Battery Powered Cameras

Providers: Ring, Blink, realink, eufy, arlo

Prose:

1. Fast and Easy Installation
2. On Demand live view on an App
3. Motion Recording Only
4. No continuous viewing

Major Strength is ease of setup, they require minimal installation and are usually functional in less than 15 minutes from unboxing them

Cons:

1. Rely only on cloud storage for recording and processing, the cloud solution usually comes with monthly subscription cost, it also grants the providing company access to your footage if they choose to do so
2. Battery Charging, you will need to charge the batteries frequently, however there are solar solutions that may help in this case, but they come with an extra cost
3. No 24/7 Recording or Live Viewing
4. Lithium Batteries don’t work well in cold environments

Having person detection feature on these cameras is a must, it will send you notification when actual person is detected and not on every mothing that happens, this will eliminate unnecessary notifications and alerts.

Door Bell Cameras

Door bell cameras are useful if you want to:

• View and confirm package delivery
• Two-Way Talk
• Live View and Recording through your phone app

There are two types of Door Bell Cameras:

• Wired: If you have existing wired door bell
• Battery Operated: If you don’t have an existing door bell

It is always better to choose the Battery-Operated Door Bell Cameras, because it gives you the option to use the camera wired at all the time plus use the battery feature in case of power outage, the existing power wires can be used to always charge the device batteries

Powered Outdoor Wi-Fi Cameras

Plug in Wi-Fi Cameras

• No Charging Required
• Low cost and high value
• The downside is running long power cables to the Camera and strong Wi-Fi signal required

Flood Light Cameras

• Replacing an existing outdoor light fixture
• Existing Location is suitable for the Camera
• The danger is working with live mains AC power

Wired NVR Package

• All-in-One Solution
• Continuous Local Recording
• The downside is running wires throughout the whole place

A single Ethernet Cable uses both Signal (Video Feed) and Power (PoE) from the NVR to the cameras and thus eliminates the need to use separate cables for Signal and Power

The best time to run cables is during construction, this is why in new projects it is advisable to invest in having all the wires pre-installed in the walls to avoid having that later. It will also save you time and money later on

Wireless NVR Package

• Cheap inexpensive solutions
• Easily configurable and connection to cameras is seamless through wireless P2P connection
• Features are limited compared to wired NVR packages
• The Downside is that usually these devices don’t receive security patches and are thus susceptible to hackers and intruders

Computer Based NVR

Most customizable, powerful and secured however the most difficult to set up. One of the recognizable PC based software that you can you is called Blue Iris