Learn me: Car/shop/home security cameras?

Car: So my only viable option for parking at my shop requires parallel parking. No big deal for me, but my front and rear bumpers have been "bumped" more times than I can count, and I've had a couple minor incidents if vandalism/attempted break-ins in the last 15 years.

Also: Driving 80 miles a day, I witness a lot of dumb E36 M3. Most recently: After working a 15 hour day and casually cruising home, a kid in his bro-dozer spends the last 15 miles of my commute deliberately "smoke-screening" me. I did not engage. Finally, when I put my blinker on to get off the highway, he throws what appeared to be a styrofoam cooler full of crap out the window.

I also had an encounter with the cops a couple years ago where I was "clocked" doing 77mph when I had my cruise set at 71, and the radar detector never pinged.

I'm told there are dash cams that not only record video/audio, but use GPS to show speed(?)

Anyway, a buddy of mine swears by the cheap dash cams he bought from Walmart. I think he records to an ipad or flash drive or some E36 M3, but I don't know if they're running while the car is parked, which I'd want for the frequent tourist bumper-taps.

Any thoughts from the hive-mind? Is there a relatively inexpensive "easy-button?"

BONUS POINTS: I'd like a similar solution for home and shop without spending a ton of money on a security system. I'm fine with catching the thief/vandal after the fact, vs. paying monthly for alarms to scare them off.

Thanks in advance!!!

I've looked into the home security stuff camera thing a little bit. You can get an all-in-one setup from Amazon for around $100, but part of me thinks I should do something a little more advanced like the Nest system. But that's a lot more money. Interested in opinions.

DashCamTalk.Com

I've just begun researching the home versions of these and the market still seems pretty fragmented. In a perfect world I would be able to get two doorbell camera's and a wireless camera or two for the back/side yards. Also, in a perfect world, these would all upload into a single cloud somewhere via wifi for a minimal (or no!) fee and I could access them from a single app on my phone. I've yet to find something that does all that.

As for dash cams, I've read that you don't need much more than the cheap ones to use while driving, but if you want it to run while parked that is a different story. You don't want it draining the car battery, so you'd need it to have rechargeable batteries? And it would need to have either a wifi connection to put it in a cloud or quite a bit of memory to store hours of data before overwriting it the next day/week/whatever.

Wish I had an actual answer but this seems to be a young market that is set to grow quite a bit.

On the home security front to many people make the mistake of what I call four corners. That's putting cameras at the four corners of the house aimed out. Problem is not getting a close up of the person and not proving that they were inside the home. I always recommend at least one camera inside the home and in a place likely to capture a close up. Good areas are at the living room TV (they steal the TV you have a close up) and in cross traffic areas where they'll be walking from one area of the house to another.

CobraSpdRH wrote: I've just begun researching the home versions of these and the market still seems pretty fragmented. In a perfect world I would be able to get two doorbell camera's and a wireless camera or two for the back/side yards. Also, in a perfect world, these would all upload into a single cloud somewhere via wifi for a minimal (or no!) fee and I could access them from a single app on my phone. I've yet to find something that does all that. As for dash cams, I've read that you don't need much more than the cheap ones to use while driving, but if you want it to run while parked that is a different story. You don't want it draining the car battery, so you'd need it to have rechargeable batteries? And it would need to have either a wifi connection to put it in a cloud or quite a bit of memory to store hours of data before overwriting it the next day/week/whatever. Wish I had an actual answer but this seems to be a young market that is set to grow quite a bit.

If I were to design such a device, I wouldn't worry about using up the car battery. Small electronics should be able to run for days without significantly using car battery capacity. Maybe have a setting for low-voltage shut-off though as a fail safe.

I would design it to store data in "stages". I.e. keep the most recent 24 hrs at high res, next 48 hrs at medium res, and then store low res for anything after that, up to one-two-three weeks (based on storage capacity) before dumping completely. I would also design it to take (and keep for as long as storage allows) high res photos when the video feed notices movement. you could store photos for a long time for the "price" of storing just a few hours of video.

Home: I initially bought a Costco wireless system (Astak). It installed easily enough, but had no recording provision and suffered pretty badly from interference, even in my small home.

Most recent iteration is a wired setup (Amcrest 960H). More of a pain in the butt to run wires, but the picture is infinitely better, it records locally to a decent sized hard drive, has wireless access and the option to backup video to your choice of media. Only gripe is that the cameras that come with it aren't the highest resolution. You can piecemeal in multiple different Amcrest cameras, though so if you want to pony up for the pan/tilt/zoom 1080p camera, you can update to those later.

