Ask Slashdot: A Cheap, DIY Home Security and Surveillance System? 508
scubamage writes "Six weeks ago, my home was broken into while my fiance and I were at work. Two laptops were stolen, an iPad, a power brick, a safe (complete with several years worth of taxes, my birth certificate, and old copies of my driver's license), a digital SLR, and several other costly items. We are now dealing with an attorney because the homeowner's insurance is fighting us on a number of items and we're not backing down. It has been a nightmare. However, we've now noticed that someone has been visiting our house during the day. There has been garbage left sitting on our back porch table, so its unlikely to have blown there. We've also seen footprints in our garden that are not there in the morning. Our neighborhood is essentially empty during the day, and we want to know who is on our property while we're not. If we're really lucky, reporting it to the police could recover some of our property. My fiance has asked me to assemble a home security system that is motion activated, and both notifies us of an entry, as well as records video or rapid HD stillframes when sensing motion. The goal is to do this cheaply and more effectively than going with a private security company like ADT (who, consequently, our police department told us to ignore due to the incredibly high rate of false alarms). We've already gotten the dog and the gun, so we have those bases covered. What suggestions do you have on setting up home security systems, and what have you done to build one in the past?"
Been there, done that.. Here's your plan. (Score:5, Informative)
We had our cars getting broken into and did basically the same thing (minus gun).
We have a linux file server at home, so what I ended up doing was getting a V4L
compatible video capture card off ebay (I got a 16 input card for $80). 4 port
capture cards are common and cheap. Just make sure it's compatible with linux.
Then go to dealextreme.com, or I think they're also at dx.com now. There you can
get cameras, and the video balun's to make it simple to use cat 5 to run your
cameras. A camera is about $20 for a decent night vision one, and the balun set
(8 baluns to run 4 cameras) were about $25.
Once you've got your hardware all set up, you can use either "motion" or "zoneminder"
for the actual surveilence. Both will do what you want. I use motion, but
zoneminder is a little more polished in the UI department.
Finally, set up an rsync script or other mirror software to get those files off site
in case they actually try to steal your server.
Zoneminder (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.zoneminder.com/ [zoneminder.com]
It integrates well with MythTV, too.
Frontpoint (Score:5, Informative)
We were broken into about 5 weeks ago. I originally considered Frontpoint about 5 months ago, but we kept putting it off. It's the only security company that had mediocre to good reviews consistently.
They have a few options - what you're looking for is their "ultimate" version, which includes cameras. It streams online I believe, and you can turn on/off the security system from your phone or their web page.
They do not send out a rep to do installation, instead they ship the system to you (they'll probably upgrade you to next day shipping for free if you mention you just had a burglary) and you set it up yourself. It took me about 15 minutes to set up, although I had to re-glue some of the door sensors.
When you call, or email, their sales agents don't try to upsel you. They work with what you want, and try to assess your needs based on how you describe your house. If you want an extra sensor for something, they are happy to give it to you - but they will want to know why, and if they don't think it's needed, they'll try to talk you out of it. I had the feeling they actually cared about my interests, and not selling me more equipment.
They also follow up on any feedback you provide, and actively try to resolve issues. I'm really happy with them. They use alarm.com for monitoring.They also have additional styles of sensors that the average joe doesn't care about (ones that you install in the door, rather than putting on the outside of the door - i.e. invisible), but you need to ask. They try to keep it simple.
Hunting Camera (Score:5, Informative)
Get a hunting trail camera. Takes pics on an SD card. Not networked, but is designed to be outside and it should get you the information you seek relatively cheaply.
IP Cameras (Score:4, Informative)
IP cameras have become quite cheap, depending on your needs. If you get PoE models they are also far easier to run than traditional cameras, as a single CatE cable can get the job done. I've set up small systems a number of places including my house, and it all works quite well and easily. While you can go the open source route, I found the easiest way is with some Mac software. You can even do it without network DVR software and use cameras that capture to onboard SD cards. I find that inconvenient, but it can be a good backup if your cameras are mounted out of reach but your server isn't.
Checkout, in no particular order:
There's a product for every need. Cheap, $50 indoor lit-room only solutions to $2000 pan/tilt/zoom IR illuminated outdoor vandal proof units.
TrendNet [trendnet.com] makes affordable PoE switches. 10/100 is fine, an individual camera stream is maybe 2Mbps for a high res stream.
I use SecuritySpy [bensoftware.com] on a Mac. Even watching 8 cameras it uses
Place cameras where you can get good shots of faces as they come through doors. Maybe one of your driveway or street in front to get a car. They won't stop the break in, although visible cameras outside may be a deterrent, but they will give you a fighting chance of catching the person who did it.
Oh, and get a dog with a loud bark. Most robbers don't want to find out if it is a small dog or big dog!
Re:Reputation (Score:5, Informative)
"knock, knock."
"Who is it?" as you rack a round in your pistol grip Mossberg 500, the process of which makes a very distinctive noise.
"Sorry, wrong address."
The comment about the blaring alarm scaring people off is true. As is the sound of the shotgun being racked.
