage, was easy to set up. No ongoing costs

Camera battery life is okay – I would get the solar panels or a permanent usb supply to them if position in difficult to reach position’s.

I’ve got the Eufy system too, but went for the more expensive version with higher battery capacity and get about six months between charges on the cameras that are triggered a few times a day

The main attraction was no ongoing subscription costs as everything is stored to a box attached to your home network. The only thing that may (or may not) be an issue for you is if you have dodgy wifi in your house. I had to move the box to cure an occasional loss of signal from one camera as the wifi connection was too weak, which is not something I’ve experienced with other wifi devices as we live in a modest new(ish) build with thin walls etc.

Have eufy sorted their security issues out ?

I keep ending up back at an offline wired system.

Blink looked good until they(Amazon take over) announced current tech support being discontinued in little over a year or so.

I have 2 blink outdoor cameras. They were cheap when i got them over a year ago
I did have them running from batteries – but they were not lasting very long, so they are now powered via the USB cable

They work OK – the night vision is not great and from the images i can tell you they were people wearing some sort of clothing…. possibly grey / black!
During the day the images are much better.

IMO you need to think about what you’re trying to achieve. Deterrent – maybe, but there’s plenty of Ring footage on the local FB pages of young scrotes trying cars, etc, don’t seem to be bothered about the cameras. Also most wear hoods/masks so ID is impossible. And if you want to be able to discern faces especially at night you have to think quite carefully about the cameras (ones with good night vision do cost more), positioning, even the focal length of the lens sometimes if they need to cover a larger area. Possibly coupling cameras with floodlights on sensors may have a more obvious deterrent effect, and negate the night-vision issue?

I’d always go for “proper” IP cameras wired via network cable (which also supplies power) over any cheap (or even not-so-cheap) WiFi solution, especially if you’ll be running a power cable to the WiFi camera anyway. These can be plugged into a NVR which records (locally) all the video (optionally can be backed up to the cloud & viewed remotely too). Generally the cameras are much higher quality and the whole system is more reliable. Obviously, install is more of a faff & slightly more technical.

The merits of a whole camera security system are perhaps debatable, but IMO there’s no argument over the usefulness of doorbell cameras, as there’s both a utility & security/community safety aspect with those. Everyone should get one!

Along with the hoodie/face covering issues of cctv, have a google of wifi cctv jamming.

If going for cctv for security/crime prevention I’d always recommend wired poe cameras.

Along with the hoodie/face covering issues of cctv, have a google of wifi cctv jamming.

yeah I was going to mention that but didn’t want to be accused of tin-foil hatting 😂 I know the technology exists and is not expensive, no idea how prevalent it actually is with (petty) criminals though! Also if a gang was organised/serious enough to use WiFi jammers & attempt to steal my car I’d probably be letting them do it personally rather than confront them 😂

captmorgan
Free Member

Along with the hoodie/face covering issues of cctv, have a google of wifi cctv jamming.

If going for cctv for security/crime prevention I’d always recommend wired poe cameras.

I think if they’re going to that extent they’ll get in regardless.

I’ve taken the view that these systems are mainly to make a casual robbing of your house a less attractive proposition than somebody else’s. If you’re being specifically targetted by professional thieves that are turning up prepared for the specific job, then they do very little.

Arlo for ease of set up but you will need a base station. App is flawless in the 2 years I’ve been using it. Battery life on full 2/4k Is not the advertised claim but they work for weeks.
I’ve got 2 pro 4k cameras with audio and one with the little led that’s not the pro version.
It’s far from the best but spot on price vs performance.

Arlo for ease of set up

is that the thing that’s best part of a grand in Currys for 4x 4K cams plus the base station? 😳

Hope not I paid about 300 for 2 cameras and the base station last year.

Edit * just seen the price now ooofff there not worth that