Home Video Surveillance Systems Guide

- a How-To Design Guide by Home-Security-Plus.com

Our customers install video surveillance systems for a number of reasons. The top reasons certainly include crime prevention. Knowledge that questionable activities are likely to be captured in real time on video is a good reason to pick another location for mischief. We also find demand for keeping track of employee activities, especially when it comes to what goes on in and around the register. Some business customers like to keep track of store activity, and also keeping track of activities outside of the storefront or business location. These systems are also helpful to identify vandals. Often the perpetrators are known to the victims and these surveillance systems can help locate the misbehaving individuals.

A surveillance system typically consists of one or more security cameras coupled with a digital video recorder to capture and share activity information over the internet to remote computers or smart phones. Some of our customers are also beginning to experiment with "smart" security cameras that directly connect to the internet (IP cameras). These cameras can be monitored by a central station. Thus, a business user can monitor multiple locations from a single surveillance station. Alternatively, multiple DVR systems can be monitored remotely from a single surveillance station also. The smart or IP cameras can be more difficult to set-up, and are more expensive. Wiring must also include an internet connection, or advanced wireless technology must be deployed to bring the signal reliably to the web.

A video surveillance system can be used in conjunction with a traditional alarm system, one that responds when a door is entered or a window opened, and the system alarm is not reset within a given time period. These types of alarms can be used to trigger video recording. Many of our customers use a DVR (digital video recorder) to keep track of all activity during the week. Others use the motion detection features of the DVR to only record or provide notifications when activity is detected. When the motion detection is set at a very sensitive level, it may also capture movement of small animals and other natural events in addition to human motion. Our DVR systems can also be monitored remotely from computers running internet explorer, and our professional web-site also sells systems that are Macintosh compatible as well. Our surveillance systems can be monitored by smart phones such as the iphone, and our upper end models are also compatible with blackberry and android smartphones. One can capture events to usb sticks, external usb hard drives, or on some of our models to CDRW or DVDRW optical media.

A complete video surveillance system also includes cabling to carry the video signals (and sometimes audio signals, where permitted by law), and also power to the security cameras. Our web site can guide you to designing a complete surveillance system, or your can call us at 866-685-6409 to design a custom surveillance system.

Security Cameras have come a long way in the last few years. They can offer a variety of features. Typical choices include indoor vs. outdoor use, low light capabilities, zero light capability using infrared technology, vandalism resistance, low profile dome configurations, and advanced optics choices. You can choose lenses for a wide field of view, close up views (such as for license plates or cash registers), or a varifocal lens that allows the user to customize the view as needed. There are specialized cameras that can remove the glare of car headlights at night to focus exclusively on automobile license plates. There are also surveillance cameras that provide "pan tilt zoom" (PTZ) features, providing a wide variety of viewing angles and focus choices.

At Home-Security-Plus.com we are committed to offering you a variety of video security products at competitive prices. We feature great product support with quick service. Please visit our web-site or give us a call at 866-685-6409 to configure the video surveillance system that you need.