Security Cameras

Creeping paranoia has caused me & the Mrs to bring home an Internet-connected camera system to try out.  Supposedly you can watch your front door from your smart phone.

Dunno what good it'll do -- not like you can DO anything about it.  

But the DVR that comes with it is motion-triggered to start recording.  If you saw something on your phone you could do a screen capture too.  

Remains to be seen what the video resolution will be.  The system I tried out last year for my dads place -- which is vacant most of the time --  had such poor resolution you really couldn't see anything.  But this one's quite a bit more money, so maybe better.

I dunno.  See when UPS makes a delivery while at work.  If somebody rings the doorbell late at night you can see if you want to get up.  Could be worthwhile maybe.  Need to play with it.

Anybody got any experience with these things?

We put up a very rudimentary system when we lived over at the old house. It used a phone cable with a camera and one of our old small tvs. It was ok. Even though it was blatantly there it's like some people didn't register it and we found out a lot. Like how our neighbor's leaf guy was literally blowing the leaves into our yard. It also helped in that in that neighborhood claiming your packages off your porch fast is a good idea. But at the same time, our car still got broken into and the guy (ok or gal) managed to stay clear of the camera by ducking over to the other side.

The real hard part is having something that lets you know you need to look and then the other thing is having some way to record the action. No recording = no care by cops.

The wired cameras are MUCH better resolution than the Bluetooth cameras I tried last year. They actually look like standard security cameras.

I have my son in law scheduled to run the wires through the attic this weekend. I have the DVR all set up already, testing the cameras in the living room.

Even just mounting the cameras above the doors, visible but out of reach, should have some deterrent value.