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security cam

 When installing hidden cameras / motion activated hidden camera and spy cams, the first thing is to establish your main goals. Such goals may be securing of your property or monitoring of some activities, then you can now go on and use your scale of preference in judging what factor is of more importance in the installing of your hidden camera. Your scale of preference could be detecting the face of an intruder or getting the License plate number of strange visitors and so on.

To reduce the risk involved while installing hidden cameras, some of these factors we must give proper assessment and considerations for achieving positive results. Let us look at these factors one after the other.

Placement

The best camera placement for achieving any goal of using your hidden camera is to place your camera in strategic point such that the focus is on the subject. Most times, you can conveniently place them adjacent or opposite to your property, you are securing or monitoring. In addition, you have to find a specific camera that fits or match the area you are monitoring, to avoid suspicion.

For example, if you are installing a spy camera to view footage around the entrance porch of your house, you will need to find a perfect camera and a porch light that fits together and looks discrete and not too ghetto. Since the porch is located outside the house, then take note that the biggest fact in selecting an outdoor camera is that, it is strong enough to pick up the license plate number. This means the camera has to have focal length enough so that the zoom is not fixed; this is because you have to adjust the lens close enough to pick up the details of the license plate number you zoomed out from an entire landscape. This is so because when you zoom from a computer, you will not have clear details from the blurry view and these will not lead you to pick up the license plate number as it does in the movies. The cut matters short, you need a manual zoom on the camera.

Know The Megapixels Of The Camera

This is important but not as important as lens size. The higher number of megapixels, the less you have to zoom in so you can read the license plate number and still get a lot of landscape using the porch light area as an example.

Make Use Of IP Cameras

You can connect IP cameras directly to your computer's network. This is not too complicated to manage these days; it enables you to store all your videos on a cloud instead of a DVR or hard drive / NVR that intruders can easily access. If you cannot run Ethernet wires, another important feature will be a wireless camera. However, be aware that wireless cameras are very Clichy, which can be at times expensive to manage. Therefore, if you can run your Ethernet cable, it is better than having wireless camera. Lastly, in doing these, make sure it is an outdoor camera.

Camera Installation

When doing your installations, make it discrete and neat enough to avoid suspicion Just do not install them anyhow, you may even require the help of a professional in doing these for you. Using the Porchlight as a case study, you can easily drill holes into the porchlight frame and fix the light with the camera technically. Now you can run the wires through the back of the walls behind the porch-light fittings to your Ethernet so that you can control your camera through your computer network.

Software Selection

Before choosing your software, consider the following:-

  • Use software that works with most IP cameras, so that you can always have new cameras to suit your needs.
  • The software can record with motion detection and does it really well.
  • Make use of software that is not complicated but straightforward.
  • Use software that makes use of time stamp and makes it usable in the court of law.
  • Stores data immediately to the cloud.
  • It has a great phone app that you can use to view your camera anywhere you can get phone Ethernet. It should also come in one pack so you can install for both desktops and for phone.

When you buy your software from places like Amazon, they will email your activation code and then you can wait for the mail or just download it right away.

Data Storage And Free Storage Cloud Drives

Power storage is more useful, because not all footage can be physically stored as said before from external hard drive or computers. Use software as recommended which takes only a minute to pick up the footage and store in your cloud with a check. Therefore, when a thief steals your computer or camera, you can still have the information stored on your cloud.

When using the Amazon cloud, it has unlimited storage with it and its worth it because you can pick up all your devices including camera footage. However, Amazon does not upload immediately on its own, to do these; you have to download Odrive, which is a free auto upload application for Amazon cloud. It helps to store footage from your software to the new Odrive folder provided and the Odrive remains as a free version.

 

Logging In To Your Router

For some, these may look daunting, but it is not. most people have no idea how these are done properly, especially people that are not tech-knowhow.  You can log into your router by attaining its default IP address username, and password in the information that came with it or by Google searching its default if you have not changed them. Note that this is different from your Wi-Fi password. Now you paste the IP address into your browser, then you give your username and password and from there you just need to find the IP address of your connected devices. It might be also helpful to know where your ports are if you cannot use your camera on handheld devices as well.

Making It All Come Alive

Your house has a main IP address. Your router, each computer, each device, and each camera all have different IP addresses and passwords as well. When you note this, all remaining process is straightforward. Also, be aware that the router has different ports. Ports are where your IP addresses exchanges information. Write down your port standards as well, sometimes you need to assign the port called “port forwarding”, and assign the port for your software to be shared on your devices in your routers port forwarding section. Finally, you take all the IP addresses, passwords and ports and plug them into the software and the phone app, then everything becomes life and you are connected and in control of all your cameras.

If these entire processes look like hard work, remember most people have used these security systems and camera, and it actually works and you will not pay the high monthly fee sometimes attached to the use of security cameras.

Think of the savings, catching thieves and adding a sense of security in your life!