In reply to CobraSpdRH:

Good point. Where I normally park, I could actually have a camera hard-wired at the shop that could catch the bumper bumpers. Might save a lot of headache.

In reply to Stampie:

I don't know the first thing about security cameras (obviously) but my plan for home and shop was to have the cameras mounted at the "exits" (i.e. Congrats on getting in. I've got a clear pic of you leaving with whatever you've stolen) as well as long-shots of the outside for the getaway car/occassional egg-tosser or whatever.

In reply to Smarta$$ McPoopyPants:

Contact CWH on here. He sold me a system for our place that works very well. Using video from it we caught the guy who ran into our building a couple years ago.

In reply to Pete Gossett:

I seem to recall that. Thanks!

I use a wired Samsung system at the house. 10 cameras total, covering entrances, driveway, shop and behind the shop. The cameras work perfectly. It eats a 2T hard drive every couple of years though. I'll be contacting CWH about a new DVR in the near future to replace it, hopefully using my existing cameras.

In the car, I use this.

Black Box GW1-C

It works perfectly, but doesn't have a GPS.

This is my previous camera. It has GPS and records speeds, as well as location on a map.

KDLINKS X1

It was a great camera except for one thing. It couldn't handle the continuous heat of the dash, and the battery exploded.

For the shop and house, highly recommend wired installs. No issues with batteries, signal strength, connectivity etc.

We have the Ring stuff and it works pretty much as you described your perfect system. Easy install, easy to access from phone, saves in the cloud and only $30/year per device. Also sends motion alerts to your phone. It only saves when motion is detected and you can review those events

It isn't wired and I have run into issues with it not connecting when I try to see what triggered a camera. But overall not bad

I have been lightly researching both dash cams and home video recording.

It seems that the market doesn't have a common user set that can drive the industry to a standard set of features. GPS/noGPS, download format, etc

• Great resolution cameras seem to be hit or miss. As someone pointed out the fuzzy image of a person taking or damaging your stuff isn't useful. Super high end cameras seem tied to elaborate control software and controllers. They may be easy to buy once you figure out the one that you want.
• Any single dashcam will have lovers and haters to the point that it is hard to discern without trying them out yourself. Mostly decisions are driven by word of mouth. Or seeing one in use. I am leaning towards the FalconZero brand based on optical clarity day or night.
• Recording sound is usually illegal so watch out for that.

CobraSpdRH wrote: I've just begun researching the home versions of these and the market still seems pretty fragmented. In a perfect world I would be able to get two doorbell camera's and a wireless camera or two for the back/side yards. Also, in a perfect world, these would all upload into a single cloud somewhere via wifi for a minimal (or no!) fee and I could access them from a single app on my phone. I've yet to find something that does all that.

I was just beginning to consider similar.

With wifi/bluetooth, and cheap storage, it would seem this all exists relatively easily in fragmented forms, somebody just needs to build the right infrastructure/app to consolidate it.

Secondly, having multiple cameras in/outside the home would be helpful to record actual detail as others have said. A grainy image of a human doesn't do much good vs. a clear head shot of someone as they pass by a camera they didn't know was there.

I used to live in bad neighborhood in Portland that went worse. I had security cameras and so did allot of people. It is a deterrent to some degree as it scares of non professional thieves. Professional low level thieves (sometimes the following is just a fashion statement) wear baggy dark clothes, hoodies that have a dark cave for an opening, usually have sunglasses on 24/7, sport weird assortments of facial hair that changes, and always have a day pack. They are indistinguishable as individuals from one another and they know it. They also know that most urban cops are WAY to busy with violent crime to give anything other than lip service to property crime, and if they are chraged with a property crime it is a couple hour process before they are out out the street again and most professional thieves are already under state supervision and these days property crime is not worth is to the state to blow 60-80k a year on by housing people. So they get a pass anyway if somehow they end up prosecuted. They also know they have rights and looking into a backpack requires a warrant. And they do not want to escalate to violent crime so they do not carry weapons and do not engage in physical altercations- they run when confronted unless really high on meth. I became quite friendly with several po po, and they said the cameras were kinda cute but pretty much useless unless really high res and it was a violent crime that was being prosecuted. They said Lock things up really well 100% consistently, keep your property lit and use visually open fencing, have noisy dogs, have weapons and make that apparent, be home alott, and neighbors watching out for each other was really important. If it sounds E36 M3ty it was.

