Didn't find anything strictly related to Home Security Cameras.

My wife mentioned she would like some camera's up around the house. I am a complete idiot when it comes to this and I am sure I am not the only one.

Please share your set ups and the pros/cons, price point, etc.. Also leave links for others to view the items you are sharing.

Here are a couple my coworker has mentioned to me and would like others opinions as well.

 

We have Vivint. It was installed when we bought the house & just activated the service to get everything going.

1 interior camera [living room]
Doorbell
Driveway
Both front corners of the house, facing the gates
3 keypad deadbolts

Overall it's a decent system, if you've got the internet bandwidth to reach it all. The deadbolt furthest from the panel tends to lose connection on occasion. Once I get around to expanding my wifi coverage, that shouldn't be a problem after that.

Need to get a call in with them, as my 2 corner cams are down. They sent me new POE injectors for them, but still nada.

 

Do you plan on running your own ethernet cables?

 

I currently have 3 wired and 3 wifi cameras. I have dived dep into the Ubiquiti environment but it isn't for everyone as it is a costly endevor and there are much cheaper systems out there. That side I like to keep my video stored local and I think the remote access App is up there with the best of them if not one of the best. Cost can be kept down a bit going with their wifi cameras and they have also started to introduce some cheaper options with their G5 camera series.

Cons:
Cost
Must use only their cameras and their recorder

Pros:
App (again one of the things that is done really well at this point)
Setup
Can be viewed on chromecast, GoogleTV, or through a dongle they also sell on any TV. Likely other streaming sticks as well
Video is stored local instead of in the cloud

 

My wifi setup is Ubiquiti, might look into that option, would just need to figure out local storage.
I've got a drawer full of virgin 2.5" platter drives at the office, but not sure if they make an enclosure for that.

 

The drive bay has mounting holes for a 2.5in drive. Only thing is you are going to want at least 2TB drive so don't know if you have ones that large laying around. When I only had 4 cameras 2TB would get me 14 days of video history.

 

I've got maybe 35 500gb platter drives in a box.
We'd order machines that way for expediency & swap in SSDs, so these are just used long enough for the OE to load the OS.

 

I would and would likely choose the camera locations based on how easy it would be to get cables to that spot.

 

If you have rack space you could order the huge separate NVR that holds 7 drives just so you could use those to get more capacity. 500gb for an NVR is not a lot of space.

As a side note, it was leaked this weekend that you will be able to soon use non Ubiquiti cameras with the Ubiquiti NVRs soon. No one know how well or if there are any limitations on that yet but it if not then I recommend it even more since I feel the interface is just so nice.

 

We have an Amcrest 10 TB NVR running 8 POE cams, a Ring doorbell, and an Amcrest wifi cam in the garage. This is all running on Scrypted so it works with HomeKit and while I like having everything store locally and then motion on iCloud, there is something so simple and easy about my in laws Vivint.