Types Of Surveillance Systems

Best Types Of Surveillance Systems For All Types Of Property

While surveillance systems have been very commonplace for commercial properties, it took a while for them to become popular for residential homes as well. One reason is that crime statistics show that the more advanced and high tech a security and surveillance system is, the more criminals will avoid them altogether. Secondly, the cost of camera equipment for home use has significantly dropped in recent years.

The best types of surveillance systems have certain characteristics that you need to look out for in order to ensure that you fully protect your property. One essential thing is that the system has to be easily expandable to ensure that as and when needed you can cover more indoor and outdoor areas with cameras.

Older systems can be very limited once installed and will also only allow a certain limited amount of detection devices, including cameras, vibration and motion detectors. This can become very costly if a system has to be replaced due to expanding commercial or residential premises.

Here are some tips on what to look out for when assessing different types of security systems that will help to maximize protection.

Outdoor Video Surveillance

Outdoor video cameras are very important not just from a point of view of capturing video of potential criminals to help law enforcement, but also from a crime prevention point of view. Crime statistics show that the more obvious and high tech the camera systems are the more it prevents criminals from entering business or residential buildings.

Important factors of an outdoor camera are that it has to be weather proof and include night vision, even in well-lit areas. This ensures that turning off the lighting does not render a camera useless. Installation should ensure that a wide area is covered and that the camera is not easily accessible from the ground.

Indoor Video Surveillance

Indoor cameras do not have to be weather proof, which means that they can be substantially smaller and easier to install with far less restrictions. For indoor use you need a camera that provides a very wide angle of view to make sure that you capture as much of a small space as possible, resulting in less cameras and fewer dark spots.

Night vision is also essential and quality is the key here. Many night vision enabled cameras capture at very low quality, making the images less than optimum, so make sure you do not cut corners here.

Hidden Spy Cameras

Some of the best types of surveillance systems will also enable you to install hidden spy cameras. These would be quite common when theft is happening on a regular basis and you need to find out how and when it is happening. Not all burglary is obvious and such hidden cameras can make all the difference in catching the criminals in the act.

Hidden cameras are usually very small and wireless to enable installation in very inconspicuous places. They are often disguised as everyday objects just like out of a James Bond movie so that they blend in with the surroundings.

Motion Detection

Security cameras should also be motion activated, which means that they only record video when something moves in front of the camera. This helps with not overwhelming your recording equipment with endless hours of still images, which will cost money.

Motion detection these days can operate in daylight as well as darkness and is so sensitive that it cannot be circumvented. At nighttime it is activated using infra red light beams, which are invisible to the human eye.

HD Video Recording

It is very important that you do not opt for low quality cheap cameras. HD video functionality these days is the norm and does not add significantly to the bill of an overall surveillance system. The added benefit is that you can get very high quality video recordings of burglars and thieves, which will help police in catching the criminal.

This will also help deter professional criminals who are very familiar with the latest technology and systems in place and know exactly where their action would be captured in movie quality.

DVR Recoding

Dependent of how much video you will end up recording you will need a central place to record all video on DVR devices. This has to be in a secure and difficult to get at place, as otherwise there would be nothing stopping a thief from stealing all the recordings as well.
While many cameras come with built in memory, it can be very time consuming to extract that data from the camera. But this can be alleviated with the next item on our list.

Cloud Recording

Saving video recordings to a cloud based data storage facility has become very inexpensive and is by far one of the best ways to make sure recordings are not lost. Basically, your surveillance system will be set up to send all the recordings over the Internet where they can be remotely accessed.

This makes it pretty much impossible for the recordings to be stolen at the same time as a property is being burgled. And you also have the ability to remotely access the recordings, not requiring you to physically go to a recording device in the event of a security alarm going off.

Advertising to the world that you have one of the best types of surveillance systems installed will ensure that your property and investment remains safe. It deters criminals and will reduce the costs of losing some of your property in the process.