Never mind 5,000 rounds a year, etc. On the off chance you have to fire after answering the door (a) you're firing from less than four feet away and (b) you're opening fire with pellets. So long as you don't try and play Terminator and use one hand to fire, you're going to hit something
Take the weapon out to the woods and put a dozen rounds through it. Take your family. You'll get to feel the kick you're going to experience and almost more to the point, the sound. Should you need/feel the need to fire another shot during an intrusion, if you've never heard a shotgun go off while you're holding it, in my experience you are more likely to pause as you recover from the shock of the sound.
Re:Don't be a tightwad (Score:5, Informative)
I do, I work for an organization with about 100 sites which I have to go in and out of, including during hours when I have to disarm a site.
The security company, by and large, doesn't really care about the brand of system in the site, they can interface to many, so long as they're commercial products. In our case, only one door into a secured area won't immediately set the alarm off, that one door has a delay before the alarm goes off, in which one disarms the system. The attendant at the security company gets an alarm on their computer screen when a site goes off, and they call the police if they don't receive a call within a minute or so of the actual alarm going off, even if one disarms the security system post-alarm. One has to know who to call and has to have a code word to prevent the authorities from being called.
In some residential installations, the security company will call a phone number on the account and ask for the code word instead of waiting for a call.
As far as burglars go, without some kind of monitoring, a burglar will still have a few minutes to grab whatever they can, even while the thing is blaring, as it's unlikely that the neighbors will call the police until the alarm gets annoying and they figure that no one is around to shut it off.
There are also fairly inexpensive ($500-$1000) camera systems with eight cameras (expandable to sixteen) at Costco that use PoE cameras. One has to run Ethernet wiring to locations for the cameras, but the advantage of needing only one battery backup for the main DVR/switch outweighs the use of separate power at each camera, in my humble opinion. I'm considering a system like this, but I know that I'll probably spend another $500 wiring for it, with the horizontal cable, the patch cords at each end, the conduit pipe for the outdoor cameras, the patch panel, the snap-in connectors, and the like, and that's assuming that I can coax an old battery backup back to life with a new set of SLAs for it.
There's no good cheap solution, in my opinion. If one is in a house, signing up for monitoring for a certain amount of time may yield a free system for detection.
Re:Don't be a tightwad (Score:5, Informative)
99% of the time a very loud siren will stop the theif from spending much time in your property. Even if you had the most expensive ADT setup it still takes minutes for police to do anything about it anyway.
You can pay ADT $45/mo for 5 years to install $200 worth of equipment and feel better. But you can get better results installing your own system and hooking up with something like NextAlarm for $17/mo no contract and get email/SMS notification when anything goes wrong, check event history such as who armed and disarmed and even get SMS when your housekeeper disarms/rearms, etc.
This combined with a cheap Lorex/Swann net connected DVR system from Costco that lets you instantly see 8/16 channels of video from your smartphone will be more than adequate.
There is a small learning curve when programming your own alarm panel, but since you are asking Slashdot, you probably know how to google already. Hopefully.
Re:Been there, done that.. Here's your plan. (Score:4, Informative)
We bought one of those cheap chinese OEM CCTV DVRs (sold under several brands worldwide, the real source is a chinese company called Dahua), plus 8 cameras.
Notes:
Considering its price, the DVR works quite well, and has decent quality/framerate (30 fps / camera, 352x240). The bad thing is that the remote client software (optional usage) is Windows-only and buggy as hell.
We considered a desktop PC with a multi-channel vide capture card (it's far more flexible), but it's messier to install/maintain (bigger, with fans sucking dirt 24/7, someone may be tempted to occasionaly use as a desktop PC etc).
We installed the DVR in the entrance room, so the doorman/watcher (however it's called in English) can see what is going on AND we have all the activity recorded in case of need.
Problem: What if, for example, someone steps in with a gun and blows up the DVR? The videos are gone, and a periodic backup will not prevent this, since the most relevant video happened mere instants before, thus DVR-copy only. -- So, for the worst-case scenario (and right the most valuable one to have recorded video), the DVR seemed useless (the DVR has a built-in sync mechanism which is very unreliable, so it's worthless).
The dillema was solved with a free software called Tanidvr [sourceforge.net] (Unixoid_OS-specific, command-line, and specific to that DVR family). Basically, we bought a computer to be used as a realtime backup server, installed in a locked room in a different floor. We also have a (intranet-only) HTTP server in order to easily download the videos, if necessary.
So, no matter what happens to the DVR, we have the video data up to the exact time (delay <1 second) the machine was destroyed.
A backup script was created for video fragmentation, and to recompress the H.264 stream to fit more days into the HD (with a quality/size the DVR is unable to provide).
Well, it works for us.
Re:Don't be a tightwad (Score:5, Informative)
If they're looking to catch the daytime lurker (and likely robber), I'd imagine you'd want it to be silent.
I use MythTV as a PVR, so adding MythZoneMinder and a few IPCams was pretty simple. It sends me a text message when one of the zones is breached, and I can look at the images or the live feed from my phone or work computer. One of the cameras is a PTZ, and the only time I got to use it in anger, turning it to face the kids who were about to tag my mailbox got them to change their minds. If something's happening that really concerns me, I can call the police direct or ask one or several of my neighbours to help out.
Re:Don't be a tightwad (Score:4, Informative)
I've long wanted to put one of those systems together....looks to be pretty well supported, and works with a pretty large amount of equipment...