Hello all! Sold the loft downtown St. Paul, and am moving up to White Bear Lake. The home does not have an existing security system, and I am interested in getting one in sooner than later. I would like to find something like the Ring system, and would love to have it work in sync with door locks, the garage door, and possibly a few exterior cameras. My questions: What system do you have? Would you recommend it? If you went back and did it over again, what would you be sure to include in the system? Anything else I should know during my research... TIA!
I would avoid the all in one wifi locks, garage door etc. Working in the cyber security I'm constantly reading about these kind of things being hacked (in the wild and lab scenarios). If security cameras are important to you ring seems to be the current consumer standard for that kind of thing. I used to have retired business cc recorder but it was expensive to maintain
I agree with @euro that I won't go near smart locks or garage door openers. (I also work in IT management and security) You're kinda spoiled for choice when it comes to this sort of thing. There are the lines from Ring, Blink, Arlo, etc. etc. Also some questionable Chinese manufacturers that are best avoided. You can go a step above and use Hikvision, Ubiquiti, Digital Watchdog, or go whole hog ($$$) and use Verkada. For home use, a few from Ring or Blink are cheap and easy to use. For home use, they work fine. I suggest just staying in one ecosystem to simplify things.
What is your end goal? Do you want the police called when a event happens? Like Euro stated, I would just flat out avoid any of the "online" items. I have read so many times about google servers going down and people losing their heat/ac when their thermostat couldn't connect. Or the fact the any video Ring records is not yours. It is property of Amazon and they share everything with the police. I didn't care about the police getting called. Most times they will roll out when they get a chance anyways, so it's not like they are going to stop anything from happening. So with that, I went Ubiquiti and rolled my own system. I started out with a simple system (that I will be posting for sale in a bit) that I have upgraded over time. It runs my whole home internet (routing, wired and wireless) along with security cameras. Everything that gets recorded does not leave my home and it is my video. I am the only person that has access to it. Now that i am into that eco system, I have gone overboard for a home, but changing, upgrading or replacing things are super easy. Russ
I have a Blink setup and it fits our current needs just fine. Definitely has some quirks and little things I would like to be better, but for the price and simplicity it's kinda hard to complain.
Goals are key, indeed. And I have personally witnessed a 2nd gen Nest thermostat burn out a control panel because it's a garbage electrical design that draws too much to charge the battery. Yes it was installed correctly in pretty new construction. Depending on these things for mechanicals or anything but 'fun' automation is foolish at this point. I'm not super paranoid about who owns my videos since I'm intentionally not very interesting as far as the cameras' field of vision is concerned. But I do plan on using Ubiquiti for the home I'm building. A closed system is not a bad thing.
I'm not a fan of an ongoing subscription for cloud-based storage of video footage. We have a Eufy doorbell camera and one of their indoor cameras that we use to keep an eye on the dog when we are both gone. I have been more than happy with their performance. I used a Honeywell system with a camera in the base station and a couple door sensors - it was free in exchange for a review of it. Total piece of crap. I hated it and everything about it. I have a friend who was an electrical engineer that is retired from Honeywell and he told me that Honeywell will sometimes license their name to be used on certain products and he suspects that is the case with this system.
Hi All! Thanks for all of the responses! Goals is a good starting point. Ideally, I like the idea of having an eye on the front door and probably the rear entrance. I don't need police called automatically, and honestly would prefer that doesn't happen because I'm sure I'll trip something up at some point. When we are away I'd like to know if anyone is coming by, and I'd like to be able able to keep an eye on the two dogs when we are not there. I guess we will have enough space in the back yard we may be able to catch some wild life now and then too! I want the sensors on the doors and probably main floor windows. I too, am not overly concerned about the ownership of videos because we're banking on low excitement, but also like the idea of a closed network. I guess as far as smart items go, I would love to remotely be able to open one entrance to the house (that may also just be one of the key code locks). I will look into more of these recommendations! Thank you!
I have the Ring setup for cameras and I love the ease of setup and how it works. I'd like network locks and garage openers too. You can still manually access or open if network is down but having the ability to lock or close your garage if you forget is an awesome feature to have.
I have the ring spotlight camera hardwired on the front of my house. The light is pretty bright, and video and sound quality is better than I thought! It needs a wifi connection, so keep that in mind when choosing a location(if you go this route). I got lucky that my router is on the other side of the wall from the light. You can talk through the light via phone, sound an alarm, and customize lighting schedules, motion settings ect. Ring is owned by Amazon, which I didn't know until after I purchased. Overall, I'm very happy with it!
