Lets talk “Security”………..

[Bmyers]

We have Wyze camera and floodlight. You can add features for additional money, but we just want the basic, which is free and it sends an alert to our phone when it detects a person and saves a short video to the SD card. We can watch the camera live from our phone/internet and turn the floodlights on and off.

They are easy to setup and my wife, who loves her chickens, have three cameras (non-floodlights) setup in the chicken coop and runs, so she can watch her chickens. Plus these cameras move around (yes, she loves her chickens).

 

[Daferris]

Might be more than what you're willing to spend but look into ubiquity.
www.ubnt.com
My Internet infrastructure and all my security cameras are there stuff. All too notch commercial grade equipment.
Been using them for more than 10 years.

 

[xrocketengineer]

I am cheap, I went with Foscam. The cameras are alright, one of my cameras is at least 10 years old. The PC software takes some learning. However, if you use the PC software (VMS for Windows or Apple), you can set up the cameras and monitor them remotely with a PC without the need of a Foscam account. In my case I have 4 cameras on the same network plus there is another one in my wife's condo on the beach that I can manage and monitor from my PC with a local account. But if I want to use the Foscam app on my phone, then I have to use a free Foscam account. The cloud recording is optional but not free. I bought the cameras one at a time as it became somewhat of a hobby. Only the oldest camera has no SD card capability. The last purchase was the Foscam NVR and that kind of sucks. It does record ok but it wants to override whatever settings you might have in each individual camera and it almost ignores the oldest camera. The VMS software and the NVR don't play well together, so it takes some effort to get them to do what I want.

 

[Runs With Scissors]

ROFL! Cornfused yet?

OMG……you said it brother…………Lots of stuff to consider.

Hell, I'm having a hard time just keep up with the all the damn letters….NVR, UPS, DVD, LGBTQ…... ROTFLMFAO……..

Well this has become “interesting"…..and I thank everyone for their input……I’m gonna have to dive a little deeper into this.




Reolink seems to be a “big player” in this market, but there is certainly no shortage of “players” for sure.

So does anyone know if you can just add a “aftermarket” external hard drive to “upgrade” the recorders from 2TB to “whatever”? Or are these systems typically “proprietary”?

 

[Hugo Habicht]

Reolink seems to be a “big player” in this market, but there is certainly no shortage of “players” for sure.

The emphasis is on "seems". When searching on the internet you may get this impression.

When I searched what system to buy I had the same impression initially. Then I came across a security systems forum which is used a lot by professional installers. They had nothing good to say about Reolink products.

After reading that I went back to reviews on various web sites and I noticed that people that gave them positive reviews had only done one product review. People with negative feedback stated the reasons and had done various product reviews in the past.

So it looks to me if Reolink has lots of people working on manipulating search results and product feedback instead on working on product quality.

I said it before: the two big players are Hikvision and Dahua. Yes, both Chinese companies, I have no problem with that. Their software is mainly open source (due to underlying Linux operating system). The source code for my NVR from Dahua is available from them. They play with open cards unlike companies in other countries (I only mention Edward Snowden here ). And if Xi Jinping thinks he has to watch my cat in the garage or in the garden, so what? And when I am in the house it is easy to stop recording or external internet access using an ethernet disconnect switch. Running "wireshark" to check ethernet traffic did not reveal any suspicious activity yet.

Wrt to your last question: my Dahua NVR accepts any SATA hard drive, nothing proprietary there. I am using server disks due to the frequent access.

 

[Old Machinist]

The only time I ever have a camera in the house is when I am going out of town. I have one on my front porch and one on the back patio, both facing outward. I also have two different views of my front gates and have them turned so they only focus on my property and gates. I don't want to be accused of recording activity off my property.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record but one of the features I like about the iegeek cameras is the free cloud service included on ALL of my cameras. I have tested to see if it's available with the camera offline and it is so if someone stole my camera I could at least still get the 6 second recording of that. I do wish they had a windows client to watch replays from my computer. Reolink does have that but I rarely use it.

 

[Scm]

So does anyone know if you can just add a “aftermarket” external hard drive to “upgrade” the recorders from 2TB to “whatever”? Or are these systems typically “proprietary”?

I would assume you could change the drive. They are probably a standard drive with a specific format depending on what system they run.

Side note about the big brother aspect.
If you care about privacy. Absolutely NEVER, install a Ring camera.
And,
If you need to setup an online account to use a system. The company (plus big brother) will defiantly have access to the device. But, I would be leery of devices that don't "require" an online account too. I bought a unit that didn't require an online account. but when I had forgotten the password I setup, the "tech support" guy was able to reset it from his location when I shared the device number. So yeah, they even had access to that one. Yes, I unplugged the cat5 cord instantly after that. I know, I'm "crazy".

 

[xrocketengineer]

Oh, I forgot, all the Foscam cameras can be setup using the PC VMS software (can not be done with the phone app) to send an email with three sequential photos when motion is detected. That is the way my first camera was setup since I had no means to record video. However, it can become a pain because the infrared LED's attract insects and the spiders decide to cover the lens with spiderwebs. Then they use the spiderweb as a trampoline and you get a hell of a lot emails at night.