Does anyone have experience or thoughts on the
Netgear Arlo system? I'm leaning towards it because it's completely wireless meaning I don't have to do any wiring to power it up, but I also need to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage. My only concern is... how do you stop the camera itself from being stolen?
Edit: I suppose what I would like is an outdoor camera that is easy to setup (i.e. as little hardwiring as possible like the Netgear Arlo) with continuous recording and doesn't require cloud storage, though I'd be okay if it were free and had a decent amount of storage space. The only reason I'm hesitating on the Arlo is because it doesn't record continuously and battery life is questionable.
You can't stop the camera from being stolen. Part of my job is doing camera systems, and most likely they won't steal the camera they'll just break it.
Every camera system I've installed, probably around 100, all cameras are set to motion-record only. There's no sense in wasting recording time/hard-drive wear for them to record nothing. Granted, these store to the cloud, so it's not your hard disk that's being thrashed with 24/7 recording time.
I have had a few owners that wanted full record on certain cameras just to be sure, but the motion record will usually catch any movement that happened. I've had cameras near air conditioning vents that will trigger motion record with fine particles of dust that go in front of the camera.
Most all decent camera systems will let you adjust the motion recording sensitivity.
My only drawbacks with the Arlo are:
1. Price, pretty expensive for two wireless cameras. Batteries seem cheap enough.
2. Still face the dilemma of if you lose power, you've lost camera recording. There doesn't seem to be a mention of local storage, as some "wireless cameras" will take an sd card for local storage before sending stream to DVR/Cloud wherever. What if you internet just goes down?
3. If I was going to buy that setup, I'd invest in a good battery backup unit for your router and/or cable modem to keep internet up. Now just because your modem is up doesn't necessarily mean you've got internet.
4. where's your recording? Oh it's in the cloud. I'm fine with the cloud, but somethings should just stay local.
It seems like a fine system, but if I was going to spend that much money for 2 cameras, I'd look into what I'll call a "real" DVR solution.
Yeah running cables in houses can be a pain in the ass sometimes.
I'd venture to say people wanting these cameras to "secure" their home are going to put them outside to watch the doors. Someone breaking into your house, most likely has scoped out your house, and maybe they've noticed that camera outside your door. If I really want in your house, I'll take that camera out before it sees me somehow. You'd want a camera inside your doors as there is where your going to get the best shot of what the person looks like.
Not even going to get into the fact of how easy "Night-vision" cameras are to circumvent. A halo of IR leds around your face defeats any IR camera at night. There are some cameras that offer night-vision without resorting to infrared bulbs.
Camera manufacturers make "vandal-proof" dome cameras that can be placed outside and most of them will be able to take a direct shot with a hammer and still work.
Would the arlo system give you piece of mind? Probably. Would
I use it for anything other than watching my kids sleep, probably not.
If you do buy the arlo, don't put the window decal up that says "I have an Arlo camera system by netgear" or whatever the decal says.
I try to educate my clients, that you have to think of a camera system as a deterrent. If they want what you've got behind cameras they will find a way.
That's not to say cameras are useless. I don't have an accurate number, but I'd venture to guess camera systems I've installed have helped prosecute 20 or so people. How many people have been fired from something caught on camera, I would say a bunch.
One cool thing I just saw with the Arlo is it can be tied in with IFTTT so if a camera senses motion you can have your smart-lights turn on. That's a pretty neat feature.
A lot of DVR boxes will offer alarm outputs, so if a camera sensed motion it could trigger an alarm zone, but most times you'll get to many false-alarms with that setup. However, I would think you could use that same alarm output wiring to trigger a light to come on.
