Use Nanny Cameras and Door and Window Alarms to Keep a Watchful Eye on Your Home

In the past twenty years, devices such as nanny cameras have moved from the domain of the rich and famous and into the living rooms of ordinary, nine-to-five working folk. The same is true of formerly unaffordable technologies like door and window sensors and motion detector alarms.



Indeed, the last of these now cost about as much as a packed lunch. You'll be able to find contacts, the twin magnetic components used to make door and window alarms, for under $4 at most hardware stores. Magnetic alarm contacts form a circuit, which is broken when a door or window is opened, a disruption which in turn signals for your alarm sirens to sound and the police to come a-running. Door and window alarms are so easy to install, you might just as well take the task on as a DIY project - a little silicone and some wood glue and you'll be feeling safer in no time at all. Alternatively, most security companies will provide this most essential part of any home security surveillance system for you relatively cheaply (provided you've agreed to sign a security contract with them, of course).



Since contacts guard your doors and windows, you should consider them the first line of defense for your home security system. Next on the list should be motion detector alarms. These, too, are relatively cheap. There are a few different technologies that allow for motion detection. Ultra wideband radar (BWR) detectors emit an inaudible signal over a fixed range. If that signal bounces back sooner than expected, the BWR detector knows that something has moved across its view, and trips the alarm.



PIR motion detector alarms, on the other hand, are sensitive to the infrared or 'black body' radiation emitted by the objects in their cone-shaped field of view. These devices are very effective and have become a staple of home security surveillance systems across the globe. Simply put, when an object of one temperature moves past an object of another temperature, disrupting that object's infrared emissions, a PIR motion detector alarm will read this change as motion. The term 'PIR' stands for Passive Infra-Red, as PIR detectors don't shine an infrared beam like those hi-tech security systems in the movies - you'd have to shell out significantly more cash for one of those babies.



Out of all these devices, though, the potential of nanny cameras has probably grown the most. You can use them to check your house out at any time of day, by viewing their footage on your computer or cellphone. All you need to do is install them in the relevant parts of your home (which if you're actually a new parent, are those parts of the home where your baby should be), and you'll be able to tell whether the nanny's doing her job.



You can even have the data gathered by your home security surveillance system sent to a remote online storage cluster. Such clusters sell users whatever quantity of space they require at low rental rates. Assuming you're using a looped system of recording (which is really the wisest option, as multiple nanny cameras might record many terabytes worth of footage if left running for too long) you could purchase enough space to store days or weeks of footage for later perusal.



Still, this is only cost-effective up to a point. Luckily, there's a simple way to get around the need for making excessively large quantities of storage space one of the costs of your home security surveillance system. All that you need to do is have you motion detector alarms and door and window alarms wired to your nanny cameras. If you set this system up in such a way that the various sensors or detectors set your home security surveillance system recording when there's movement in the house, you'll wind up eliminating the need for redundant recordings of empty rooms. You can also get cameras programmed with motion detection software to begin with - these will actuate this function without the need for any fancy fiddling on your part.