Security Camera Newbie -- need suggestions

[ms1969 0]

I'm new here. For quite some time, I've thought about getting security cameras. But yesterday, my neighbor told me that there had been two young men in a car smoking weed in front of my house, in my parking spot. It leads me to believe it's someone who knows our schedules and knew that no one was home. We live in a townhome community where most of us know each other's cars and schedules. I have my suspicions of who it is, but I need to prove it. I'd like to put cameras in the front and the back of the house, but I don't know what I need. I can't afford a really expensive system, and I'm not extremely tech-savvy, so it needs to be something easy to monitor and/or record. Help!

[TheF 0]

Getting a professional to do it is the easiest, but the most expensive.

So setting it up yourself is the cheapest option.

 

Depending on which country you live in, there are different laws as to what is legal to film and what is not.

Most countries has a "inside your own property is OK" and once you start filming outside of it, you might be across the line of what is legal or not.

But you're only getting caught for it if the local autorities knows about it, and posting the images/videos on Facebook/Youtube is a sure way for someone to notice and start snooping.

 

If you're not tech savvy and don't know the difference between an IP-adress, gateway and network mask, stay away from IP cameras.

Go for analog, AHD, TVI, CVI or any of the other coax connectable cameras.

 

There are a lot of webshops that sell complete packages, which might be smart, since the cameras and the DVR are ment to be connected, which makes things easier.

 

You might simply go with a USB camera and a software on your computer, which some times can be enough if all you want to do is surveil your property for a short period of time. I can reccommend http://www.yawcam.com/ which is a free, but fairly powerful software for USB cameras.