Kathy

Added information. As I said, the house is all concrete block, so we will be running conduit on outside of house and run the Conduit/Cat 6 into the house at one spot. I'm thinking the time consuming part will be attaching the conduit securely.

Our Italian electrician says it will take at least 40 hours of labor to install 8 cameras and one DVR. I must look stupid.

Thanks Nat23! We will look at this brand. Does anyone have a ballpark estimate on how long it would take to install 8 or 9 cameras with DVR, on/in a house with concrete block construction? And I mean the house is entirely concrete. Roof, eaves, etc. we would need to put cameras on overhangs and sides of outside walls. (Typical Italian construction) We were going to explore hiring a local electrician, but want to ensure the labor costs were reasonable.

Zr1, thank you for the great info. I can now see it might not be too smart to get texts on every sensor trip. Do most systems have adjustable sensitivities or can I block certain parts of the frame from detecting motion? Can you recommend a reliable brand?

We would like to install an IP camera system at our home in Naples, Italy. I found this forum and it appeared that folks here were pretty helpful and extremely knowledgeable. We live in a high crime area, and have had one break in and one attempt. We hope to do the install ourselves. Thinking we need 8 quality cameras outside and 2 inside. We want motion detection cameras that annunciate via email and text (is that even possible?), POE and the ability to add cameras later. We don’t feel comfortable with buying the system here in Italy. I’d like to get an off the shelf system from an American company that has good customer service (both to help with install and if any equipment fails later). Dual voltage is obviously needed. Budget: 1-2K. I’ve browsed on line (Amazon and Home Depot), but not sure what to purchase. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!