Home CCTV

[gasmenace]

Anyone got any pointers for a complete newbie to home CCTV?

I want to protect the new garage with a camera at each corner and I'm thinking I'll probably use about 3 more to cover the side and front of the house.

Don't really have a clue where to start except to say they will have to be wireless as I can't start running cables aroudn the house now it's decorated.

FWIW I got a nice setup from Maplins - wired, not wireless (other posters have said why wireless isn't ideal).

They sell a cheaper, similar one now which would fit your bill here: http://www.maplin.co.uk/500gb-4-channel-...pp-477048.

A few points that were on my learning curve:

I put mine in the house and paid an electrician to string the cable but there was zero mess. If you decide you want it in the house, if you can bring the cables in the same route as your TV aerial or satellite cable, there's already a route to follow.

I'd say run the entire setup into the house via the garage, with only the recorder kept inside the house by the telly - it has its own channel.

If you just plain can't run wiring, you'll have to keep the whole system within the garage, lock the recorder away in a cupboard or out of the way in a secure spot, and get a little monitor just for setting up and looking at recordings. You can connect it to your wi-fi using a powerline network thingy so as not to run cables, as long as the garage is on the same mains loop as the house.

Whatever you decide:

To use the iphone remote app away from home you need a fixed IP, but it will work fine inside your own wi-fi zone.

You can have more than four cameras, but an 8 channel setup gets pricey.

Get one extra decent day/night camera to cover the main gate - the supplied cameras are a bit basic.

You can set up virtual tripwires (at least with mine) that sounds a beep alarm inside the actual recorder if anything crosses a line you setup on the screen.

Spiders and cobwebs look bloody enormous under infra red.

Once it's up and running you'll probably never look at it - until something happens!

Colin