Friday, December 18, 2009

Home Security Surveillance: How to Build a Powerful, Efficient Home Video Surveillance System

By Jeffrey Parker

Obviously, the greatest thing when it comes to personal security is literally having someone watching over you. This is why you'll be challenged to find a celebrity or politician without a bodyguard, along with specialists to provide home security surveillance and access control over their gates during sleeping hours.

Unfortunately, people are expensive commodities. On the other hand, technology, once you own it, will work tirelessly for whatever purpose for which it's intended. While a well-integrated home video surveillance system won't be able to protect you, a combination of alarm sirens and recorded footage will go a long way to both scaring off intruders and ensuring that you can identify them and bring them to justice.

These days, the issue of managing and storing home security surveillance footage is tackled by a variety of different means. Some people enlist the services of online storage clusters, to which their data is wirelessly transmitted the instant it's recorded, providing insurance against the possibility of anybody concealing the details of their crime after it happens. Others prefer to protect their information by storing it in a safe room on the premises, where it is saved to a Hybrid Digital Video Recorder (or HDVR). Either of these options allows for the possibility of recording numerous feeds simultaneously, and utilize looped recording to prevent your stored trove of information becoming too large and unwieldy.

There is, however, a much more nifty solution to the problem of storing digital footage. It involves the judicious use of PIR motion detectors which, with a little uncomplicated rewiring, can be used to activate your home security surveillance system. PIR motion detectors cover a cone-shaped area, and are activated by a change of sufficient degree in the heat of that area. Thus, they utilize very little power and take up no storage space in terms of information. When activated, they'll cause your cameras to come into operation, setting them to run for a certain specified period beyond the last detected movement or change in the observed area.

All you need to do for an efficient home video surveillance system is to have your PIR motion detector rigged to activate the recording function of your cameras, and BAM - your information storage costs just dropped to negligible levels. Your system will now record only when it has to, for a fixed period. It's possible to make such a system even more effective, if you're willing to shell out some cash for panning, tilting and zooming (PTZ) cameras. These are capable of tracking motion, shifting to follow the actions of intruders. If that's too expensive, you can get motion-activated dummy PTZ cameras, which could do a lot to scare off thieves before they even enter the premises.

Home security surveillance systems can be constructed with the cheapest of materials or utilizing the most sophisticated technology (indeed, PIR motion detectors can be had for as little as $20). The best move when deciding which route you'd like to go is to do lots of research, determining how the ever-fluctuating market looks relative to your pocket, and determining whether you'll be able to do the installation as a DIY project. If it all looks too overwhelming and complex to you, you'd probably be best served by signing up with a good security company that will do the home video surveillance system installation and monitoring for you - and back it up with force when the need arises.

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