Diy Home Security Systems With Cameras – The home security industry in general is growing rapidly. One of the biggest growth areas is in DIY home security. People are much more interested in taking personal and home protection into their own hands.
With wireless security camera systems, motion sensors and video doorbells widely available, DIY home security is just as easy to set up and maintain as the same service provided by a professional company. Read this guide to learn more about how to install your own wireless security system and some of the best products for DIY home surveillance.
Diy Home Security Systems With Cameras
A DIY home security solution requires careful planning. You need to figure out all the elements you need to put together a home security system that you won’t quickly outgrow.
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DIY home surveillance systems fall into two basic categories. You can choose a self-installed security system that you will monitor yourself, or you can install your own security system but sign up for a monitoring service that does not require a contract (usually just a monthly fee).
If you choose not to go with a service, it’s even more important that you choose a home self-monitoring system with the right features to help you secure your home.
It will also be important to integrate a camera; visual verification together with a warning allows you to see the nature of the threat, which is of particular importance with self-monitoring. You don’t want to send the police to your home when the only problem is that the neighbor’s husky decided to dig up a rose bush while you were at the office.
When choosing a DIY wireless security camera, wireless cameras make a lot of sense as they are easy to install. However, there are some other characteristics that you should consider carefully.
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If you’re serious about a DIY home surveillance system, consider purchasing a kit. These are often the cheapest way to get quality equipment with multiple cameras and a recording unit that will all work together with a minimum of fuss.
A DIY alarm system can seem intimidating, but most of them are fairly simple to install, with kits including detailed instructions, online installation videos, and some companies offering live chat or phone support during installation if you run into problems .
A wireless package is the most efficient when it comes to installation. Hardwired alarms have some advantages, but require drilling and sometimes wiring. Additionally, unlike a wireless home alarm, if you move, the system must remain in place, requiring you to go through the process again at your next home.
At a minimum, you need a package of motion sensors, door and window sensors and a control box. Look for a model that allows you to cover multiple zones and control different home, away and sleep settings. A remote control for the system is also a good feature to make it even easier to arm and disarm, even if you run out the door. It is also important for the system to be able to send alarms if there is a breach. The sound of the alarm itself might scare away a less determined intruder, but if you have chosen to monitor your own safety, you must call the police yourself, and the sooner the better.
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Make sure your alarm system can be integrated with your security camera system. If possible, you might want to buy them all from the same brand.
Homes without security systems are three times more likely to be burglarized than homes with security systems. The study is so crucial that many insurance companies even offer homeowners insurance savings when you invest in home security.
Ready to make your home more secure? The Home Depot delivers online orders when and where you need them. A few years ago my wife and I decided to get a CCTV security system. We didn’t know much about home security or security cameras at the time. But we wanted to be checked into our home while we were away.
If we weren’t DIY nuts, we’d probably have gone the Easy-DIY route and bought an all-in-one home security kit from Ring or Simplisafe.
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But we felt deeply uneasy that these brands are storing our video recordings in the cloud, especially indoor videos. Cloud-dependent security cameras were hacked left, right and centre. Some even offered them up to the police without warrants! Also, many useful features of these cameras, such as advanced motion detection, were locked behind monthly paid subscription plans. Even basic things like being able to review recorded clips that you’d expect are a given.
So even if the upfront costs looked low, the ongoing costs would add up quickly. This is the downside of the subscription-based business model that most security camera companies are turning to these days. Don’t get me wrong, cloud backup is fine and works as off-site backup. But having it shoved down our throats and having to pay for it is simply unacceptable.
But being the DIY and tech-crazy people that we are, we decided to do it ourselves – the ProDIY way, learning by doing, using excellent stand-alone IP cameras (like the Reolink E1 Pro ), and high-quality yet affordable prosumer network gear (like Ubiquiti’s Unifi series).
Today we have a DIY home CCTV security camera system that we have selected and set up ourselves based on months of research. It is ultra-reliable and has extremely useful features, such as having full interface with our Home Assistant and HomeSeer HS4 home automation system, yet is very affordable.
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We often get questions about our DIY CCTV setup, such as how we are able to view our home security cameras securely from anywhere in the world. So we thought we’d share our journey with you, our readers.
We will list our complete security camera setup and how to safely and securely connect to our home from virtually anywhere. We’ll also go into not just a list of the various devices that make up the system, but also how they all come together to help us achieve our specific security goals.
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Here is a screenshot of how we view our IP cameras live from our laptops and on the TV:
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We can also access the cameras from our smartphones using either the tinyCAM Monitor Pro app or QNAP’s VMobile app to access the NAS (Network Attached Storage) NVR’s clip archives.
Whenever motion is detected by one of the IP cameras, the QNAP NAS informs our Home Assistant home automation system, which can then turn on lights, play a siren alarm, send me video clips, anything I can think of.
Previously, I only used the HomeSeer HS3, so I connected the QNAP Surveillance Station directly to my Homeseer HS3 system. The QNAP QVR Pro had not yet been released.
But since then I have largely switched from Homeseer to Home Assistant. I only use Homeseer for some older Z-Wave door sensors that don’t work with Home Assistant. In addition, both QNAP QVR Pro and Home Assistant support advanced motion detection methods for IP cameras. Eventually, I plan to write tutorials to replicate my entire smart home system setup.
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Now let’s see what the security camera system part of our smart home network looks like (see also how we built our DIY Smart Home Automation system)
A topology is a representation of how a system is connected to each other. Network topologies can be either physical or logical. A physical network topology shows the actual physical layout and the connections between different elements. A logical network topology shows how they are functionally connected to each other.
Here is a physical map of our entire smart home network. For a reliable and scalable surveillance system, you need to have the right network set up to support it. So let’s start there.
The first thing you’ll notice is that there are many different network components and that devices are neatly encapsulated in neat spaces (LAN, VLAN1, VLAN2…etc).
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Most people just connect a Wi-Fi router to the ISP modem and call it a day. If you’re just using a couple of wireless cameras, it probably will.
But for our security and privacy focused Pro-DIY system, we need to go further. We need to be able to defend our network against hackers and botnets. For this we need a strong and powerful hardware firewall.
We need to be able to isolate security cameras so they cannot ‘call home’ or leak data outside our network. Any device in our network we don’t trust (like most Chinese security cameras) shouldn’t be able to access sensitive personal devices like laptops and cell phones of their own volition. For this we need the ability to create virtual LAN (VLAN) networks.
Every consumer Wi-Fi router has a built-in firewall that offers basic protection. But they are often not very adaptable. For example, in most cases you cannot create your own firewall rules. And most of them