How To Leverage Modern Technology To Protect Your Home And Family

Most people are well aware of the use of CCTV cameras to deter criminals and gather evidence to solve crimes. Let's face it, every time you visit a shopping mall you can see surveillance systems in action and how often on the news do you hear of convictions brought about thanks to video footage?

But what is not so obvious to many folk is that these days you can easily and fairly inexpensively install your own surveillance system at home. Thanks to technological advances in computer systems, networks and digital cameras, putting together a highly effective domestic security system is an afternoon's work for anyone with basic DIY skills.

The first thing to clear up is that modern home surveillance cameras are not CCTV. Closed circuit television is a fairly outdated system that, as the name suggests, uses regular analogue TV apparatus and stores images on video tape. It's bulky, requires ongoing maintenance (changing tapes for example), gives poor picture quality and lacks the integration features available with modern digital camera technology.

For anyone looking to install their own system these days, wireless IP (or network) cameras offer pretty decent quality within a modest budget, and crucially, are easy to setup and use. These are basically customized digital still cameras that look to your home wireless network like any other wireless device.

They take a lot of pictures close together to simulate motion (exactly how movies work as it happens) which are automatically uploaded via your wireless router to a computer hard drive and/or the internet. Like the digital images you're used to from standalone and phone cameras, the resolution is way above anything possible with CCTV video tape.

Also, being simply digital information, the images can be stored, copied and transmitted the same as any other digital files. So for example, you can setup the system to send your mobile phone a text alert with an image attachment if a camera detects motion.

This "alert" capability hilights one of the key differences between a digital security camera system and the old VCR based technology. Computer software is capable of interpreting digital information and scheduling appropriate actions accordingly. So even the process of detecting motion, for example, is more sophisticated and controllable.

Older systems relied on crude infra red detectors which could easily fail to spot movement or frequently overload the system with false positives. Digital imaging however can be tailored to map portions of the field of view against previous versions and thus much more accurately determine whether any changes are attributable to human movement or simply changes in light levels or some other minor artefact.

But more importantly, a digital system can be programmed to respond in various different ways according to the perceived threat. For instance, you can often set up "schedules", in other words define periods of the day or week when you know that mostly you're around and thus don't wish to be alerted (or photographed even). You can vary the nature of the alert, from say a simple text message to an email containing an MPEG file. And you can even passively monitor both the live feed and previously stored images from any remotely located computer (assuming of course you have the passwords).

Installing a wireless IP surveillance system at home is remarkably simple. The cameras themselves are typically quite small and lightweight and come supplied with mounting brackets and a power cable with a 12v transformer. All you need to do is affix each bracket securely where required and clip the camera in, plug the transformer into the nearest power socket and go find a computer...

The rest of the installation process is usually a matter of installing the supplied software and following the on-screen instructions. The network automatically detects the new devices and that's pretty much it, unless you're the sort who likes to start playing around with the seemingly endless configuration options (rather than accept the perfectly acceptable factory settings).

One final tip for boosting the effectiveness of your home surveillance system without busting the budget is to consider installing some dummy security cameras. If you can obtain empty cameras cases that are identical to your real cameras, you can very cost effectively create a convincing illusion that your system is much more extensive than it truly is.

The key point to take away from this article and particularly that last tip is this: the leverage you can obtain from using modern technology lies in the fact that it deters crime in the first place. Burglars for example rely to a large extent on anonymity - once their identity is revealed it is pretty much game over - and would rather not risk finding out how good your system is. The fact that you appear to have one is quite sufficient.