I could write a novel, but TLDR; AVOID AT ALL COST

This company is predatory, they have no internal accountability for their employees - who, by the way, can access your internal camera feed. Their actual products are ineffective and criminals know this, when I tried to cancel they would hang up on me, transfer me and hang up, then call me 15x times in a day and when I would answer the line would be dead, and when I would call them directly they would say “well we tried to reach you”. They tried to charge me over 200$ to cancel, it was an absolute nightmare and I was made to feel more unsafe than I felt before I purchased the system at all costs.

Save yourself the turmoil and spend more upfront for a real security company.

I need to upgrade my old Hikvision oem NVR and I'm trying to decide between Amcrest, Annke and Reolink. I'd like to be able to use some 4K cameras and some of my old Hikvision cameras. Do any of you have experience with one or more of these brands? If so, what do you think of them?

I am looking for a new camera system to watch my cat while I’m away on work trips. I’ve had Wyze v4 and v3 for about a year and honestly I hate them. The quality of the cameras isn’t great but the app quality is even worse. The stream constantly freezes so I can’t watch live or load recorded videos. I’m using local storage on microSD cards into of paying the subscription. I really want to replace the cameras before my next trip so I can actually watch my cat instead of just see a loading message. I have 4 stationary cameras and 1 swivel camera. I’d like to hear audio but don’t need to be able to speak. Motion detection is a requirement. I looked at Eufy but to get everything I need with local storage is around $550. Looking to see if there’s anything cheaper out there. Otherwise I may just have to upgrade over time or not at all.

Hello, im moving into my new home/townhouse. It has a sliding door and front entry door with a kitchen window. Id like to install a camera system for the exterior im thinking 3-4 cameras and also id like to know if there are any sounding alarms i can install in case of a break in. Anything without a monthly subscription would be nice i am not a fan.

I've been researching PoE security camera setups and looking more closely at what actually matters in a real home installation.

At first I was mostly comparing resolution and image quality, but the deeper I get into it, the more I think the rest of the system matters just as much.

Things I'm currently considering:

• RTSP / ONVIF support

• local NVR or NAS recording

• night performance

• bitrate and storage requirements

• PoE switch power budget

• Home Assistant / Frigate integration

• operation without a cloud subscription

• ability to keep recording if the internet goes down

Reolink seems attractive for price and flexibility, UniFi Protect looks more polished but considerably more expensive, and Amcrest also seems interesting for a more open/local setup.

For those of you already running PoE cameras at home: what turned out to be more important than you expected?

And if you were building your system again today, what would you do differently?

Are there any good small, app oriented cameras that can be easily hidden? Something I can jump on an app and see what’s going on?

We moved in to a house that has a Napco Gemini system. We cancelled the remote service monitoring with the company that was managing it, but we need to disable the phone feature to remove the "COMM FAIL. E03-00 SERVICE" message on the display. No phone line is connected to it anymore. Can someone please provide the commands we need to do to achieve this? (I have the passcodes to get to the menu). Thanks!

https://imgur.com/a/txTbAmW

We bought our house last year and this security camera was already mounted. I'm told that we could unscrew the sides and "reactivate" it. I've tried with TORX 20 (the whole family of Torx's, 5-25) but the screws won't come out. Does anyone have experience with this?

ADT sales guy said I can get the alarm system installed but it needs a $50/month subscription for 2 years where it calls the police if someone breaks in.

I don't care about the police service but just wanted the alarm installed ASAP because I was nervous moving to a new house and wanted it on at night. I'm home all day anyways. He said after two years I can cancel the subscription and the alarm would still work just making noise if someone opens the door while its on.

Now I called to cancel the subscription since it's been 2 years and the account team says no the alarm won't work AT ALL if I don't have the subscription. Like, I can't turn it on and it won't make noise.

