Home Surveillance System on A Limited Budget
Home surveillance system is expensive? I think it’s not. Through this article, I’ll share you about how to get a home surveillance system in a tight budget. Later you’ll know that you don’t need to spend hundreds or thousands dollars to monitor your home security. You don’t need to be confused with several equipments that seem too high tech for youJ, you can even utilize your existing electronic device to build a reliable home surveillance system.
Before building own home surveillance system, you need to know what are the building blocks of a home surveillance system. Well, typically a home surveillance system consists of a camera, recorder with receiver, and a wireless connection device, that’s all. For your DIY home surveillance system, those components would be a generic surveillance camera, DVR card along with its software, and a PC / Laptop with an internet connection.
Ok let’s start with the first component. To have a home surveillance system, you don’t need to buy a high tech surveillance camera; you just need to buy a generic surveillance camera that only cost less than $40. For your home monitoring purpose, I think a camera with 25 feet range is more than enough. If you want more features, you may consider a dome camera with night vision capabilities so that you can get a clear recording even in no lighting condition. One important thing is ensure that the surveillance camera you buy have wireless capabilities so you can easily connect the camera with your PC without getting troubled in connecting a wire. How many cameras you should buy are depends on how many spot you want to monitor. For home uses, I think 4 cameras is enough, you can put two in front, one to monitor your backyard, and one inside your home.
The second component is a DVR card with its software. With this device, you can turn your PC into a powerful DVR. Because the picture / video you capture can be directly saved into your hard disk. There are several types of DVR card such as a 4 channels, 8 channels, and 10 channels DVR card. Since this time you will only use 4 surveillance cameras, you need to buy a 4 channels DVR card. As I know, you can get a non branded DVR card with only less than $50. When choosing a DVR card, make sure you get software with scheduled recording and automatic notification features. This will ease you to use your home surveillance camera.
The last component is a PC with internet connection. Why you need an internet connection? Because this enables you to monitor your home when you are working or going somewhere. You can use the video streaming technology to monitor your home. Keep in mind that you need to have a sufficient storage capacity in your PC especially if you want to keep your recorded video. Please also be informed that to conduct a video streaming technology, you need to have a reliable internet connection. Ok, now that you have all the component, all you need to do is connect those 3 components, fine tune the capture, and keep watching your home security.
