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Monitoring a property via live cameras has never been so easy and inexpensive. There is also a bewildering amount of options on the market. We endeavour to select the best systems to suit your needs and more importantly budget.
Our systems have been selected with amongst others, two important factors often overlooked with home security: The first is privacy and security. We’ve selected systems which don’t rely on sending your video feeds to the cloud* or an internet connection to function. All recording is performed locally within your network. Remote monitoring and notifications are possible, but this is via an app (Android/iOS) that is open source and uses a secure proxy, which means only you have access to it.
The second is price. Costs can quickly spiral when selecting hardware and traditionally these systems have been very expensive. In more recent years, with the abundance of loss cost products this has become more affordable. However, this “cheap” hardware has been notorious for quality and privacy issues which have been well documented in news outlets. Even well established more expensive hardware has been implicated in such problems. Our hardware has been carefully selected with a balance between price, security and features.
Many people squirm at the thought of having a camera placed inside your home. We hear you, that’s why our solution is truly smart! The advantages of having cameras inside can be huge. The obvious one is intruder detection, rather than fitting many sensors, usually one camera per room can accurately detect the presence of a person to alert you when you’re away from home. You could also check to see if you left something on the table or even make sure the place isn’t on fire! Although we’d hope you’d be using other more reliable devices for that! It could also be to monitor small children or pets if you’re in another room. As our systems aren’t using the cloud*, you can rest assured their privacy is secure.
But how can we achieve all this whilst maintaining your privacy when you’re home? With our smart hubs and pan/tilt cameras we can automate when you’re home to get them to face away from the room and switch onto privacy mode. Additionally, blocking the cameras access to the internet* will allow us to be sure the images aren’t going anywhere they shouldn’t.
There are many factors which can affect the cost or how effective any installation is:
If you require installation and are located within our coverage area, we can offer a survey service which is fully reimbursed if you decide to purchase the system after quoting. Get in touch to find out more or to arrange a visit. If you’re confident of your requirements and wish to install yourself, head on over to our store.
The newest feature of video surveillance is object recognition or detection and it’s revolutionising security surveillance around the world. Computers (and their programmers!) are now intelligent enough to recognise objects, text and even faces! Our latest smart DVR, NuCCTV, features built in object detection, event clip recording and mobile app playback/snapshot notifications.
Included in the purchase, is a pre-configuration of the system, plus two remote sessions to fine tune the systems’ settings. Get in touch if you’re not sure which cameras you require or have any specific requirements.
Fed up of your camera’s sending you alerts whenever the wind blows or the cat wondering past at all hours? If you’re used to this then you are far more likely to ignore any alerts, thus missing any important events. With object detection instead of just motion detection, “false positives” or false alerts are practically eliminated. At the same time, accuracy can be tuned to pick up every event, be it a person, car, animal or any of the other 77 pre-programmed models! It can even differentiate between a cat and a dog, if that’s something you need!
The other major feature of Object Detection is making security surveillance much more efficient. Instead of needing to record video 24/7 and then having to spend hours reviewing that footage, now any events are recorded in small clips with an adjustable start before and after time so you can be sure not to miss the action. Clips can also automatically be removed after an adjustable amount of days so space is always available. Due to this, required storage disk sizes are greatly reduced, hard disk wear and usage is reduced, which means lower costs and making this an all round smart choice for surveillance security.
With this new technology comes inevitable privacy concerns with the sharing of personal data. Many of the products available today use cloud servers to perform the object detection. This involves sending images or even clips to servers outside of your network. Whilst this is usually secure, there have been occasions where even big names like Ring, have been caught out. It’s not only “unplanned” data breaches which let a lot of cloud services down, it’s intentional sharing of personal data by big corporations and even 3rd parties. It’s not only video and images that are being exposed as this article and many other news reports suggest. Our system on the other hand, is totally secure by design. All data is analysed locally (on the same device) without ever leaving your network for object detection. All snapshots and recordings are stored on the device’s internal drive and never leave your network unless you enable external access.
If you do require external access, it can be set-up through Home Assistant¹ and a small monthly subscription fee which is supporting the open source project and being used, amongst other things, to keep the service secure. To enable your devices to securely access these clips on the internet, we can log in to our smart-hub via a secure link in the Home Assistant¹ Android/iOS app or a web browser. More info here.
With the help of Home Assistant, detecting objects, just got even smarter. Now we can not only get security events, we can get smart devices to act on them. Your NuCCTV is not only a smart DVR, it’s a smart home hub! Find out more about Home Assistant¹ here.
Now event detection is reliable and a multitude of object detection’s are possible, things can really get interesting when it comes to automating actions from events. Here’s some examples but your imagination really is the limit with home automation!
All cameras sold come with a manufacturer app available to set them up on your network and configure settings. This will be connected to their cloud but once the camera is set up this can be uninstalled if you wish. To completely block internet access from the camera, a suitable router or firewall will be required that allows this function. Most modern domestic routers will allow this, however, in rare cases where this isn’t available, we can supply replacement devices and even set them up for you if you live within our coverage area. If you have purchased our NuCCTV system, we can perform the blocking configuration as part of the set-up service. To do this, we will need full access to your router’s settings and thus it’s login credentials. These are normally provided on the device itself, unless they’ve been changed by yourself. If you’re unsure if your router is capable, find out the model number, let us know and we’ll investigate.
¹: We do not charge for the usage or redistribution of the Home Assistant binaries, nor do we have any affiliation or endorsement of the Home Assistant Core Team, Home Assistant Core contributors or Nabu Casa, Inc. Nabu Casa is a trademark of Nabu Casa, Inc.
²: We not have any affiliation or endorsement of MSI. MSI is a trademark of Micro-Star INT’L CO., LTD.