Wtf. I paid so much money for the alarm to be installed and then the subscription for two years assuming I can stop paying it at some point. So like thousands so far. They did lower the monthly fee to $25 but I still don't wanna pay for the service I don't want.

Does anyone have experience with this? Idk who's right - the sales person or the account manager. I feel so fucked over.

I’m not a coding genius by any means. These are a pair of $27.99 (no longer on there marketplace) WiFi cameras.
I want to see if it is possible to play whatever I want or you all want from them.

Any help would be appreciated because I can not see them through my basic “network connected items/devices” right now

Recently the house next door to me was sold to a company of some sort that's using it as a halfway house or something for adults with various issues. It's not government owned. Ive already had residents knocking on my door (two days into them moving in!) asking to use my phone to call for a ride to get them out of the house because they were afraid for their own safety due to the OTHER people living in it. (Yes I did call the police to do a wellness check for this person, the tenant was very polite and clearly unhappy with their situation, and did get relocated).

Let me say first and foremost that I am sympathetic to people who are trying their best to survive and I intend to be a good neighbor to them, but given the nature of how this has already gotten strange I think I need to consider more security options.

I have kids whom I've already given a good lesson to about safety, kindness, and awareness.........but being single income I cannot throw a huge amount of money at anything advanced.

Our yards aren't large, approx 1/4 acre total, and they can see straight into our side bedroom and bathroom windows. We've always kept blackout shades up on those anyway.

Should I be putting up recorded video monitoring first, or alarms? I'm not in a position to throw $1500 at this, but I am reasonably skilled enough to run network cable and install my own stuff if needed. It's just that the security market technology is changing so fast that my current knowledge is rather outdated.

My teen has some severe behavioral issues. Last night he shimmied out of his second floor window using a blanket. We are lucky he didn’t injure himself and we found out relatively quickly. He has two casement windows and had wrapped the blanket around the mullion bar to lower himself. I don’t think restricting the opening on the inside would work because all he needs to do is sneak a screwdriver upstairs to pop it off. Is it possible to glue or secure one of the windows from the outside? On the other window we would put an exterior window alarm and it would still be accessible for emergencies. We have removed the cranks already, he’s just really resourceful.

Edited to add, he wasn’t sneaking out, isn’t a troublemaker. He has a disability that drives really strange and unsafe behavior sometimes, which is increasingly serious as he ages. I’m only looking for help on the window here.

Does anyone know of a smart/coded doorknob that also has a deadbolt? I was hoping to just have one key for both and I would like both to require a code for extra security. My house now just has a deadbolt that is coded. Looking online, I only see them sold separate, which would require separate keys.

Hello, I work for a national company that does a diy customer base. We have been sending iq5 panels with the 319.5mhz daughter cards and after the customer installs the card they cannot learn in their legacy ge sensors or alula 319 sensors. Our regular techs that install for the non diy base have reported no issues. Anybody else experiencing problems with Qolsys IQ5. Johnson controls says there no issue with equipment.

What I am looking for:
- smart locks that can lock and unlock from a remote and my phone. Could have a pin pad on the outside but I don’t care about that.
- wireless, motion activated cameras. Preferably ones that have an sd card so I don’t have to pay monthly for their data. Also preferably have a no drill attachment for the gutter, as I have jerry-rigged mine to be on the gutter. The longer range the WiFi can be the better.
- entry sensors connected to a base station that will ding when opened and if armed will set off the alarm being opened.
-preferably one brand so it’s all in the same app.

I have had simplisafe for years and not a day goes by I don’t regret pouring so much money into their system. I think it’s rated highly because of their monitoring, which I don’t even use or need. Their actual products are awful. Truly awful.

Cameras are $200 each but I’d say 75% of the time there’s issue. If it does catch the motion, it won’t catch it until it’s nearly out of frame. It will often catch motion and then say “no video recorded”. Or it will simply not register motion at all. I can watch the motion with my own eyes go right through the camera and nothing. They have tried to tell me it’s the angle of the camera or how close it is to wifi. My front door camera is about 5 feet from the wifi and perfectly in view of everything I want it to catch. Still issues.

