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I wasnt expecting to enjoy having them as much as I have. Having a good phone app & the ability to easily play back the logs from my phone has been nice.

We have two homes with many multiple webcams at each and they are absolutely invaluable to peace-of-mind.

Keith B wrote:Alarm company signs and window stickers can be a deterant also. Barking dogs as well.

i like to cover my bases and have all of the above.
need to add a camera system too...but honestly i think my dog is the biggest deterrent

rentz wrote:

Keith B wrote:Alarm company signs and window stickers can be a deterant also. Barking dogs as well.

i like to cover my bases and have all of the above.
need to add a camera system too...but honestly i think my dog is the biggest deterrent

It's hard to underestimate the value of a good set of dogs.

tyree wrote:

rentz wrote:

Keith B wrote:Alarm company signs and window stickers can be a deterant also. Barking dogs as well.

i like to cover my bases and have all of the above.
need to add a camera system too...but honestly i think my dog is the biggest deterrent

It's hard to underestimate the value of a good set of dogs.

Cameras aren't happy to see you when you get home.

Our neighborhood considered installing a commercial camera solution to curtail occasional vandalism at our pool.

We looked at the bid and decided not to do it. The reasoning:
- The cost would have covered twenty years of the typical sort of vandalism we see (petty destruction of patio furniture, etc.)
- We would need a volunteer to monitor it or pay even more for a monitored solution
- Even if we catch something, it's very likely that we end up with an anonymous picture of a person we don't know, often times possibly a minor. These petty vandalism events aren't big enough to get that picture on the news, so unless we turned our Facebook page into a witch hunting operation and the perp happened to be known by somebody, all we have is a photo of the jerk.

We have considered dummy cameras, but I'm guessing they lose their effectiveness after the first even where nobody gets caught and the trespassers realize they're not real.

fickman wrote:Our neighborhood considered installing a commercial camera solution to curtail occasional vandalism at our pool.

I agree with everything you said, but just so you know, here is another idea about this: install a "trailcam" that instead is aimed at security e.g. this

http://www.reconyx.com/product/SC950-Hy ... nce-Camera

Less than a grand. The only maintenance required is once a year you replace the batteries, unless you have a power source nearby, then there is NO maintenance. The cam watches 24/7 and records any motion in the area to an SD card. When the SD card fills, it erases the oldest captures and keeps on recording.

The joy of this system is that you really don't need to think about it until there is an incident of some kind. Then you pull the SD card and look.

The bad part of any "neighborhood" system is that someone has to take responsibility for it, but presumably if you have an HOA then the directors assume that responsibility.

I've got 5 outdoor cameras. The bad news about having them be in obvious places has been that at least once kids have taken shots at them. Course, those are the same kids that are dumb enough not to understand how much field of view these cameras have and get their photos taken while shooting. I've recently moved them to more discreet locations, at least at the entrance to my property. At the house, I make no attempt to hide them.

With so many, I'm effectively monitoring who comes and goes into two of my neighbors homes as well as who enters the neighborhood. It's solved minor vandalism crimes and has at least once identified a driver that did some property damage hitting a mailbox. It's peace of mind for "what's going on at home right now" as you can access them via cell phone.

The only down side that I've found to IP cameras is that as you move up to better and better picture quality, the more of that wifi network you use. I have to have special antennas to be able to talk to the cameras that are far from the house. There are, of course, traditional "record" solutions that use wires, so you can pick what works for you.

And like many other posters, I've got two large dogs with a sign at the gate indicating that we've got them. Generally, you don't want to go home-invading in rural America, but if it happens, it'll be well recorded.

I have a friend building a house - he's using trail cams to monitor who comes and goes while there is no power or internet.

Do you folks with camera systems ever just kick back on a Friday night with a beer and playback all the overnight action from the footage?

cb1000rider wrote:
The only down side that I've found to IP cameras is that as you move up to better and better picture quality, the more of that wifi network you use. I have to have special antennas to be able to talk to the cameras that are far from the house. There are, of course, traditional "record" solutions that use wires, so you can pick what works for you.

For those who have access to an Internet provider that can offer over 400 mbs, (Grande, Google Fiber, etc.) shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Redneck_Buddha wrote: For those who have access to an Internet provider that can offer over 400 mbs, (Grande, Google Fiber, etc.) shouldn't be that big of an issue.

I wish I was one of those. :-)
That's not what I was actually referring to. These cameras tend to take a lot of pictures as I use their motion sensors. So trees that sway, changes in light often trigger the camera's record function. Having several of them push pictures over wifi impacts my network. Not the "internet" side -but actually loads up Wi-Fi. The photos are recorded to a device isn't in the main part of the house, I don't even attempt to push them to the cloud due data limits on my internet provider.

It doesn't noticeably affect internet access, but if you stream video over wifi as many people do these days, it interrupts that stream. Netflix, local streaming, all that stuff. If you don't have that, you won't notice.

I'm aware I can isolate the camera network and give priority to streaming - haven't taken it that far yet.

cb1000rider wrote:

Redneck_Buddha wrote: For those who have access to an Internet provider that can offer over 400 mbs, (Grande, Google Fiber, etc.) shouldn't be that big of an issue.

I wish I was one of those. :-)
That's not what I was actually referring to. These cameras tend to take a lot of pictures as I use their motion sensors. So trees that sway, changes in light often trigger the camera's record function. Having several of them push pictures over wifi impacts my network. Not the "internet" side -but actually loads up Wi-Fi. The photos are recorded to a device isn't in the main part of the house, I don't even attempt to push them to the cloud due data limits on my internet provider.

It doesn't noticeably affect internet access, but if you stream video over wifi as many people do these days, it interrupts that stream. Netflix, local streaming, all that stuff. If you don't have that, you won't notice.

I'm aware I can isolate the camera network and give priority to streaming - haven't taken it that far yet.

thats one reason when i set mine up i'm going with POE and have them all direct wired. I was going to buy wifi cameras but then I did more reading on how they can absolutely saturate your wifi bandwidth.

Let me know if you want recommendations for POE cameras.. I've gone through quite a few in the last couple of years. My newest cams are actually POE that are bridged wifi.

madwildcat wrote:Question regarding videos like this: Is there any issue with posting something like this online? In the community I live in, multiple of us have cameras, but we had been lead to believe that posting our video if it showed teenage thieves, vandals, etc could get us in trouble. Personally, if someone's kid is stupid enough to vandalize my property, I don't quite see what leg they have to stand on, but I figured it was worth asking.

It's generally accepted that people have no expectation to privacy out in public. Recording and broadcasting one's image is legal in that case.

as far as deterrent values of cameras, not in Houston as far as I can see from the news reports about people sitting in chairs on the vic's porch putting on the new shoes they just stole from that very same porch