Recently there has been an increase in thefts in our neighbourhood, which is weird since we live in a nice area of town that, to my knowledge, doesn’t have a history of this stuff. So, after my car was gone through (stupid me for not locking it that night), and after some other neighbours having thefts occur even one having their car taken, we decided it was time to have at least some security in the house.
I did a lot of checking online. The biggest selling features to me was going to be ease of installation, which seems weird since I’m a jack of all trades, but I would rather have time for hobbies and to complete items on my ‘Honey-do’ list. Lots of systems were wireless but needed me to run power to the cameras. Others were wired 100% (not easy to install). But I came across a very well reviewed system by Netgear called Arlo. What got me here was that the cameras were customizable, you could add more, and mount them pretty much anywhere within range (indoor and outdoor) of the base unit….. SOLD.
https://www.arlo.com
Install of the base unit was very easy and took only a few minutes using the instructions provided (yes, I do use instructions sometimes) and I enabled all the cameras purchased in my bundle to make sure they worked.
The main area I wanted to survey was the driveway, so I mounted it with the exterior security mount on the side of some fascia under the roof over hang and pointed it at my driveway.
The other I put attached to the ceiling outside by our front door to keep an eye on my front walk.
Now the next step was to configure the system. This is a matter of preference and the amount of flexibility I found was fantastic. The system saves your videos to the internet which you can access via your smartphone or on any computer connected to the internet.
Keep in mind that the cameras are all battery powered, so unnecessary use may drain the batteries faster, but there are a number of ways to optimize the performance of your system.
At the end of the day, I’m very pleased with this system so far, but I will update this post if I do find any issues.
I know this kind of sounds like a sales pitch, but if you like or not, comment, share, etc. Cheers.