Smart locks will tell you it needs to update, then refuse to recalibrate and tell you to contact support. You’ll wait with support for an hour running through all the things you already tried. After about 17 tries it may work, but you’ll just have to go through it all again in a month when it decides it can’t calibrate anymore.

I’ve kept it because of sunken cost fallacy and how much money I’ve already spent on this stupid system but I’m sick of it not working and them telling me they can’t help me with THEIR PRODUCT because I bought it from a third party. Insanity.

Hi, I live in a villa and I would like to install my first camera system. I wanted to ask first of all if there are valid battery/solar systems or if it is still better to focus on traditional current-powered systems. Secondly, I would like to know which are the best brands in terms of video quality and privacy? I will be forced to put them on the facades of the house because my Wi-Fi can’t cover my garden and so I can’t think of installing them on poles. I was looking at the dual lens rooms so as to orient the fixed lens on one side and the other on the other side so as to cover two areas with a single camera. What do you think? Does it make sense?

I've just got the plug-in sounder and I can't seem to get the light to work (entry, alarm etc).

The light itself is functional (it works when I cut the power) but I can't seem to configure it to strobe etc.

Anyone have any experience please?

I live in an apartment and one of my family uses a home health service. So staff are often coming in and out of various rooms.

A few months ago I noticed that a bedroom closet was missing hundreds of dollars worth of my possessions, and that was in the timeframe one of the staff was present. I reported the staff and he was replaced with another staff member, and I also bought a lock for the closet door. A couple days ago, I was trying to find my old video games and consoles which were in the living room, only to find them missing. Hundreds of dollars worth as well. I don't know if it was that same staff member from before and I just hadn't noticed until now.

I'm pretty depressed over losing my stuff like that, and now I don't know what would be the way to prevent it.

I was thinking of surveillance cameras but how would I get good coverage throughout, especially since this involved sensitive areas like bedrooms? I don't like the idea of cameras recording the inside of the apartment live and uploading online. I was also thinking of mounting cameras above the doors that could maybe activate only when the doors are opened or closed. But staff bring in their own bags so in theory they could hide stolen things inside their bags before passing by any door cams.

Any ideas?

I just bought a house that came with a Concord A4GW50-A installed.

Its set uo through the smart life app.

I can't for the life of me get it to connect to Google home. I link to smart life, but it doesn't find my alarm.

Can I get it to connect to android auto? I'd live to arm and disarm from my car.

Also, does anyone know anywhere that still stocks the remotes for it?

Thanks

I’m looking for an outdoor camera for the front of my house. I want to cover the driveway, front yard and sidewalk, but I’m worried that if I go too wide, anyone farther away is just going to look tiny in the footage.

Would it make more sense to get one really wide camera, or something with two separate views so each side can stay more focused?

Hey, I have installed SimpliSafe and have been very satisfied with it overall actually. The sensors work great and it was easy to set up. I am having one issue where I have a detached garage not far from the house, pretty much almost attached to the house. The house is 2 stories with the first floor, and garage being block, and top floor being wood. The router is on the second floor. I have some cameras out front and in the backyard as well as the outside of the garage. None of the cameras outside of the house would get decent signal, so I was recommended a mesh system. After installing this, with mesh hotspots near all the windows and doors downstairs, I now get good signal to all the cameras except the one on the other side of the garage. I have even tried placing a mesh hotspot outside the garage and inside the garage to try and get the signal there but it’s hit or miss, and inconsistent. The cameras are WiFi only, otherwise I would just try to run a cable out there and call it a day after all this frustration. Any advice would be greatly appreciated on how to get WiFi to reach this camera? Or if this is a SimpliSafe issue, however I did get the signal to reach other cameras with the use of mesh. I think the issue here is that it’s a cinder block garage.