In reply to Shaun:

I agree with most of what you wrote. It seems home cameras are more to just let you maybe learn a better way to build your physical security features. A family friend had their car broken into and you described the person's outfit perfectly. But with the added old ski mask with two eye openings. Nothing to use to figure out who did it.

Basically can't stop any of the semi professional criminals, even an avid YouTube watcher can build up a method to get away with theft crimes. But keeping the knucklehead thief may be worth the expenses on cameras. Thus the market settling on low resolution cameras. High resolution won't help anyhow.

Just don't understand the need to take someone else's​ stuff.

I've had several wireless Blink cameras around my house for about half a year. They were easy to connect, the app and cloud storage are free, and seem to be pretty reliable about capturing movement around my doors and alerting me (mostly cats walking through my backyard). I recommend them to friends who are looking for cameras. The biggest criticism I have of the system is that there's no geofencing on the cameras, so if I am around or outside the house at odd times then they will record me if I haven't turned them off through the app. Being app based, Blink may just disappear one day but that's not too high on my list of worries.

I think they've come out with an outdoor camera recently, but I haven't had any issues with using indoor cameras outside under cover.

I agree with some of the folks above that the cameras will not be a big deterrent to professional thieves, but there are situations where having cameras at your door can be useful - you never know who will be around your house or what state of mind they will be in (drugs, people waiting to rob you when you get home, etc...). Having an alert that there was movement is useful. Having a recording of the person, and any potential interaction I have with them, could potentially make all the difference if I am ever pulled into court about an incident on my property is well worth the $250 or so I have invested.

A while back I put up an inexpensive trail camera in my back yard to see what critters pass through. Unfortunately it only seems to catch me and the wife when we're working in the yard. Except it also snapped two pics of somebody in a grey hoodie at 120am last week. 

We have exterior motion lights. Interior lights on timers that are on all night and live in a "good" neighborhood and that didn't make a difference to this person.  For some piece of mind I'll be looking into a camera system so this thread became very relevant for me.

The yi 1080p on amazon is cheap and nice. I got the 4 cameras just sitting around for now and im quite impressed. 4 cameras for about 90$, premium cloud service is like 130$ a year for 5 cameras. I havent got the cloud service set up yet but i did get some outdoor enclosures so I can put the cameras outside. I'll probably leave 1 inside. 

I'm up to 16 cameras at the house. 6 hardwired cameras on a DVR, and 10 Amazon Blink cameras. You can't come in the yard without me knowing you are there. I also have signs letting the would be crooks know they are on camera. When the vandals went through the neighborhood a couple of months ago they didn't hit my house or either of my neighbors.

The dash cameras have been updated to the Viofo A119 with the GPS base. There is one in every car including the cars the kids drive. They are more durable than the others I have tried.

I have a Blink system set up inside our house and in the shop area that has worked well. Fairly cheap very easy to set up. Also have motion lights set up up at rear entry to house and shop plus a game camera I move around in the back yard. Game camera was a cheap one and unfortunately the infrared lens doesn't give very clear pictures of the squirrels, armadillos, raccoons, etc. it seems to catch. Thankfully we have not had any problems but the Blink seems to catch myself, wife, dog when we forget to disarm system occasionally.

I have the Ring doorbell camera, a Ring camera with motion activated lights in front of the garage and on the deck showing who is coming to the back door. I also put one with the lights and motion camera in the garage by the man door into the garage so that you see all of the garage and anyone entering.

what is nice, if one light is triggered, the other two lights turn on.

I can see all from my phone/tablet and my wife and kids have access to it (and send me every cat or raccoon family the thing films at night).

all are kept in the cloud for 30 days or can be saved. I can turn the lights & sirens on or off from my the app as well as listen to any camera or talk to anyone thru the camera. Plus I can check from my bed if I left my garage door open.

it was cheap, easy to set up but there are some privacy concerns that would keep me from having it in my house.

jfryjfry said:

For the shop and house, highly recommend wired installs. No issues with batteries, signal strength, connectivity etc.

That's my take, too. You only have to run wires once; wireless cameras need to be maintained. I have a Swann four camera system - playback and interface is a bit clunky, but the price is decent.